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Republicans Have High Hopes About Flipping Wisconsin’s High Court – National Review
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When traditional conservative judicial candidates make their pitch to voters, one crucial jurisprudential dictum typically tops everything else: Judges don’t make law; legislatures do.

This conservative principle is at stake in this spring’s Wisconsin supreme court election, argues conservative nominee Brad Schimel, the Badger State’s former attorney general who now serves as a circuit court judge in Waukesha County. “Judges should faithfully apply the law the way the legislature wrote it to the facts of a case,” he told National Review in a wide-ranging interview about his candidacy. “We shouldn’t decide what’s good policy and what’s bad policy. “The legislature is, ..

As Trump’s allies blast hero Zelensky for his clothes, desperate Ukrainian war medics ask Don: ‘Should WE wear a suit’?– www.thesun.co.uk
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HERO surgeons on Ukraine’s frontline have mocked their US critics by asking “should we wear a suit?”

Frontline docs hit back after President Zelensky was accused of disrespecting America by wearing combat fatigues to the White House.

Federal cuts to HUD grants threaten impact on housing discrimination efforts – AOL
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A new set of federal cuts at the hands of the Trump administration will impact the number of grants the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) can offer to organizations.

Along with these latest reductions, HUD, like many federal agencies, has lost hundreds of employees as DOGE aims to reduce federal spending.

This past Valentine’s Day, former HUD employee Jayna Lennon was just days away from completing her probationary period when she received a termination letter.

“It was really surreal. Yeah, it was a crazy day,” Lennon said.

USAID Cuts Puts a Company That Helps Disabled Kids at Risk– time.com
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As the U.S. government endeavors to trim its spending, no agency has been as pared back as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). On Feb. 26, after 30 days of what was purported to be a 90-day review, the Trump Administration announced that 90% of the international aid projects the agency was funding were going to be canceled, ending an era of outsize dominance and generosity by the U.S. in foreign aid.

These cuts include funding for medical, nutrition, educational and democratic initiatives that were sustaining and protecting millions of people. While foreign aid represented about half a percentage of the U.S. budget, it also represented more than 40% of the world’s foreign aid. The size and speed of the cancellations have reverberated around the world, with many experts suggesting that America’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner has taken a hit simply because of the abruptness of the process.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that all foreign-aid projects must make Americans safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Valerie Karr, who has been working in disability rights for two decades, understands that impulse but is aghast at the cost to the people her small business served: disabled children in impoverished countries. For the last six years, Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) has helped implement plans to get children with disabilities around the world into schools and keep them there.

Voters Support Government Efficiency, Democrats Don’t Get It– www.dailysignal.com
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President Donald J. Trump and Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk are trying to rightsize the entire federal enterprise, just as companies—large and small—do daily.

Democrats are having none of it. Indeed, their rage over DOGE knows no borders.

“Donald Trump has turned the White House into ‘The Elon Musk Show,’” House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York complained this week on the Capitol steps. “It’s a malignant clown show. Nothing that is being done—nothing—is actually making life better for the American people. They are trying to take affirmative steps to make life worse.”

Xenophobic Democrats are slamming Musk as an immigrant! He was born in South Africa and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. He also is a citizen of Canada via his Canadian mother.

On Thursday, Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s ‘The View,’ called Musk “a foreign agent; an enemy of the United States.”

AOC tells NPR Republicans ‘do not want to solve’ illegal immigration problem—claims fix is ‘path to citizenship’ for undocumented people | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
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“It is a problem not just for Democrats, it’s a problem for the entire country that Republicans do not want to solve.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused Republicans of deliberately avoiding a real solution to the nation’s immigration issues and argued that a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is the best way to address the crisis.

During an interview with NPR host Steve Inskeep, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about how immigration is impacting Democrats’ support among working-class voters in the wake of President Donald Trump’s re-election, according to Fox News.

“To what extent is immigration, as an issue, part of your problem with working-class voters?” Inskeep asked.

“I guess my question would be, what does the word ‘problem’ mean?” Ocasio-Cortez replied.

“People voting for the other side and not for you,” Inskeep explained.

Poll Finds Support for Israel Among Americans is Divided by Age– legalinsurrection.com
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Many young people have bought the progressive narrative on Israel, which is hardly surprising based on what we have seen on college campuses.

Americans Sharply Divided by Age Over Support for Israel, Poll Finds

A new poll about the Israel-Hamas war found a 29 percentage point divide between older and younger Americans on support for Israel.

Recent polling for the Napolitan News Service of 1,000 registered voters comes as President Donald Trump hopes to end that war in the Middle East. Trump last month hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, where they talked about Arab countries taking Palestinian refugees and the future of Gaza.

Sixty-six percent of senior citizens polled consider Israel an ally, whereas only 37% of younger voters do. While no senior citizens surveyed viewed Israel as America’s enemy, 16% of younger voters (under 35) regarded that country as an enemy.

Why did Germany’s SPD party do so badly in the election? – DW (English)
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The day after Hamburg’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, March 2, cautious optimism was in the air at the Social Democratic Party (SPD) headquarters in Berlin. “The result made us smile,” said party co-chair Saskia Esken.

The SPD won 33.5% of the vote in Hamburg, more than double its February 23rd federal election result of only 16.4%. That was the SPD’s worst federal election result since 1887 ­— back when it was still called the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. The Bundestag election reflects a depressing, decades-long downward trend for the party.

The SPD’s 25.7% share in Germany’s last federal election in 2021, now seems to have been an anomaly. Back then, opinion polls had  put the party at 15% for months. Its surprising comeback was due to crucial mistakes by its main rival, the center-right Christian Democratic Party (CDU). Those within SPD ranks later described it like this: “We thought we had won — but it was only that the others had lost.”

Billionaire Musk survives UK Royal Society expulsion calls – Bilyonaryo Business News
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Tech billionaire Elon Musk has survived calls for his expulsion from the Royal Society following a crunch meeting at the elite British science institute.

However, the roughly 150 members in attendance vowed to combat “misinformation and ideologically motivated attacks” on science following Monday’s closed-door talks.

It came after more than 3,000 people including Nobel prize winners signed an open letter last month saying X owner Musk had broken the Society’s code of conduct by promoting “unfounded conspiracy theories”.

China’s naval deployment should invigorate Australia’s election debate – The Strategist
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The Australian government’s underreaction to China’s ongoing naval circumnavigation of Australia is a bigger problem than any perceived overreaction in public commentary. Some politicisation of the issue before a general election is natural in a democracy—and welcome if it means Canberra’s defence and China policy settings feature more prominently in debates ahead of the election due by May.

How times have changed. Fifteen years ago, Australia was worried that the quadrilateral partnership with India, Japan and the US would spook China, making it worry that it was being strategically encircled by the US and its regional allies and partners. Wind the clock forward to 2025 and China’s navy is off Perth, circumnavigating Australia with a potent surface action group.

This is the furthest south that a Chinese naval flotilla has ventured. This one is composed of a cruiser, a frigate and a replenishment ship—above the surface, at least.

Naval analysts have urged Australia to temper its reaction to the deployment because Canberra has a reciprocal interest in freedom of navigation in China’s maritime periphery. This is certainly a factor, and to some extent puts the government in a bind. The Chinese navy has a clear legal right to operate in waters close to Australia, even if it is going very far out of its way to make a point. That includes the right to conduct live-fire exercises.

Trump directs Lutnick to investigate US lumber imports– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Saturday that orders an investigation into U.S. imports of wood products, an industry that the president sees as “essential to the national security, economic strength, and industrial resilience” of the United States.

The order directs Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to lead an investigation into the national security implications of the U.S.’s current imports of timber, lumber, and manufactured wood products. This will include looking into demand for timber and lumber in the U.S., if domestic production can meet domestic demand, the significance of major foreign exporters in meeting U.S. demand, as well as any predatory trade practices that affect the U.S.’s competitiveness in the industry.

A report on this that details these potential national security concerns and includes policy recommendations such as tariffs, which Trump has floated on lumber as recently as mid-February, will be due by late November.

Mark Zuckerberg hints at the end for Meta’s programmers, with more companies expected to follow suit by 2025 – Glass Almanac
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The coming years will be pivotal. With Meta, Salesforce, and other tech giants leading the charge, AI-driven automation in programming is no longer a question of “if” but “when”.

The real challenge now is how the industry—and society—will adapt. Will programmers evolve alongside AI, or will they be left behind? One thing is certain: 2025 is set to be a turning point in the way we think about software development, automation, and the future of work itself.

Supreme Court allows Kentucky’s GOP attorney general to defend controversial abortion law – The Sentinel
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The law restricts a standard second-trimester abortion method known as “dilation and evacuation” that is used after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It was signed into law in 2018 but has so far been blocked by the courts.

The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t address the constitutionality of the law. Instead, the dispute involved a procedural issue: whether the attorney general could step in to defend the law after other state officials said they would no longer pursue an appeal.

Deep-sea expedition reveals low-oxygen depths of Red Sea host unexpected life– phys.org
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An exploratory expedition describes two deep-sea, low-oxygen ecosystems in the Red Sea, including some surprising fish. The findings are published in PNAS Nexus.

Persistent oxygen-depleted zones in the ocean are relatively well studied in the temperate zone, but little is known about these unique ecosystems in the tropics. Shannon Klein and colleagues explored two subsurface oxygen-depleted zones in deep reaches of a Red Sea coral reef system with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and crewed deep-sea vehicles as part of the Red Sea Decade Expedition of 2022.

Both sites are geomorphologically enclosed and characterized by warm temperatures (22ºC) and deep, oxygen-depleted conditions (<2–10.958 μmol O2 kg⁻¹) beneath the reef’s surface waters.

ROV video footage from Amq Deep showing lace corals and fish in warm, low oxygen conditions. Credit: National Center for Wildlife (NCW), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

In the Amq Deep, reaching 619 meters below the surface, the authors found lace corals and at least three species of fish, including lightfish, soldierfish, and large aggregations of lanternfish. Lanternfish in the suboxic deep swim five times slower than lanternfish in oxygenated waters and may migrate upwards at night to reoxygenate and feed.

In the 491-meter-deep Farasan Deep, near-anoxic conditions (<2 μmol O2 kg⁻¹) were expected to preclude the presence of aerobically respiring organisms. However, the researchers were surprised to observe fish swimming along the surface of the sediment under these conditions. These fish are unidentified.

According to the authors, the warm and saline environment of the Red Sea interacts with deep enclosed depressions to restrict vertical mixing, limiting oxygen resupply at depth—and similar zones are likely to occur in abundance in other tropical coastal areas, perhaps with their own adapted fauna.

ROV video footage from Amq Deep showing lace corals and fish in warm, low oxygen conditions. Credit: National Center for Wildlife (NCW), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

More information:
Shannon G Klein et al. Deep oxygen-depleted depressions in a Red Sea coral reef sustain resistant ecosystems, PNAS Nexus (2025). academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/art … 93/pnasnexus/pgaf049

Citation:
Deep-sea expedition reveals low-oxygen depths of Red Sea host unexpected life (2025, March 4)
retrieved 4 March 2025
from https://phys.org/news/2025-03-deep-sea-reveals-oxygen-depths.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Quantum properties in atom-thick semiconductors offer new way to detect electrical signals in cells– www.sciencedaily.com
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For decades, scientists have relied on electrodes and dyes to track the electrical activity of living cells. Now, engineers at the University of California San Diego have discovered that quantum materials just a single atom thick can do the job — using only light.

A new study, published on Mar. 3 in Nature Photonics, shows that these ultra-thin semiconductors, which trap electrons in two dimensions, can be used to sense the biological electrical activity of living cells with high speed and resolution.

Scientists have continually been seeking better ways to track the electrical activity of the body’s most excitable cells, such as neurons, heart muscle fibers and pancreatic cells. These tiny electrical pulses orchestrate everything from thought to movement to metabolism, but capturing them in real time and at large scales has remained a challenge.

The Ethics of Long-Term Psychiatric Drug Use and Why We Need a Better Way– www.madinamerica.com
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Toxicity That Psychiatry Refuses to Acknowledge

Mainstream psychiatry acknowledges that antipsychotics can cause neurotoxicity—tardive dyskinesia is a well-documented condition. But the field refuses to extend that acknowledgment to other psychiatric drugs.

Yet, in my experience, long-term antidepressant use can cause its own form of neurotoxicity, leading to:

  • Apathy
  • Dissociation
  • Chronic low energy
  • Agitation

This condition is recognized in the medical literature as tardive dysphoria. But despite its existence in research, I was never taught about it in my psychiatric training. I’ve never heard it mentioned at a conference.

What happens to these patients? Instead of recognizing their condition as antidepressant-induced neurotoxicity, they get diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. This leads to:

  • Higher doses of medication

  • More drug combinations

  • Escalation to ketamine, TMS, or ECT

  • In some cases, being placed on heavy antipsychotics like clozapine

The Year America Banished the Bible from the Public Square – Standing for Freedom Center– www.standingforfreedom.com
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The Supreme Court’s Abington decision banning Bible reading and prayer from America’s schools was a turning point, but it need not be the final word: With the Bible as its roadmap, America can repent and return to God, who sustained it for centuries.

In 1963, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Abington School District v. Schempp. By an 8-1 vote, the Court ruled that mandatory Bible reading and prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

 

Doctor targeted by Biden DOJ for exposing trans medicine for minors invited to Trump congressional address – AOL
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A Texas surgeon indicted by the Biden Justice Department for blowing the whistle on transgender medicine has been invited to attend President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

Dr. Eithan Haim called the feeling “indescribable” after staring down the threat of a decade-long prison sentence.

“It’s a hard thing to try to wrap into words,” Haim told “Fox & Friends First” Monday.

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Originally published February 14, 2025 for our End-of-Month Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get semi-monthly issues.

By Paul Collier, Editor

“A clear view of the difference between the province of constitutional law and the province of administrative function ought to leave no room for misconception; and it is possible to name some roughly definite criteria upon which such a view can be built. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law… The broad plans of governmental action are not administrative; the detailed execution of such plans is administrative. Constitutions, therefore, properly concern themselves only with those instrumentalities of government which are to control general law…

Our peculiar American difficulty in organizing administration is not the danger of losing liberty, but the danger of not being able or willing to separate its essentials from its accidents. Our success is made doubtful by that besetting error of ours, the error of trying to do too much by vote. Self-government does not consist in having a hand in everything, any more than housekeeping consists necessarily in cooking dinner with one’s own hands. The cook must be trusted with a large discretion as to the management of the fires and the ovens…”Woodrow Wilson, from The Study of Administration

INTRODUCTION

As President Trump moves to cut down the administrative state, the courts are now responding to his moves with aggressive rulings that could cause the President to ignore their rulings altogether, come what may. The story of the administrative state versus Trump, though, began long ago, in the mind of a professional man who was pondering this question: How can America overcome the limits of democracy and liberty?

On December 31, 1887, a policy wonk named Woodrow Wilson penned an essay called The Study of Administration.” In that essay, Wilson outlined a dream of a new America that would free itself from the shackles of a democracy without surrendering the principles of a democracy.

That dream was fulfilled in the administrative state, where an army of “experts,” people who would use the broadly written language of laws to create more de facto laws not held accountable to public opinion. This would be accomplished using regulations, specifically the regulators, unaccountable legislators, that write the new de facto laws.

Wilson would become President in 1913, a year that saw the Income Tax created, the Federal Reserve created, and State Legislatures lose the power to select Senators. America was becoming more “Democratic” and more well-funded. The seeds of Wilson’s administrative state were created.

Over 100 years later, Wilson’s administrative state has grown into an anti-American leviathan, with its tendrils infecting every major American institution and almost every American life. A recent SCOTUS ruling that struck down the so-called Chevron defense, a legal precedent that conceded constitutional interpretation to the administrative state, effectively struck down the heart of Wilson’s administrative state. This makes creating new deeply buried slush funds for the anti-Americanist party, the DNC, much more difficult, so the pain of losing what they have is even more pronounced.

Now, DOGE and Trump are coming for Woodrow Wilson and his regulator army.

A. THE RISE OF THE AMERICANIST BILLIONAIRE

A civil war has broken out in America that takes us one step closer to a “hot” civil war, which is still far worse than this less invasive version that’s being fought right now. This war is being fought in government buildings in D.C., America’s capital. This war is being fought in U.S. courtrooms across this country. This war is being fought on social media around the world. This war is being fought in newsrooms and film studios. This is a war between the administrative state, the party in power, and the defenders of the republic, the counterrevolutionaries.

  1. THE PROGMERICANS – On the one side, we have the Democratic Party and their loyal rearguard, the “RINOs” (Republicans in name only) that still seem to have a lot of power in national, state, and even local leaderships across America. This group has essentially bought into what one might call “The China Model,” which is a model that supposes one can have a “mixed economy,” one that allows for controlled “capitalism” enjoyed by the party favorites, and one that still exercises socialist control over the unfavored masses.

What attracted American billionaires to the China model was the idea they could enjoy the fruits of capitalism, mainly its creative power over socialist markets, while not suffering the full consequences of “true” capitalism, competition from the hoi polio.

When it comes to the DNC, the line between the DNC-captured corporation and the state is so blurred that it has become almost invisible. For instance, the Soros family gave millions to DNC-interest groups, even largely bankrolling the rise of so-called Soros DAs,” far-left anti-crime Attorney Generals like Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg, people willing to violate American Rule of Law for the sake of the party.

Yet, the Soros Family has also received millions from USAID, one of what will most likely turn out to be multiple DNC slush funds designed to spread woke leftism abroad and insurrection at home. So where does the state begin and end with the Soros family? There is no separation, it would seem, to this writer.

  1. XI ARRESTS THE BILLIONAIRES – After Chairman Xi became the de facto chairman of China in 2016, by earning the title of “Core” leader, he moved swiftly to purge those not in his trusted circle by using corruption charges as the tip of that purging spear.

After he was done with the political class, he turned his sights on the billionaire class, which is when American billionaires took notice. Some began to realize that a socialist system, even with capitalism for the party favorites, is still a police state system, making any billionaire vulnerable to the whims of a leader like Chairman Xi no matter how much wealth the party allows them to accrue.

  1. BIDEN ACTS LIKE XI – The billionaires on the inside of the heart of DNC power felt a little safer, believing, perhaps, they could never be one of the rogue billionaires that would get caught up in the leader’s crosshairs. The billionaires on the outside of DNC power began to see the writing on the wall.

The acceleration of the rise of the anti-woke billionaires came through the DNC’s poor decision to prosecute Trump, political opponents, J6ers, and even pro-life activists. They could see for themselves up close the real power of the woke left to destroy the opposition using lawfare and any other means they might find at their disposal.

They started to believe the Democrats were the violent revolutionaries (since 1913) seeking to create an oppressive police state that we always said they were. They knew one thing: if Trump lost in 2024, they might be the next to be hauled off to prison.

So they threw in with Trump, dodged literal bullets, and now, with the creation of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Americanist billionaires (Trump, Musk) are battling the Progmerican billionaires by going after the heart of the DNC.

The heart of the DNC power is its magical, nebulous government-created-and-protected slush funds. These funds were created by Wilson’s administrative state, and now they are its lifeblood.

  1. THE BATTLEFIELD EMERGES – But the Americanists aren’t just fighting the slush funds; they’re fighting the wall of DNC bodies that stand as human shields to protect those funds, the bureaucrats, the unelected de facto DNC activists using government funds to subvert American interests both at home and abroad.

In front of those bureaucrats is the first line of defense, the DNC judges, the Judges willing to subvert American Rule of Law to advance the interests of the DNC, the party of Progmerica, the police state, where American liberty dies. This is that struggle so far.

B. THE PRIZE FOR VICTORY, THE COST FOR DEFEAT

What’s at stake for the DNC is the very survival of its key advantage, the ability to create the illusion of social acceptance, social ascendancy so the woke left can continue to use its most powerful weapon, social ostracism, as a legitimate expression of organic power (or grassroots power as opposed to what it really almost always is, astro-turfed power).

Through its control of most of the major institutions in America, the Progmericans are able to create the illusion that their way is the right way, the commonsense way, and anyone outside of that orthodoxy is rightly socially ostracized, if not imprisoned, if not killed.

But the ideology is antithetical to human flourishing, so only deception, fraud, and coercion can sustain it. For that, they need to control the means of social, cultural, market, and civic production, which they mostly do.

Should they lose even the majority of it, let alone all of it, this writer predicts a dramatic shift in political worldviews in America when Americans learn their American beliefs and American values are NOT fringe views that are code for white supremacism as the DNC media would have you believe.

Should the axe fall on even just the majority of their slush funds, the effect will be profound. It will ensure the Democrats will have to either abandon the anti-American wokism it decided to ride to power or cease to be a party at all.

C. DOGE BREACHES THE BEAST

After DOGE accessed the Treasury Department’s payment data when Homeland Security Officers had to be called to remove resisting bureaucrats from the premises, they discovered a far-left slush fund called USAID. Soon after, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly halted the operation (more on her later).

It was decided that the operation, the forensic investigation of government budget by DOGE, could continue after the DOJ agreed to a proposed order that would allow only two Musk-approved, but Treasury Department-employed people to have access to the data in read-only mode. These two special employees are Tom Krause and Marko Elaz.

The window into the soul of the so-called deep state, the USAID, would continue, and DOGE would expose, in detail, an operation that spanned the world, that funded the press, at home and abroad, and created many unaccountable funds worth billions. The heart of Woodrow Wilson’s administrative state lay bare for the world to see.

  1. USAID SOCIAL – Here is a bulletin of just a few woke left activist groups USAID funded (from PJ Media):
  • $1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa through the State Department.
  • $14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department.
  • $20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department.
  • $47,020 for a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department.
  • $32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru through the State Department.
  • $55,750 for a climate change presentation warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina to be led by female and LGBT journalists through the State Department.
  • $3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean” through USAID.
  • $7,071.58 for a BIPOC speaker series in Canada through the State Department.
  • $80,000 for an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia, through the State Department.
  • $3.2 million to help Tunisian migrants readjust to life in Tunisia after deportation through the State Department.
  • $16,500 to foster a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society” through the State Department.
  • $10,000 to pressure Lithuanian corporations to promote “DEI values” through the State Department.
  • $8,000 to promote DEI among LGBTQ groups in Cyprus through the State Department.
  • $1.5 million to promote job opportunities for LGBTQ individuals in Serbia through USAID.
  1. USAID PRESS – In addition to pushing woke left ideologies, USAID also funds major leftist media outlets, including Politico and the New York Times. This is a story that might be a future MIA report (events permitting) involving more than just USAID indirectly funding corporate media.

The use of slush funds to prop up media outlets telling Americans to hate themselves while inciting violence on a daily basis makes these same media outlets vulnerable if the slush funds are shut down.

After all, when the press continues to spread hateful messages, they lose customers, and they can only sustain themselves if they are being subsidized. In this case, they are being illegally subsidized by the government.

USAID was also behind funding the work done by these same insurrectionists to spread the Russia Hoax, a psyop that was intended to remove not just a sitting President, but the entire political opposition, criminalizing dissent in the name of safety against the Russian demon.

From townhall.com:

Public’s Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag once again dove into this sordid world of (supposed) NGO activity and government funding: they found that OCCRP pushed the Trump-Russian bank/money laundering myth.

USAID and the State Department appear to have created a vast network to co-opt the international press. These agencies funneled $472.6 million to Internews over the last 17 years. As of 2023, Internews operated out of 30 countries and had reached over 778 million people. The organization trained over 9,000 journalists and nearly 4,300 media outlets worldwide.

Jeanne Bourgault, Internews’ CEO, advocated for exclusion lists on social media “to combat disinformation” of disfavored views at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2024. The WEF then issued a report naming “misinformation” as the number one “Global Risk.” 

Through these methods, USAID specifically, and the U.S. deep state in general, have used taxpayer money not only for censorship, but also for propaganda, agenda setting, and information control around the world. 

As a result of their discoveries, Trump and his Secretaries have been slashing jobs and offering buyouts to others. They’ve also canceled what funding of leftist fake news outlets they could.

D. WILSON FIGHTS BACK

After a few thousand jobs were slashed, lawsuits ensued immediately, mostly filed in DNC-controlled courts. One immigration group suing Trump, CASA, is being funded by the government to the tune of $12 million from 2022-23 alone. Even as this report is finalized, news of more district judges striking down Trump’s orders are STILL coming in.

A good summary of the work being done by the DNC-serving courts was written by John Daniel Davidson from The Federalist:

Federal judges in Democrat-majority districts have issued preliminary injunctions blocking Trump’s executive actions to end birthright citizenship, reform and downsize the United States Agency for International Development, and offer buyouts to federal bureaucrats. A federal judge this past weekend blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and all other political appointees in the Trump administration – including the Treasury secretary and his deputies – from accessing payment data at the Treasury Department.

… (Another judge, appointed by Obama, took the extraordinary step of ordering the administration to pay back every cent of federal funding that’s been paused or canceled – and threatened anyone who violates his order with criminal contempt.)

What all this lawfare amounts to is a kind of judicial coup against the sitting president. By doling out injunctions like they’re USAID grants for LGBTQ awareness programs in Mali, Democrats have been able to hamstring key aspects of Trump’s agenda – at least for the moment. It’s a simple enough tactic. All Democrats have to do is shop for a venue to find the most activist, rabidly anti-Trump federal judges in the country, file their lawsuits, and wait for the injunctions to come raining down.

Vice President JD Vance tweeted, “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.” This seems like pretty aggressive language to me.

President Trump has filed an Emergency Motion to dissolve the TRO to cancel the most aggressive judgments. From President Trump’s filing:

At approximately 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 8, 2025, this Court issued an ex parte Temporary Restraining Order that purported to limit access to a vast swath of Treasury systems to only “civil servants,” while prohibiting “all political appointees” from doing the same. On its face, the Order could be read to cover all political leadership within Treasury – including even Secretary Bessent. This is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides.

There is not and cannot be a basis for distinguishing between “civil servants” and “political appointees.” Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President. A federal court, consistent with the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of that work from the specter of political accountability. No court can issue an injunction that directly severs the clear line of supervision Article II requires. Because the Order on its face draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction, it should be dissolved immediately.

The war in the courts continues, with a recent ruling in Trump’s favor offsetting the far-left judges’ treasonous actions. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. removed his freeze on federal employee payouts.

The Democrats know their heart of power is under assault. Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) yelled out at a rally, “We will not take this! We will fight back! And god#%m it, shut down the Senate! We are at war!” Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) screamed, “Pay attention. We’re here today in the hopes that you will see the light. But if you do not see the light, we will bring the fire. Resist!”

The Democrats are calling for street fights and threatening to “get up in their faces” while their DNC-serving judges are threatening to arrest Trump if he doesn’t comply with their unconstitutional orders. One Democratic Party U.S. congressmember recently threatened to meet Elon Musk with “actual weapons,” and encouraged his followers to do the same.

Robert Garcia (D-CA). saidWell he is a d#%k, and I think he’s also harming the American public in an enormous way. What I think is really important and what the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight… This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country, and it’s important to push back on the chairperson of this committee.”

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

The heart of this battle, right now, is in the courts, and the DNC has polluted it with activist party members who hold no loyalty to a country they’ve been trained to believe is merely a white supremacist demon that helped invent or completely invented evil itself.

The DNC-controlled courts will do what they must to protect the party from being politically executed before our very eyes. The question is, what will the Americanists do in response? This could be the flashpoint where the civil war of today becomes something awful tomorrow.

If SCOTUS intervenes quickly and settles most of the lawsuits in Trump’s favor, expect to see Progmerican billionaires begin leaving the country to head to friendlier climes. There may be some token blue state resistance, but this will not devolve into a hot civil war, as the counties outside the cities in those states will quickly make it clear they stand with Trump.

If SCOTUS intervenes quickly and sides with the bureaucrats, America will face a constitutional crisis, one I don’t think Trump will back down from. In this scenario, we will soon devolve into a hot civil war. If Trump fails to defy the courts, the bureaucrats have won, which will also lead to a hot civil war, but not as quickly as it will if Trump defies the court orders.

This writer supports Trump ignoring the court orders, for he would know that to preserve this infestation is to guarantee the destruction of the republic, so he will have nothing left to lose. Blue states will form associations but will not officially secede from the union; rather, they will simply not recognize the authority of the Trump Federal government. Numerous states will issue arrest warrants for Trump and every other member of his cabinet.

Blue States will see counties within them revolt, peacefully, doing to them what they just did to Trump, refusing to recognize state authority. Maps will emerge that will show the true reality of power for Progmerica, that the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly a city party that lacks real presence in most of the country.

Outside of the cities, Progmericans do not gather in significant numbers. If the maps reveal this reality, expect the shooting war to be averted. If not, this is when the shooting war begins.

If SCOTUS fails to act quickly, the battle will be over the hearts and minds of the people, with the DNC hate machine, the info-terrorist-insurrectionist media, pulling out all the stops to scare Americans into thinking reining in government bureaucracy and spending is somehow white supremacism.

Believe you me, friends, in the woke left parlance, the shortest path to cutting off critical thinking and winning every “debate” is to convince the sycophant their enemy is the devil himself, which is what “white supremacism” really means. It is a dog whistle for the devil, Satan, Old Scratch himself. This time will be no different.

But the use of yell-shaming as a means of human control eventually breaks, and the human ends up breaking their spell over them, laughing at the wokist’s taunts, its baseless accusations, and its hysterical cries.

If SCOTUS drags its feet and allows these cases to slowly work through the courts, this will mean more violence Americans will have to face, and more blue state tyranny Americans behind enemy lines will have to face.

With only state power to thug their enemies with, the people in blue states will soon be reminded of the difference between Trump’s America and Progmerica, where they now live. This will cause those who might not be able to afford to leave to STILL leave for red horizons, as the exodus from woke continues.

Their ability to fund more city burnings is less than it was, but city burning is coming, and the response from Trump might be heavy-handed, as it probably should be.

If this writer is right, the power of the media to mold American opinion is diminished more and more every day. Their power is so waned that I do not believe the lies they tell onscreen will overcome the reality Americans feel in their lives every day.

They want this rot gone, even if they don’t fully yet fundamentally understand that this rot is centralized in one entity, the DNC, the Democrat National Corporation.

If the spirit of America is as strong as I believe it is in this land today, this will be the last gasp of the latest iteration of Hell, the Democratic Party and its woke left vehicle of power. Still, it will hardly be the last we hear from Hell, for Hell never shuts up, and WILL NEVER shut up until Christ returns.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Woodrow Wilson’s Administration and Achievements: Exploring the Impact of Wilsonian Politics on American Progress and Global Affairs – Frank B. Lord, James William Bryan

The Study of Administration – Woodrow Wilson

Democracy and Administration – Brian J. Cook

The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the Administrative State – Thomas W. Merrill

Originally published February 14, 2025 for our End-of-Month Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get semi-monthly issues.

By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent

“Whoever is killed by a Jew receives the reward of two martyrs, because the very thing that the Jews did to the prophets was done to him. The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah. Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world. The Jews kill anyone who believes in Allah. They do not want to see any peace whatsoever on Earth.”Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture, from a sermon which aired on Al-Aqsa TV, April 8, 2011

INTRODUCTION

As Donald J. Trump assumed office for the second time as President of the United States, aside from the hysterical – and distressingly public – psychological breaks that instantly issued forth from the ranks of the Liberal-Progressive Left on Trump’s swift engagement in the domestic and internal governmental arenas, Trump was immediately faced with an array of foreign policy disasters left for him by his defeated and disgraced predecessors, and among those was the never-healing wound that is the Gaza Strip.

In brief: Trump’s publicly proposed solution was, with colossal understatement, a bombshell to the world at large. The proposal? Hand Gaza over to America, who will clean it up and rebuild it with the conditions that the Palestinians be relocated to new lands. Technically speaking, this could be called “ethnic cleansing,” meaning to denude a geographical region of a targeted ethnic group. It could also be called “migration.”

We’ll let future historians decide what the action should be called should anything approaching the GazaLago plan happen.

To understand the possibility of such a proposal, one must consider the historical background, starting in 1948 and working up to the present day. Afterwards, we will consider the options and how that might or might not align with Trump’s proposed GazaLago.

A. HISTORY TO PRESENT DAY

With Hamas backed into a corner, now being forced to trade the hostages taken in October of 2023 in exchange for breathing room as Israeli forces close in, the people of Gaza are now facing the reality that they have been left without any effective aid or relief, because actions have consequences in proportion to their intensity.

The reality on the ground is that the people of Gaza who stayed took no action against Hamas for nearly twenty years before the attack on October 7. As a result, no civilized country wants to take them in. Unlike their counterparts in the West Bank, Gaza Palestinians have no safe harbors.

Seeking some sort of firm resolution to this long-running problem, Donald Trump did what he does best: he shocked the world out of somnolence by “thinking outside the box” – but in a way so extreme, the world gasped in shock, as Trump stated flatly, that the United States would take over the Gaza Strip.”

Is he serious?

A couple caveats with Trump’s proposal include a statement by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who told the press, “It’s been made very clear to the president that the United States needs to be involved in this rebuilding effort to ensure stability in the region for all people. But that does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza. That does not mean American taxpayers will be funding this effort. It means Donald Trump, who is the best dealmaker on the planet, is going to strike a deal with our partners in a region.”

That was followed up by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who told the press that “to take over Gaza” is “… going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions.”

  1. GAZA: ANCIENT LAND OF CONFLICT – The Gaza Strip’s modern history is inextricably linked to the establishment of Israel in 1948. Following Israel’s declaration of independence and the ensuing Arab Israeli War, Gaza came under Egyptian administration while experiencing a massive influx of Palestinian refugees.

This demographic shift fundamentally altered Gaza’s character, as its population swelled with displaced Palestinians from what became Israeli territory.

From 1948 to 1967, Gaza remained under Egyptian control, though Egypt did not annex the territory or grant citizenship to its residents. The 1967 Six-Day War brought another dramatic change as Israel occupied Gaza along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and other territories. This began a period of direct Israeli military administration that would last for decades.

  1. THE FIRST INTIFADA – The first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) erupted in 1987, with Gaza becoming a center of resistance against Israeli occupation. This period saw the rise of Hamas, an Islamic resistance movement founded in 1987, which would eventually become the dominant political and military force in Gaza.

The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of Gaza and the West Bank.

  1. THE DISENGAGEMENT – In 2005, Israel implemented a unilateral disengagement plan, withdrawing all Israeli settlements and military installations from Gaza. However, Israel maintained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and maritime access.

The following year, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, leading to tensions with the rival Fatah movement. By 2007, these tensions erupted into open conflict, resulting in Hamas taking complete control of Gaza while the PA remained dominant in the West Bank.

The post-2007 period saw Israel and Egypt impose a strict blockade on Gaza, severely restricting the movement of people and goods. This period was marked by recurring cycles of conflict between Hamas and Israel, including major military operations in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014.

Each round of fighting resulted in significant Palestinian civilian casualties and infrastructure damage, while Israeli communities faced rocket attacks from Gaza. Despite various attempted ceasefires and Egyptian-mediated negotiations, the underlying tensions remained unresolved.

Living conditions in Gaza deteriorated under the blockade, with limited access to electricity, clean water, and economic opportunities. The territory’s population of over 2 million people, predominantly young and increasingly urbanized, faced unemployment rates among the highest in the world, caused not only by the Hamas authority’s incessant tilting at the Israeli windmill, but also by its own terrible governing practices.

  1. OCTOBER 7 – On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, breaching the security barrier and attacking military installations and civilian communities.

This event marked the deadliest day in Israel’s history and led to the most intense military response against Gaza since 1948, fundamentally altering the regional security landscape and drawing increased international attention to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

B. FALLOUT OF THE GAZA WAR

Israel, hampered by a vacillating Biden administration, has been unable to bring the conflict to a swift conclusion. This inability has been due not only to Joe Biden’s complete ineptitude, but also by a wide-ranging series of attacks from enemies as diverse as the Houthi rebels of Yemen, their co-religionists of the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, and direct attacks from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Those attacks, beginning in April of 2024, were by far the most serious, running until October of 2024, as Iran traded fire with Israel via drones and missiles over the Jewish state, striking their embassy in Damascus, Syria.

  1. IRAN – The radical religious state of Iran, being what it is, has admitted to no fault by using its embassy openly as a meeting place to plan attacks on Israel using its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC then directed both Hezbollah, and other Iran-aligned terror groups.

The Israeli strike killed many senior field commanders, including at least two Iranian general officers of the IRGC. This put Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the difficult position of trying to hang on to his state, while dealing with Iran’s Don Quixote impersonation as he continued to battle the remnants of the Islamic State.

This close association with Shi’a Iran has driven yet another wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian authority, as the religious divisions of Shi’a vs. Sunni cause yet more problems for Gazans, while the West Bank Palestinians continue to count their blessings on staying out of the conflict.

  1. SYRIA – This series of wide-ranging failures and seemingly panting desires to go to war for “reasons,” ultimately resulted in the most destabilizing event in the Middle East since the so-called Arab Springof 2011, as the Assad dynasty suddenly collapsed in early December.

What we know now, after the events of recent days following the revelations of the shenanigans of USAID (which you can read more about on pg. xx), is the conversations about the REASONS for that destabilizing event could get VERY INTERESTING.

The collapse and exile of Assad and his family has completely upended the politics of the entire region, in ways that have yet to play out fully.

In this context, What about Gaza?

  1. GAZA OPTION #1: EVACUATE GAZA AND SEND ITS PEOPLE TO NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES?

The conflict that began with the attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7 of 2023 has made the Palestinian cause – and Palestinians in general – highly toxic throughout the world.

Playing on the sympathy of being under hostile rule in your homeland (while deftly dodging the actual history) is never a bad strategy. Slaughtering women – even pregnant women – and children, and taking hostages for torture and ransom? Not a great plan, especially when more than nine million of your people are refugees in neighboring countries.

It is this refugee problem that lies at the heart of the matter, because – for varying reasons – no one wants to take in any more of them.

  1. THE 60S – The Palestinian refugee situation emerged primarily from two major waves of displacement: the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the 1967 Six-Day War. Following 1948, approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in what became Israel, with many settling in neighboring Arab states. Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in 1950, received the largest number of refugees and uniquely offered them citizenship rights.

By the late 1960s, Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Jordan numbered around 400,000, with many living in refugee camps. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, had become increasingly powerful within Jordan, effectively creating a “state within a state.”

Palestinian fighters (fedayeen) operated with relative autonomy, using Jordanian territory to launch operations against Israel, which often resulted in Israeli retaliatory strikes on Jordanian soil.

This situation created growing tensions with the government of Jordan’s then King Hussein. The PLO’s military presence, parallel administrative structures, and challenge to Jordanian sovereignty became increasingly problematic.

Palestinian militants began setting up checkpoints in Jordanian cities and occasionally clashed with Jordanian security forces. The situation was further complicated by the presence of more radical Palestinian factions that rejected even the PLO’s authority.

  1. BLACK SEPTEMBER – The deteriorating relationship between the Jordanian government and Palestinian organizations was exacerbated by several airline hijackings carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in September 1970. The PFLP hijacked four aircraft, landing three of them at Dawson’s Field in Jordan, which they renamed “Revolution Airport.” This dramatic action, combined with mounting tensions, led King Hussein to declare martial law.

The ensuing conflict, known as Black September, lasted from September 1970 to July 1971. The Jordanian military’s campaign against Palestinian armed groups resulted in thousands of casualties and ultimately led to the expulsion of the PLO and other Palestinian armed organizations from Jordan.

Most Palestinian fighters relocated to Lebanon, significantly shifting the regional dynamic of the Palestinian resistance movement and leading to long-term consequences for Lebanon’s internal stability.

  1. CURRENT DAY – The events of Black September marked a crucial turning point in the Palestinian national movement and highlighted the complex relationships between Palestinian organizations and their Arab host states, relationships that continue to influence regional politics today.

In brief: Jordan still maintains Palestinian refugee camps housing more than 2.3 million refugees. It cannot take more, especially the heavily radicalized Hamas fighters and their supporters from Gaza.

Likewise, Egypt cannot take in too many Gazans, either. This is not so much due to bad history with the Palestinians, but because Egypt is an economic basket case. The massive state is desperately trying to stabilize its economic situation, before it turns into a far worse version of Tunisia in 2011. Adding over 2 million desperate and radicalized refugees is a recipe for disaster, one far worse than Jordan.

  1. GAZA OPTION #2: RETURN GAZA TO PALESTINIAN RULE, SANS HAMAS?

In a word, NO. Israel has been dealing with the “Gaza Problem” for over 75 years, and after committing the largest killing of Jews since World War II, no rational Israeli government is going to agree to let Gazans rule that state again, as they have proven – through their acquiescence to rule by Hamas – that they cannot be trusted with even humanitarian aid.

The October 7 attacks fundamentally altered Israeli security calculations regarding Gaza. The swift breaching of Israeli border defenses, which were previously considered highly secure, demonstrated vulnerabilities that Israeli military planners hadn’t anticipated, such as the use of paraglider assault troops. The scale of civilian casualties and the methods employed raised serious concerns about future security threats if Gaza returns to Palestinian control.

From Israel’s security perspective, the attack highlighted how civilian infrastructure and resources in Gaza, including construction materials and humanitarian aid, had been utilized for military purposes, such as the construction of extensive tunnel networks. This has led to heightened skepticism about the ability to prevent future militarization of the territory under Palestinian governance.

Additionally, polling data has indicated that Hamas maintained significant popular support in Gaza prior to October 7, even though that support is eroding steadily. This erosion has occurred as Hamas has shown that it cannot follow through with its rhetoric, thus raising Israeli concerns about whether any alternative Palestinian leadership could effectively prevent new militant groups from regaining influence in the territory.

The extensive tunnel system discovered during the subsequent conflict has reinforced Israeli arguments that any future governance arrangement would require strict security oversight to prevent rearmament.

In brief: Israel no longer wants “home rule” in Gaza, as that has proven to be a catastrophic failure.

C. GAZA OPTION #3: LET IRAN DEAL WITH IT?

The fighting that began in earnest in late 2023 was driven by money given to Hamas by Iran via a deranged release of some $6 billion dollars to the terrorist regime in Tehran by the Biden Gang. It is not unreasonable to demand that the Iranian regime take in the Gazans it goaded into a suicidal attack on Israel. This is in no way as ludicrous as it might first appear, as it would not be the first time this would have happened.

In 1982, the original secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrew from Beirut, Lebanon, by sea, under the protection of a multinational peacekeeping force led by the United States and France. Although thoroughly beaten by Israeli forces, the PLO did their best to reform and reorganize in their new homes in Tunisia and Libya.

Responsibly, then, Iran should be on the hook to resettle the population of Gaza, as they are ultimately responsible for this mess. The spectacular mismanagement of social and economic policies by the incompetent mullahs has created a situation where Iran definitely needs the infusion of a population with no issues with procreation.

But…let’s give Iran a dodge to get out of doing that – after all, that is certainly what the Biden administration would have done.

Let Iran send the Gazans to their co-religionist proxies in Yemen, the Houthi rebels. Sure, that would transfer the fighting to Yemen, but, like Somalia, Yemen is one of those wars “voted most likely to continue.”

Doing so, applying an appropriately ruthless level of ‘realpolitik’, would both kick this particular can down the road, and be a stick to keep Saudi Arabia in check…or, at least force them to hire more mercenary troops for the long term.

If that sounds harsh, what is harsher is considering how many people have been killed to date by children in a sandbox, thinking that they are adults, while their sand squabbles kill people continuously.

Playtime is over, and it’s time to grow up and join the rest of the adults in the 21st Century.

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

So – “GazaLago?” What? – And then…there is The Donald. When Trump made what at first sounded like an off-hand comment from someone who might be getting a bit old in the brain, people were really shocked when he doubled down on his statement.

Is the United States about to go “boots on the ground” to take over Gaza? Hopefully, this is a serious bluff by Trump, as doing so would be a catastrophic blunder on his part.

The Palestinians in Gaza are outraged at the very idea of being displaced. However, given their role to date in how we got here, their say does not really carry as much weight as they or their supporters think.

If Gazans are really serious about wanting a better life, their best bet is to find somewhere else to live…because they are ultimately responsible for creating this problem, and actions have consequences.

If Trump is using this as a bluff to force Egypt and Jordan to cave on taking in Gaza refugees, he is being ill-advised, because – for the reasons outlined above – neither state can really absorb any more radicalized Palestinians.

For his part, King Abdullah of Jordan bought time by offering to take in some 2,000 sick Palestinian children from Gaza, but this is actually much more than Jordan should have to do, as the Hashemite kingdom is one of the U.S.’s staunchest and most consistent allies in the Middle East. For its part, Egypt has offered to help rebuild Gaza, but without Palestinians becoming their problem.

This is an uncharacteristically dangerous gamble on Trump’s part, as even back-room diplomacy in the Middle East has to maintain “wasta” (or “face”) for the leader, lest they lose their perceived legitimacy.

But…Let’s assume, for a moment, that Trump actually follows through on establishing a U.S. “protectorate” of some kind over Gaza. What would that look like?

Firstly, it would be an abject failure of staggering proportions if such a geopolitical situation were to occur, and the Gazans were left in place, while the rebuilding would continue. Terrorist attacks and sabotage would be rampant, as would relentless attempts to infiltrate the U.S. through a visa program. These things would happen as a matter of course.

On the other hand: What if Trump can actually force a displacement of Gazans to “somewhere else”? This would leave a blasted hellscape of rubble and ruins, lousy with unexploded ordnance, riddled with unstable tunnel networks.

Now, Trump – who made his money, one should recall, in real estate development – is well aware of what it would take to rebuild Gaza, in a “mechanical” sense; in fact, he likely did the calculations in his head.

In this event, yes – with multiple billions of dollars in investment over at least a decade – the Gaza Strip could become a new “Riviera” for the Mediterranean, although the advertising campaign would be insane. It would take at least another decade to approach paying off its initial capital investment, however…and that is leaving aside the potential political fallout that would occur initially.

There is, however, another option – which, let me note, would also involve removing the Palestinians: Converting the Gaza Strip into a new version of the Tangier International Zone.”

An artifact of the colonial era, the Tangier International Zone (TIZ) was a diplomatic agreement between Britain, France and Spain to convert the ancient port city across from Gibraltar to a kind of “free state,” which operated as a completely open city from 1925 to 1956, mostly to ease British fears of Spain taking control of the southern side of the Straits.

Morocco, the technical ruler of the city, was at that time under the “protection” of France, and did not have much say in the process. It was a home for all manner of hedonists, smugglers, rebels, renegades, and shady bankers; in a very real sense, it was “more Casablanca than Casablanca.”

That potential could turn GazaLago it into an economic powerhouse, and pay off its reconstruction bills in short order… But don’t hold your breath – that sort of vision is something unreadable by the rickety post-WWII international diktat, and something the Skittle Hair Brigade will never accept, even if it benefits them directly.

FURTHER RESOURCES

The Lessons of Modern War: Volume I: The Arab-Israeli Conflicts, 1973-1989 – Anthony H Cordesman (Author), Abraham Wagner

The Lessons of Modern War, Vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War – Anthony H Cordesman (Author), Abraham Wagner

The Lessons Of Modern War: Volume III: The Afghan And Falklands Conflicts – Anthony H Cordesman (Author), Abraham Wagner

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Originally published February 14, 2025 for our End-of-Month Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get semi-monthly issues.

By Paul Collier, Editor

“Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise.’” Luke 10:30-37

On January 30, 2025, newly sworn-in Vice President JD Vance had a moment when speaking with Sean Hannity that kicked off a whole host of “debates” (some in good faith, some in bad faith) about the nature of Christian love. He was speaking specifically about the illegal alien invasion of the country and the President’s plan to deport them all.

First, here’s what JD Vance said that kicked off the dust storms:

“[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders.

But there’s this old-school [concept] – and I think a very Christian concept, by the way – that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

The go-to counter by the left is to appeal to Luke 10, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, to counter this notion that the Homefront comes first. In this story, a Samaritan, who is considered by many at that time to be a stench on the land, finds a poor (presumably) Jew who had been beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Before the Samaritan (the stench of the land) found him, a priest saw him and passed him by, so too did a member of the tribe of Levi, a Levite (which is the priestly tribe).

In this story, then, we have a non-descript Jew who is near death, and two Jews from the most “holy” of tribes, with one being an officer in one of the highest sacred positions in the land. We have the earth, the below, in the beaten man, and wisdom from heaven, the priest and the Levite, intersecting, and the highest of the highest who is a brother to this Jew walked on, left him for dead.

But the lowest of the low, the stench of the land, the Samaritan, bent down and picked up the earth, the Jew, though he was his enemy. The leftist uses this passage to back up the claim that “Christian” love means we love everyone equally, and so those who are without, whether they be family or fellow citizens, strangers or foreigners, we give first to those with the most needs. The good Samaritan gave to the man who hated him because that man had a greater need than his own.

Of course, this takes the gospel out of the story, as this writer sees it, a story that works to show us the nature of true Christian love, to love your enemy as yourself, but it also shows that this spirit, this Christian love, is what makes you a priest, a high position in a family that crosses all racial and ethnic boundaries.

The priest and the Levite were lower in the earth than the man left for dead, though they walked in the whitewashed tombs of a legacy of true priests and Levites.

That love is possible because Christ loved his enemies as he loved himself at an unfathomable scale, giving His life and suffering the torment of the sins of billions of enemies so that they might be saved, for Christ died for us while we were yet his enemies.

That love was reflected in the Samaritan, who risked death himself, walking into Judean towns. It might be the fact that he was helping a Jew that he himself wasn’t robbed and beaten and left for dead.

The Samaritan was like others in Christ’s gospel from outside the 12 tribes who would show Israel that the righteousness of God in men is what made them high places in His Kingdom declared, a Kingdom among those who follow Christ, not their genetic heritage.

In Matthew 8, Jesus says of the faithful centurion who knew his servant could be healed with but a word from Christ, “Truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:11-12).

The message of the Good Samaritan is NOT to give to those who need it the most, for if that were the case, Christ would have chastised the woman who came and washed his feet and used expensive perfumes to anoint Him with, an expense that could have gone to the poor instead. Christ says of her gesture, “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told.” (Matthew 26:13).

The message of the Good Samaritan is multi-valent, but outside the shadow of Christ we see in the Good Samaritan, it demonstrates to believers what living out the love of Christ looks like in our lives, emboldening us to dare risk life and limb to rescue our enemies from harm. But that doesn’t mean we preclude the needs of loved ones in our lives or form a hierarchy of giving around “need” alone.

The Apostle Paul himself tells us in 1 Timothy 5:8 that “if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and worse than an unbeliever.”

We have a particular responsibility to provide first for our family, our friends, our associates, our fellow citizens, and then ever outward. When Christ came to walk the earth as the Son of Man, He demonstrated that stewardship responsibility to the inner circle, but yet called us to be impartial to those outside our inner circle.

We see an example of this in Mark 7 when Christ delivered the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter from demons because the foreign woman clearly demonstrated faith in Christ the Messiah even though he did not come to serve non-Jews. He judged her impartially, not as a foreigner, but as a daughter of Christ, for she clearly recognized him as the Messiah, calling Him Lord.

As he was leaving, he told them, “You will be witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) He sent them out with a stewardship that began at home (Jerusalem) and extended outward (Judah, then Samaria, and then the ends of the earth) AFTER the home was served first.

On this, JD Vance was right. But he left out a distinction between stewardship and love. Stewardship is the fruit of love through Christ’s love; it is a certain responsibility love leads us to fulfill, but it’s not love itself. This, I believe, is closer to what JD Vance was describing.

This is an important distinction, and it could explain why JD Vance’s message isn’t more clearly understood (though it might reflect his own lack of understanding of the deeper gospel message, that love is about stewardship, but it’s also about impartiality, and even mercy).

Love does not mean I deprive my neighbors to provide for strangers. Love DOES mean that I show NO PARTIALITY to my neighbors over strangers. If my brother steals from a stranger, Christian love compels me to side with the stranger. Love DOES mean if someone is bleeding in front of me and they are my enemy, I stop what I’m doing and seek to come to their aid.

The left leaves out the stewardship responsibility we have to our inner circles, while JD Vance appears to have left out impartiality and mercy in his, equating stewardship with the totality of Christian love, which it is not.

What’s more, he uses this analogy to justify deporting millions of illegal aliens, some of whom might deserve impartiality and mercy when considering their unique circumstances. To be sure, the criminals (the ones who are criminals for more than just being here illegally) will have to go. To let this nation continue to be inundated with dangerous people who have no right to be here would be bad stewardship of our inner circle, our fellow citizens.

But somewhere in that mix are people who might be like that broken man, beaten and left for dead, in need of mercy, even if you imagine these people are our enemies (some of them are, but most of them are not).

In the last of the books of Moses, Deuteronomy, as Moses is preparing his people for his own death, he tells his people, as commanded to him by God “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).

It is not good stewardship, and thus not good Christian love, to sacrifice the well-being of your fellow citizens to take care of strangers, but now that they’re here, let us remember it is also not good Christian love to decline to give mercy, nor to decline to serve the ones beaten, robbed, and left for dead either.