02 U.S. Politics

Military Analysis: Europe’s Firepower is Far Behind U.S., Russia, and China | The Gateway Pundit– www.thegatewaypundit.com
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After eighty years of relying on the U.S. for defense, the EU’s combined military power remains dwarfed by the U.S., Russia, and China.

Recent media reports have claimed that Europe is bolstering its defenses to counter Russia, increasingly independent of U.S. assistance.

These headlines, while attention-grabbing, often gloss over a critical clarification: Europe is not a unified political entity. It is a continent—a geographic space—lacking its own institutions or a standing army.

When such claims surface, they could plausibly refer to three distinct entities: NATO, the US-led transatlantic alliance with its collective defense framework; the European Union (EU), a political and economic union with limited military integration; or a broader notion of “greater Europe,” encompassing all nations on the continent, including non-EU and non-NATO countries like Russia itself.

For this article, I assume these claims point to the EU’s militarization efforts. And for the analysis, I am employing this PMEI framework—Political, Military, Economic, and Infrastructure—widely used in strategic and national security contexts, to provide a comprehensive lens to assess the EU’s complex systems, identifying strengths, vulnerabilities, and interdependencies across these critical domains.

Elon Musk and DOGE Discover Biden Gave 2.1 Million Social Security Numbers to Foreigners– lidblog.com
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Elon Musk and DOGE have revealed that Joe Biden gave Social Security numbers to 2.1 million illegals in 2024 alone.

This essentially made these illegal aliens quasi legal because they were able to use those official numbers to get jobs, loans, and any other manner of legal services to which they were not eligible.

Per Breitbart News:

Speaking at a conference alongside his longtime friend Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners, Musk said DOGE uncovered some eye-opening numbers regarding social security in 2024.

“We started at the top of the system. Mapping the whole system of social security to understand where all the fraud was. There’s a lot of great people there that showed us a lot of waste, so that came with a big list of stuff. But this is what jumped out at us,” Gracias said as he pointed to the chart. “In 2021, you see 270,000 people; goes all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are non-citizens that are getting social security numbers.”

Gracias clarified that he had no political motivations for revealing those numbers, noting that his parents and siblings were born in Spain while touting himself a supporter of legal immigration. He also praised the employees of the social security administration who “took risks” to show them what has been allegedly happening.

France Cracked Down on Far-Right Corruption—And Team Trump Is Triggered – Mother Jones– www.motherjones.com
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Far-right French politician Marine Le Pen has not proven to be as lucky as Donald Trump was in skirting consequences of breaking the law.Alexis Sciard/IP3/ZUMA

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After a French court found far-right leader and former presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement on Monday—a conviction that will bar her from holding political office for five years—some of President Donald Trump’s closest allies are boosting baseless conspiracy theories alleging that Le Pen’s conviction is part of a global scheme to keep right-wing populists from holding office.

Le Pen is reportedly accused of wrongfully diverting $5 million in funds earmarked for the European Parliament to staffers of her nationalist, xenophobic party, the National Rally, over a 12-year period. The verdict makes her ineligible to run in the country’s next presidential election in 2027—and comes after she was polling at 37 percent, more than 10 points ahead of her closest challenger. Le Pen has run for that office three times before, and became more popular as right-wing political parties across Europe rose in prominence in recent years; in the 2022 presidential runoff, Le Pen earned 41.5 percent of votes to President Emmanuel Macron’s 58.6 percent. (Macron is term-limited.)

 

Iran, Facing Trump Threats, Says It Positioned ‘Launch-Ready Missiles’ To Strike ‘US-Related Positions’– freebeacon.com
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Iran says it has readied “a significant number” of advanced missiles capable of striking American bases and military outposts in the Middle East, drawing a sharp warning from the Trump administration.

Iran’s “armed forces have readied missiles with the capability to strike U.S.-related positions,” the Tehran Times, a state-controlled newspaper, reported on Monday. “A significant number of these launch-ready missiles are located in underground facilities scattered across the country, designed to withstand airstrikes.”

The announcement came in response to President Donald Trump’s threat over the weekend to bomb the country if it does not enter into negotiations over its contested nuclear weapons program. But Trump is not backing down—the White House, in response to Tehran’s war preparations, told the Washington Free Beacon it does “not take kindly to military threats.”

“President Trump and his administration do not take kindly to military threats,” said White House National Security Council communications director James Hewitt. “The President has made clear he prefers direct diplomatic channels with Tehran, or they will face serious consequences if they do not end their work to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Trump Admin Defunds 16 Planned Parenthood Abortion Centers in 9 States– www.lifenews.com
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The Trump administration is withholding tens of millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood facilities, according to an exclusive breaking news article published by POLITICO on the evening of Monday, March 31.

According to POLITICO, nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates that receive federal money from the 55-year-old Title X family planning program received a letter on Monday announcing that their funding is being “temporarily withheld” for “possible violations” of federal civil rights law and President Donald Trump’s executive orders — including prohibitions on the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Funding is also being withheld, according to the article, because the organization “overtly encourages illegal aliens to receive care.”

 

The Bud Light boycott worked: Major corporations are walking away from LGBT pride– www.lifesitenews.com
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(LifeSiteNews) — Pride comes before a fall – and as some major companies rethink previous “woke” policies, the corporate gravy train LGBT activists have relied on to fund their activism has finally begun to slow. 

According to NPR, both Anheuser-Busch – famous for beer brands like Beck’s and Budweiser – and the telecoms giant Comcast have both pulled funding from San Francisco Pride. Anheuser-Busch has also ended their sponsorship with St. Louis Pride. 

They aren’t the only ones. Diageo, the beverage company responsible for Johnny Walker, Smirnoff, and Guinness has pulled support from San Francisco Pride, as has Jackson Family Wines (which includes La Crema Wines). Meta, the tech giant that includes both Facebook and Instagram, has also reportedly pulled funding from San Francisco Pride. 

Significantly, a number of those companies have been attempting to distance themselves from wokeness after spending years wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta announced earlier this year that he was reintroducing free speech to Meta’s social media platforms and began by removing many of the restrictions around LGBT debates (and had the tampon dispensers removed from the male washrooms at Facebook’s headquarters). 

Federal judge orders Colorado school to restore controversial books to school library – Standing for Freedom Center– www.standingforfreedom.com
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The school board must now make books with themes and images of violence, graphic sex, and suicidal ideation widely available to young teens against the wishes of many parents, but an appeal is already being planned.


A U.S. District Court judge has mandated that Colorado’s Elizabeth School District reinstate 19 previously removed books to its library shelves.

This decision follows a lawsuit initiated by the NAACP alongside students, asserting that the school board aimed to “limit students’ access to any books that contravene the Board members’ partisan, political values.”

The controversy began in August 2024 when the Elizabeth School Board voted to remove certain books from school libraries. Board officials cited concerns over the content they deemed inappropriate, including graphic violence, racism, and discrimination, ideations of self-harm or mental illness, and sexual content.

DEI Hangs on At NASA. Plus, Harvard in Trump Admin’s Crosshairs.– freebeacon.com
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Equity in space: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory let go nearly 900 workers last year due to budget cuts. The layoffs impacted both technical and support staff at the lab, which creates land rovers that have reached Mars. They did not impact the lab’s chief inclusion officer, Neela Rajendra.

She is best known for arguing that “extreme deadline[s]” are an “obstacle to inclusion.” While NASA closed its central diversity office earlier this year in response to a Trump executive order, Rajendra survived because “the lab created a new role for her—one with many of the same duties as the old one,” our Aaron Sibarium reports.

“Instead of chief inclusion officer, the lab explained in a March 10 email, Rajendra would henceforth serve as the ‘Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success,'” writes Sibarium. “The title change provides one of the most clear cut examples yet of how institutions are seeking to circumvent Trump’s ban on DEI by renaming diversity offices and shuffling staff.”

ICE admits ‘administrative error’ in sending protected Maryland resident to Salvadoran prison– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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In a new court filing, the Trump administration said it made a mistake in deporting a Maryland father with protected legal status to a prison in El Salvador.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Kilmer Armado Abrego-Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old child, was mistakenly a part of three planes with Venezuelan deportees to the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center last month. The filing appears to be the first time the administration has admitted a mistake during the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportation of over 100 Venezuelan nationals.

“Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego-Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” an ICE official said in a court filing.

While the government acknowledged the error, it said that because Abrego-Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the U.S., nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.

In 2019, Abrego-Garcia was deemed by an immigration judge to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang based in Los Angeles, which Abrego-Garcia has repeatedly contested. In the same decision, the court agreed at the time that he should not be deported to El Salvador, determining that his fear of being persecuted or tortured at the grim prison was credible.

Trump Pausing $210 Million in Federal Funding to Princeton– legalinsurrection.com
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The Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese posted on X that President Donald Trump’s administration will pause $210 million in federal funding to Princeton:

The funds are being paused while the admin investigates antisemitism on campus. The decision is not the culmination of the investigation, an official shares.

“Princeton has perpetuated racist and anti-semitic policies,” an admin official told the Caller.

The investigation opened dates back to Biden. Biden’s Department of Education opened an investigation in 2024 following a Civil Rights complaint from Zachary Marschall, the editor-in-chief of the conservative website Campus Reform.

Marschall alleges in his complaint that the university failed to respond to campus anti-Semitism. The complaint alleges that at an Oct. 25, 2023, walkout in which students supported Palestine, they chanted “Brick by brick, wall by wall, apartheid has got to fall.”

Abortion Activists Freak Out Because Gen Z is Becoming More Pro-Life– www.lifenews.com
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You have to put it altogether to appreciate why the pro-abortion website rewire news group would run a story under the stern headline “Anti-Abortion Advocacy Is Rising on College Campuses.”

We already know that as a generalization, Gen Z—18 to 29— is the most conservative age group in decades. We also know that pro-abortion Vice President Kamala Harris barely beat President Trump, 52% to 46% among Gen Z voters but that 57% of men under 30 voted for Mr. Trump.

Newsweek’s Adeola Adeosun reported

Recent AtlasIntel polling shows President Trump’s approval rating among 18–29-year-olds has climbed to 52.7 percent in February, marking a substantial improvement [23 percentage points] since his January inauguration.

This demographic transformation challenges long-held Democratic Party assumptions about younger generations forming an “ascendant majority” that would secure their electoral future.

The conservative trend among Gen Z voters—especially young men—appears to be solidifying during Trump’s second term, potentially reshaping American politics for years to come.

Planned Parenthood Oral Arguments Will Further Expose Abortion Giant’s Filth– thefederalist.com
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This Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that exposes how Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortions, has become increasingly cavalier with taxpayer dollars. The court will look at how Medicaid funds are funneled toward promoting and performing abortions, all while putting the lives of vulnerable women at risk.

In 2016, Dr. Phillip Hawley, hospice physician and former assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, wrote: “Reason alone tells us that human life is special and we have a duty to protect one another. And that duty is especially strong when dealing with those in a weakened and vulnerable state.”

But for Planned Parenthood, human life is not special. It is merely a commodity to be disposed of in order to make money — and lots of it.

Meanwhile, there is a growing amount of evidence showing how Planned Parenthood has used the massive government funding it receives to promote abortion and “gender transitions” while financially starving its “clinics” and making them unsafe for both the woman and her preborn child.

Seattle Mayor signs bill to protect sex change, abortion providers from prosecution in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
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“Seattle is a city where diversity is celebrated, and the LGBTQ+ community is not just accepted but embraced.”

On Monday, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, accompanied by city leaders and LGBTQ+ community advocates, signed new legislation to strengthen protections for people seeking gender reassignment procedures and abortions in response to recent actions by the Trump administration.

Harrell signed the legislation into law to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility. He said, “Seattle is a city where diversity is celebrated, and the LGBTQ+ community is not just accepted but embraced. The egregious attempts by the Trump administration to target, discriminate, and dehumanize LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender individuals, and strip them of their rights goes directly against our city’s values. This legislation shows our commitment to a Seattle where everyone – regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation – can live openly and be treated with dignity and respect.”

House passes bill to increase transparency on China funding U.S. universities– www.thecollegefix.com
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That money comes with ‘hidden agendas,’ Rep. Baumgartner says

Higher education institutions would be required to report as little as $1 in funding from China under legislation that passed the U.S. House on Thursday.

The Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act would close loopholes that U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar says the Chinese Communist Party is using to “infiltrate and influence our academic institutions.”

“The passage of the DETERRENT Act is a powerful response to China’s aggressive attempts to use financial leverage to undermine our universities and national security,” the Michigan Republican (pictured) stated in a news release.

“This legislation enhances transparency, closes dangerous loopholes, and holds institutions accountable for their dealings with foreign adversaries like the CCP,” Moolenaar stated. He chairs the House Select Committee on China.

The legislation, which now heads to the U.S. Senate, would lower universities’ “foreign gift reporting threshold from $250,000 … to $0 for countries of concern like China,” the news release states. For other countries, the threshold would be $50,000.

Karoline Leavitt Brings The Receipts, Exposes Allies’ Sky-High Tariffs On U.S. Goods– trendingpoliticsnews.com
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On the eve of President Donald Trump’s much-anticipated “Liberation Day,” the date when he is expected to launch a flurry of new tariffs intended to level the trade U.S. deficit with foreign nations, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back aggressively on media claims that they will only lead to consumer pain and higher prices.

Waving the receipts, Leavitt spoke in depth about some of the most egregious examples of U.S. goods being taxed at a higher rate by other countries. She cited a 700% markup on rice being imported to Japan and a 300% tariff in Canada on American butter and cheese.

“This makes it virtually impossible for American products to be imported into these markets, and it has put a lot of Americans out of business and out of work over the past several decades,” she declared.

One Washington Post headline on Tuesday — “Trump aides draft tariff plans as some experts warn of economic damage” — summed up the narrative that outlets are spinning ahead of President Trump’s economic upheaval. Most goods being imported into the U.S. will face a 20% tariff, according to details about the plans shared by sources.

The outlet writes that the tariffs, if enacted, “would almost immediately” cause Trump’s economy to “tumble into a recession that would last for more than a year,” citing an economist at Moody’s who called the outcome a worst-case scenario.

A Trump bid for a third term could set off legal battles in states nationwide– www.latimes.com
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In a private meeting at a global summit in Buenos Aires in 2018, China’s president, Xi Jinping, turned to President Trump and said it was a shame he couldn’t stay in power beyond the two-term limit set by the U.S. Constitution. Trump agreed.

It was just one of several instances in which Trump mused over the prospects of an extra-constitutional reign in the White House.

“He’s talked about it for a really long time,” said John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, recalling the meeting. “It’s on his mind, and he’d like to do it.”

The possibility of Trump running for a third term gained fresh attention this weekend after the president told NBC that he was “not joking” about pursuing one.

“There are methods,” Trump said. “But I’m not — it is far too early to think about it.”

Attorneys, scholars and state officials disagree. The knowledge that Trump may bid to stay in power, in a direct challenge to the 22nd Amendment, already has election officials in secretaries of state offices throughout the country bracing for legal battles that could begin as soon as next year.

The Atlantic Caught Pushing Another Anti-Trump Hoax Story – PJ Media– pjmedia.com
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As Signalgate fades into obscurity, joining the long list of failed attempts to manufacture a Trump administration scandal, The Atlantic has a new problem. A new Trump hit piece it published this week has been exposed as a lie.

The mainstream media is scrambling to discredit Trump’s mass deportation policy, pushing the false narrative that, despite the administration’s focus on removing criminal illegal aliens first, innocent people are being swept up alongside illegal alien gang members and felons.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, has a track record of publishing bogus hit pieces on Trump. In 2020, he pushed a debunked claim that Trump called fallen soldiers “losers” and “suckers,” which even he later admitted might be false. In 2024, he spread another false story about Trump being upset over a soldier’s funeral bill — dismissed by other journalists but still published by The Atlantic. His history of dishonest reporting makes skepticism of his work not only justified but necessary.

On Monday, The Atlantic jumped on the innocents-swept-up angle, publishing a piece that claimed, “The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador.”

Here’s how The Atlantic described the man:

Court filings show Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

President Trump Says He Would Love To Run Against Obama In Hypothetical Third-Term Presidency– wltreport.com
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President Trump, while addressing reporters in the Oval Office, said he would love to challenge Obama in a third-term presidential race.

Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Trump, “I know it’s hypothetical right now, but if you were allowed for some reason to run for a third term, is there a thought that the Democrats could try to run Barack Obama against you?”

Trump responded, “I’d love that,”

He added, “That would be a good one. I’d like that. And no, people are asking me to run, and there’s a whole story about running for a third term. I don’t know, I never looked into it.”

Watch here:

Per WFIN:

President Donald Trump said he would “love” to run against former President Barack Obama in a hypothetical third-term run for the presidency that he has floated in recent days.

“I know it’s hypothetical right now, but if you were allowed for some reason to run for a third term, is there a thought that the Democrats could try to run Barack Obama against you?” Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Trump on Monday evening from the Oval Office.

“I’d love that,” Trump responded. “I’d love that …. That would be a good one. I’d like that. And no, people are asking me to run, and there’s a whole story about running for a third term. I don’t know, I never looked into it. They do say there’s a way you can do it, but I don’t know about that.”