Secure Freedom Minute

Yesterday, an incredibly timely webinar addressed perhaps the most important question of our time: “Is sharia a ‘religion of peace’ or a strategy for war?”  The answer impacts everything from whether there is any prospect for a “peace deal” with Iran to whether sharia-adherent Muslims can be expected to support and defend the U.S. Constitution to the advisability of building more Islamic centers here and importing more foreign imams. The webinar established unmistakably that for fourteen hundred years, Islam’s “prophet” Mohammed, his successors and untold numbers of their followers have adhered to a political-military-legal program they call “the path,” or sharia in Arabic. And its express goal is to use violence and other forms of jihad to impose sharia worldwide.  Sharia is, in short, a strategy for war and the compulsory submission to it of non-adherent Muslims and everyone else.  BanSharia.com. This is Frank Gaffney.

The noose is tightening on Cuba’s Communist regime that has long brutalized its people and threatened ours. According to Fox News Digital, the Justice and Treasury Departments are investigating “145 U.S. non-profits and activist groups with $1 billion in collective revenues…as part of a wider influence campaign by Cuba's communist regime and other foreign actors.” Among those subpoenaed is Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, the wife of a China-based billionaire named Neville Roy Singham. He’s reportedly put $278 million into pro-Communist advocacy groups.  It’s bad enough that such supporters of our enemies are allowed to help them undermine our security. Insult is added to serious injury that, as tax-exempt organizations, their groups are effectively subsidized by the American people.  Time to put them out of business, along with the dangerous Cuban government they slavishly support.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Thank God the so-called “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran remains incomplete. It’s in America’s vital interest that it never be finalized. Here’s a clue: Even as negotiations continue with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now doing business as the Iranian government, its vessels are laying more mines to control the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces were compelled to attack them in “self-defense.” If that’s how the IRGC behaves before it makes a deal to open that waterway and promises further negotiations, there is no reason to expect it will behave better afterwards. To the contrary, fourteen hundred years of “peace accords” with sharia-supremacists like Iran’s – and in particular this regime’s gambits – guarantees this deal will humiliate Donald Trump and America and that this “endless war” will continue on worse terms.  New Yorkers like Trump have one word for that prospect: Fuggedaboutit.   This is Frank Gaffney.

On this Memorial Day, President Trump will pay tribute to our fallen heroes amidst concerns that others’ lives may be lost in renewed conflict with Iran now temporarily paused.  Donald Trump promised in the 2024 campaign to prevent “endless wars.” But, the most endless war in history is the one waged against Western civilization for fourteen hundred years by Islam’s founder Mohammed and his successors. And the President has an opportunity actually to defeat its prime-movers. Unfortunately, that will not be what results from the present negotiations. To the contrary, the deal said to be in the offing will prop up and empower the Iranian regime and, by so doing, encourage every other jihadist around the world to intensify efforts to impose their totalitarian sharia law on all of us. Mr. President, truly end this endless war by winning, not perpetuating, it.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Yesterday, three men were killed outside the largest of 13 mosques in California’s San Diego County. Such violence is unconscionable and must be condemned.  Even though little is known so far about the teenage shooters, the Islamic Center’s imam, Taha Hassane, nonetheless decried “intolerance.” And New York’s Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani denounced “Islamophobia.”  Before sympathy for the victims and efforts to parlay this crime into a pretext for silencing those of us who legitimately oppose utterly intolerant and intentionally terrifying sharia-supremacism, a little level-setting is in order. This mosque has long been associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Two congregants aided the 9/11 hijackers. And Imam Hassane routinely misrepresents sharia and intolerantly inveighs against Israel and its supporters.  Such facts do not justify violence. But they do underscore the need for legally and peacefully opposing metastasizing sharia in America.   This is Frank Gaffney.

The Justice Department yesterday indicted former Cuban dictator Raoul Castro and others for three murders of American citizens thirty years ago. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it may mark “the beginning of the end” of the regime he and his brother, Fidel, have inflicted on the island’s longsuffering population for nearly seven decades. The indictment was preceded by an oil embargo engineered by President Trump and a man whose family fled to freedom from Cuba, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It has precipitated sustained blackouts and economic privation that has translated into increasing public demands for liberty. It’s hard to overstate the strategic implications of Cuba’s possibly imminent liberation. The Kremlin and Communist China have long weaponized the island, collecting signals intelligence there, running spy operations here and supporting insurgencies and hostile regimes throughout the Western hemisphere.  Let us pray for Cuba Libre. This is Frank Gaffney.

Today, Chinese emperor Xi Jinping accorded his vassal, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the same red-carpet treatment Donald Trump got last week. Despite assertions that the President’s pomp-and-circumstance was evidence of respect that offset Xi’s several affronts and otherwise aggressive attitude, the message is clear: China’s ruler is actually an enemy.  That reality was central to a PresentDangerChina.org webinar on Monday which critically examined last week’s Beijing summit and its outcomes. Our experts agreed that Xi’s regime is in acute political, economic and strategic difficulty, if not extremis, and that Mr. Trump has considerable leverage. But that can translate into heightened danger.  That’s especially the case if the Xi-Putin meeting fits a pattern of such summits serving as preludes to joint “strategic arson.” If Xi feels emboldened to act against Taiwan, giving Russia its marching orders would be a precursor.  Watch this space. This is Frank Gaffney.

Yesterday, three men were killed outside the largest of 13 mosques in California’s San Diego County. Such violence is unconscionable and must be condemned.  Even though little is known so far about the teenage shooters, the Islamic Center’s imam, Taha Hassane, nonetheless decried “intolerance.” And New York’s Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani denounced “Islamophobia.”  Before sympathy for the victims and efforts to parlay this crime into a pretext for silencing those of us who legitimately oppose utterly intolerant and intentionally terrifying sharia-supremacism, a little level-setting is in order. This mosque has long been associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Two congregants aided the 9/11 hijackers. And Imam Hassane routinely misrepresents sharia and intolerantly inveighs against Israel and its supporters.  Such facts do not justify violence. But they do underscore the need for legally and peacefully opposing metastasizing sharia in America.   This is Frank Gaffney.

Yesterday, we celebrated on the Washington Mall 250 years of “one nation under God” by rededicating the American experiment to the Judeo-Christian values and beliefs not only central to its beginnings and history to date, but to its prospects for the future.  Critics are determined to obscure, if not completely deny, the role the Scriptures and the hand of God played in inspiring the authors of our founding documents. “Rededicate 250” featured prayers, Biblical citations and statements from America’s get-go to underscore that, in our time, we must prize that spiritual genealogy and eschew efforts to alter it. In particular, we cannot persist – in the name of religious freedom and “interfaith dialogue” – in according to Islam’s anti-constitutional sharia death-cult the status of a “great Abrahamic faith,” allowing it seditiously to undermine our nation and freedoms through unwarranted First Amendment protections.

Virginia’s Democratic Party might better be described as the Bolsheviks. After all, their approach to governance seems to be Lenin’s revolutionary practice of “the ends justify the means.”  A prime example is the Democrats’ bid to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional districts. First, they created a constitutional amendment whose language was corruptly misleading and unlawfully adopted contributing to its narrow approval last month. That outcome was immediately stayed by one judge and then rejected by the Virginia Supreme Court. The Bolsheviks reportedly want to retaliate by lowering its mandatory retirement age to 53 and restock the court with sympathetic jurists.  Failing that, the Bolsheviks want the U.S. Supreme Court to endorse their shenanigans. Let us pray that they are repudiated again and the wellspring of America’s pro-freedom revolution 250 years ago will cease to be threatened by a Leninist one.   This is Frank Gaffney.

Chinese emperor Xi Jinping’s lavish welcome for President Trump cannot obscure a harsh reality: China’s ruling Communist Party is at war with the United States. If we continue to ignore that natty fact, we invite a redoubling of the CCP’s long-running “unrestricted warfare” against America – an unforced, and possibly terminal, error of epic proportions.  Much will depend on what comes next. If President Trump allows Xi to reduce their summit to yet-another opportunity to preside over one-sided deals with U.S. “captured elites,” 47 will be remembered as having perpetuated and greatly intensified the threat we face.  If on the other hand, like President Reagan at Rekjyavik, Mr. Trump rejects the temptation to prop up the Chinese Communist Party, he may yet put it on the “ash-heap of history,” alongside the odious Soviet one that spawned the CCP. Just do it. This is Frank Gaffney.

China’s emperor Xi Jinping will wine and dine President Trump as part of a spectacle in Beijing intended to give the outward appearance of hospitality. I pray the U.S. delegation includes a food-tester.  This is no joke. Poisoning enemies has long been part of the intrigues of China’s imperial courts. And, since Donald Trump poses a unique and existential threat to the CCP’s global ambitions, taking him out – presumably via a seeming “accident” – would be an elegant solution to Xi’s acute internal problems. Alternatively, Xi may simply persist in poisonously impacting  this fall’s midterm elections and, thereby, the Trump presidency via restricting rare earth mineral exports, enabling and protracting Iran’s war with America and gaining new opportunities to penetrate and subvert our country. Make no mistake: You are deep behind enemy lines, Mr. President. Stay safe, vigilant and protected by God.  This is Frank Gaffney.

President Trump is taking numerous “old friends of China” to Beijing today – corporate executives who have made fortunes transforming the People’s Republic into a superpower.  The President’s entourage reinforces the illusion that the PRC is merely an economic rival that a new poll indicates most Americans share. Mr. Trump just reinforced that misperception by declaring we have “a very friendly competition” with China.  Actually, as a recent PresentDangerChina.com webinar underscored, Communist China is at war with us. It is perilous to ignore that fact and open our country and economy to further predations – thereby, enabling the CCP to intensify its decades long “unrestricted warfare” against us.  The result will be to prop up Xi Jinping’s regime and embolden it further. Donald Trump has historically understood the Chinese threat and must be guided by that reality at this critical juncture.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Sam Faddis is a brilliant former CIA spy who spent much of his career countering Iranian efforts to bring “Death to America.” With President Trump’s necessary rejection to what amounted to Iran’s demand for our surrender, Sam’s recommendation is to stop talking to the regime in Tehran and “go for the jugular.” That would involve the following: targeting critical nodes of Iran’s oil infrastructure, border crossings with Pakistan and communications, while seizing two dozen ghost tankers full of Iranian oil off Malaysia and imposing a nationwide no-fly zone.  Mr. Faddis also urges President Trump to cancel his impending trip to China and sanction its companies enabling Iran to continue waging war against us. As Sam pointed out in a webinar last week, doing otherwise invites not Xi Jinping’s help to us, but will embolden him further to help our enemies in Tehran. This is Frank Gaffney.

The White House just released a new National Counterterrorism Strategy. It marks an important break from past official narratives about enemies foreign and domestic heretofore euphemistically and misleadingly called “terrorists.”  Notably, it declared: “Americans should be safe to live their lives without the fear of terror attacks, the threat of jihadists, the flooding of our communities with deadly drugs at the hands of foreign narcoterrorists, or violent left-wing extremists who have adopted radical ideologies antithetical to the principles upon which our Republic was founded.”  Particularly heartening is the acknowledgement that among the “terrorists” we confront are actually “jihadists,” in other words adherents to the totalitarian Islamic doctrine known as sharia that requires them to engage in holy war or “jihad.” The strategy explicitly calls for “protect[ing] Christians, who have been slaughtered at the hands of these Jihadi groups.”  Praise God! This is Frank Gaffney

President Trump often praises Chinese dictator Xi Jinping with whom he is scheduled to meet next week in Beijing. What if the feeling isn’t mutual?  After all, Xi not only has long waged “unrestricted warfare” against our country, but repeatedly undermined the Trump presidency.  For example, the Chinese Communists reneged on commitments to seal a sweeping trade deal that, if implemented, would have corrected many of their abuses and been a yuuuge win for Mr. Trump.  Next, they launched a biological warfare attack that killed a million Americans and brought to a screeching halt his then-booming economic recovery.  The Chinese reportedly used their access to U.S. vote-counting hardware and software to help prevent his reelection in 2020. Now, Xi is rearming Iran, choking off our access to rare earth minerals and continuing his imports here of murderous fentanyl.  With friends like Xi…. This is Frank Gaffney.

Would Franklin Roosevelt have contemplated traveling to Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler at the height of World War II? The proposition is, of course, absurd. Among other reasons would be concerns about the President’s personal safety. Yet, Donald Trump is set on visiting Beijing next week to meet with a man who has killed more Americans in what some call “World War III” than Hitler did – namely, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.   China expert Col. Grant Newsham confirmed yesterday that Xi’s regime is “at war with America” and has used fentanyl to kill 800,000 of us – roughly the equivalent of four divisions.  In addition, Xi keeps sending Iran chemicals for ballistic missiles to attack U.S. military personnel. The question occurs: Might he have Trump killed, too? President Trump has already postponed their summit once. It would be advisable to do it indefinitely.  This is Frank Gaffney.

A British government official warned today that slavery is increasing in the United Kingdom and worldwide, reporting that it is at record levels and is expected to worsen over the next decade. Unfortunately, this revelation won’t come as news to the estimated 1 million girls who have been enslaved and brutalized by Muslim rape gangs in the U.K. over the past fifty years. As their indefatigable champion, Tommy Robinson, has made clear during a U.S. speaking tour, authorities who knew of this horror overwhelmingly ignored it lest prosecuting the perpetrators cause their co-religionists to retaliate violently. He warns that such outrages are happening here, too. That’s because slavery and rape are condoned by sharia and widely practiced worldwide by its adherents. And, if their goal of conquering the West succeeds, every non-Muslim will, at best, be enslaved as so-called “dhimmis.” BanSharia.com. This is Frank Gaffney.

California is poised to make two Muslim holy days state holidays even though both celebrate sharia-supremacism and examples of its past violent conquests. Predictably, such submission will encourage jihadists to believe their plans for stealthily taking down America are not only achievable, but irresistibly progressing. The bill that would enact these concessions was unanimously approved by two committees of the Democratic-controlled legislature in Sacramento. The absence of even a single dissenting vote attests to the success of what amounts to “electoral jihad.”  A new video reveals Islamic clerics and others boasting about bloc-voting that allows a Muslim minority to be “king-makers” in close elections typical of state and local balloting.  That’s how Britain has been lost – and how, if sharia-supremacists and their allies and enablers are not decisively defeated at the polls, we will lose not only California, but the country.  This is Frank Gaffney.

The most horrific crime against humanity in the world history is underway in our time. According to Open Doors’ World Watch List, over 388 million Christians are currently being heavily persecuted around the world.  That’s more people than live in the United States  being tortured, imprisoned, raped, driven from their homes and, in many cases, murdered simply because they follow Jesus Christ.  Our coalition called “Save the Persecuted Christians” conducted this week a powerful webinar exposing one of the most flagrant and ongoing examples of such horrors. It examined the genocide to which Nigeria’s Christian population is being subjected with the knowledge and complicity of its government.  To his great credit, President Trump intervened there last Christmas, killing large numbers of jihadists responsible for such predations. Now, he must redouble his efforts to hold them and their governmental enablers accountable. This is Frank Gaffney.

For some fifty years, the U.S. dollar has been the world’s reserve currency. Of late, the end of that status has been increasingly seen as inevitable, if not actually imminent. My brilliant friend, Rod Martin, has just published a characteristically contrarian and optimistic assessment of that prospect under President Trump. Put simply, he says, it ain’t gonna happen. In an article posted at RodMartin.org, this increasingly influential pundit observes: “Trump doesn’t just mean to put America ‘first’: he intends to make America dominant. Or in a phrase, ‘great again.’” According to Rod, that’s possible because the President has restored international perceptions of our military strength – in particular, the power of the U.S. Navy – and Donald Trump’s indisputable willingness to exercise it. The knock-on effect is that, “The dollar remains more than a currency. It is a strategic weapon.” Praise God! This is Frank Gaffney.

For some fifty years, the U.S. dollar has been the world’s reserve currency. Of late, the end of that status has been increasingly seen as inevitable, if not actually imminent. My brilliant friend, Rod Martin, has just published a characteristically contrarian and optimistic assessment of that prospect under President Trump. Put simply, he says, it ain’t gonna happen. In an article posted at RodMartin.org, this increasingly influential pundit observes: “Trump doesn’t just mean to put America ‘first’: he intends to make America dominant. Or in a phrase, ‘great again.’” According to Rod, that’s possible because the President has restored international perceptions of our military strength – in particular, the power of the U.S. Navy – and Donald Trump’s indisputable willingness to exercise it. The knock-on effect is that, “The dollar remains more than a currency. It is a strategic weapon.” Praise God! This is Frank Gaffney.

My friend, George Rasley, is a Mensa Society-certified “genius” with a wealth of life experience, including work on over 300 political campaigns and service in the White House. These days, he’s the editor of Conservative HQ, an invaluable online resource with a quarter-million subscribers. Providentially, George has turned his considerable talents to documenting and exposing the threat we all face from sharia-supremacism. Among other things, he’s captured videos of Islamic leaders and Muslim Brotherhood operatives here, explicitly declaring their pursuit of sharia’s anti-constitutional requirement: Its adherents must wage jihad to establish that totalitarian political-military-legal system’s rule world-wide. In other words, sharia is, in practice, inherently a seditious conspiracy. George Rasley will present his compelling findings this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time in an hour-long Victory Coalition webinar. Register to join us at VictoryCo.org. This is Frank Gaffney.

A Sunday New York Times profile of outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook implicitly confirmed his status as the preeminent member of what the Communist Chinese contemptuously call our “captured elite.” In practice, that means he and his company profited immeasurably by systematically betraying this country.  Patrick McGee, the author of Apple in China, wrote: “Based on my research, I am convinced that no company has done more to enable President Xi. Since 2008, Apple has worked with suppliers to train 30 million workers, principally in China…facilitat[ing] an epic transfer of practical knowledge in how to make things to hundreds of Chinese factories.”  Regretably, Cook’s treachery is not unique. Untold numbers of Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” have used the funds of pensioners, investors in mutual funds and other clients to underwrite China’s menacing military build-up.   Treason must no longer pay. This is Frank Gaffney.

The term “Red-Green axis” describes the improbable, but very real, collusion between radical leftists and sharia-supremacist Muslims. Despite myriad differences, they collaborate here, animated by a shared goal of destroying our constitutional Republic.  While examples of such cooperation abound, Texas has lately been a locus of particularly insidious ones. For instance, in recent days, hard leftists and Muslim Brotherhood operatives pressed – fortunately unsuccessfuly – the State Board of Education to adopt a K-12 social studies curriculum promoting cultural Marxist and pro-sharia agendas.  And last Saturday, a “young Democrats” group in Tarrant County issued a statement aligned with, if not actually written by, Muslim Brothers. It falsely asserted, “Islam teaches peace and justice. Islam…does not teach people to hurt others, engage in acts of terrorism, or promote violence.” Patriots must expose and reject the Red-Green Axis.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Last night, a packed hall in Dallas celebrated the fight to defeat sharia’s stealth jihad against Western Civilization and five men at its forefront.  This is our time’s “existential threat” to liberty and in Texas – and, indeed, the rest of America – we must learn from the mistakes Great Britain and most of Europe have made for too long. Notably, British freedom-fighter Tommy Robinson condemned the U.K.’s decades-long tolerance of primarily Pakistani Muslim rape gangs. And four Texan legislators – Congressmen Keith Self and Chip Roy and State Representatives Brent Money and Brian Harrison – described their efforts to push back on, and ultimately defeat, sharia-supremacism. On this occasion, they embraced our “Sharia-Free Pledge,” committing to do everything in their power to prevent the imposition of sharia here. We must now encourage others seeking elective office across this country to do the same at BanSharia.com.    This is Frank Gaffney.

Tonight, four extraordinary patriots – three American, one British – will join forces to help Save Texas and Save America from the threat sharia-supremacism poses to both, and Western civilization more generally.  The event will take place in Dallas and feature remarks by the U.K.’s Tommy Robinson and U.S. Congressmen Keith Self and Chip Roy and Texas State Representative Brent Money.  Each has been powerfully raising alarms about the stealthy jihad that has long – and increasingly successfully – been waged by the Muslim Brotherhood and others determined to replace the West’s tradition of freedom with the slavery of Islam’s totalitarian sharia political-military-legal system.  We will celebrate these courageous leaders tonight as they urge the 1.9 million Texans who voted last month to prohibit sharia in their state – and others who will be voting in November – to catalyze such actions there and across America. BanSharia.com. This is Frank Gaffney.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been formally charged with fraud at the expense of its many donors and to the public’s detriment. It’s about time. The SPLC allegedly paid informants in organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, effectively aiding the very “hate groups” it professes to oppose.  I can attest from hard personal experience that this so-called “watchdog” has garnered funds by fraudulently branding as “haters” countless individuals and organizations who are simply conservative, and therefore at odds with the SPLC’s radical leftist agenda and that of its sharia-supremacist allies.  In short, it’s a disreputable instrument of political warfare, with a sordid record of prejudice and hateful behavior towards its own employees.   The Justice Department’s investigation of the SPLC is ongoing. Let us pray it fully exposes and ultimately dismantles what I consider to be a thoroughly corrupt and hate-mongering monster.    This is Frank Gaffney.

As a resident of Virginia, I voted “No” this morning on the stunning power-grab that commonwealth’s Democrats are trying to pass. If you’re an eligible Virginia voter, I encourage you to vote “No” as well in the course of this Election Day. At issue is a constitutional amendment that would gerrymander the current congressional districts from a six Democrat to five Republican split to one in which there would be ten Democratic representatives to just one Republican.  If it succeeds, nearly half the state’s electorate would effectively be disenfranchised.  Adding insult to injury is ballot language claiming this gambit is designed to “restore fairness in the upcoming elections.” In fact, it’s designed to give Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year and consume the last two years of President Trump’s term with impeachments, subpoenas and other distractions.  Just say “No.” This is Frank Gaffney.

In one of history’s most insidious and impactful acts of information warfare, Soviet Communist influence operatives successfully defeated Senator Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to expose their penetration of the U.S. government.  Even though McCarthy was correct, his name was made synonymous with false allegations of imagined internal threats –creating a societal norm that there are no actual enemies within and anyone who says otherwise is beyond the pale.  Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier dared to defy this stricture to warn about Marxist infiltration and undermining of our armed forces. Check out the Heritage Foundation’s new film, “Call Sign Courage,” that powerfully documents how the Biden administration retaliated against this extraordinary officer, prematurely ending his career in uniform, and how, thanks be to God and Donald Trump, he is currently a top Pentagon leader, taking corrective action. This is Frank Gaffney.

In recent days, President Trump and Pope Leo have had very public disagreements about, among other things, the justness of the war with Iran.  It turns out that Leo is a leftist who, despite his American roots, is more comfortable currying favor with totalitarians than opposing them.  For example, the Pope has continued his predecessor’s practice of acquiescing to the Chinese Communist Party as it seeks to crush China’s Catholic and other religious communities. That’s indefensible. And, during his recent visit to Algeria, Leo professed that Christians and Muslims can be friends, ignoring that country’s ongoing and aggressive persecution of those who follow Jesus. While Christ taught that peacemakers are blessed, ignoring sharia-adherent Iranian and other Muslims’ obligation not to take Christians and Jews as friends – and, indeed, to kill them – is a formula for genocide, not genuine and just peace.  This is Frank Gaffney.

China is reportedly using space assets to help target Iran’s attacks on American personnel, equipment and regional allies.  Unfortunately, such weaponization of space against us is but a small foretaste of what Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has in the works. Especially concerning is his determination to get “boots” on the lunar ground before we return to the moon.  Asked yesterday by Maria Bartiromo whether we would “win the moon race,” President Trump demurred, observing the  Chinese might “get lucky.” If they do and arrive with the intention and capability to preclude us from landing on or otherwise using the moon, its resources and strategic location, we will not just be unlucky. We’ll be at a perilous disadvantage in space and here on earth.  Consequently, every effort must now be made to win the race to the moon – and, once there, be prepared to defend it.   This is Frank Gaffney.

President Trump has a lot of legitimate complaints at the moment about our so-called “allies.” A number of them have refused our use of bases we pay for, permission to fly through their airspace, and help with the Strait of Hormuz, upon which they rely far more than we do for access to energy. Such fair-weather friends just added insult to injury amidst the war with Iran by granting its monstrous regime both legitimacy and influence at the United Nations.  As the non-governmental organization UN Watch caustically observed, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia were among the Western nations that nominated Iran to a seat on a UN committee whose responsibilities include shaping policy on human rights, women’s rights, and terrorism prevention.  To its credit, the United States stood alone in opposing this reprehensible travesty. Now President Trump should defund it.  This is Frank Gaffney.

In the course of last week, an epic struggle took place in Austin, Texas with potentially far-reaching implications for the country as a whole. At issue is the character and content of social studies curricula that will be used to teach millions of K-12 children in that state, and perhaps another twenty across the USA over the next decade.  Over sixty hours of deliberations and votes, the Board adopted required reading and other essential knowledge and skills standards that factually describe the history of our exceptional nation. In so doing, it rejected alternatives favored by a designated terrorist group known as the Council on American Islamic Relations and its radical leftist allies designed to denigrate America and indoctrinate and alienate our kids.    Consequently, praise God, our children will have a basis for pride in this country – and grounds for helping protect her.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Twenty-one hours of bilateral negotiations between a U.S. delegation led by Vice President J.D. Vance and one comprised of ruthless Iranian jihadists came to naught over the weekend. To paraphrase the Veep, that’s the good news. The even better news is that President Trump has responded by announcing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz through which the export of much oil and gas from Persian Gulf nations takes place.  By so doing, he is negating the leverage the regime in Tehran has obtained by its own assertion of control over the Strait. That arrangement allowed it to gain desperately needed revenue by continuing to sell oil to select friends like Communist China and by imposing tolls on other vessels permitted to transit. The U.S. blockade can – and must – precipitate the mullahs’ unconditional surrender and the liberation of their enslaved people.  This is Frank Gaffney.

Negotiations between the Iranian regime and the Trump administration resume in Pakistan this weekend. Vice President J.D. Vance heads the U.S. delegation and is clearly determined to stop the fighting.  Hard experience with such diplomacy over the past four decades makes one thing clear: Parleying with Iran’s sharia-supremacists may – I repeat, may – give the appearance of temporarily lessened hostilities. Unfortunately, since it necessarily involves perpetuating the ayatollahs and their loyalists’ hold on power, the threat they pose simply further metastasizes. The alternative is now the only hope for avoiding what the brilliant George Rasley has correctly described as a stunning tactical victory lost to a catastrophic strategic defeat. That is to help achieve a different government in Iran – one representing, instead of murderously repressing, its people, not restricting the Strait of Hormuz, not pursuing nuclear weapons and not seeking Death to America.  This is Frank Gaffney.

President Reagan warned that “Every generation faces an existential threat to freedom” and that our country must be protected from it and passed on to the next generation to do the same.  The Texas State Board of Education is currently deciding about a social studies curriculum for K-12 students. In my testimony on Tuesday, I warned this panel’s members that their now pending choice between a pro-freedom curriculum they adopted last year and Red-Green axis one I call the “CAIR curriculum” will have real national security implications. The Board’s deliberations and votes are still ongoing with a kind of trench warfare being waged over line-by-line amendments.  We need to support the heroic Board members striving to equip our young people with the facts that justify love of country and the necessary willingness to defend it. I urge you to do so at BanSharia.com.   This is Frank Gaffney.

Yesterday, President Trump stepped back from his promise to devastate the infrastructure of Iran essential not only to its military, but the civilian population, as well. If we want the Iranian people’s help, this was a necessary course-correction. The truth is, moreover, you cannot play chicken with an apocalyptic regime. This one’s leaders and loyalists believe they can bring back their messiah and usher in Islam’s golden age by precipitating cataclysmic devastation.  As long as any of them remain in power, ceasefires, promises about opening the Strait of Hormuz and any other putative concessions will be seen by them and their friends as victories. And set the stage for more jihad against us and the rest of Western civilization. Consequently, we must insist on the Iranian regime’s unconditional surrender and the actual liberation of our natural allies – the longsuffering people of Iran. This is Frank Gaffney.

Artemis II’s overflight of the moon’s dark side has gotten most attention. But the mission’s most important target is the lunar south pole. It happens to be that of the Chinese Communist Party, too.  Who gets there first will likely determine who controls not only its water resources. They can be used to support a manned base and its operations, to make hydrogen for fuel for further space exploration and to project power from there to here.   And that, unfortunately, is the CCP’s plan. So the question is: At what point will the United States recognize this reality and ensure that it not only beats the Chinese Communists to the moon but is able to defend it, as well? This is Frank Gaffney.