Washington's yearly defense measure has ground to a halt, and one buried clause explains why a widening bloc of lawmakers wants the whole thing pried back open. Members voted down the procedural rule required to open debate on the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act on June 30, splitting 198 to 224 as fourteen Republicans broke away. Their rebellion turned on Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) bid to fasten President Donald Trump's SAVE America Act to the must pass bill, not on the Israel clause. Even so, the collapse handed opponents breathing room and preserved an amendment that...

Israel's latest war on Lebanon is now threatening to unravel the fragile understanding that Washington and Tehran reached to halt their 2026 confrontation. Under the interim agreement that Pakistan mediated, the United States and Iran declared a permanent end to military operations on every front, Lebanon included. Israel, not a party to the pact, refused to comply. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on June 15 that his forces "will stay in the Lebanon security buffer zone for as long as necessary," and nine days later Defense Minister Israel Katz declared the military would not...

The Trump administration's May 2026 indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro represents the latest escalation in a six-decade campaign of economic warfare that has failed to achieve regime change while inflicting catastrophic harm on the Cuban people. The roots of the U.S. embargo lie in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, which overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Fulgencio Batista and set Cuba on a course of nationalization and Soviet alignment. The United States first launched an arms embargo in 1958, with the energy and agricultural sectors targeted beginning in...

Americans have been fed a comforting fairy tale about Islamic terrorism. Radical jihadists attack the West simply because they despise freedom, democracy, and the American way of life. This narrative flatters domestic audiences while conveniently obscuring a far more troubling reality. For decades, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel have armed, financed, tolerated, and tapped into Sunni Islamist extremists as geopolitical tools to destabilize rivals. The evidence spans multiple theaters and rests on declassified documents, congressional investigations, and credible...

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) tweeted on May 4, 2026: For nearly six decades the U.S. has voluntarily remained in the dark on Israel's nuclear capabilities. The ambiguity ends now. There is too much at stake to accept ignorance. We are at war alongside Israel against Iran without knowing what their red lines are for using a… pic.twitter.com/oe0KF9MnKQ — Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) May 6, 2026 That tweet accompanied a letter signed by Castro and twenty-nine other House Democrats addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The lawmakers argued that Congress has a constitutional duty to...

The United States has long operated under a seductive strategic fantasy. Remove the leader of an adversary organization, whether a drug cartel, a terrorist group, or a sovereign state, and that organization will collapse, enabling American interests to fill the resulting vacuum. However, decades of academic literature, hard empirical data from Mexico's drug war, and the lived consequences of America's post 9/11 targeted killing campaigns all tell a damning story many in the DC ruling class refuse to acknowledge. Decapitation strategies are, at best, tactically satisfying and strategically...