Five years ago yesterday, President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office to calm a country panicked by the emerging global pandemic. No one at the time fully comprehended the catastrophe that was about to unfold.
 
It was a catastrophe for families who lost loved ones. It was a catastrophe for our children who lost years of learning.
 
It was a catastrophe for our scientific establishment, which lost all credibility. It was a catastrophe for the American people, whose civil rights were trampled.
 
It was a catastrophe for our country as the pandemic paved the way for the Biden/Harris regime.
 
It was also a financial catastrophe. The national debt exploded because of emergency spending. All safeguards were suspended to get money out the door as quickly as possible. Hundreds of billions of dollars were lost to fraud, with much of it going to foreign scammers.
 
Now, Elon Musk’s DOGE has confirmed that more than $300 million in Small Business Administration loans were issued to children under 12 years of age during the pandemic. Another $330 million was issued to people older than 115.
 
This is the fraud and corruption the Trump team is trying to clean up.
 
 
 
A Supremely Important Case
 
The James Dobson Family Institute, where I also serve as Senior Vice President for Public Policy, just scored a major victory. We filed a brief that helped convince the Supreme Court to hear a critically important case out of Colorado with major implications for free speech and religious liberty.
 
The case, Chiles v. Salazar, involves a challenge by Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor, to Colorado’s law banning so-called “conversion therapy.”

In reality, the Colorado law censors and silences Christian counselors and therapists. It prevents them from presenting the biblical and biological truth about human sexuality to confused children seeking help. In place of that truth, Christian counselors are forced to affirm the lie that a child can be born in the wrong body.
 
The law is an outrageous assault on the First Amendment. I hope and pray there are five justices who also see it that way.
 
 
 
Taking Antisemitism Seriously
 
Kudos to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon! With the full support of the Trump White House, McMahon put 60 universities on notice that they are under investigation for violating the civil rights of Jewish students.
 
Immediately after the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, American university campuses erupted in spasms of antisemitism. Jewish students hid in their dorm rooms or locked themselves in libraries to avoid violent pro-Hamas mobs. Others left their schools to avoid being threatened and attacked.
 
The Biden administration turned a blind eye to this outbreak of vile Jew hatred. The Biden Justice Department was too busy prosecuting its political opponents and spying on parents at school board meetings. The Biden Education Department was too busy punishing schools that didn’t allow boys into girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
 
The few times the Biden administration investigated antisemitism, it was always done in conjunction with investigations into Islamophobia, as if Muslims were being terrorized on any American campus. They aren’t.
 
Donald Trump, who is constantly smeared by the left as a “fascist” and a “Nazi,” stopped all of that. Now the power of these federal agencies is being used to go after real Nazis on our college campuses who are treating Jewish students like it’s 1930s Germany, not 2020s America.
 
Ironically, Democrats and their leftist media allies are accusing the president of attacking the freedom of speech of American college students. That doesn’t pass the straight face test.
 
President Trump is a staunch defender of free speech. It’s the left that used the Deep State to censor speech!
 
 
 
Ignore The Spin
 
The left-wing media has been spinning the recent stock market losses as the result of President Trump’s trade and tariff policies. That’s fake news. Markets go up and they go down – with a striking degree of regularity.
 
Market corrections – drops of 10% to 20% – have occurred on average every 1.2 years since 1980. But there were four corrections in 2022 under Joe Biden.
 
2024 was a good year for the stock market. Many companies were trading at or near record highs. So, it’s only natural that there would be some “profit taking” or sell-offs.
 
Here’s the bottom line: The stock market is not the economy, and it can fluctuate wildly at times for no obvious reason. At some point, investors will realize there are good bargains to be had, and they will start buying again.
 
In the meantime, the Trump/Vance administration is working every day to grow our economy and bring good-paying jobs back to America.
 
 
 
Nothing’s Changed
 
Forty-two years ago, a column was published in the New York Times titled, “What’s Wrong With NATO?” It was a very lengthy column – nearly 4,500 words of in-depth analysis on European politics, foreign policy, military strategy, nuclear deterrence, and warnings about the waning influence of nationalism.
 
Here’s a key quote. I’ll tell you the author later:
 
“If we have learned anything from the NATO experience of the last 30 years, it is the rediscovery of an old truth: Dependency corrupts and absolute dependency corrupts absolutely.
 
"To the degree that Europe has been dependent upon the United States, the European will has been corrupted and European political vitality has diminished. A reconstructed NATO could reverse that process. But it would have to be an all-European NATO, with the United States an ally but not a member…
 
"A new Atlantic alliance between the United States and an all-European NATO would be possible and desirable… But if this is to come about, we must subject the NATO that now exists, a very sick NATO, to shock treatment. Nothing less will suffice.”
 
Donald Trump could have written this. It’s essentially his position on NATO. It’s sick. It’s too dependent on the United States, and too weak to defend itself. Of course, anyone who wrote this today would be accused of being “Putin’s puppet.”
 
But this article was written by Irving Kristol, Mr. Neocon himself and the father of Bill Kristol. The elder Kristol understood in 1983 that regardless of the good instincts behind NATO’s creation, it was rotting and hollow then, and we’ve had 42 more years of rot.
 
 
 
Sign Of Division Demolished
 
Jackhammers and other demolition tools were hard at work Monday in downtown Washington, D.C. The district’s mural paying homage to the radical and racist BLM movement is finally being removed.
 
In the wake of the George Floyd riots, the words “Black Lives Matter” were painted on a Washington, D.C., road. The mural letters are 40 feet high and run the length of two city blocks just north of the White House. The entire area was renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
 
House Republicans, led by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), threatened to cut the district’s budget unless the mural was removed.
 
BLM Plaza was a daily reminder of the division and racial discord Joe Biden and the neo-Marxist left created in America. We spent several years recently tearing down “racist” monuments. It was long past time for this one to go.
 
Of course, black lives do matter. All lives matter. We are all created in the image of God, deserving dignity and respect.
 
 
 
BREAKING NEWS: There are reports that Ukraine has agreed to a 30-day ceasefire in exchange for the U.S. releasing the pause on intelligence sharing and shipments of military equipment. The situation is very fluid, and it remains to been if Russia will accept the ceasefire.