What the Hell Is Going On

The 2024 Iowa caucuses have come and gone, with the key takeaways some freezing temperatures, low turnout, and a Trump slam dunk. 15 percent of eligible Iowans gave 51% of the vote to the former president. Of course, that also means that about half voted for somebody other than Trump. Most disappointed was Nikki Haley, who surprised us all with a lagging third place, while Ron DeSantis pulled ahead to second. So, is the 2024 GOP nomination a done deal for Trump? Maybe. But the year has just begun, and some more challenging ground is ahead for the Donald and his would-be replacements.Sean Trende is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on elections, American political trends, voting patterns, and demographics. He is also the senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. Before becoming a full-time political analyst, Mr. Trende practiced law for eight years, during which time he represented clients before a variety of settings ranging from state trial courts to the Supreme Court of the United States.Download the transcript here. Subscribe to the WTH substack here.Read Marc's GOP vs. Biden analysis here.

Generation Z is now entering the workforce, and free speech levels have never been so low in America. Coincidence? We think not. Legions of Gen Zers are bringing the totalitarian ideas they were spoon-fed in university — CRT, DEI, and other Neo-Marxist ideas — into the American mainstream. As a result, we are at a peak cancel culture moment. How did this happen, who is to blame, and most importantly, how do we close Pandora’s box? Our guests — authors of a new book on cancel culture — suggest we cannot, but we can move forward and begin to right some of these wrongs. It starts with raising kids who aren’t cancelers, keeping corporations out of the cult of cancellation, fixing K-12, and reforming higher education.Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and one of the country’s most passionate defenders of free expression. Together with Rikki Schlott, he is the author of The Canceling of the American Mind. He has written on free speech issues in the nation’s top newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and was executive producer of the documentaries Can We Take a Joke? and Mighty Ira. Lukianoff earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from Stanford.Rikki Schlott is a New York City-based journalist and political commentator. She is a research fellow at FIRE, host of the Lost Debate podcast, a columnist at the New York Post, and a regular contributor to numerous publications and television programs. Her commentary focuses on free speech, campus culture, civil liberties, and youth issues from a Generation Z perspective.Download the transcript here.Subscribe to the WTH substack here.Check out Greg and Rikki's book here.

2023 was not a year of shining achievements for the Biden administration. But along with the bad, there were achievements worth celebrating. So this year, Marc continues his tradition with the top ten best and worst things Biden did in 2023. Among the best relate to China – the replicator initiative, restrictions on Chinese advanced tech, and military aid for Taiwan – as well as his support for Israel and Ukraine. Among the worst were his slow rolling aid to Ukraine, softness on Iran, student loan forgiveness… and running for reelection. Download the transcript here.Read the 10 Worst here.Read the 10 Best here.Subscribe to the WTH substack here.

Happy holidays from the WTH team. In case you missed it, we are re-upping one of our best pods of the year with John Yoo, to explain why kicking candidates off the ballot (looking at you, Colorado) is undemocratic...Is it correct that election officials can disqualify Trump based on the 14th Amendment? Was it really necessary or strategic to begin impeachment proceedings against Biden now? Is our Republic unraveling? This is precisely why Marc and Dany called on Biden to pardon Trump. This is why Abraham Lincoln said that a compass that points true north is only useful if one also knows the terrain we traverse.Download the transcript here.

Nearly three months into the Israel-Hamas war, we’re back with Elliott Abrams for an update on what the hell is going on, and more importantly, where to go from here. The military objectives – what Israel must do in order to secure its people – are one level, but as the conflict continues, there are deeper issues that will take time and clarity to address. How do we deradicalize both the Palestinian population in support of Hamas? What about Hezbollah? Iran? And how can we help Israeli security when we are struggling Hamas supporters here at home? Why is the United States so loath to defend itself in the Red Sea? And why are there hundreds – hundreds—of Biden administration employees virtue-signaling their personal disagreement with the policy of the President of the United States?Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.Download the transcript here.Check out Elliott Abrams' recent piece here.Subscribe to the WTH substack here.

In 2002, Ruy Teixeira co-authored The Emerging Democratic Majority. Now, two decades later, his new book is out – Where Have All the Democrats Gone? So what happened to the Democratic Party in those intervening years? A couple of major factors stand out. First, the Democrats have bled working-class voters – once the party’s base. This means that your average Democrat today is not a UAW union worker, but probably a middle to upper-class post-grad student at Harvard. Or Colombia. Or U Penn. Second, the party’s mission has been captured by extreme versions of wokeism, making progressivism synonymous with total agreement with the far Left. And while the Dems’ recent winning streak is attributable to the specific alchemy of special and off-year elections – in 2024, it will be a much bigger challenge to see how coastal elites and college grads sustain the party.Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Before joining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress from 2003 to 2022. He coedits “The Liberal Patriot” blog. His new book is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes (Henry Holt & Company).Download the transcript here.Check out Ruy Teixeira's new book here. Check out the Liberal Patriot Substack here. Subscribe to the WTH substack here.

The best-kept secret about aid to Ukraine? 90% of the money the US allocates for military aid is spent here at home. The money goes right to American defense companies that employ American workers to produce the weapons systems that Ukraine is using to fight Russia. Not only that: the money is revitalizing decayed production lines, bringing back institutional knowledge about weapons manufacturing to the fore, and pushing the American defense sector to innovate and modernize old weapons systems. But this is all being done begrudgingly by the Pentagon and painfully slowly by the Biden admin, and with zero support from several loud voices in the GOP. At a time when the US is facing three major threat environments – Russia-Ukraine, Hamas-Israel, and a future China-Taiwan – why is Congress so confused about the need to rebuild America’s defenses? Why aren’t Congressmen pushing harder for more jobs in their own districts for their own constituents, instead of prioritizing their own isolationist agenda? Bonus: read Marc’s piece in the Washington Post laying out the argument, and the data, for Ukraine aid benefiting the American worker.John Ferrari is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work focuses on the defense budget, defense reform and acquisition, and the US military. Over his 32-year US Army career, Major General Ferrari, who is now retired, served as the director of program analysis and evaluation, the commanding general of the White Sands Missile Range, a deputy commander for programs at the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, and a strategic planner for the Combined Joint Task Force Seven in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Major General Ferrari has also worked as a branch chief for contingency operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the US Department of Defense and as a program examiner at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.Download the transcript here.

Why is the United Nations siding with Hamas in its war on Israel? An exaggeration? Nope. The examples are endless. The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), devoted to the question of Palestinian refugees in name, but de facto a front for Hamas; leadership on the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council from China and Iran, setting the anti-Israel agenda; UN employees teaching antisemitic propaganda, promoting Hamas on their personal social media accounts, and blocking condemnation of terrorism. What’s more, all this is paid for, in large part, by the American taxpayer. It’s time to reform the United Nations, or, absent the necessary changes, to cut off their cash. Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. From 2019 to 2021, Schaefer was appointed by the U.N. General Assembly to serve on the Committee on Contributions, which advises the General Assembly on the scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of the United Nations among member states. He worked at the Pentagon as an assistant for International Criminal Court policy from March 2003 to March 2004. Download the transcript here. Read Dany's National Review piece here.Subscribe to the WTH substack here.

Since the events of October 7, the Chinese Communist Party has been spreading virulent antisemitic memes in the U.S. via its favorite information warfare tool: Tik Tok. We have had episodes on Tik Tok before, but the urgency of this issue has reached a fever pitch, culminating with the celebration of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” on the app last week. Tik Tok is pervasive – around a third of young adults use it for news – and it is incredibly effective. It is not just the propaganda that is convincing young Americans to hate America and ally themselves with bin Laden, Iran, and antisemites everywhere. And it is not even the losses on Xi Jinping’s “smokeless battlefield.” It is the question of the easy control of young American hearts and minds – which apparently march to the TikTok algorithm’s orders – and the consequent control the Chinese Communist Party has over American opinions and American politics. Bonus: There are also transgenic mice.Congressman Mike Gallagher has represented Wisconsin’s 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017. In the 118th Congress, Representative Gallagher serves as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, as Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.Download the transcript here.

What do Critical Race Theory and antisemitism have in common? A lot, actually, from the roots of each movement, to the ideology, to the way they are weaponized by the left today. The overarching philosophy linking these movements together is a Manichean ordering of peoples into groups of oppressed or oppressor – usually, but not always, based on the color of one’s skin. Indeed, it is no mistake that in the aftermath of WWII, Jews sought to categorize themselves as white, a move that has now fed the bizarre oppressor/colonizer trope so popular on the left. First Jews weren’t white enough for the white supremacists, but now are too white for the CRT crowd. Not to mention the shifting ideological assaults on Jewish groups, once accused of being communists now accused of being capitalists. Yes, donors are pulling out of universities that harbor pro-terrorist groups; yes, the support of Hamas the past few weeks has been a PR disaster for wokeism. But it will take a lot more than that to root out the antisemitic and real race-based discrimination that has gripped America.David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Turin, and Hebrew University. Professor Bernstein teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, and Products Liability. His most recent book is Classified, The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.Download the transcript here.

It is unclear whether Iran chose the exact date and time of the Hamas attacks, but the detail is irrelevant. The Islamic Republic of Iran has funded, coordinated, trained, and armed Hamas and other proxies for years. Should Israel not definitively succeed in eliminating Hamas, Iran will learn a critical lesson: its strategy works. What does Iran want from this war? Eventually, hegemonic control of the Middle East; in the meantime, derailing normalization between Israel and the Arab states, eliminating any moderate Palestinian political players, and total control of the revitalized Palestinian question in the region. Iran’s influence isn’t limited to its proxies in the Middle East either – it has an unprecedented strategic alliance with Russia and a growing partnership with the People’s Republic of China. So, why the international equivocation on Iran? Sanctions are needed, tightening the loopholes for Iranian financing of terrorist proxies is needed… Iran must pay a price for fomenting this war.Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow at AEI, where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries. Before joining AEI, Dr. Pollack was affiliated with the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Before that, he was the center’s director and director of research. Dr. Pollack served twice at the National Security Council, first as director for Near East and South Asian affairs and then as director for Persian Gulf affairs. He began his career as a Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA, where he was the principal author of the CIA’s classified postmortem on Iraqi strategy and military operations during the Persian Gulf War.Download the transcript here.

There are Charlottesvilles happening every day in America. This time, they’re everywhere, driven by an explosion of antisemitism. And these Charlottesvilles are happening at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford among other elite havens of academe. This is not the alt-right, fringe antisemitism of years past. The modern version has taken on the flavor of the leftist elite: it equates Zionism with racism; it coalesces the extreme aspects of BLM, feminism, and other groups against a common enemy; it is pro-nothing and entirely anti. The Nazi movement had its roots in professors, Nobel Prize winners – this too, is finding roots in elitist bodies who can intellectualize their way around the pernicious evil of the Hamas attacks. The only way to stand up to a culture of hate? Intolerance of it, and imposing consequences on those who profess it. Ruth Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard University. She immigrated to Canada from Romania in 1940 and is a preeminent scholar of Yiddish and American culture, literature, and politics. She is the author of several books, including her memoir Free as a Jew. Download the transcript here.

It has been over 20 days since the House of Representatives ousted, and then successively failed to re-elect, a speaker of the House. The dysfunction could not be coming at a worse time: war in Europe, war in the Middle East, rising danger in the Pacific. Budgets are not getting passed, much less additional aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. The House cannot even convene to condemn the Hamas terrorists – what the hell is wrong with our country? One infuriating piece of information from our podcast today: a large portion of representatives voting against aid to Ukraine are “voting no, hoping yes,” an indication that partisanship has truly eroded the very fabric and efficacy of government. America desperately needs intellectual consistency, good-faith politics, and honesty. How can we right this sinking ship?Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick represents Pennsylvania’s first district. In the 118th Congress, Congressman Fitzpatrick sits on the Ways and Means Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition, he co-chairs the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and Congressional Ukraine Caucus, while also serving on the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force and NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Prior to serving Congress, he was an FBI Special Agent and a Federal Prosecutor.Download the transcript here.

The monstrosity of Hamas’ attack on Israel is hard to fathom. This podcast, with Times of Israel reporter Haviv Gur, shares some insight into developments on the ground in Israel, tragedies that Israelis are experiencing real-time, and analysis of the political, religious, and military aspects of the conflict. He also gives us a glimpse into Israel’s calculus following the attack – what do Israelis think Palestinians are thinking? Where are the roots of Palestinian extremism, how do the majority Arab Israeli population view the behavior of their neighbors? How has the fundamental understanding of regional cooperation changed, and where are we beginning to have clarity on the real aspirations of Palestinian leaders and other Middle East actors in the fall-out?These questions and more with Haviv Rettig Gur. Haviv is The Times of Israel's senior analyst. He has reported from over 20 countries and served as director of communications for the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel’s largest NGO. He lectures on Israeli politics, the US-Israel relationship, the peace process, modern Jewish history and identity, and Israel-diaspora relations. Haviv lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two sons.Download the transcript here.

On October 7th, Israel suffered the worst attack it has experienced in its history at the hands of the terrorist group Hamas. 900 casualties in Israel, including at least 11 American citizens – not to mention around 150 hostages taken by Hamas, most back to the Gaza Strip where they will be held as bargaining chips. The shocking adjectives being used are spot on: heinous, evil, unconscionable. And one lesson has emerged crystal-clear: weakness on Iran does not lead to moderation and bonhomie, it leads to bloodshed and paves the path for terror. Obama’s nuclear deals; Trump’s tougher but ultimately unsustainable approach; Biden’s inattention and subsequent $6 billion bribe to Iran – and people wonder why the Iranian regime thought that now might be a good time to push the envelope even further. What happens next will be decisive. We have watched Biden slow roll aid to Ukraine while Congress tears itself apart. We have watched successive administrations hope that pivoting to Asia will put the Middle East in the rear-view mirror. It won’t. When tyrants and terrorists are persuaded the US is weak, they act. The time has come to change their minds.Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.Download the transcript here.

Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown last week when it passed a continuing resolution – a stop-gap spending bill that finances the government for a little over a month. What does this really mean? It means that we are spending at previous levels of government while important investment bills for the future are frozen, hamstringing the federal government in carrying out its number one job: to provide for the common defense. But the problem is bigger, and goes back further, than this week. Our Defense Department is underfunded and spending priorities are misaligned; multi-year appropriations are wildly out of touch with real inflation numbers; Congress treats weapons contractor behemoths like they are a de facto member of the bureaucracy. And the proverbial icing on the cake? The Pentagon is not only lagging in relation to prior output, it is lagging behind China. The investment in military and defense preparedness with our number one threat should never be inverse, but China is steadily investing, while the US is stagnating and slipping. Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, one of the 12-member US Army War College Board of Visitors, and a member of the Commission on the Future of the Navy.Download the transcript here.

Gallup, Pew, and other reputable polling institutes have been lock-step in reporting the precipitous decline of American trust in the country’s institutions over the past few years. Every survey examining public faith in our institutions to do what is right, to provide for the common good, or to simply function at all has hit rock bottom. Surprising? Not really – these dropping percentage points coincide with upticks in intense partisanship, erosion in our political process, and culture wars. And this is not, as the media would portray it, solely an income inequality issue; social mobility and opportunity issues yes, but the biggest factor in this mistrust is the widening cultural gap between the new elites, and the rest of the US’ population. What can be done? It is imperative that students are educated in civics and history and maintain a respect for the institutions that are meant to provide for them. And most importantly, it is high time for real leaders to step up, recognize and fix these corrosive problems. Download the transcript here.

The projected Biden-Trump rematch is not merely depressing, it is causing policymakers on the left and the right to abandon good sense. The result? A double-whammy Biden impeachment and Trump constitutional crisis as the country heads into the election season. Is it correct that election officials can disqualify Trump based on the 14th Amendment? Was it really necessary or strategic to begin impeachment proceedings against Biden now? Is our Republic unraveling? This is precisely why Marc and Dany called on Biden to pardon Trump. This is why Abraham Lincoln said that a compass that points true north is only useful if one also knows the terrain we traverse.Download the transcript here.

In a post-Dobbs political landscape, abortion policy has become the great divider. But disagreements over abortion cannot stifle much-needed conversations about what can be done to support American women, mothers, fathers, and children. To nobody’s surprise, WTH co-host Marc is a conservative. His colleague at the Washington Post Alyssa Rosenberg, is liberal. Together, they undertook the critical task that one might expect from our lawmakers, and put their differences aside to write a productive, respectful, and intelligent guideline for family policies that have been proposed by lawmakers, yet to be passed. They selected policies that did not require them to compromise on their respective positions on abortion, and those that have a serious chance of becoming law if the work is done by Congress. It is a model of good-faith hard work, and the kind that is rare among those who actually make policy – we commend you to read it here. Alyssa Rosenberg writes about mass culture, parenting, and gender for The Washington Post's Opinions section. Before coming to The Post in 2014, Alyssa was the culture editor at ThinkProgress, the television columnist at Women and Hollywood, a columnist for the XX Factor at Slate and a correspondent for The Atlantic.com.Marc Thiessen writes a column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is a Fox News contributor.Download the transcript here.

This summer, several articles aired in mainstream media outlets citing unnamed individuals from the Pentagon, and criticizing the speed and tactics of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. These critiques appear to at once reflect a poor understanding of the military goals and capabilities of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and also bolster the growing anti-Ukraine, pro-isolationism cohort in America. The lack of humility is even more remarkable: the US has not fought a war against a protracted Russian offense like Ukraine’s, since General Patton and the Metz campaign, in 1944...in France. What’s more, no Western military would ever conduct a counteroffensive without air power or long-range artillery; but by slow-rolling and limiting aid, the Biden administration is expecting Ukraine to do just that. It is also worth noting that since the articles aired, Ukraine successfully punctured Russia’s first line of defense. Why are we not celebrating that, and ensuring a decisive win against our shared enemy, Putin?General Jack Keane is a retired 4-star general, the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and Fox News Senior Strategic Analyst. General Keane is a member of the Secretary of Defense Policy Board and has advised four Defense Secretaries and is a member of the 2018 and 2022 Congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy.Download the transcript here.

It may not come as a surprise that in much of the developed world, money spent is not necessarily money used well. We have done podcasts on the ideological and political dangers of bad development policy, but the dollar-to-donuts, real practical bent of the conversation is just as important. Because at the end of the day, the international community has come up with many (169) development objectives, most all of them unreachable (we have only met one). Instead of looking at the trajectory of UN sustainable development goals and bemoaning their overreach and underperformance, Bjorn Lomborg presents a realistic re-orientation of priorities. He has whittled the 169 UNSDGs down to 12 actionable steps the international community can take to challenge today’s problems. The goals are straightforward, cost-effective, and good faith – for anyone discouraged by the constant backsliding and bureaucratic stagnation of today, this is a refreshing step forward. Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center and the former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute. He became internationally known for his best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). Bjorn is listed as one of Time’s 100 most influential people, and his most recent book is Best Things First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World’s Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises.Download the transcript here.

Little known fact: the intelligence war between the East and the West started long before 1945. And not only that; it did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s either. Indeed, this silent conflict has been lurking in the background of virtually every major historical event since 1917. The intelligence wars of the past century have been defined by theft, driven by fear, and dictated by tyrants from Stalin then to Putin and Xi Jinping now. But today, the age of the traditional clandestine secret service is over, and open source is the coin of the realm. So are we prepared to compete with China and Russia on these new battlegrounds?Calder Walton is an historian at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He received a doctorate in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he also helped to write MI5’s authorized hundred-year history. He is the general editor of the three-volume Cambridge History of Espionage and Intelligence. His previous book, Empire of Secrets, won the Longman-History Today Book of the Year award. His new book is Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West.Download the transcript here.

The What the Hell crew continues our summer reading series! Our next pick is The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. The Peacemaker’s focus is Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, adding to previous research with recently declassified national security documents. But just as importantly, the history presented reminds us why the challenges we face today – socialism rebranded, struggles for sovereignty in Ukraine and Taiwan – are not novel. In fact, it is pretty simple to guess where Reagan might have stood in 2023. Inboden underscores as well that, contrary to popular opinion, the fall of the Soviet Union under Reagan was never inevitable, but required a real US policy shift. It is worth the read (or, if you are like Marc, the audiobook listen) to remember the Cold War muscles the US built not too long ago, or even just to remember what decorum and strength in leadership looks like in government.Bonus: Reagan’s legacy lives on at the Reagan Institute; listen to our podcast on their summer survey here.William Inboden is the Professor and Director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He previously served as William Powers, Jr. Chair and Executive Director of the Clements Center for National Security, Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, all at the University of Texas-Austin. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Texas National Security Review. Inboden’s other current roles include Associate with the National Intelligence Council, member of the CIA Historical Advisory Panel, member of the State Department’s Historical Advisory Council, and Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum.Download the transcript here.

This August, the What the Hell crew brings you a summer reading series! Our first pick is Chip War, a book the NYT hailed as a cross between Mission Impossible and the China Syndrome. Nominally, this is the story of the semiconductor industry, but it is really a forecast of modern grand strategy, great power conflict, and the security of the global economy. It is no mistake that the book’s author, Chris Miller, set out to write a book about military strategy – and then realized that military strategy today is defined by applying advanced chips to systems. Beyond just military however, advanced chips make the world as we know it work. They are in your iPhone, your dishwasher, your car… the list goes on. The clincher? Almost all of these highly technical chips are made in Taiwan – one of the most geopolitically tense areas in the world. Chris Miller is an Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at AEI. He is also the co-director of the Fletcher School’s Russia and Eurasia program and the director of the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In addition to Chip War, Miller’s books include We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to Asia from Peter the Great to Putin (Harvard University Press, 2021), Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Chris is an alumnus of Harvard College and holds an MA and PhD from Yale.Download the transcript here.

With the incessant politicization of real foreign policy issues, sometimes it is helpful to go back to the numbers. And in this case, the numbers are detached from the reality that anti-Ukraine Republicans are trying to sell. In fact, a new summer survey from the Reagan Institute finds that a 76% supermajority of Americans, including 71% of Republicans, agree that it is important to the US that Ukraine wins the war. This is not the “Ukraine fatigue” story we have been told. Moreover, support for aid increases substantially when respondents are given more information – where aid to Ukraine is going, how Ukraine has performed on the field. Knowing this, why are our leaders failing to give the America First case for aid to Ukraine?Roger Zakheim serves as the Washington Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. He previously practiced law at Covington & Burling LLP where he led the firm’s Public Policy and Government Affairs practice group. Before joining Covington he was General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee where he managed the passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He was also the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.Download the transcript here.

One of America's greatest engines of growth is fossil fuels – cheap, reliable energy that jumpstarted the industrial revolution and paved the way for the security and prosperity we enjoy today. Others will not be so lucky. Many African countries lack energy security and are reliant upon foreign aid and international organizations that impose environmentally correct conditions on assistance. Indeed, rather than affording African nations the same pathway to prosperity that Western countries used, the left has decided that ‘what is for me is no longer acceptable for thee’ and is pushing green energy on the African continent. Africans like clean energy as much as the next guy (Kenya has geothermal, Ethiopia has hydro) but others (Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria…) are forced to rely on natural gas. But the future of Africa and engines of growth are uninteresting to climate crusaders, who embrace neocolonialist conditions for aid to Africa, all the while jetting about in private planes. Instead of forcing climate terms on critical Africa assistance programs, as John Kerry is intent upon doing, or degrading the efficacy of the Power Africa initiative, perhaps the US and Europe should focus on alleviating poverty, truthfully.Todd Moss, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, is the Executive Director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, and a nonresident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute and the Colorado School of Mines. He has a substack called Eat More Electrons.Download the transcript here.

Last week at the NATO summit in Lithuania, the world watched as Ukraine was denied an actionable plan for membership in the alliance. It was almost a rinse and repeat from 2008, when Ukraine and Georgia pushed for membership, and were offered a similarly passive statement – save for one major exception: today, Ukraine is actively fighting for its life. In fact, Ukraine is doing NATO’s job for it: defending Europe, upholding sovereignty, and keeping Russia’s imperialist ambitions at bay. And, notwithstanding the ire of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan – who has labeled Ukraine ungrateful -- nobody (much less Zelensky) is arguing for membership during a hot war. Ukrainians want a secure plan forward, not a vague and gauzy set of commitments that amount to “maybe.” A roadmap is not actually hard to formulate (Marc and former Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun wrote one for Washington Post) so what is the hold-up? Are we really going to let Putin bully 31 (soon to be 32) countries into icing out a staunch ally? Ambassador Kurt Volker is the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, the former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine. He's now a distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a founding partner of the American University in Kyiv.Download the transcript here.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the private military company Wagner Group, staged a rebellion against Putin’s regime in Russia on June 24th. For a brief moment, the Wagner forces took over Rostov-on-Don, and came within 125 miles of Moscow before coming under heavy fire by the Russian military, and turning back. Putin struck a deal with Belarus president Lukashenko wherein Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus in exchange for amnesty. But who is Prigozhin? None other than Putin’s former caterer. If it sounds ludicrous, that’s because it is – and the media is still abuzz with theories as to what happened. Are there cracks in Putin’s regime? What were Prigozhin’s motives? Why the hell did Putin meet with Prigozhin a week after the purported coup attempt? Most troubling of all, US intelligence appears as perplexed as it was on day one. Yaroslav Trofimov is the Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He covered the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 and has been working out of Ukraine since January 2022. He previously served as Rome, Middle East, and Singapore-based Asia correspondent, as bureau chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as a Dubai-based columnist on the greater Middle East. He is the author of two books: Faith at War (2005) and Siege of Mecca (2007).Download the transcript here.

The Supreme Court went out with a bang in 2023 – before heading off to recess, SCOTUS struck down affirmative action, ruled Biden’s loan forgiveness grab unconstitutional, and prioritized the First Amendment in a creative design case. Each of these cases (save for KBJ’s recusal on the affirmative action vote) was decided 6-3: the conservative majority versus the liberal bloc. Despite the ensuing media mayhem that accompanied the rulings, however, the cases are each staked squarely in the law – not political pandering. Indeed, politics aside, Biden lacked the authority under the HEROES Act to forgive billions in debt; the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause prevents quotas based on race in universities; the First Amendment prohibits forcibly asking an individual to provide services for a cause they are opposed to. Polls suggest that Americans are losing faith in the efficacy of the Courts, but likely only think so based on the political fervor that persuades us that these decisions were not made in good faith. So, we brought in a legal expert to explain just how these decisions are made. Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. At GWU, he is also the Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center, and Executive Director for the Project for Older Prisoners. Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, members of Congress, and more. He publishes columns on jonathanturley.org.Download the transcript here.

If you thought the Trump indictment capped the pattern of White House prosecutions, well, you’d be wrong (though see the WTH joint op-ed on how to end the prosecutorial death loop). Now, Hunter Biden has been indicted on misdemeanor charges of tax evasion – news that was decried as a “sweetheart deal.” But a former IRS investigator and FBI officials who came forward to Congress present a government cover-up, from the DOJ disallowing a 2018 investigation into Hunter Biden, to limitations on actually collecting information. And of course, this story has deep roots in 2009, when Joe Biden became Vice President of the United States. At that moment, Hunter set up his “international financial business.”The facts are muddled (no thanks to US institutions charged with un-muddling them) but there remain clear questions that must be answered: from whom did the Bidens receive money, and what was it for? Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior editor at Breitbart News. He is the former William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His most recent book is Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.Download the transcript here.

The dictators of the nanny state are waging war on things that work. Daily appliances that make life manageable (your gas stoves, your AC, your lawn equipment) are increasingly under assault, with dubious climate/equity rationales. But the effects on climate are negligible, and the myriad electric substitutions don’t just have environmental costs of their own, many simply don’t work. So what is really going on? Instead of protecting the consumer as these bans claim to do, this new technocratic bullying is imposing a lifestyle brand – electric cars, electric stoves, heat pumps, etc. If you don’t like it… well, you *will* like it. The progressive Puritans will make sure of that. Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review, a former MSNBC commentator, and a former associate editor for Commentary Magazine. He is the author of The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives' War on Fun.Download the transcript here.

When the Founders conceived the U.S. Constitution, they were under the assumption that the head of state in America would be guided by honor – that an impeachment would virtually never be necessary, that the shame of the prospect would force the accused to step down from office. That model of leadership with integrity is absent in today’s political climate. In former president Donald Trump’s second, and more serious indictment, he has been charged with 37 counts relating to his retention of classified documents. Yes, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden should also be prosecuted – but that does not exonerate Trump. But it is also true that we have never prosecuted Presidents before: not Clinton, not Nixon, not LBJ, not even Jefferson Davis. The DOJ is crossing a line - not a constitutional line, but a “bright line” of institutional practice, as our guest calls it, and that is enormously significant. Where did statesmanship go? Just where will this Trump indictment lead the nation?John Yoo is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. He is the Emmanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. He is also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. His most recent book is Defender in Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power. Download the transcript here.

Over the past 15 months, Ukrainians have surpassed expectations in their response to the Russian invasion, showing valor and resilience. But more than a year into the fighting, many of those who advocate for aid to Ukraine still do so as a matter of idealism. Voters should know that it is also in the United States’ vital national interests. President Biden, our commander-in-chief, has a responsibility to explain to the American people what is at stake in the war in Ukraine: the consequences of failure, the consequences of success, and America’s role. In this special episode of WTH, Dany interviews Marc on his important piece for the Washington Post, where he has collected the 10 strongest arguments for why helping Ukraine will make the United States safer, more prosperous, and more secure. Download the transcript here.

Last week saw two more entrants into what is already a crowded Republican primary field: Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are officially in the running. Polling suggests that DeSantis is the only real challenger to Donald Trump, but the party base can only hope that his glitchy Twitter announcement doesn’t belie a deeper weakness in the candidate’s campaign. Tim Scott, by contrast, has embraced a more traditional roll out and uplifting Reaganite rhetoric, but enjoys far less popularity right now. There is a fine line to toe in the Republican primaries – too few challengers may cede the field to Trump; but too many entrants could fracture the non-MAGA voting bloc into ineffective camps, also handing the primaries to Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats are hedging their bets with a “known known” and sticking with Biden… so is a Trump-Biden rematch inevitable? If not, does the GOP have the political dexterity to capitalize on this unique election cycle and an increasingly diverse voter base? Josh Kraushaar is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider. He is also a Senior Political correspondent at Axios, Fox correspondent, and host of the Against the Grain podcast. Previously, he was Editor in Chief of the Hotline, and a co-author at the Almanac of American Politics.Download the transcript here.

After four years of work, the Durham Report the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation was released last week. And notwithstanding the objections of the New York Times and other partisans, the report was revelatory: the probable cause for opening the Russia collusion investigation was so flimsy that internal investigators had serious doubts and the Brits refused to even touch the case; the primary source for the famous Steele dossier was Igor Danchenko, previously suspected of working with Russian intelligence; the dossier itself was funded by none other than Hillary Clinton and the DNC. The case is convoluted and so over-saturated with petty politics that even legal experts have a hard time summarizing, but the most important takeaway remains crystal clear: the FBI acted negligently and with extreme political bias in their handling of what came to be called Crossfire Hurricane. How did we end up with institutions charged with fidelity to the law that Americans can no longer trust? Perhaps more importantly: how can we do better?Andrew McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and the author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. He served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.Download the transcript here.

It’s a tale as old as time… where will our next trillion come from to feed our hungry coffers? We jest, but only a little: Negotiations on raising the debt limit are ongoing, marking, ahem, dozens of times this has happened under both Democrats and Republicans. Neither party has been able to summon the wherewithal to sacrifice political clout for the good of the long-term economy. Take healthcare spending: Democrats promote top-down, regulatory spending, while Republicans support consumer-based choice and competition. Fine – but costs haven’t been fixed, efficiencies have not been produced, and Medicare has an $80 trillion shortfall over 30 years. Who do we think is going to bail us out? China and Japan hold a measly $2 trillion of our debt and they are selling it; the Fed holds just $5 trillion and they’re trying to downshift. Are we really going to rely on American banks and savers and mutual funds to lend Washington $100 trillion over the next 30 years at low interest rates? It is not even a possible scenario. Our guest predicts that we are on a path that ends in a 15% value-added tax and a payroll tax rising close to 22% – yes, exactly like Europe. Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, focusing on budget, tax, and economic policy. Previously, he worked for six years as chief economist to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and as staff director of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth. From 2001-2011 Riedl served as the Heritage Foundation’s lead research fellow on federal budget and spending policy. He also served as a director of budget and spending policy for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign and was the lead architect of the ten-year deficit-reduction plan for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.Download the transcript here.

This Thursday, the COVID-era immigration policy Title 42 will expire. Initiated by the Trump administration, it allowed for the expulsion of migrants at the border under a public health directive. It lifts as numbers of encounters at the border continue to skyrocket – instances grew from 646,822 in 2020 to 2,766 in 2022, and have already surpassed 1.544 million this year. These are staggering and historic numbers. Border Patrol cannot handle the sheer quantity, processing centers are overrun and inefficient, legitimate asylum seekers and migrants are being delayed access for years while the US government attempts to handle the illegal entries. Title 42 was not meant to be a sustained solution, but its expiration – without a replacement policy in place – means that this summer will see a humanitarian tragedy at the US southern border. Notably, polls show that the American public is not very divided on this question; by and large, Americans support and encourage legal immigration, and condemn the chaos – the humanitarian disaster, financial confusion, and resource misallocation – that is the result of loose and unserious border policy. And yet, Administration after Administration, Congress after Congress, drags its feet and leaves policy stopgaps to the courts. Andrew Selee is the President of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a global nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies. He also chairs MPI Europe's Administrative Council. Prior to MPI, Dr. Selee spent 17 years at the Woodrow Wilson Center where he founded the Center’s Mexico Institute, and served as the Center’s VP for Programs and Executive VP. He has also worked on staff in the US Congress, served on the Board of Directors of the YMCA, and is a columnist for Mexico’s largest newspaper El Universal. His most recent book is Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together.Download the transcript here.

Not only is DEI hiring creating bureaucracy bloat in higher education country-wide, it is beginning to fundamentally alter our institutions. One place where the erosion of excellence is already apparent? Our legal institutions – just last year, 12 Federal Judges boycotted hiring clerks from Yale Law School (some of the crème de la crème of legal education) due to the aspiring lawyers’ inability to practice good faith, unbiased law. And no wonder: The Federalist Society at Stanford Law School hosted Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – he was shouted down by a group of students. Our guest Ilya Shapiro was nearly fired for tweeting about Biden’s Supreme Court nominations. We are, as a nation, beginning to forget… this is a representative democracy. We are not governed by a mob. Free speech is a foundational tenet of the Constitution that defines this country and its institutions. College sophomoric groupthink on social issues is one thing; but the next generation of Supreme Court prosecutors already radicalized enough that they are being barred by current sitting judges? That’s quite another problem. Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute, director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Shapiro is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court.Download the transcript here.

The Ukrainians are running out of munitions and the war is predicted to endure past 2023; China is debuting new missiles that have the ability to penetrate US defenses; Egypt Is toying with supporting Russia in attacking Ukraine; ISIS is evolving. These are just a handful of the revelations from the viral Discord leaks, a set of US intelligence documents leaked on the gaming platform Discord and other sites by 21-year-old Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Ways to interpret the fallout are manifold, but lessons learned all point back to US responsibility: that Ukraine will face empty bins is a self-fulfilling prophecy that the US can remedy through a revitalization of its defense industrial base. That Taiwan is at enhanced risk of invasion by China every day is only tempered by US willingness to build up Taiwan’s defense and develop a strategic counter-aggression framework. Content aside, that a 21-year-old kid was able to photograph and share US top secret information, and continue sharing it for 8 months – well, it is not a leap to underscore the importance of tightening US intelligence security measures to prevent this from ever happening again. Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Polymeropoulos worked for twenty-six years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before retiring in July 2019 at the Senior Intelligence Service level. He was one of the CIA’s most highly decorated operations officers. He is the author of Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA.Download the transcript here.

The priorities that have traditionally shaped American national character – patriotism, religious faith, family, community involvement – are no longer as important to most Americans. The Wall Street Journal reported this trend in a viral poll, but the sentiment is believable even without the stark statistics. This poll was conducted in 1989, 2019, and now in 2023, and the only value to go up in importance? Money. Our guest explains that there is necessary context for the reported numbers due to methodology, but the overall trend is undeniable: we are becoming an increasingly selfish country. And what is to blame? Perhaps it is the echo chamber of social media, the decline of serious education, or anti-Western propaganda from our adversaries beginning to define our own national message. In any case, the country is unhealthy. But entirely fixable, and worth fixing. Patrick Ruffini is a pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights, a polling and analytics firm. Ruffini began his career working for President George W. Bush, including roles at the Republican National Committee, his re-election campaign, and in his Administration. From 2005 to 2006, he was the lead digital strategist for the RNC. He is the Author of Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP (coming November 2023).Download the transcript here.

The conflict in Ukraine has revealed what conventional war looks like in this day and age. It has also made clear just how extensively the US defense industrial base has atrophied in the post-Cold War era. We are struggling to keep pace with arming Ukraine, even when drawing from stockpiles that have not been replenished since Reagan’s buildup in the 1980s. We are failing to put in place today contracts that will produce critical munitions by 2026 and beyond, but the reality is that the entire system is so broken (from the supply chain, to research vs. procurement imbalances, to budget hurdles) that American leadership in future great power conflict is a question mark, not a given. What does this mean looking ahead? Our guest ran over a half dozen war games to simulate what a US conflict with China over Taiwan would look like; he discovered that we will run out of some of our most advanced precision weapons in less than a week. This should be a wake-up call – why are we seeing sobering lessons from Ukraine but failing to learn them?Seth G. Jones is senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, director of the International Security Program, and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Jones was the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. He also served as representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Before that, he was a plans officer and adviser to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan).Download the transcript here.

It’s spring break, and your kids might have more time on their hands… so we are revisiting one of our best and increasingly relevant episodes.Over a third of Americans spend hours every day on an app that directly feeds their data to the Chinese government. TikTok, owned by Chinese parent company Bytedance, is constantly collecting reams of data on its users, from GPS to keystrokes to outer-app monitoring, and even encrypted data that might be useful someday. But aren’t these D.C. elite problems — worrying only for those who plan to work in intelligence or government someday? Nope. The implications of China’s TikTok-enabled reach touch almost every American. Personal privacy aside, our national security is at immediate risk. The Chinese Communist Party exerts a measure of control over more than one-third of Americans. Are we going to continue to cede our sovereignty to Xi Jinping? Or will the U.S. Government shut down TikTok once and for all?These questions with Klon Kitchen, a senior fellow at AEI. He specializes in national security, defense technology, innovation, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Previously, he was a director at the Heritage Foundation and was the national security advisor to Sen. Ben Sasse. He has worked at the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, and at the Defense Intelligence Agency.Download the transcript here

The wheel, the printing press, the steam engine, and… ChatGPT? A Luddite you may be, but there is no escaping the world’s newest technological revolution: personal artificial intelligence. It is easy to list the net-negatives of another tech medium designed to further decrease the already dwindling human-to-human interactions in our life – the atomization of society is bad, children growing up on screens is bad, the erosion of individual judgment and critical thinking is bad. Not to mention the evanescence of jobs and the mechanization of learning. But is it all bad? Like any technological advance, there are both beneficial and dangerous applications. And as our guest notes, the danger of misuse does not reside in 1’s and 0’s, but in the user, the human. Are the forces of good more productive and innovative than evil? Or will we fall prey to our own innovation?These questions and more with Tyler Cowen. Dr. Cowen is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog Marginal Revolution, and maintains the website Marginal Revolution University, a venture in online education. He is the co-author of Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Winners, and Creatives Around the World.Download the transcript here.

The 2024 presidential nominee field is starting to take shape, with headlines pointing to a Biden-Trump replay. But are those really the only likely options? Actually, no. Two-thirds of polled Republicans want someone other than Trump, but who can continue Trump’s policies. This means energy independence, a conservative court, cutting taxes, hawkish China policy, a strong military—all led by someone authentic, personal, and who can lead the country for eight strong years. One possibility is DeSantis, who has rallied support for his conservative domestic policy but is hedging on foreign and defense policy. There are other good options as well, but the GOP base is still afraid of offending Trump’s base, a stumbling block going up against a fairly robust Democratic bench. Make no mistake: this is an inflection point for the Republican party. Will it regress to the pre-Pearl Harbor, GOP, or Democratic-Ted Kennedy isolationism? Or will someone take up the Reagan mantle, and govern as the leader of the free world, in such a way that China, Russia, and other aggressors take notice? These questions and more with Karl Rove. Rove is the former Senior Advisor to George W. Bush, and former Chief of Staff. He is a Fox News contributor and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.Download the transcript here.

Before Friday, Silicon Valley Bank was the sixteenth largest bank in America. Now it bears the standard of being the second largest bank failure in US history, only upstaged by the 2008 financial crisis. As the initial shock – both to the market and to news headlines – is wearing off, some things are clear: SVB was badly run, had mismanaged its asset investments, and as a truly silicon valley-centric bank, had an un-diversified portfolio tied to tech start-ups, crypto, and its California clientele. But the real catalyst? A long year of the Biden administration’s failure to combat inflation caused the Fed to hike interest rates, resulting in a major loss of asset value for the bonds SVB owned. Now, the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury Department have decided to protect depositors – but not shareholders – beyond the standard $250,000 insured cap for deposits. In short, the average taxpayer is bailing out the Silicon Valley elite. Michael Strain is the Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Strain is also the author of The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).Download the transcript here.

More than three years later, we are still investigating the origins of the deadliest pandemic in recent history. The DOE and FBI have given credence to the explanation that the virus originated in a Chinese government lab in Wuhan – so why don’t lab leak theorists feel vindicated? Because, as our guest alleges, this is just the beginning. China owes the US reparations; Biden owes the American people a focused investigation and explanation; Dr. Tony Fauci and Francis Collins owe more than an apology for their scandalous cover-up. This is a democracy, and the truth will come out eventually – but a deeper truth has already seen the light: our public health institutions have been corrupted, as has our media. Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN. He is also the author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century. Previously, Josh covered foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun.Download the transcript here.

Canada’s euthanasia protocol – not merely doctor assisted suicide, but specifically euthanasia – is among the most expansive in the world. The euthanasia program, called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was enacted in 2016 and was, at its inception, already broad: in 2021 it accounted for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada, which is over 27 people per day, and eligibility included not just those with foreseeable death but also those with disabilities – like hearing loss. Now, Parliament is gearing up to expand the eligibility further, to include those with mental illness and even minors. For context, this makes Canada more accepting to euthanasia than the German public in 1933 under the Nazi regime. Not to mention, the deeper insidious motivation for an increasing number of MAiD cases in Canada: a social welfare network so threadbare that Canadian citizens would rather die than face abject poverty on top of a shambolic healthcare system. To coin a phrase, what the hell is going on?Alexander Raikin is a freelance writer. He writes about medical ethics, and specifically about the Canadian medical system. He's written on Canada's euthanasia laws for National Review, New Atlantis, the Free Beacon, and others.Download the transcript here.

This week marks the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The anniversary comes on the heels of the Chinese spy balloon debacle. Think these are unrelated issues? Not so – as General Jack Keane explains in this masterclass of logical statesmanship and responsible deterrence, victory in Ukraine is not only in America’s interest and in the interest of the security of Europe, it is also crucial to deterring China from acts of aggression. From China buying Russian oil, to now hinting at supplying them with lethal weapons, these two American adversaries are increasingly interconnected. President Biden made a commendable trip to Kyiv to commemorate the anniversary of the war, a significant demonstration of America’s continued support in the conflict. But hard power is also necessary to win in Ukraine, and yes, even retake territory formerly lost to Russian annexation. Jack Keane explains, in detail, what is required to make this possible.General Jack Keane is a retired 4-star general, former Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army, the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, and a Fox News Senior Strategic Analyst.Download the transcript here.

Parents are increasingly losing ownership of the right to their child’s education. Americans saw the effects from widespread school closures over Covid (nearly two decades of educational progress wiped out), and continue to see educational systems that promote partisan agendas, all leaving parents little recourse to choose where and how their child is educated. Not to mention, the Nation’s Report Card statistics released for 2022, which showed record low reading and math scores, with minority and lower-economic students faring the worst. What are parents to do, especially those who cannot afford to send their children to private, parochial, or otherwise quality places for education? Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa recently passed one of the most sweeping school choice laws in the country to answer this very question. Her school choice bill gives every student in the state of Iowa an educational savings account of approximately $7,600 in per-pupil funding to facilitate placement in private schools. And no, it does not take resources away from public schools – it actually saves them money. No, this does not degrade the public school education quality, but rather fosters the competition we know to be necessary to help any establishment realize potential. And most importantly, it gives educational choice back to the parents of these students.Governor Kim Reynolds is the 43rd governor of Iowa, with the distinction of being the first woman elected to the state's highest office. Previously, she was a Clark County treasurer before she was elected to the Iowa Senate. She was the running mate and lieutenant governor to Terry Branstad.Download the transcript here.

The Biden Administration has been “too little too late” in countering Russia, and is increasingly playing by the same rules with the Chinese Communist Party. The latest national security spectacle played out over a full week before the White House ordered the shoot down of the Chinese spy balloon that floated from the tip of Alaska all the way through the coast of the Carolinas. The questions surrounding this event are numerous: what was NORAD doing while it watched this slow-moving CCP target drift into American airspace? If this has happened in the past, as the White House maintains, why don’t we have a standard operating procedure to deal with it? But beyond this incident, it is the implications of the U.S. reaction that truly matter – if it takes a civilian standing in a field in Montana to point out a security threat to prompt the White House to action, we have a problem. If we don’t get serious, fast, about China, we’re adding to the problems we already face with the CCP. And if we continue to hedge on defense spending, and see Chinese incursions and major wars as isolated crises, the nation will pay a much heavier price down the road. Representative Mike Gallagher (WI-08) is the new Chairman of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. He is also on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He has served in the House since 2017. Before that, he served for seven years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two deployments in Iraq. He also served as the lead Republican staffer for the Middle East and Counterterrorism on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Download the transcript here.