Monthly Archives: April 2025

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The Broadside | What is This Fetish That Democrats Have With Foreigners Here Illegally?

It boggles the mind that a Maryland Democrat senator goes all out for an illegally present, MS-13 gang member and human trafficker from El Salvador accused of beating his wife who was sent back to his country of origin—while ignoring the brutal 2023 murder of a 37-year-old mother of five by a different Salvadoran illegal immigrant, without so much as a full-throated denunciation.

Why is it that Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week—most likely on the taxpayers’ dime—to try and win the release and return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia? Why isn’t he applauding the deportation of a foreigner who illegally crossed into the United States in 2011 and lived here for 14 years even though he was under deportation orders? And why are Democrats as a party outright opposing the efforts to repatriate the millions of foreigners who flooded our nation over the last four years during the reign of Joey Sponge-Brain and his Cast of Hannibal Lecters?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because they’ve inhaled the toxic fumes of Marxist-based wokery and believe that the United States of America is a racist country that oppresses minorities and that it is a moral imperative to elevate the oppressed and crush the oppressor. Sen. Van Hollen sees his effort to reverse the Trump administration’s action as a noble virtue that expresses his contempt for the ruling class and identifies himself with the oppressed.

“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?” Van Hollen told reporters before Morin took the briefing room podium. “They should just let him go.”

Well, senator, it may be that the laws are different in El Salvador. Perhaps just being a member of MS13 is grounds for imprisonment; I hear that they’ve been rounding up gang members by the thousands under a state of emergency for the last couple of years. But you go right ahead and tell El Salvador who should and shouldn’t be in prison. Seems to be your thing.

It’s true that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador” due to an administrative error. But it’s also true that the court didn’t require the administration to “effectuate” his return.

I’m guessing the difference is that “facilitating” his return means cooperating with El Salvadore to return him to the US once he’s made available by El Salvador, whereas “effectuating” his return means that the administration is responsible to get him back—to make it happen—whether El Salvador wants to cooperate or not. It’s the difference between waiting for the other party to act or taking the initiative yourself.

(Of course, I don’t know the legal nuances of such words. I’m an opinion writer, not a lawyer. So, take what I think with a grain of salt.)

Our immigration system is not only broken, but overwhelmed. There is no way for us to process tens of millions of foreigners in a reasonable amount of time. Thousands of them are criminals.

If they are here illegally, the only way to reduce their presence quickly is to round them up and send them back to where they came from. Even if they’ve claimed asylum.

Will some of them sincerely fear for their lives? Yes. But the responsibility for that lies with the previous administration, which illegally facilitated (there’s that word again) the worst foreign invasion on American soil in our history.

They made the mess. We need to clean it up and quickly. Kick them all out and tell them to come back through legal channels.

And if they’re angry about it, tell them to talk to Mayorkas and Biden.

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The Broadside | Make it a Good Friday

Isn’t it refreshing to have a president who at least respects the Christian faith, even if we sometimes wonder just where he himself stands with Jesus Christ? I think some of what Trump does in defending the faith is part of his MAGA agenda, since he and any historian worth their degree knows that our Founders and the early republic reflected Judeo-Christian beliefs. Our entire system of government rests on the model of biblical law.

Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!” (Matthew 20:17-19)

He has risen indeed!

Have a great weekend.

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The Broadside | Trump’s Tariff Regime Seems Chaotic But He’s a Disrupter and I Trust He Knows What He’s Doing

I’m not an economist and I don’t play one on TV, so I’m not sure what to tell you about Trump’s tariff scheme. He cranks out a list of countries using some mathematical formula that creates just the right reciprocal tariffs on each, starting with a baseline 10% tariff on everyone we trade with.

Then the markets tank, analysts panic and there’s a massive sell-off. Then Trump “pauses” the tariffs for 90 days so that he can make deals with dozens of countries that reached out to the U.S. Markets skyrocket and post one of its biggest rallies in history.

What gives?

First, the tariffs to every country was meant to cause the free world to make a choice – China or us. According to Scott Bessent on the White House lawn early this afternoon, north of 75 countries have chosen us. They are clamoring to renegotiate trade deals. Inevitably, every one of these deals will benefit the United States. It defies logic to believe that America’s position vis-a-vis trade with any individual country is going to be worse off after negotiating a new deal. With some countries, we’ll be nominally better off. With other countries, we’ll be in a much more equitable place. And because we have the commitment of 75+ countries to renegotiate trade, Trump is pausing the tariffs for 90-days in good faith in order to let the negotiators do their thing.

The bottom line is none of these pending trade deals would have been offered or committed to without the tariffs used as an attention-getter.

Second, by forcing the world to choose between the United States and China, China has become further isolated. Trump has all the leverage in the world to squeeze China, and squeezing them is exactly what he’s doing.

It’s high stakes gamesmanship and Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.

Trump knew all along the stock market, and the angst around it from the chattering class in resistance media was transient, and would rebound once he got us into a position of strength in global trade.

The bottom line to phase two is that all of it – phase 1 and phase 2, were a plan to take on China and combat them as the growing threat they are before having to deal with them anyway once they’re stronger and we’re weaker. This has been always about boxing in China. All of it. Yes, Canada, you, too.

I get a little nervous when playing chicken with a behemoth like China. We are dependent on China for pharmaceuticals, as we learned during Covid (released by China on purpose, I’m convinced, to take out Donald Trump). China supplies us with electrical machinery and TV parts, nuclear reactor parts and mechanical appliances, toys, games, sports equipment, plastics, furniture and lamps, vehicles, iron and steel, and optical and photographic parts, electronics, medical equipment, pharmaceutical ingredients, and, last but not least, rare earth minerals, which are crucial for industries like defense, renewable energy, and consumer electronics.

The U.S. imported $438 billion worth of goods from China in 2024 and only exported $144 billion. We’ve outsourced a lot of our manufacturing to China.

The tariffs are a tool to reset global trade and to begin diminishing the influence that China has on the world stage. They probably won’t be too happy about any negative impact that a reordered trade regime has on their Belt and Road strategy.

Both Apple and Porsche scrambled to get their products from India and Germany before the tariffs went into effect.

Since March, Tim Cook-led Apple has chartered at least six cargo jets, each carrying an estimated 100 tons of iPhones, to fly from India to the US, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The tech giant also nudged Indian authorities to expedite the shipments through customs.

Apple “wanted to beat the tariff” with its last-minute shipments, a source familiar with its planning told Reuters.

In total, approximately 1.5 million iPhones were ferried to the US, according to Reuters calculations.

Meanwhile, the German luxury car brand Porsche warned analysts on Thursday that its first-quarter results would be impacted by “higher company-owned inventory shipped to the US to beat the tariff deadline.”

Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imported cars and car parts that went into effect April 3.

That levy remains in effect despite his 90-day pause on country-specific measures.

Trump is a disrupter, and I learned from his first term and from his second presidential campaign not to underestimate him, nor to panic when he does something that seems completely illogical. There’s a method to his madness, and I’ve decided to trust that his instincts are pretty good.

Besides, what choice do I have?

Have a great weekend.

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The Broadside | Islam Is Subduing the West, Including the U.S.

A longer one today. I encourage you to read and listen to it all.

One of the things that I am deeply concerned about is the growing presence of Islam in the United States. It is a concern that stems from what we’ve witnessed over the 24 years since 9/11, when jihadi “extremists” made their presence known to the whole world.

Since then, Islamic “extremists” have carried out thousands of attacks worldwide, including four commuter trains bombed in Madrid (191 dead); the Beslan massacre (330 dead); four suicide bombers during London rush hour (52 killed); the massacre of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo staff in Paris (17 killed); the massacre of students at a university campus in Kenya (150 dead); a rampage at a beach resort in Tunisia (37 murdered); and many others.

As bad as these assaults are, there’s something even worse happening across Europe: the fall of the West to Islamic invasion.

A world-historical societal transformation is taking place before our very eyes, and yet few have taken notice. Britain, the erstwhile leader of the Western world and the foundation and source of English-speaking civilization, is in its last days as a free society, and will soon become an Islamic state. Yet despite the mountains of evidence that this transformation is taking place, many will still deny that it is happening at all. They may not even admit it when it overtakes them personally.

The English actor-turned-political-activist Lawrence Fox recently noted what was happening: “The Mayor of London is a Muslim. The mayor of Birmingham is a Muslim. The Mayor of Leeds is Muslim. Mayor of Blackburn – Muslim. The mayor of Sheffield is a Muslim. The mayor of Oxford is a Muslim. The mayor of Luton is a Muslim. The mayor of Oldham is Muslim. The mayor of Rochdale is Muslim. All this was achieved by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England.”

[…]

Lawrence Fox continued: “Today there are over 3,000 mosques in England. There are over 130 sharia courts. There are more than 50 Sharia Councils. 78 percent of Muslim women do not work, receive state support + free accommodation. 63 percent of Muslims do not work, receive state support + free housing. State-supported Muslim families with an average of 6 to 8 children receive free accommodation. Now every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam. Has anyone ever been given an opportunity to vote for this?” 

Paul Weston agrees.

An unpleasant reality: The government accepts the fact that Britain will be an Islamic State well before 2050, and is thus guided by one operational principle alone: ensure the transition from Christian/Post-Christian Britain to Britistan is as peaceful as possible. What would this look like in practice? You are witnessing it in real time. Islam is revered, promoted and excused. Traditional Britain is persecuted smeared and jailed

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born and raised a Muslim in Mogadishu, Somalia. In her early 30s she renounced Islam and identified as an atheist. She recently underwent a conversion to Christianity (see here). She has the same concern as Spencer and Weston.

In a nine-count thread on X, Maral Salmassi also comes to the same conclusion in her final panel (all nine posts are worth reading):

“Modern civilization,” by which she means the West.

Which brings me back to the United States. We, too, are incrementally going the way of Europe. There are roughly 4 million Muslims in the U.S. According to a CNN report from 2018,

According to [Pew Research Center] data, the Muslim population is growing at an accelerated rate, and will more than double from an estimated 3.45 million in 2017 to an estimated 8.1 million in 2050. In the meantime, Muslims are expected to surpass Jews as the second-largest religious group.

We’ve had numerous terrorist attacks on us since 9/11, including the Times Square bomber (failed); the Fort Hood shooting (13 dead); the Boston Marathon bombing (3 dead); the business holiday event shooting in San Bernadino (14 killed); the Orlando nightclub shooting (49 dead); the pickup truck attack on a Manhattan bike path (8 killed); a Muslim beheading a co-worker in Oklahoma City; a Muslim trying to take over a Jet Blue cockpit (restrained); a Muslim attacker in Fargo, North Dakota (1 killed); a Muslim trying to run down a crowd of Jewish people with his car in LA (no one injured); and the jihadist who ran his truck down Bourbon street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (15 killed). Plus, lots more (including so-called “honor killings”) that I document here.

We also have Muslim mayors.

Voters in three Detroit suburbs chose, for the first time, mayors who are both Muslim and Arab American in historic local elections on Tuesday, marking a shift in political power to a region that has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S.

Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, all located in southeastern Michigan, have seen decades of economic growth and cultural advancement driven by Arab American immigration and investment, but have struggled with representation.

From another report,

Hamtramck, which has a population of about 28,000 people, made headlines in 2021 when it became the first US city to elect an all-Muslim City Council and a Muslim mayor.

Hamtramck is also the only city in America with a Muslim majority population, while Dearborn is said to have the country’s largest concentration of Arab Americans. The five states with the highest Muslim populations (2025) are New York (724,000), California (504,000), Illinois (474,000), New Jersey (322,000), Texas (313,000), and Michigan (242,000) [Source].

Why should we be concerned? Because as Muslims become a greater part of society, they will begin demanding accommodations. In fact, it has already started in ways that aren’t easy to see.

Stocks:

The rising Muslim population has also led to an increase in demand for Shariah-compliant stocks. These stocks are from businesses that conduct their activities in accordance with Shariah rules and refrain from gaining exposure to sectors like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. 

Schools:

Food:

Those are just three examples. It goes much deeper and darker than just Sharia-compliant products or accommodations. It’s all about infiltration and conquering the country.

If this is all new to you, it may be a lot to take in. It may even seem far-fetched. But I’ve been watching the rise of Islam in the West and in the U.S. for about 15 years. I may not face the long-term consequences of what is growing in our country, but my children and their children most certainly will.

If you want to know what will happen here without any intervention, just watch what happens in England. It won’t be long before the Brits surrender to a fully Islamified nation, or have to literally fight their way out of submission.

I can guarantee you that in the not-too-distant future, the conflict between freedom as a way of life in a constitutional republic and the dictates of Islam will become greatly aggravated and, if nothing is done to head off that conflict, it will end in patriotic Americans having to fight for survival.

I guarantee it.

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The Broadside | Evidence for the Battle of Armageddon

This blog is meant to look at culture, politics and faith but mostly focuses on politics. As I’ve mentioned before, I deliberately try to include some faith-related content that eschews politics altogether.

For the first time, a team of Israeli archaeologists has uncovered ancient artifacts at northern Israel’s “Armageddon” site that might offer proof of an epic battle documented in the books of Kings II and Chronicles between a king of Judah and an Egyptian pharaoh.

Two academic papers published earlier this year explained how an unprecedented amount of 7th-century BCE Egyptian pottery was found in recent excavations at Megiddo, suggesting that Egyptian soldiers were indeed in the right biblical place at what could be the right biblical period.

“Megiddo is the only site in Israel and the neighboring countries mentioned in the Bible and in all great records of the Ancient Near East,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein, head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa and long-time director of the Megiddo Expedition.

I love biblical archaeology that offers evidence, if not outright proof, for events and people written about in the Bible. So often the Bible is scoffed at as being mythological or just a collection of imaginative stories, but certainly not rooted in history. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Book of 2 Chronicles in chapters 34-35 and 2 Kings in chapters 22-23 narrate the vicissitudes of the 16th King of Judah, Josiah. As he rose to the throne, he was described as a God-fearing leader who brought the people of Israel back to a righteous path after centuries of idol-worshipping and sinful behaviors. Yet, his efforts did not placate God’s wrath against the people. As Egyptian Pharaoh Necho marched against the Assyrians, Josiah confronted him at Megiddo, and Necho killed him (2 Chronicles 35:20-22; 2 Kings 23:29). The Assyrians, one of several biblical foes of the people of Israel, were responsible for destroying the kingdom of Israel in the northern part of the land (where Megiddo is located) in the 8th century CE, a century before the Josiah-Necho battle.

“It is important to note that the re-establishment of the site as an Egyptian stronghold in the late 7th century BCE had long been suspected, mostly based on a biblical verse in the Book of Kings, which described Josiah’s execution at Megiddo by Pharaoh Necho,” said Dr. Assaf Kleiman of Ben Gurion University, a senior member of the Megiddo Expedition staff who led the studies published in Egypt and the Levant and the Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament.

The Bible is so historically accurate that archaeologists have found it a reliable source for their own work.

One of the archaeologists that I follow is Joel Kramer, who hosts episodes of the Expedition Bible on YouTube, to which I subscribe. The most recent episode is Tomb of the Exodus Pharaoh: What Was Found & Why You Don’t Know About It!

In that episode (embedded below), Kramer finds the mummy of what we can be pretty sure is the pharaoh of the exodus, when the Israelites broke free from Egypt where they had been enslaved for more than 400 years. Most fascinating is the tantalizing possibility that we also find the mummified remains of the pharaoh’s son — the one who dies as a result of the last plague that God brought on the Egyptians.

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
— Exodus 12:29-30

Have a good weekend.

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The Broadside | You Really Can’t Hate the Media Enough

Leslie Stahl, the 83-year-old “See BS News” reporter, asks a heartless question of Jewish American Keith Siegel, a former Hamas hostage.

A former hostage accuses Hamas of starving him while he was a captive, and she immediately tries to undermine the credibility of his accusation by questioning whether Hamas really meant to starve him or were just forced to starve him because they themselves didn’t have any food, the poor babies.

Stahl asks this question in the face of the barbarities that Hamas committed during their attack on October 7, and the known fact that any supplies from the outside world, including food, always winds up in the hands of the terrorist organization.

But Siegel shuts her down.

While Siegel discussed how his captors treated him, he stated that after his wife, Aviva, was released from captivity, Hamas became “very mean and very cruel and violent.”

“They were beating me and starving me,” Siegel said. Stahl followed by asking, “Do you think they starved you because or they just didn’t have food?”

Siegel denied that his torturers didn’t have enough food, recounting, “No, I think they starved me, and they would often eat in front of me and not offer me food.”

To suggest that Hamas was itself starving and therefore they had no food to give and therefore they were innocent of his charges is Stahl’s effort to limit the reputational damage to Hamas. It also signals that “See BS News” stands with Hamas. “They’re really not that bad, are they? Isn’t it possible that they just didn’t have any food to give you? Let’s not be too hard on the darlings.”

This isn’t journalism; it’s activism.