Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have unveiled the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

The post ‘Lord of the Rings’: WB Reveals Irish Actor Is Replacing Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in ‘Hunt for Gollum’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.  

I think we should take another look at the Iranian War, and I would call it a longer view, not the short-term 24-hour news cycle.  

What’s happening right now is the media and the left wing of the United States political spectrum, the Democratic Party, and they are a nexus now, a Borg. They react in 24-hour cycles. So anything that looks unfortunate, from the point of the American success in Iran, they cling to.  

So last Monday, it looked like Donald Trump, after his tweet on Easter that he was going to end the civilization of Iran, and I mentioned before he meant the regime, the theocracy, the civilization of radical Shiite jihadism in Iran, they wanted to impeach him. They said he was a “warmonger,” a Hitlerian figure. 

The next day he announced that negotiations would take place, and then he was a TACO, a Neville Chamberlain, a George McGovern, a Jimmy Carter, “Trump Always Chickens Out,” but it’s indicative that they don’t look at the war empirically, they look at it entirely in political terms. 

In fact, people as diverse as Tom Friedman or Bill Kristol, if you collate what they have written, they almost feel that anything that happens negatively in Iran might be positive because it would hurt Donald Trump, and then therefore that would be in the long-term interest.  

Forgetting that we have 100,000 soldiers in the theater risking their lives, and they’re risking their lives to eliminate the real opportunity, the real likelihood, that Iran could get nuclear-tipped missiles very quickly, not just aimed at Western Europe, but in two or three years, perhaps the United States as well, given the participation of North Korea, China, and Russia in their arms industry and their agenda.  

So we have to look at the long version, and the only way we can do that is look at history, and history says it’s very unusual that one side has been so victorious in an asymmetric war, especially against the strongest power in the Middle East by all accounts, 93 million people, a huge territory. And people were terrified of it, not just the Gulf monarchies, but the Europeans. 

We say the Strait was open before the war. Yeah, it was open, but it was open on the condition that Iran would close it at any minute or could make things difficult. Prior to this closing, it had closed it in 1979 and 1980, and again in 2019 and had threatened to do it on many occasions. It’s not going to be able to do that when this war ends.  

So if you look at it realistically, very quickly, they don’t have a military, so to speak. They have lost probably hundreds of billions, if not half a trillion dollars, in a half-century investment in missiles and now in drones, sophisticated aircraft and submarines and capital ships.  

Their command and control is down to the second- and third-tier, and no one knows who’s in power. We don’t know if it’s the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We don’t know if it’s the political class. We don’t know if it’s the theocracy. We don’t know if it’s the army.  

But we know two things: that they are each afraid of each other. They don’t want to seem as if they’re too compliant, so they want to be as hard-line as possible, but we don’t know what that really represents. All of these communiques that are so lunatic may be just intended for internal consumption.  

And the other fear they have, any one of them, is looking at these four different groups and says, if they cut a deal with the West or the United States in particular, and there’s a transitional figure and the people take over, we’re all going to be dead for what we’ve done.  

And so, it’s a very fluid situation politically, but militarily it’s clear that this has been an overwhelmingly devastating war for Iran. And who were the winners and losers of it? Take Russia. Russia has no presence in Venezuela now. It has no presence in Latin America. It has no presence in the Middle East. Its Assad regime is gone.  

It had a drone back-and-forth relationship with Iran. Maybe it’s supplying some weaponry across the Caspian Sea we don’t know about, but for all practical purposes that’s been severed.  

It’s bogged down in a war with Ukraine. It’s lost over 1.5 million people. It enjoys a little spike in oil prices, and that may help it, but it would be much more likely that they would want now to get out of the Ukrainian war, have some kind of deal, armistice, and then have sanctions lifted off them because they feel that the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t have a good future. 

Which turns us to the Gulf itself. The Strait of Hormuz has 20%, not 80%, 20% of the world’s oil going through it every day. The Saudis are going to expand their Red Sea pipeline. The Emiratis are going to expand their pipelines that serve other countries that are oil producers in the Gulf of Aden. They’re talking about going across the desert through Jordan to Haifa, and you could envision in four or five years the Gulf might only serve Iran.  

Instead of being an asset, it could be a liability. If anybody wanted to close it, it would’ve hurt Iraq and Iran more than anybody else.  

I mean, Iran has other ports, but it would be an inert asset. And so holding onto the strait and threatening the world means that people are going to find alternative oil supplies and they’re already doing it with the U.S. and Venezuela. 

And if Russia is smart, it will try to find a ceasefire and join in this alternate supply that’s non-Gulf.  

China has been hurt because it got 80% of all Iranian oil, and that’ll be contingent on the United States. It’s already contingent whether they get Venezuelan oil, on the United States. It won’t be sold to them at a discount. 

They look at the war and what do they say? What do they see? They see that drones—submarine drones, surface craft drones, aircraft drones—and now the United States has broadcast to the world they’re going to acquire what, a half million, a million of them. They’re late to the party, but when we get riled up and we get activated, we can outproduce almost anybody. 

And the idea that they were going to go across 110 nautical miles into Taiwan after what they’ve seen in Iran would be very foolhardy. The United States fleet could sit on the other side of Taiwan, arm Taiwan to the teeth, which they’re doing now, and it would be very hard for hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese shipping to come across that strait without being under constant fire from a sea of ballistic missiles and drones. 

Europe is a big loser. We didn’t ask all that much of them. We just said supply us by letting us use your bases and your airspace. That was very modest … they wouldn’t do that. The Spanish closed their embassy in Israel, and they kept it open in Iran. For all practical purposes, Spain is a belligerent. 

France wouldn’t let us use its air power. They won’t even go into Lebanon, their special post-colonial friend and responsibility, and help get rid of Hezbollah.  

Britain said they were going to protect their interests in Cyprus. They have a base that was targeted. They can’t even send one destroyer there. 

Turkey is a NATO member. And what has Turkey been doing? It’s been really siding with Iran, and it’s threatened to invade and attack Israel, a NATO partner.  

Italy, we thought was a close conservative friend. They wouldn’t let bombers land in Sicily. The U.K. has been the most disappointing. 

Maybe it’ll try to help. It doesn’t have many resources anymore. It’s sad to say, given the history of the Royal Navy. But my gosh, if we had said to Margaret Thatcher when she asked our aid in 1982 to help the Falklands, we could have just quoted what Starmer would later say, “this is not our war. 

It’s not our war.” It’s not our war in Serbia. It’s not our war in Libya. It’s not our war in Chad.  

So you can see the problem with NATO in name only, and it will be a bilateral alliance. I think more and more the United States will pick and choose which NATO members it will fully work with because the rest are either neutral or hostile to the United States. 

And finally, the United States. If this war ends in two or three weeks, it’ll still be seven months for the economy to recover, and oil will start flowing out of the Gulf.  

And more importantly, Venezuelan oil, American oil and even perhaps Russian oil will get on the market to capture these high prices and people will avoid the Gulf as much as they can, and the Gulf will be opened one way or the other. 

And so there’s a good chance the economy can return and there’s a better chance people will come to the realization after this 24-hour hysteria and media cycle and left-wing fanaticism is over, when they look at the situation empirically, they’re going to say, my gosh, Iran is not threatening the Middle East. 

My gosh, they don’t have a ballistic missile threat. They do not have an immediate avenue to get nuclear weapons. They have no military. Their entire command and control has been wiped out. Their population is furious. It’s stewing.  

This could be like the fall of the Berlin Wall, which not the next day, not the next week, not the next month, but within months, or in the case of the Soviet Union, within two years, you could see a regime change. 

So the United States is in a good position, especially because we chose not to fight on the conditions that we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we’re fighting house to house in Taji or Fallujah or we don’t know who’s friend, who’s the enemy in a village in Afghanistan. Now this was fought on Western American terms, and the asymmetry shows it. 

So we don’t know what the ultimate prognosis of this war is, but if we take the long view, it’s far more favorable to our interests than it is to our enemies.  

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post Iran Crumbles, Critics Scramble: Trump’s Long Game Leaves the Media Exposed appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Erika Kirk was forced to miss a Turning Point USA event Tuesday at the University of Georgia after being targeted by threats. Erika Kirk was left widowed last year after […]

The post Left-Wing Mob, Violent Threats Force Erika Kirk to Miss TPUSA Event with JD Vance appeared first on The Western Journal.

Texas Democrat James Talarico has amassed a huge war chest in his bid to flip a Lone Star State’s Senate seat in November.

Talarico, a member of the state House who beat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for his party’s nomination in March, raised $27 million in the first three months of 2026, his campaign announced on Wednesday.

The Democrat’s haul makes him one of the biggest fundraisers in the history of Senate campaigns.

Jaime Harrison, also a Democrat, holds the Senate fundraising record for a quarter, having raised $57 million in one quarter of his unsuccessful 2020 bid to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Harrison’s record beat that of Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who raised $38.1 million in one quarter during his unsuccessful 2018 race against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Texas Republican primary voters have yet to make a final decision on their candidate to run against Talarico, as incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is advancing to a runoff against his challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

President Donald Trump has not endorsed in the Republican primary.

“James is proud to be the only candidate in this race not taking a dime of corporate PAC money, shattering grassroots fundraising records with donations from 246 Texas counties and the help of over 500,000 small dollar contributors — unlike John Cornyn and Ken Paxton, who have raked in millions of dollars from special interests and fought to enrich their billionaire donors while working Texans struggle,” JT Ennis, a Talarico spokesman, told The Daily Signal in a statement.

“Our people-powered campaign is going to change this broken political system by defeating corrupt politicians like John Cornyn and Ken Paxton this November,” Ennis added.

Cornyn’s campaign said a statement Wednesday that he raised $9 million dollars in the first quarter of 2026 — a number referring to the over $7.2 million given to his authorized fundraising committee and $1.7 million to the campaign itself.

In a statement to The Daily Signal, Cornyn campaign senior advisor Matt Mackowiak argued Talarico’s numbers are inflated by out-of-state money.

“James Talarico is raising massive amounts of money through Act Blue and major donors in New York and California,” said Mackowiak.

Talarico’s campaign said in their announcement that many of the “grassroots fundraising” donations came form “working Texans,” mentioning that “97% of contributions to the campaign were $100 or less.”

Mackowiak also argued Cornyn’s numbers position him well in the Republican primary.

“To date, Senator Cornyn has raised over $20 million for the race, more than four times what Ken Paxton has raised,” said Mackowiak.

“Democrats nominated their strongest candidate for U.S. Senate, and Republicans must nominate John Cornyn, their strongest candidate for U.S. Senate to ensure Texas stays red and we maximize the chances to win the five new Congressional seats.”

The Paxton campaign’s report, which must be filed Wednesday, has yet to be published. Paxton’s and Talarico’s campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Texas Dem Senate Candidate Posts Massive Fundraising Numbers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

AUSTIN, TX — Local couple Tyler and Madison Hansen expressed grave concerns this week that having a baby might significantly disrupt the many hours a day they currently spend sitting three inches apart on the sofa staring at their respective iPhones in total silence.

In a new twist on the epidemic of teacher sexual misconduct in the U.S, a Florida music teacher has been charged with terrifying a teenage student by kissing her between the breasts — and showing her a tattoo on his chest to reflect his love for her.

The post Music Teacher Charged With Grooming Student, Showing Her a ‘Love’ Tattoo on His Chest appeared first on Breitbart.

LIV Golf executives have called an "emergency summit" in New York as rumors swirl that the whole venture is about to shut down.

The post LIV Golf Calls ‘Emergency Summit’ As Rumors of Shut Down Looms appeared first on Breitbart.

We might want to listen to what the farmers are telling us, because if they don’t grow our food we do not eat. Coming into this year, we were already facing the worst farming crisis in America in at least 50 years. Farmers all over the nation are drowning in debt, and farm bankruptcies have been soaring. In all my years, I have never seen America’s farmers so angry, and now the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has made things much worse. Spring planting season is here and there is a global scramble for whatever supplies of nitrogen fertilizer that happen to be available. As a result, prices have skyrocketed and farmers all over the planet are facing some incredibly tough choices.

That is even true here in the United States.

According to a brand new survey that was just conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation, 70 percent of U.S. farmers say that they will not be able to purchase all of the fertilizer that they need in 2026 because it has become so expensive…

Conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation April 3-11, the survey shows 70% of respondents say fertilizer is so expensive that they will not be able to buy all the fertilizer they need.

More than 5,700 farmers, both Farm Bureau members and non-members, from every state and Puerto Rico took the survey. Farm Bureau economists analyzed the results in the latest Market Intel.

The analysis reveals that almost 8 in 10 farmers in the southern U.S. say they can’t afford all needed supplies this year, followed by the Northeast and West at 69% and 66%, respectively, compared to 48% of the farmers in the Midwest.

Fertilizer prices were already at frighteningly high levels even before the war with Iran started, and since that time they have surged dramatically…

Nitrogen fertilizer prices have gone up more than 30 percent since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28, according to Market Intel. Combined fuel and fertilizer costs have also risen between 20 and 40 percent, with urea prices jumping 47 percent since late February.

Many people out there don’t seem to understand this yet, but this is going to affect all of us.

If 70 percent of U.S. farmers use less fertilizer this year, those farmers will grow less food.

If there is less food available, prices will go up.

Needless to say, food prices are already at ridiculous levels, but they are going to go even higher.

In impoverished countries, conditions will be even worse.

Due to a historic lack of nitrogen fertilizer, hundreds of millions of families that are currently barely existing “may soon find they are only able to afford little or no food”…

In many parts of the world, vulnerable families who today are currently managing to put some food on the table may soon find they are only able to afford little or no food.

“If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest,” said WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Carl Skau.

I wish that I could get people to understand how serious this is.

Goldman Sachs is publicly admitting that the global fertilizer crisis is spreading a lot faster than they were originally projecting.

We desperately need the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened immediately, but that simply isn’t going to happen.

The Iranians continue to strangle commercial traffic through the Strait, and the U.S. has now “completely” cut off traffic to Iranian ports…

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports is now fully into effect, “completely” cutting off Tehran’s international sea trade that powers about 90% of its economy, the U.S. Central Command said late Tuesday stateside.

The announcement comes at a time when the White House has been signaling a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the Middle East, as discussions around continuing negotiations with Iran are underway.

“A blockade of Iranian ports has been fully implemented as U.S. forces maintain maritime superiority in the Middle East,” said Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, highlighting that it was achieved under 36 hours of President Donald Trump’s order.

The Trump administration is convinced that this blockade will force the Iranians to give in.

According to U.S. Central Command, the first 48 hours of the blockade have been a resounding success…

But the Iranians are showing no signs of backing down.

On Wednesday, an official with the IRGC warned of severe consequences if the U.S. does not end the blockade…

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced Wednesday that Tehran would not allow the import or export of goods through the Persian Gulf, the nearby Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea unless the United States lifts the blockade it imposed earlier this week around the Strait of Hormuz.

Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya emergency headquarters, said the measures would be “firm and decisive” steps to protect Iran’s national interests and sovereignty.

According to Abdollahi, if the U.S. continues the blockade Iran has decided that it “will not allow any exports or imports to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea”…

In his statement broadcast by Iranian state television, Abdollahi said Iran would move to disrupt shipping routes in the Red Sea and elsewhere if the U.S. continued its blockade, initiated by President Donald Trump.

“The powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic will not allow any exports or imports to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea,” the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said.

If Iran is able to successfully stop commercial traffic from traveling through all of those waterways, it will greatly intensify the economic problems that we are starting to witness all over the globe.

In California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has already almost reached 6 dollars…

Gas prices are soaring across the country, but especially in California. The Golden State average is now nearly $6 per gallon — 40 percent above the national figure. That gap is likely to widen: UC Davis economists estimate that Californians could soon be paying more than $2.50 a gallon above the national average.

In the United Kingdom, officials are bracing for widespread fuel shortages in “two or three weeks”…

Sources told ITV News that the UK is ‘two or three weeks away’ from shortages of diesel and jet fuel, although petrol supplies are healthier.

The Government is said to be facing ‘difficult decisions’ over how to allot fuel supplies, including how to keep ‘ancillary power’ going for NHS hospitals.

If the war with Iran is not resolved quickly, this will only be the tip of the iceberg.

The Iranians are holding the global economy hostage, and they fully realize that this gives them a tremendous amount of leverage.

But there is no way that the U.S. and Israel will ever agree to their demands.

So for now we seem to have an unsolvable problem on our hands, and meanwhile the damage that is being done to the global economy is getting worse with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post 70 Percent Of U.S. Farmers Say That They Will Not Be Able To Purchase All The Fertilizer That They Need In 2026 appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

A book by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar promoting her immigration legislation simply recycles old ideas and relies on some center-left sources, a conservative watchdog group says.

The Florida Republican member’s book, “Dignity Not Citizenship: The Truth About Immigration No One Is Telling You,” is an argument for her bill called the DIGNIDAD Act, short for Dignity for Immigrants while Guarding our Nation to Ignite and Deliver the American Dream Act. The bill—which mixes tough immigration enforcement with granting some legal status to illegal aliens—has 20 Republican and 20 Democrat cosponsors.

However, the sources used to back up Salazar’s case in the book are not conservative, according to an analysis of the text by the Oversight Project, a watchdog group.

Her book, released last November, calls out the Biden administration’s open-borders policy but also says Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids aren’t working. She opposes mass deportation, arguing it is costly and bad for the economy.

The Oversight Project analysis contends that Salazar’s book used some passages that didn’t give adequate attribution to sources such as the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Niskanen Center, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative organization that monitors nonprofits, didn’t categorize the Peterson Institute as on the right or left, but it described the Niskanen Center as a libertarian environmental think tank and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy as left of center.

The Oversight Project analysis found that other sources for Salazar’s book were fully attributed. Yet those were not conservative sources.

One example is the Brookings Institution, which has employed members of past Democrat and Republican administrations, though many Brookings donors have been left of center, according to the Capital Research Center.

Other sources for her book include the Bipartisan Policy Center, which CRC describes as a center-left think tank, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is not associated with the right or left. Another source is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is clearly conservative on numerous moral and cultural issues but has been critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. These organizations were cited with proper attribution, according to the Oversight Project analysis.

The analysis found a “high” concern level for only passing attribution to research by Michael Clemens of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on global trade, finance, and labor.

It also found the Salazar book mentions “Michael Clemens, writing for the Peterson Institute,” but the prose in Salazar’s book, such as “incomes dropped, land values collapsed,” was similar to wording from Clemens. Her book “mirrors the structure and content” of the Peterson article, according to the Oversight Project analysis.

Salazar argues in the book that deportations were unsuccessful during the eras of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, and under President Calvin Coolidge—information detailed by Clemens, the Oversight Project argues.

“It looks like Salazar is not thinking for herself. She certainly isn’t writing for herself,” Oversight Project President Mike Howell told The Daily Signal.

Howell said it wasn’t plagiarism but called it “sloppy regurgitation” of points made by the Washington establishment that has promoted amnesty for illegal aliens.

“These are old, tired ideas that the swamp has pushed for decades,” Howell said. “This lacks dignity. It would be more dignified if she would think of her own arguments.”

The Daily Signal emailed spokespersons for Salazar on Monday and Tuesday and left voicemails in both the Washington, D.C., office and the main district office in Miami.

The Daily Signal also contacted Skyhorse Publishing, which owns Regnery Publishing, the publisher of the book, for comment by email and phone on Tuesday.

Other examples were labeled in the analysis as moderate or low with regard to attribution.

The analysis asserted Salazar “underattributed” tax data from a 2024 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

A book passage from Chapter 5 says, “In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $96 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. That breaks down to roughly $15 billion in sales and excise taxes, $10 billion in property taxes, and $7 billion in personal income and business taxes.”

The Oversight Project says these specific breakdown figures come directly from the institute’s analysis, but the book doesn’t cite the institute study that gained news coverage when it was released.

It further says the book has “close paraphrasing” of a Niskanen Center article in Chapter 1 that describes labor shortages. The specific sequence of examples—such as pharmacies, shipping hubs, and delivery—was close to the sequence in the Niskanen report, the Oversight Project says. However, its analysis says the “Niskanen Center is named once in passing” but contends this was a “lightly reworded version of the original article’s argument structure.”

The post Watchdog: Salazar’s Immigration Book Relies on Nonconservative, Center-Left Sources appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WILMINGTON, DE — Secret Service agents reportedly looked at each other and shook their heads on Wednesday, as former President Joe Biden committed an unfortunate act of mistaken identity while his motorcade passed a house with a lawn jockey.