REUTERS—President Donald Trump has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under former President Joe Biden’s administration and green cards issued to citizens of 19 countries, Department of Homeland Security officials said on Thursday.

Officials say the Afghan immigrant suspected of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday entered the U.S. in 2021 under a resettlement program.

Hours after the shooting, which left the two Guard members in critical condition, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the immediate and indefinite suspension of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals.

On Thursday, DHS said the Trump administration was expanding that to include a review of all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration. The alleged gunman was granted asylum this year under Trump, according to a U.S. government file seen by Reuters.

USCIS director Joseph Edlow said in a statement he was also directing a “full-scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern” at Trump’s request.

He did not indicate which countries are considered by the United States to be ones of concern. USCIS referred Reuters to a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.

Trump had already called for the “re-examination” of all Afghan nationals who came to the U.S. under his predecessor, saying that the U.S. needed to take measures to ensure the removal of anyone who does not “add benefit to our country.”

Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the president has carried out an aggressive immigration agenda. Reuters reported on Tuesday that his administration had ordered a broad review of all refugees, who entered the U.S. under Biden.

That order would apply to about 233,000 refugees who entered between Jan. 20, 2021 and Feb. 20, 2025, according to the memo signed by Edlow.

In late October, Trump set the refugee admissions cap for fiscal 2026 at a record-low 7,500, saying the U.S. would focus on bringing in white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward, editing by Ross Colvin; Editing by David Gregorio)

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The nation will this week partake in a ritual unlike any other in the rest of the world. Americans of all persuasions, races, and creeds will gather with family around the table and give thanks, most of them to the Almighty, for the bounty they have received this year.

It’s easy to take Thanksgiving for granted. And yet it is something uniquely American, and truly a wonder. It is a holiday that confirms that we as a country are committed to gratitude and to recommitting ourselves annually to this national character trait.

It acts as some sort of baptismal sacrament. Immigrants take their first timorous step toward Americanization when they start honoring this sacred holiday and learn to cook its dishes. And thereby, without being fully aware, they begin to incarnate the national spirit.

In personal terms, a disposition to be grateful renders important benefits, reducing anxiety and depression, and making us better companions and better sleepers. This is so self-evident it hardly requires research to substantiate it, but the evidence does exist.

In geopolitics, the thankful disposition draws a bright line between the United States and wretched states officially devoted to its opposite, ungratefulness. A commitment to gratitude may have been one of the things—right up there with love of liberty—that made America the historic sworn enemy of Marxism, whose guiding ideology, envy, is the wages of ingratitude.

Thanksgiving is unquestionably uniquely American. I have lived at least a year in seven countries, in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, many more if one counts shorter stays, and have never encountered anything like it anywhere else.

Yes, in East Asia, I experienced firsthand what the Koreans call the Chuseok festival, held on 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, so from late September to early October, depending on the year. But it’s not dedicated to giving thanks, but rather to the full moon.

Canada, Liberia and the Caribbean island-nation of Grenada also have official Thanksgiving days, but they are derivatives of America’s.

Thanksgiving is not just uniquely tied to this country because it is reflective of the American national character. Its lineage is the thread of the national quilt.

Anyone who has watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and its companion, The Mayflower Voyagers, will know the essentials of how the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims and their Indian hosts in 1621 in the Plymouth Colony. Right there, Thanksgiving starts as a needed slap in the face to the “land acknowledgement” crowd.

(And yes, it might be better to read a book and learn history right and not from Peanuts, but don’t underestimate the value of popular culture in propagandizing the national spirit. When Charlie Brown exclaims at the Thanksgiving table, “We thank the Lord for a bountiful harvest,” Hollywood was telling generations of young Americans that it wasn’t just ok to be patriotic and faithful, but that it was normal and expected.)

Then, in one of its very firsts acts, the first Congress in 1789 requested that the newly elected President Washington proclaim a national day of Thanksgiving.

But it wasn’t till later, in the middle of the Civil War and in response to a persistent, decades-long letter-writing campaign by editor and writer Sarah Josepha Hale, that Abraham Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed the last Thursday in November as our official day of Thanksgiving. Then Congress in 1941, just as America was about to enter another war, officially made it the fourth Thursday.

Thus, Congress and our most important leaders ratified an outlook that is the gift that keeps on giving.

Experiencing gratitude is “associated with greater longevity among older adults,” says a Harvard study last year. According to the British Psychological Society, “around 18.5 per cent of individual differences in people’s happiness could be predicted by the amount of gratitude they feel.”

Saying thanks to your partner and meaning it also makes the institution of marriage stronger. A team at the University of Illinois found that “higher levels of perceived gratitude buffered against the stresses of both financial strain and ineffective arguing.” (One could ask, in marriage, is there any other type of arguing?)

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, a 2009 study found that “Gratitude was uniquely related to total sleep quality, subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, and daytime dysfunction.”

Of course, Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt, and the various congresses in question—to say nothing of the Pilgrim fathers, Samoset or Squanto—did not have any of these benefits in mind, they just wanted to thank the Lord. Maybe the unintended consequences are payback.

That is not going to help you deal with your aunt who voted for Kamala Harris and will show up dressed in a Handmaid’s Tale outfit. Just tell her that if President Trump and Zohran Mamdani can bury the hatchet, she can get along with others, too.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Originally published by Washington Examiner.

The post Don’t Take Thanksgiving for Granted appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—FBI Director Kash Patel said during a Thursday press conference that the agency has searched the Washington state home of a gunman accused of ambushing two National Guardsmen and a location in San Diego, California.

West Virginia National Guardsmen Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom were allegedly shot with a Smith and Wesson revolver at the Farragut West Metro Station in Washington, D.C., by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the United States in September 2021.

Patel provided reporters an update on how the investigation was proceeding.

“Partnering with the D.C. United States attorney’s office, we have also executed multiple, multiple search warrants to include the subject’s last known residence, which is in the state of Washington,” Patel said.

“The search warrant was executed on that house last night or early this morning and it’s an ongoing process. All the individuals found in the house have been interviewed and some interviews remain ongoing.”

“We will not stop until we interview anyone and everyone associated with the subject, the house and every piece of his life,” Patel continued. “There’s also subject interviews, relations conducted in San Diego pursuant to our ongoing investigation. So as the judge noted, this is a coast-to-coast investigation being led right here in Washington D.C.”

Lakanwal allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar!” before opening fire on the National Guardsmen, journalist Julio Rojas reported. One National Guardsman who was on the scene who didn’t have a firearm stabbed Lakanwal with a pocketknife, while another fired multiple shots that struck the suspected gunman, according to Rojas.

“I spoke to [CIA Director] John Ratcliffe and [Secretary of War] Pete Hegseth. We’re investigating his background to include any known associates that are either overseas or here in the United States of America. That’s what a broad-based international terrorism investigation looks like,” Patel told reporters.

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Victor Davis Hanson painted a dire picture of America’s descent into chaos during a Fox News interview Wednesday night, just hours after an Afghan national shot two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C.

Hanson, a Daily Signal senior contributor and Hoover Institution senior fellow, told guest host Kellyanne Conway that left-wing leaders have systematically undermined law enforcement and constitutional order.

The renowned historian pointed to a disturbing pattern during Donald Trump’s presidency, starting when “retired generals came out and said, he should be removed, the sooner the better.” Hanson cited the chairman of the joint chiefs’ contacting his Chinese People’s Liberation Army counterpart. And he noted, most recently, the six Democrat lawmakers who told members of the U.S. military “you can decide … what’s legal and not legal, and act accordingly to your own wishes.”

“A recipe for disaster,” Hanson warned. “A kind of a perfect storm.”

Hanson connected this insubordination to current immigration enforcement battles. “We had Gov. [JB] Pritzker, Gov. [Gavin] Newsom, Nancy Pelosi … all saying that state and local law enforcement would confront ICE, and that was anti-constitutional,” he explained.

The result? Hanson said that criminals believe “nothing is going to happen to me.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting of two National Guardsmen in the nation’s capital, Hanson said this breakdown of societal norms has created “a recipe for an ungodly tragedy.”

When asked why Democrats coddle criminals while vilifying law enforcement, Hanson offered a stark assessment: “I don’t think they have a message or an agenda that people favor, so they have to cause total chaos.” He suggested Democrats believe voters will “get into a fetal position and say make it all go away.”

Hanson argued that Democrats can’t win on the issues “so they have to create chaos, the violence, the Tesla dealerships are burned, the smutty videos” to generate systemic disruption. He compared it to 2020’s COVID lockdowns, which he said Democrats weaponized against Trump’s “really brilliant first term.”

Hanson warned this violence and chaos “is going to keep happening, unfortunately,” as millions of illegal immigrants and prematurely released criminals roam free in American communities.

The post Victor Davis Hanson Warns of ‘Recipe for Disaster’ as the Left Embraces Lawlessness appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, take a moment to remember the many Americans who gave their last full measure 82 years ago in the attack on the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

Almost two years after Pearl Harbor, the assault by the 2nd Marine Division on a Japanese-held stronghold started on Nov. 20, 1943, five days before Thanksgiving. In a brutal three-day battle, over 1,000 Americans were killed, and almost 2,300 were wounded. In proportion to the forces engaged, it may have been one of the most costly battles in U.S. military history, with as many casualties suffered in three days as in the six-month campaign on Guadalcanal.

Betio Island, the main island of the Tarawa Atoll, was a little over two miles long and no more than half a mile wide. It is about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and was important to the Allied communication lines with Australia and New Zealand. It was part of the outer defense line of the Japanese Empire. Tarawa was the opening campaign of the U.S. drive across the central Pacific.

Even though no point on the island was more than nine feet above sea level, the Japanese force of 4,800 soldiers had honeycombed the island with a formidable array of barbed wire, mines, bunkers, pillboxes, log barricades, and gun emplacements with interlocking fields of fire. It was the most fortified atoll the U.S. would invade. The Japanese commander, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, boasted that “a million Americans couldn’t take Tarawa in a hundred years.” When the battle was over, only 17 Japanese were alive, along with 129 forced Korean laborers.

The U.S. Navy Task Force supporting the Marines, led by Admiral Harry Hill, included three battleships—two of which, the Tennessee and the Maryland, had been damaged at Pearl Harbor—as well as several light and heavy cruisers and destroyers and three aircraft carriers.

A New Challenge

Even though the U.S. Marines had a long and storied history, they had relatively little experience in the type of large-scale amphibious assault against a heavily defended island that the Tarawa attack would require. Although the 2nd Marine Division had already fought a bloody campaign on Guadalcanal, alongside the 1st Marine Division, the initial landings there were unopposed. That would not be the case on Tarawa. And on Tarawa, the Marines, for the first time, would be up against Japan’s elite Special Naval Landing Force—the Imperial Marines.

The 16- and 14-inch guns of the battleships, along with the guns of the cruisers and destroyers, conducted a massive pre-invasion bombardment. In addition to air attacks launched from the carriers, the warships fired more than 3,000 tons of shells. Unfortunately, as the Navy and the Marines experienced again and again in subsequent island assaults, the sandy soil absorbed much of the high explosives, and most of the Japanese bunkers survived. There were also complaints from the Marines that the shelling was lifted too early, giving the Japanese time to get their men back down to the shoreline defenses before the Marines landed. Even worse was a problem that affected much of the Pacific island-hopping campaign—the lack of precise information on the topography and the tides and currents surrounding these islands.

The first three waves of Marines were carried in LVTs or amphtracs, an armored, amphibious tractor that could get over the reef surrounding the island. In fact, Tarawa was the first battle using the LVTs, which had been originally developed for rescue operations in the Florida Everglades. But because there were not enough of them and so many were lost in the initial assault, the following waves of Marines were carried in Higgins boats, which drew three to four feet of water. In a mistake that would end up costing many lives, the battle planners miscalculated the tide, and the Higgins boats were stranded in low water over the coral reef.

The Heroism of Marines

In what is probably one of the greatest examples of bravery, fortitude, and sheer grit in the history of the Marine Corps, the Marines dismounted from the Higgins boats and waded hundreds of yards through chest-high water under intense enemy fire, loaded down with weapons and packs. Five thousand Marines managed to get ashore on the first day, but the lagoon was filled with the floating bodies of hundreds of dead Marines. In fact, the Marines were pinned down on the beach because of the fanatical Japanese resistance and a seawall that their amphtracs could not get over. They had numerous other problems, from seawater soaked radios to delays in getting their artillery support  ashore to water contaminated from being stored in insufficiently cleaned oil drums.

There were countless acts of bravery during the battle by both Marines and sailors. On the second day, two Navy lieutenants on their own initiative rescued 150 wounded Marines who were stranded on the reef, one of them using a commandeered Higgins boat after his own boat was wrecked. That Navy lieutenant even took out a Japanese sniper who had swum out to a wrecked Higgins boat. He received the Navy Cross for his gallantry—and when the war ended, Lt. Eddie Albert resumed his acting career.

Four Medals of Honor were awarded, including one for Colonel David Shoup, who had landed with his Marines on the first day and had continued to direct attacks despite being wounded with shrapnel in both legs.

The battle to take this tiny island, which was only barely the size of New York’s Central Park, was vicious, with the Marines fighting from one pillbox, bunker, and strongpoint to another. Each one had to be destroyed and every Japanese soldier killed, because none would surrender. The Marines fought off multiple Banzai charges, a foreshadowing of what was to come in other island assaults in the next two years.

Marine Corps Gen. Holland “Howlin Mad” Smith, who is known as the father of modern U.S. amphibious warfare, was the commander of the Amphibious Corps, which included the 2nd Marine Division. He compared the Marine assault on Tarawa to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The number of casualties and the photos of dead Marines published in newspapers from that “stinking little island” shocked the American public. But Henry Shaw, the former chief historian of the Marine Corps, said that Tarawa provided the Marines and the Navy with the textbook on how to conduct amphibious landings. The lessons they learned helped save countless American lives in the island assaults that followed in the Pacific Campaign that ultimately led to the Japanese surrender in 1945.

So as we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners with our families, all of us should remember and give thanks to the American Marines and sailors who 72 years ago fought for the freedom, liberty, and security we enjoy as Americans. They didn’t experience a peaceful Thanksgiving, but they—and the men and women in our military today—are the reason all of us will be able to enjoy a peaceful holiday with our families.

The post This Thanksgiving, Remember the Marines Who Gave Everything at Tarawa appeared first on The Daily Signal.