Throughout the year, the left has insisted that President Donald Trump is some kind of dictator. They chant “NO KINGS!” in the streets and warn that Trump is one executive […]

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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’d like to return to this often contentious subject in the news of why the United States supports Israel.

I must come clean. I am not a Christian Zionist. I feel I’m a Christian, but I have no special advocacy to support Israel because it’s a biblical home of the Jews and, by extension, the Judeo-Christian traditions of which I am a member.

And I can even confess, as a rural resident who grew up isolated on a farm, I don’t recall anybody being Jewish. And I had never met anybody Jewish until I was 18 years old, when I went to the University of California campus at Santa Cruz, and for the first time in my life I met somebody who said he was Jewish.

So, I don’t come to this issue with any particular hidden agenda, whether it’s Christian Zionists—that’s a new term that’s in use now—or as an advocate of Jewish Americans or Israelis. I do it for one reason. I support Israel for one reason: It is in the interest of my country, the United States.

Now, why would that be? I’ll give you one example. In 2012, ’13, and ’14, the United States embarked on a joint missile defense program with Poland and the Czech Republic in Eastern Europe. You know that because in 2012, that same year, then-President Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic right before his campaign that he was willing to be flexible on missile defense in Eastern Europe, i.e., give it up, if Russian President Vladimir Putin would give him space before his reelection. I.e., don’t invade Ukraine or don’t invade anybody, like you did in 2008 with Ossetia.

Both of them kept the bargain. Putin didn’t invade and for two years kept—and Obama was reelected and they removed missile defense.

But what was the missile defense for? It wasn’t to protect us, it couldn’t from Russia’s 7,000 nuclear-tipped missiles. It was designed to protect Europe from Iran. They were paranoid that, unlike us, they were in a range of new Iranian missiles, and Iran was considered hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon. So, it was in our interest.

Forget Israel, forget anything else in the Cold War vis-a-vis the prior Cold War between Russia and the United States. It was in NATO’s interest to protect the European continent from whom? Iran. And that made sense, didn’t it? Because Iran had killed almost, if not more, Americans than ISIS had or al-Qaeda had.

Al-Qaeda was responsible, via Osama bin Laden, for 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11, 2001. But Iranian Shia terrorists all over the globe had killed Americans. They killed Americans in Beirut in the Marine barracks in the embassy. They gave shaped charges to our enemies in Iraq and probably were responsible for over 2,000 American soldiers dying or being maimed.

So, they were existential enemies of America, and we had taken efforts well aside from Israel to protect our allies and ourself from Iranians and that theocratic, anti-American government.

There was another reason too. We tend to often favor democratic or consensual societies over their antithesis. That’s why all of the NATO governments now are consensual, our closest ally. That’s why Australia—we are a close ally in New Zealand. They are consensual. That’s why we are closer to Canada than we are to Mexico, because it’s more consensual. That’s why we are good friends now with Japan. It’s a consensual government in a way it was not during World War II. We’re a consensual government. We see a consensual government in South Korea. OK.

So, what is Israel? Israel is a consensual government. It’s surrounded by 500 million people of the Islamic world—Shia and Sunni, Iranian and Arab—that aren’t, they’re not consensual.

There’s only one government that is truly a free democratic government, and that’s Israel. So, it has affinities with the United States and interest with the United States that transcends anything to do with the 7 million Americans who are Jewish Americans. That’s just a given.

They are not directing American policy. They couldn’t unless Israel was democratic, consensual, Western, an outpost in a dangerous part of the world that has key resources for global prosperity with oil and, more importantly, is an enemy of our existential enemy that transcends any question of Israeli or Iranian animosity, and that’s the theocratic government of Iran that began its existence by taking Americans hostage and storming our embassy.

There’s another question as well as we have all sorts of quasi-allies, of course, that are not consensual, and we give them a lot of money. We give Jordan over a billion dollars. We give Egypt over $600 million. We give a country that can be very, very anti-American all sorts of help, fellow Turkish member Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in Ankara. And we don’t require any prior litmus test that they be constitutional or consensual, but nobody seems to object to all the money we give these countries or all the support.

So, why would you not object for us offering military assistance to Turkey that isn’t consensual, fully, and still illegally occupies Northern Cyprus, but you would object to military assistance to Israel that is consensual and shares exactly the same enemies as the United States does? And these enemies are prior to and not relevant to Israel’s particular enemies. We would not be friendly with the Iranians, regardless of Israel. They took our embassy and they killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans for reasons other than we support Israel.

In other words, it’s in our self-interest to stop Iran from posing an existential threat to Europe, ourselves, from killing American soldiers, and for trying to disrupt and unsettle the entire Middle East, where 40% of the world’s oil is from. And that is well aside from the fact that Israel, the so-called Holy Land, is the foundation, the home, the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That is a reason, but it’s not the only reason, it’s not even the primary reason, nor is the advocacy of Jewish Americans. The primary reason we support Israel: It’s in our cold, hard, self-interest.

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

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Fuzzy Zoeller, a two-time major champion in pro golf who won the Masters during his first appearance at the event, died Thursday. He was 74.

The post Fuzzy Zoeller, Two-Time Majors Champ, Dies at 74 appeared first on Breitbart.

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)

The post Trump Administration to Carry Out Sweeping Immigration Review After National Guard Shooting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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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President Donald Trump says he’s enlisting the help of legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus to spruce up the courses at Joint Base Andrews — adding a site long known as the […]

The post 'Jack Will Be the Architect': Trump Teams with Jack Nicklaus to Revamp 'Presidential Golf Course' appeared first on The Western Journal.

Real ones remember it like it was yesterday. It was September of 2023. Deion Sanders. His first game as a college football coach, taking his Colorado Buffaloes on the road against the 17th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs, fresh off their national championship game appearance against Georgia from the year before.

The post Like Father Like Son: Both Deion and Shedeur Sanders Make It Hard to Root for Them appeared first on Breitbart.

Colorado State Sen. Faith Winter (D) died Wednesday in a multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 25 in Centennial that left several other people injured.

The post VIDEO — ‘Our State Is Shaken’: Colorado Lawmaker Dies in Multi-Vehicle Crash appeared first on Breitbart.

On Tuesday’s edition of CBS’s “The Takeout,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said that he doesn’t believe Democrats nationally have an Achilles’ heel on crime and immigration, “But I do think our party needs to be one where border security

The post Beshear Prior to D.C. Guard Shooting: Dems Don’t Have Achilles’ Heel on Immigration, Crime appeared first on Breitbart.

A U.S. Navy sailor died last week after entering rough waters off Waiapua’a Bay to rescue two children struggling in the high surf. Authorities said the incident happened Saturday, Nov. […]

The post Navy Sailor Makes Ultimate Sacrifice Saving Children from Dangerous Hawaiian Surf appeared first on The Western Journal.

Our expert roundup of the best thermal scopes for hunting in 2025—ranked by detection range, image quality, refresh rate, and real-world performance. Perfect for hog, coyote, and predator control. For many hunters, the season never truly ends. Whether it’s feral hogs tearing up farmland or coyotes harassing livestock, there’s always something that needs thinning out—and ... Read more

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