1) “Making Foreign Aid Great Again” (State Marco Rubio, U.S. State Department)
From the article -- This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency.
We will not apologize for recognizing America’s longstanding commitment to life-saving humanitarian aid and promotion of economic development abroad must be in furtherance of an America First foreign policy.
USAID viewed its constituency as the United Nations, multinational NGOs, and the broader global community—not the U.S. taxpayers who funded its budget or the President they elected to represent their interests on the world stage. USAID marketed its programs as a charity, rather than instruments of American foreign policy intended to advance our national interests. Too often, these programs promoted anti-American ideals and groups, from global “DEI,” censorship and regime change operations, to NGOs and international organizations in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.
That ends today, and where there was once a rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid, there will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag. Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people.
2) “We’re Told That Chemical Abortions Don’t Count” (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog)
From the article -- But the second and most important truth relevant to the reportedly decreasing number of abortions is that the numbers of preborn children killed by poisonous drugs is soaring to unimaginable highs. Indeed, the most conservative estimates suggest that 60-70% of all abortions in America are via chemicals like RU-486 and the “morning after” pill. And that’s not even adding to the horrific total those preborn kids whose lives are ended by the abortifacient properties of the tragically misnamed birth-control pill. No, none of the children destroyed by these lethal poisons are being counted by health officials.
America’s downward trend in the surgical abortion rate over the last two decades involves several factors -- the effects of pro-life laws, the spread of pro-life education, the increased awareness of fetal development through ultrasound and fetal surgery, the compassionate work of pro-life pregnancy aid centers, and a greater spirit of compassion towards the innocent among today’s youth.
But, let’s face the truth, the primary reason the abortion statistics are down is because those numbers are cooked. The abortion industry (and its friends in the old guard media) are manipulating the math by ignoring altogether the means by which the majority of abortions now are committed. This not only provides cover for the chemical abortion industry, I’m afraid that it also provides false comfort to pro-life advocates. The sad, alarming fact is that our culture (as a whole) is no more interested in genuinely defending the sanctity of life than before the Dobbs decision.
3) “House Passes BBB as Conservatives Win ‘Significant Commitments’ on Life, Transgenderism” (Ben Johnson, Washington Stand)
From the article -- While many pro-life advocates — including SBA Pro-Life America and Americans United for Life — called the bill’s one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood a step forward, some former insiders say the deep-pocketed abortion industry has the resources to wait it out. “While any taxpayer money diverted away from Planned Parenthood is a good thing, defunding our nation's largest abortion provider for just one year is not the win many of us who believe abortion is abhorrent wanted it to be,” said former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, Abby Johnson, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “A year is enough time for many Planned Parenthood facilities to hold out to be re-funded. Some will close, but Planned Parenthood as an organization has millions of dollars, wealthy donors, and could support those clinics if they choose.”
Planned Parenthood, which received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, reported total net assets of $2.52 billion. “Bottom line: it’s not enough and Republicans should permanently defund the abortion giant, not just for a paltry 12 months,” said Johnson. “A one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood is no victory; it’s a disheartening concession,” Katie Brown Xavios, national director of American Life League, told TWS. “To receive only a token punishment for those who harm women and kill the innocent is unacceptable.”
Family Research Council backed the House version of the bill and reserved the right to score against the Senate version. Ultimately, it reconsidered after House conservatives wrung several promises out of the Trump administration and Hill leadership. “Last night, we facilitated negotiations and conservations on key policy issues that had been removed or modified from the House version,” announced FRC President Tony Perkins on Thursday morning. “[W]e believe we will see policy outcomes that offset the changes made by the Senate.”
Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus quickly confirmed they had obtained promises for future executive action and legislation to defund abortion and transgender procedures, as well as other policy priorities. “We got significant commitments on spending reductions outside the framework of the bill,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “We said, ‘Let’s talk about some offsets elsewhere. Let’s talk about some things the executive can do to mitigate some of the concerns about what the Senate did with our House bill,’” Harris told Perkins.
“We got a major commitment, a serious commitment on spending reduction,” as well as “a large commitment on social issues. We got an agreement that the administration will add adults to their transgender funding limitation. And we’re going to have a discussion with the administration on the egregious, cross-state trafficking in mifepristone."
4) “The Decline and Fall of Our So-Called Degreed Experts” (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness)
From the article -- Almost daily during the tariff hysterias of March, we were told by university economists and most of the PhDs employed in investment and finance that the U.S. was headed toward a downward, if not recessionary, spiral. Most economists lectured that trade deficits did not really matter. Or they insisted that the cures to reduce them were worse than the $1.1 trillion deficit itself. They reminded us that free, rather than fair, trade alone ensured prosperity.
So, the result of Trump’s foolhardy tariff talk would be an impending recession. America would soon suffer rising joblessness, inflation—or rather a return to stagflation—and likely little, if any, increase in tariff revenue as trade volume declined.
Instead, recent data show increases in tariff revenue. Personal real income and savings were up. Job creation exceeded prognoses. There was no surge in inflation. The supposedly “crashed” stock market reached historic highs.
5) “Celebrating Independence From Anti-American History Propaganda: The end of the 1619 Project?” (Mary Grabar, American Spectator)
From the article -- Hannah-Jones might have presented herself as original but in 1980 the commie professor was sarcastically pointing out that American exceptionalism included “income inequality,” “inequities” in “public health and education,” “endemic racial fears and hatreds,” and an “electoral system” that was built on “economic might.” Jefferson, Zinn also noted, owned “hundreds” of slaves, and his “great manifesto of freedom” did not apply to them.
Zinn threw into question the very legitimacy of the country, from the “discovery” by the capitalist Christopher Columbus to the protection of “property” in the Constitution instead of the “life, liberty, and happiness” of the Declaration of Independence. The country was founded to protect the rights of the wealthy, who then held all political power, the middle class being a “buffer” between the owning classes and the enslaved blacks and poor whites.
Cutting through the nonsense in 2020 was President Trump making his speech at Mount Rushmore, on the eve of Independence Day (called a “diatribe” by the newspaper that had much at stake in The 1619 Project). Addressing the “campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” Trump vowed that, unlike other monuments, the one with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, would never be “desecrated.”
He called July 4th, 1776, “the most important day in the history of nations.” With a rebuke of the 1619 rioters, he said, “Every American patriot should be filled with joy, because each of you lives in the most magnificent country in the history of the world.”
* “God’s Faithfulness: Why Do Many Pastors Ignore Paul’s Declaration Of Love For The Jewish People?” (Tom Simcox, Harbinger's Daily)
* “Trump 2.0 is a Wrecking Ball -- and he's wrecking the right stuff.” (Glenn Harlan Reynolds)
* “Ketanji Fatigue: Last week, the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority reprimanded Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for her feeble legal reasoning." (S.A. McCarthy, American Spectator)
* “The EU’s Internet Law, a Blueprint for Global Censorship -- Including on American Platforms?” (Adina Portaru, Daily Signal)
* “The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps” (Gary Anderson, American Spectator)
