There’s an old adage about speculation and opinionizing over what a political leader may or may not do: it goes “Those who know don’t say, and those who say don’t know.” This would be a good rule for those who catastrophize the consequences of President Donald Trump’s proposed actions … before they take place.

In recent days, fearmongering and panic were everywhere over the President’s plans for Greenland, some went so far as to say it would be the destruction of NATO, others called for the 25th Amendment. But, within about six hours of being in Davos, we received news that the framework for non-military deal was put together.

All of a sudden, it all seemed very reasonable.

As children, we read of the story of Chicken Little to learn not to exaggerate our paranoias; doing so leading to disastrous results. President Trump has embarrassed his critics with success—time and time again.

Perhaps it’s time to give him a little wider berth on the international stage.

So far, he’s done quite well.

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The first year of the second term of President Trump concluded on Tuesday this week—and only the most extreme of partisans will deny that 45-47 hung a lot of wins on the wall:

• A closed border,
• "eight-and-a-quarter" peace negotiations,
• the "one big beautiful bill,"
• Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran,
• Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela,
• Rising domestic oil and gas production, and:
• The wonderful combination of falling inflation and rising wages.

Most important to the world of his achievements in his first year back: President Trump is not only the commander in chief of the mightiest military in history, he’s demonstrated that knows how to use it.

Trump has restored America’s deterrence—a power that that had been forfeited by Biden and our collapse in Afghanistan.

Iran, Islamist terrorists across Africa, from Somalia to Nigeria and Nicholas Maduro have all suffered devastating blows that punished them for behavior outside the guardrails that President Trump set.

American leadership is back.

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There’s very little left that’s sacred in American political life. Until recently, houses of worship were one of the few exceptions.

No longer. In Minnesota, far-left agitators stormed a church service. Their stated goal was to find the pastor, whom they claimed worked for ICE.

The First Amendment protects free speech, as it should. Americans have the right to petition their government for redress of grievances. That includes the right to protest government actions that offend their conscience.

But protest must be peaceful. Once it turns violent, it becomes criminal conduct.

And when a mob breaks into a church during services to pursue a pastor, threatening peaceful worshippers, it’s something even uglier. It’s domestic terror.

What happened at the Minnesota church crossed a bright line in American life. The mob should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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“Well, we have to ask,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recalls being pressed.

No, they really didn't.

In his new memoir, Shapiro tells the true story of his interaction with Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. The vetting process, headed by former Attorney General Eric Holder, obsessed over Shapiro’s views on Israel. In fact, the vetting team demanded to know if Shapiro had ever been an agent for the Israeli government—on no evidentiary basis except that Shapiro is Jewish.

This is an ancient libel against Jews—driving the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in eastern Europe, the Dreyfus Affair in France and, of course Germany under the Nazis. It’s the anti-Semitic assumption that a Jew living as a Jew is suspect of disloyalty on that basis alone.

And now it’s come to America embraced by the Democrat Party itself—part of its presidential campaign in 2024.

Kamala Harris needs to answer for this repulsive development—and so does her party.

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This past Sunday, the unthinkable happened. A leftist mob aided and abetted by former CNN host, Don Lemon, burst into an evangelical congregation at worship on the Lord's Day.

It happened as Citi's Church in St. Paul, Minnesota was worshiping this past Sunday. Angry protestors invaded the church, stopped its worship, intimidated its members, and demanded that the church denounce one of its elders who is currently serving as acting field director for US immigrations and customs enforcement, better known as ICE.

Is this where we are headed? Invading a church engaged in worship on the Lord's Day is the breaking of a bright moral line. Children and young people in this Southern Baptist congregation were traumatized. This is flatly wrong and clearly scandalous.

Federal authorities need to act and responsible citizens need to remind our fellow citizens that ICE is an official federal law enforcement agency and is to be fully respected.

This church invasion was a first. It likely won't be the last.

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Chalk up a significant win for religious freedom—this time from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court ruled that religious organizations have the right to hire people who share their faith, even for non-ministerial roles like administrative assistants or technicians. In other words, faith-based organizations don’t lose their religious identity the moment someone steps out of the pulpit and into an office.

The decision applies only to religious organizations themselves, not to secular businesses or hospitals they may operate. But it still matters a great deal.

At stake is a basic principle: religious groups exist to advance a mission grounded in shared beliefs. Every employee contributes to that mission in some way. Forcing a religious organization to hire people who reject its core convictions undermines its very purpose.

Kudos to the Ninth Circuit for recognizing this simple truth.

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on cases that could determine whether states have the authority to preserve women’s sports for biological females.

The cases, from Idaho and West Virginia, challenge laws that restrict girls’ and women’s athletic teams to participants of the same biological sex. Transgender students argue these laws violate Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

But beneath the legal claims lies a more fundamental question: who gets to define what it means to be a woman under the law?

The Court must decide whether government is required to treat self-declared gender identity as determinative—or whether it can rely on the objective reality of biological sex.

Upholding these laws protects fairness and safety in women’s sports. More importantly, it prevents sex (and womanhood itself!) from becoming an arbitrary legal construct.

That matters.

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The difference between the illusion of power and its reality is the difference between the Ayatollah Khamenei and President Donald Trump. Trump is on the cusp of joining the very small number of American presidents who reorder the world. Khamenei is on the cusp of history’s abyss reserved for murderous fanatics.

The belief in the unlimited power of a totalitarian government to maintain itself and protect its rulers is a dangerous conceit, as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro have both discovered.

It may be that Ayatollah Khamenei is in the process of discovering the same hard reality: No government, no matter how ruthless, can endure for centuries or even decades in the face of a resentful population.

Not even the rulers of Rome at the height of the Caesars were guaranteed an endless run of power.

If either the U.S. or the Israeli’s provide the final push, the great people of Persia will re-emerge and regain their place among the great civilizations on the planet.

We wish them well.

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