FOR MANY ON THE LEFT AND THE NOISY YET LESS NUMEROUS FAR RIGHT, THE REASON NOT TO STOP THE MULLAHS IS THAT DOING SO MIGHT HELP ISRAEL IN THE PROCESS

Stopping Tehran’s apocalyptic goals is more important than thwarting Trump

Critics assert that the price America is paying to force the Islamic Republic to give up its nuclear ambitions and zeal for terrorism is too high. But the alternatives are far worse. 

 

By Jonathan S. Tobin 

 

JNS

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

A large billboard in Tel Aviv reads "Thank you God & Donald Trump!."

 

Two weeks after the start of the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran, naysayers about the wisdom of the operation remain pervasive and loud. The arguments against the war are based on a variety of concerns. The motivations of many of those denouncing the decisions of President Donald Trump are clearly partisan, ideological, and, in the case of a considerable percentage of those on the far right and left, connected to prejudice. 

Regardless of the validity of those complaints—and many, if not most, deserve to be dismissed—there is no avoiding the main question to be answered about such a conflict. Is it worth the cost in blood, money and political capital, both at home and abroad, that the administration is expending on a fight with no definite endpoint in sight?

And to that question, there are no easy answers. There is good reason to worry about whether the unintended negative consequences of the war will, in the long run, be viewed as more significant than the issues policymakers are currently obsessing about. 

Kicking the can down the road

Nevertheless, even the most reasonable skeptics of the effort, not to mention the deafening chorus of those partisans and ideologues predicting doom for Trump’s war plans, are largely failing to address another equally important question that must be answered. Is the cost of allowing the pre-war status quo to continue higher than those associated with the uncertainties of war? 

Iran was steadily rebuilding its nuclear program with an imminent option to race to a bomb, expanding missile production and continuing to orchestrate an “axis of resistance” dedicated to fomenting chaos and war. That’s more than enough to justify the risks of potential disaster that are an inevitable part of all wars. 

Like the question about the cost of war, the answer will only be clear after the fact. Yet even now, with the outcome of the campaign still somewhat in doubt, it’s obvious that continuing a policy of kicking the can down the road that Trump’s predecessors chose—either out of bad judgment, an unjustifiable sympathy for Tehran, cowardice or just plain apathy—would have been as colossal a mistake as even the costliest military blunder. 

The dangers that lie ahead are not limited to the short-term question of whether Washington and Jerusalem will achieve their objectives, which are aligned with each other but not identical. 

The first purpose of the campaign is the eradication of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, in addition to its support and active participation in international terrorism. Washington and Jerusalem are committed to those objectives, which they rightly see as not only crucial to their own countries but integral to the security of the West as a whole. Those are widely seen as achievable goals to one degree or another. 

Both governments have also stated that they favor regime change in Iran. That’s something Israel believes is absolutely necessary to achieve. The Trump administration would like it to happen, but could live without it, as long as the ayatollahs were stripped of their nukes and missiles, and had their terrorist option foreclosed. 

It’s far from clear whether the goal of toppling the Islamist government in Tehran can or will be accomplished. If a successful domestic uprising doesn’t happen, both countries are wisely reluctant to commit to a ground incursion on the scale required to install a new government. 

Economic and strategic problems

Still, the problems that are being generated by the war don’t only involve Iran retaining nuclear capability or whether the theocrats can cling to power. Just as important is whether the economic consequences of the war or its impact on equally important strategic problems faced elsewhere by the West will wind up overshadowing what happens in the Persian Gulf or the Middle East. 

With respect to economics, it’s obvious that Trump and his team—contrary to the false narratives about the war being impulsively decided on a presidential whim or as the result of sinister Israeli or Jewish pressure—were fully cognizant of the implications of combat in the region on the price of oil. That Iran might seek to stop its flow through the Strait of Hormuz was always a likely possibility. And it was a given that the price of oil, and consequently, the price of gas at the pump in the United States, would go up once the war started. 

A long-term jump in oil prices would harm the global economy, set back Trump’s objectives for American prosperity, and impact domestic politics and his party’s chances of retaining control of Congress in the midterm elections this fall. You don’t have to be an isolationist who opposes any foreign interventions to understand that any one of those things might be considered a good enough reason for an American president to hold off on efforts against Iran. 

The China factor

Added to that is the impact of the conflict on the international stage, where the United States is—whether many Americans fully understand it or not—locked in a geostrategic rivalry/conflict with Iran’s allies: Russia, and even more importantly, China. As historian Niall Ferguson, who supports action against Iran, has pointed out, this war must be seen in the context of a second Cold War in which the United States is facing off against what may prove to be a Chinese opponent that’s far more formidable than the Soviet Union was in the first such conflict in the 20th century. 

Removing the Iranian threat is a blow to China in terms of its strategic quest to dominate the globe and because it is an important source of oil to Beijing. But should the United States be embroiled in an unsuccessful war in the Middle East, this would help the Chinese elsewhere. And Russia is benefiting from the way the current war is increasing its oil and gas revenue, and serves as a distraction from its stalemated efforts to wear down Ukraine in that four-year-old war. 

As Ferguson writes this week in The Free Press, blocking the Strait of Hormuz for any appreciable period of time would be a disaster for Washington, as well as something that could set an unfortunate precedent for the ability of China and its allies to do the same thing in other important choke points, such as the Strait of Taiwan. It almost goes without saying that, as the analyst argues, “the longer the war lasts, the greater the domestic pressure on Trump; the heavier the costs for U.S. allies in Asia and Europe; the more money for Russia; and the greater the temptation for China.” 

Those risks are real. But to assume the sort of military failure or stalemate in Iran, as most of Trump’s critics do, that would generate that sort of scenario in which China profits from the war is not persuasive. 

While the success of the U.S.-Israeli offensive won’t be able to fully evaluated until after the conflict is over, it’s clear that both militaries have not been thwarted during the first two weeks of the joint campaign. To the contrary, they have systematically eliminated Iran’s military capabilities, hunted down its missile-launchers and done more damage to its nuclear program. 

The fact that a country as large as Iran is not completely defeated in two weeks is not a reason to believe the war has so far been a failure. If the armed forces of the two allies are allowed to continue their military efforts, the already devastating results for Iran will likely become even more impressive. It could possibly go a long way toward rendering the regime harmless to its neighbors and/or unable to resist the desire of its population for a new government. There is no reason to believe that the war is already a “quagmire,” other than the wish on the part of Trump’s opponents that this is what it will turn out to be. 

Even if the results are not everything the two governments would wish for, the arguments that say the United States would have been better off delaying action or even appeasing Iran, as the Obama and Biden administrations did, ring false. 

Partisan folly

The policy of enriching and empowering Tehran that was the consequence of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign-policy achievement—the 2015 nuclear deal—was disastrous for the Middle East and for America. It led to a stronger and more aggressive Islamist regime. It encouraged its adventurism, hegemonic ambitions and willingness to start wars against Israel from Gaza and Lebanon via its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the way its Houthi allies in Yemen sought to interdict international shipping in the Horn of Africa. 

More than that, letting Iran get a nuclear weapon, as Obama’s pact guaranteed, or race to one, as became an increasingly likely scenario in the last year, would have done far more damage to U.S. interests than even a permanent hike in gas prices or an emboldened Beijing. Economic and strategic thinkers are right to ponder what may follow the current campaign, and whether some or all of the fallout from it will be problematic or wind up working out in ways that we cannot foresee. But letting a tyrannical regime ruled by religious fanatics bent on imposing their version of fanatical Islam on the Middle East and the rest of the world get a nuclear weapon to blackmail and intimidate opponents would be a nightmare. 

And that would have been the inevitable result if the United States hadn’t prepared to act at some point in the near future. While Washington could have waited until the threat was so imminent that averting it would have been as catastrophic as waiting for it to happen, Trump wisely decided that forestalling that scenario was worth the risk. 

While the calculus involved in determining that acting in 2026 was far less costly and dangerous than waiting until some point in the future, what cannot be debated is that stopping Iran was in almost everyone’s interests. To treat the need to stop the apocalyptic implications of an Iranian bomb as somehow less important than short-term increases in the price of fuel or theoretical advantages that might fall to Beijing is like comparing fatal cancer to a broken limb. The latter is painful and can impair one’s lifestyle. The former is to envision a chronic global catastrophe carried out by theocrats with no compunction about slaughtering innocents. 

The failure to acknowledge this basic premise is what makes so much of the criticism of the administration unpersuasive. 

And that brings us back to the motivations of the critics. As was apparent from the first days of the war, most of those opposing Trump on Iran are doing so for partisan reasons. 

While polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the war, those who drill down into public opinion on the issue also show that far larger majorities agree with Trump on the nature of the threat from Iran and the necessity to deal with it. However, when simply asked about whether they favor the president’s policies, their replies are in keeping with the hyper-partisan nature of contemporary American society. 

Democrats are united against the president’s decision to an extent unprecedented in the history of opposition parties at a time of war. Having committed themselves to a view of Trump as a complete villain (and a fascist authoritarian at that), few among his foes seem willing, as previous generations of Americans had done, to let politics stop at the water’s edge, even when vital American interests are at stake. 

As veteran Democratic lawyer David Boies wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, every previous president of the last quarter-century agreed that Iran posed a threat that needed to be addressed. Yet virtually the entire Democratic Party has been opposed to acting on that imperative, and they’re not doing so because they are worried about oil prices or thinking China might find a way to gain from it. The only reason for their opposition is that Trump is doing it.  

The other reason for opposing action against Iran is, if possible, even more contemptible. 

An argument rooted in hate

For many on the left and on the noisy yet less numerous far right, the reason not to stop the mullahs is that doing so might help Israel in the process. 

As sober analysts, as well as Trump and his team, have pointed out, the Jewish state and its leaders didn’t strong-arm or even really persuade the United States to do something that was just as much an American imperative as an Israeli one. 

The fact that since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic has sought the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet—the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan” of the United States—was an argument against restraining them for those ideologues on the left and the right who sympathize with that goal. 

The antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories that have been floated in recent months and weeks about Israeli and Jewish influence over American policy weren’t so much based on false conceptions about U.S. interests as it was in hostility to the safety or existence of Jews. That those, like podcaster Tucker Carlson, who traffic in Jew-hatred, didn’t want Washington to act with Jerusalem to prevent the genocide of its population, even if it also meant buttressing American security, isn’t surprising. But as Carlson’s confession about his communications with the Islamist regime in the run-up to the war makes clear, the loyalty of extremists who hate Israel and Jews is more with those who share their vile beliefs than it is to the United States, let alone Trump. 

Americans can and should be conducting a conversation about the cost/benefits of the war. Given the uncertainty involved in any military conflict, there is always the possibility that the fight will lead to results that will ultimately determine that the risk wasn’t worth it. 

Yet alongside that discussion must be one about the costs of letting Iran go on seeking, and ultimately acquiring, the nukes and missiles that would transform the world for the worse. Preventing a terrorist Islamist regime from gaining such power will always be a higher priority than even sensible efforts to keep oil prices down or conserve U.S. resources just to be able to deal with other threats posed by China and Russia. 

Instead, all we’re hearing from Trump’s opponents is partisan bile or antisemitic invective. That is not a debate that has anything to do with American interests or costs; it’s an irresponsible and hateful agenda that deserves no respect. 

FOR DECADES, ISRAEL HAS SERVED BOTH AS A PROVING GROUND FOR AMERICAN DEFENSE TECHNOLOGIES AND AS A SOURCE OF INNOVATIONS THAT AMERICAN SYSTEMS LATER ADOPT

The core root of ‘Pax Silica’

How the U.S.-Israel partnership is evolving into the technological backbone of the free world. 

 

By Jeff Ballabon 

 

JNS

Mar 17, 2026

 

 

A U.S. Navy sailor signals an F/A-18E Super Hornet preparing to launch on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of Operation Epic Fury, March 4, 2026.

 

One of the administration’s recent talking points offers an unexpected glimpse into how global power is changing. The White House and officials at the highest levels have described the skies over Tehran as effectively dominated by “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the United States and Israel.”

At first glance, placing Israel alongside the United States in that formulation sounds surprising. One country is the world’s leading superpower of more than 330 million people; the other is a long-embattled nation of fewer than 10 million.

The phrase is all the more striking coming from an administration led by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose political vision and rhetoric consistently emphasize American primacy and exceptionalism. To place Israel on equal footing with the United States in such a context signals how deeply the two nations’ military and technological capabilities have become intertwined.

And it may point toward something larger about the future of the alliance between the two countries.

In modern warfare—characterized by software, cyber capabilities, satellites and artificial intelligence—the decisive factor is no longer simply size. Technological sophistication and rapid innovation increasingly determine military power.

For decades, Israel has served both as a proving ground for American defense technologies and as a source of innovations that American systems later adopt and scale. Missile defense, cyber capabilities, intelligence tools and unmanned systems all illustrate this pattern—technologies refined under Israel’s intense security pressures, and then integrated into broader American and allied capabilities.

Today, that technological dimension of alliance is official policy. The U.S. State Department now uses the term Pax Silica to describe an emerging framework of trusted technology partnerships among allied nations designed to secure supply chains, accelerate innovation and defend the infrastructure of the digital age.

Within that broader initiative, Israel occupies a uniquely central role.

Author and technologist Bryant McGill has suggested that Pax Silica may represent more than just a network of technological cooperation. He argues that Washington and Jerusalem together are emerging as something closer to the nucleus of a new strategic architecture built around technological power. He describes the relationship as a kind of “dual-platform Western security organism,” in which the two nations operate not merely as allies but as mutually reinforcing engines of innovation and scale.

The concept is ambitious, but the intuition behind it captures something very real.

For decades, the U.S.-Israel alliance has been explained primarily through two lenses. One emphasizes geopolitics: intelligence cooperation, military coordination and shared strategic interests in a volatile region. The other points to deeper affinities between two democratic societies shaped by innovation, freedom and the legitimacy of self-defense.

Both explanations are true.

Critics, meanwhile, offer a simpler narrative. Across the ideological spectrum, conspiracy theories about the alliance persist—claims that American support for Israel must be explained by manipulation rather than interests and strategy. As the technological and strategic logic of the relationship becomes clearer, however, those arguments collapse into caricature and hysteria.

What many observers long sensed may now be revealing a deeper structural explanation.

For many Americans, the bond with Israel has always seemed to possess a dimension beyond realpolitik. Often described in emotional or spiritual terms, it reflects two nations that see echoes of themselves in one another. What was once called a “special relationship” has indeed been something more concrete: the innovation engine of a broader democratic security order.

American exceptionalism—rooted in the belief that a nation can organize political life around liberty, covenant and moral purpose—has long found its mirror in Israel’s own sense of national mission.

That parallel is not accidental. The Founders of the United States drew openly from the Hebrew Bible. In building the American republic, they sought to create a society that would serve as an example to the world—what later generations would call a “city upon a hill,” echoing the words of Massachusetts Bay founder John Winthrop and reflecting an older biblical idea: that a nation organized around moral law could serve as a light unto the nations.

Beneath those traditions lies something deeper. It is a shared conviction that human life carries moral significance and that free societies exist to protect and elevate it.

It is precisely this idea—of societies organized around liberty, moral law and human dignity—that has long made both nations targets of intense hostility. The United States and Israel are not threatening because they seek to impose their systems on others, but because their very existence challenges regimes and ideologies built on coercion and hierarchy. It is no coincidence that critics from opposite ends of the political spectrum increasingly sound indistinguishable in their attacks on both countries. However different their rhetoric, movements that reject the liberal democratic order often converge in hostility toward the societies that most visibly embody it.

Seen through that lens, the technological partnership between the United States and Israel becomes easier to understand.

In some ways, the U.S.-Israel relationship combines the strengths of a startup and an industrial giant: Israel innovates like a startup, and America scales those innovations globally. What begins as rapid experimentation in Israel can become global capability through American power.

Israel’s security environment forces constant experimentation. Technologies are conceived, tested and deployed under real-world pressure through an unusually dense network of military units, universities, and venture capital. The United States contributes something equally essential: scale—vast capital markets, research institutions and the industrial infrastructure capable of deploying those innovations globally.

The result is not merely an alliance but something closer to a shared security innovation ecosystem.

Observers outside the Middle East have begun to recognize this dynamic as well. As China-Israel analyst Carice Witte has noted, strategists across the Indo-Pacific are studying the conflict not simply as a regional war but as an example of how American alliances function in an era of great-power competition.

Beijing, in particular, is examining the operational integration between the United States and Israel—shared intelligence, coordinated air operations and rapid technological adaptation—as evidence of how deeply allied systems can operate in high-intensity conflict.

Seen in this light, Pax Silica may represent not a replacement for the order that has governed the free world since the end of World War II but its technological evolution.

For nearly eight decades, Pax Americana rested on American military strength, economic leadership and alliances that sustained the democratic world’s security architecture. After the Cold War, the United States briefly appeared to stand alone as the world’s “unipower.”

Today, that dominance faces growing challenges—most notably, from China and the expanding ambitions of its sphere of influence.

The response is not the abandonment of the American-led order but its adaptation.

In an era defined by artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and space-based infrastructure, alliances rooted in technological ecosystems will increasingly determine international stability. Within that evolving architecture, the U.S.-Israel alliance occupies a singularly powerful role.

Two societies shaped by similar civilizational instincts—innovation, freedom and personal responsibility—have developed complementary strengths: one excels at rapid invention, the other at scaling those inventions across the world.

As new technologies enable enemies—foreign, domestic and perhaps even machine—to threaten what remains of the free world, the association that critics dismiss as sentiment or attack may prove to be something far more consequential: the defining strategic connection of the technological age.

UNITREE G1 BUSTED BY CHINESE COPS

First robot ARREST revealed: Watch the moment a humanoid is detained by police after terrifying an elderly woman in China

 

By William Hunter 

 

Daily Mail

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

A bizarre video shows the moment a humanoid robot is arrested by police after terrifying an elderly woman in China

 

In what sounds like a scene from a science fiction thriller, a humanoid robot has been arrested by police after terrifying an elderly woman in China. 

According to local authorities, the 70–year–old woman was startled by the robot when she suddenly noticed it standing behind her. 

A viral clip shows the woman yelling and waving her bag at the diminutive bot, which repeatedly raises its arms in the air.

Footage then shows two police officers escorting the Unitree G1 down the road, with one leading the robot by its shoulder. 

Police told reporters that the woman had stopped to check her phone when the robot halted behind her, waiting for her to clear the path.

The elderly pedestrian was then 'frightened' to discover that the robot was silently following her down the road.

Following the incident, the woman told police that she was feeling unwell and was taken to hospital for a check–up and treatment. 

After doctors confirmed there was no physical altercation between her and the robot, the unnamed woman said that she wouldn't be filing a complaint against the bot's operator.  

The altercation occurred at 21:00 local time outside a residential complex in Macau, China. 

In the video, according to a translation by the Macau Post, the woman can be seen yelling: 'You're making my heart race!

'You've got plenty to do, so what's the point of messing around with this? Are you freaking crazy?'  

While the robot was not officially arrested, police did remove it from the scene and returned it to its operator, a man in his 50s, who was reminded to exercise caution.

However, on social media, the short clip of a robot being escorted away by police has sparked a wave of memes, as commenters joke that this is the 'first robot arrest in history'.

On X, one commenter joked: 'Looks like the robot needs a lawyer or some basic rights.'

'We are rapidly approaching a new wacky timeline,' added another.

One asked: 'Did the robot have a mugshot? Did the robot go to court?'

 

A viral clip shows the woman yelling and waving her bag at a Unitree G1 robot, which repeatedly raises its arms in the air

 

While one chimed in: 'This is exactly how the matrix started.'

However, others were far less sympathetic, blaming the elderly woman for overreacting to the robot's presence.

One commenter coldly wrote: 'Clearly the woman is the problem, not the robot.'

'Lock that woman up for impeding a robotic lifeform,' another added.

Authorities revealed that the robot belonged to a nearby education centre, which had been using the Unitree G1 robot as part of a promotion.

Towin Mak, a spokesperson for the education centre, told local broadcaster Teledifusão de Macau (TDM) that the robot was leaving the area when it encountered the elderly woman.

Mr Mak added that it was being guided by a mix of autonomous programming and remote supervision at the time. 

The robot's operator has apologised for causing distress. 

 

Following the incident, the 70–year–old woman told police that she was feeling unwell and was taken to hospital for a check–up and treatment. She later decided to bring a complaint against the robot's operator 

 

While this may be the first time that the police have had to bring a robot into custody, police forces are already making robots part of their approach to fighting crime. 

Professor Ivan Sun, from the University of Delaware, previously predicted that robotic police officers would be patrolling our streets in just five years.

These real–life robocops will be able to detect, pursue and apprehend suspects – likely working alongside human supervisors.

Meanwhile, countries like China and Singapore have begun trialling robotic police robots, with varying degrees of success.

For example, the Xavier robot in Singapore patrols public spaces to detect 'undesirable social behaviours' such as smoking before relaying the information to human officers.

While in China, AI–powered robots such as the AnBot have been integrated into security systems to conduct surveillance, verify identities and patrol transport hubs. In the UAE, robots have been used in more service–oriented roles such as greeting tourists or providing multilingual assistance during large events.

VIDEO REVEALS THAT IN 1987 TRUMP SAID HE WOULD ATTACK IRAN IF HE WERE PRESIDENT

Shocking video shows Donald Trump discussing his Iran war plans in 1987

 

By Chris Melore 

 

Daily Mail

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

Donald Trump's comments during a 1987 interview with late journalist Barbara Walters (Left) appear to show Trump's intentions of attacking Iran four decades ago

 

Footage has emerged of President Donald Trump warning of the threat posed by Iran's Supreme Leader and America's goals in a war with the nation, 39 years ago. 

The video captured an interview with late journalist and television personality Barbara Walters in December 1987, where Trump appeared to predict the current crisis in the Middle East and laid out his war plans if he were president.

At age 41, Trump said: 'The next time Iran attacks this country, go in and grab one of their big oil installations and I mean grab it and keep it and get back your losses because this country has lost plenty because of Iran.'

Trump also dismissed the possibility that Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, would send in troops to defend their allies in Iran, adding that he was more concerned about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling him 'something like nobody's ever seen.'

The real estate mogul's prophetic comments came four decades before the US and Israel would launch a devastating military campaign that has already killed Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

'You're going to have a war, and it's going to start in the Middle East,' Trump predicted to Walters during the interview.

The Walters interview on ABC's 20/20 also revealed how the future two-term president had spent thousands on newspaper ads criticizing the US for protecting foreign oil tankers without compensation when Iran was attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Today, oil prices have surged as fighting in the Persian Gulf has spread to the sea, with Iranian drones targeting the Strait of Hormuz, and the Pentagon is once again considering using the US Navy to protect oil shipments headed west.

 

                          

                          A tanker engulfed in fierce flames after strike by Iran

 

The unearthed interview featured excerpts from Trump's appearance at New Hampshire's Portsmouth Rotary Club in October 1987, a luncheon where influential people could test the political waters before a potential run for office.

In a stunning echo of Trump's future political addresses, the billionaire was captured saying: 'I'm personally tired of seeing this great country of ours being ripped off.'

Decades later, Trump's remarks at the event have been called his 'first campaign speech,' as the president has continually called for European countries to spend more on their own defense.

Trump's 1987 call for a tougher stance on Iran and more financial backing from US allies in Europe and throughout the region has eerily mirrored the current situation, with the president demanding NATO send warships to police the Strait of Hormuz.

The president insisted on Saturday that Britain, France and China should 'send ships to the area so that the Strait will no longer be threatened by a nation that has been totally decapitated.'

Speaking to the Financial Times, Trump said: 'It's only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there.

'We have a thing called NATO,' Trump continued. 'We've been very sweet. We didn't have to help them with Ukraine… but we helped them.'

'Now we'll see if they help us. Because I've long said that we'll be there for them, but they won't be there for us. And I'm not sure that they'd be there.'

 

Pictured: Oil tankers sail near the Strait of Hormuz on March 11, 2026

 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is thought to have already pushed back on this demand, reportedly saying that the British military was only ready to deploy minesweeping drones to clear out the important shipping lane.

In the 1987 interview, Trump floated the idea of forcing other nations to pay the US to protect the world's oil shipments sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, calling the fee for the Navy's work 'a ransom.'

'We made a huge mistake by going into the Persian Gulf without having negotiated a fair and reasonable deal before with all of the beneficiaries of the Persian Gulf,' Trump said.

'I would have said, "hey folks, let's get together, how much you're gonna pay for this?" and, you know what, give you a little secret, Barbara, they'll pay a ransom.'

As for Trump's plans for seizing Iran's oil, something that has not become reality yet, the New York businessman asked the Portsmouth Rotary Club: 'Why couldn't we go in and take over some of their oil, which is along the sea?'

 

The US and Israeli militaries have been carrying out devastating bombing raids on Iran. As the conflict has escalated, oil prices worldwide have spiked

 

When Walters pressed a 41-year-old Trump on how he would carry out such an operation, the future president would not definitively say he would send in ground troops to take Iran's oil fields - something Trump has still not committed to doing in 2026.

Despite not revealing the details in 1987, Trump's war plan may be playing itself out in real time, as the US military has already bombed Iran's biggest and most important oil facilities, the Kharg Island oil terminal.

The small island in the Persian Gulf handles approximately 90 percent of Iran's crude oil exports, totaling over a million barrels per day.

US forces have struck military targets on Kharg Island in March 2026, but have reportedly avoided hitting the oil facilities themselves to prevent a total shutdown that could spike global oil prices even further.

BAD NEWS FOR RFK JR IS VERY GOOD NEWS FOR THE NATION'S CHILDREN ... BUT IT'S ONLY TEMPORARY

Judge blocks RFK Jr.'s childhood vaccine overhaul which slashed number of recommended shots

The order issued Monday is the latest development in a lawsuit filed in July 2025 by the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other medical groups

 

By James Gordon

 

Daily Mail

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

The ruling halted Kennedy’s plan to end universal vaccine recommendations for illnesses including flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis and RSV 

 

A federal judge has blocked federal health officials from reducing the recommended number of childhood vaccines.

Judge Brian E Murphy ruled that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also likely violated federal procedures when he revamped a key vaccine advisory committee which helped secure the reforms. 

The decision handed down Monday temporarily halts Kennedy's order to end broad recommendations for all children to be vaccinated against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV.

It also stopped a meeting of a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory committee, which was set to convene this week in Atlanta.

The judge's order, however, is not the final word. The blocks are temporary, pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment.

Federal health officials indicated they planned to appeal.

'HHS looks forward to this judge's decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,' said Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon.

The order issued Monday is the latest development in a lawsuit filed in July 2025 by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and some other medical groups. 

 

 

The order also stopped a meeting of a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory committee, which was set to convene this week in Atlanta. 

 

The lawsuit in federal court in Boston originally focused on Kennedy's decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women. 

The lawsuit was updated as Kennedy took more steps that alarmed medical societies, causing the plaintiffs to ask Judge Murphy to take steps to address those policy changes too.

They also asked the court to look at Kennedy's actions concerning the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises public health officials on what vaccines to recommend to doctors and patients.

Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation's top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel last year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

Murphy, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, said Kennedy's reconstitution of ACIP likely violated federal law. He ordered the appointments and all decisions made by the reconstituted committee to be put on hold.

The ACIP was scheduled to meet this week to discuss COVID-19 vaccine safety, among other issues, but that gathering was postponed, officials said.

'ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet,' said Richard Hughes IV, an attorney representing the AAP. 'How can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?'

 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. is shown above at the official Make America Healthy Again summit in November last year

The US had been preparing to drop vaccines from the childhood immunization schedule 

 

Jason Schwartz, a Yale University vaccine policy expert who has studied the committee, called the halting of an ACIP meeting for legal reasons 'unprecedented' in its 62-year existence. 

Hughes called the judge's order 'a momentous step toward restoring science-based vaccine policy,' and he was echoed by leaders of several doctors' groups and public health organizations.

When Trump administration officials overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, they said it wouldn't result in families losing access to them or cause insurers to stop covering them. 

But it left many Americans confused, as doctors' groups, public health organizations and many states continued to recommend licensed vaccines, said Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the AAP.

Several doctors' groups said the changes were not based on good evidence, and advised doctors and patients to follow guidance that was previously in place. Health officials in 30 states have rejected at least some of the new recommendations.

The judge's order should bring clarity, Racine said.

'If anyone has any questions about what's the appropriate vaccine schedule for their children, the best thing to do is to talk to their pediatricians,' he said.

 

In December, an influential panel of US vaccine advisers voted to revoke a longstanding recommendation that all babies receive hepatitis B shots within 24 hours of birth, in a move expected to reverse the country's progress toward eliminating the disease

 

Schwartz said he expected federal health officials to keep expressing 'their deep skepticism regarding the importance of vaccination' and to keep embracing 'unsupported vaccine safety allegations.'

After the ruling, one of Kennedy's appointees to the committee, Dr. Robert Malone, urged the Trump administration to keep pursuing Kennedy's vaccine policy changes.

'A district court order is a delay, not a defeat,' he wrote Monday on Substack.

NATO: THIS IS NOT OUR WAR

Europe refuses to send warships to Hormuz despite Trump's demands

US allies are drawing hard lines against military involvement in the Iran conflict, exposing a deepening rift within the Western alliance.

 

by Bar Shaffer  

 

Israel Hayom

Mar 16, 2026

 

German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius was unequivocal. "This is not a NATO war and has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO," he said.

The Strait of Hormuz became a new front in the transatlantic dispute on Monday. Despite President Donald Trump's explicit demand that NATO allies send warships to reopen the blocked oil route, according to Reuters, Europe replied with a sharp "no."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made clear at a press conference on Monday that the United Kingdom would not be dragged into "a wider war," and sharply implied that the American administration had so far acted without any coherent plan. "If we are sending our forces into harm's way, the minimum they deserve is to know there is a legal basis and a clear plan," Starmer said. He then took a pointed swipe at Trump, adding, "Some would rush into war without the full picture. That's not leadership – that's being dragged."

The reaction in Berlin was even cooler. In response to Trump's threats about NATO's future if allies failed to assist, German government spokesman Steffen Kornelius was unequivocal. "This is not a NATO war and has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO," he said.

Germany also reminded the White House that the US and Israel had not bothered to consult Berlin before launching the military campaign, and that Washington had initially declared European assistance "unnecessary and unwelcome." "I genuinely don't know what to say about 'formal requests' for help in this context," the spokesman added.

The rest of Europe's major powers drew their own red lines. Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis announced that Athens would not participate in any military operation in the Strait of Hormuz, limiting its involvement to the existing "Aspides" mission for ship protection in the Red Sea.

Italy's foreign minister stressed that diplomacy was the only path to resolving the situation, noting he saw no existing naval mission that could be extended into the Strait of Hormuz.

Dutch Foreign Minister Brandsen warned that sending NATO warships would not resolve the problem overnight and could trigger a dangerous escalation – though he did not rule out future involvement after a more thorough review.

While Europe and the US traded barbs, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi moved to exploit the momentum and ratchet up pressure. "As far as we are concerned, the strait is open," he said in Tehran on Monday. "It is closed only to those enemies who carried out unjust aggression against our country, and to their allies."

TRUE TO TRADITIONS, JEWS ARE TO BLAME

The new pro-ayatollah antisemitism

As the war with Iran intensifies, a disturbing trend has emerged across Europe and North America. 

 

By Fiamma Nirenstein 

 

JNS

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

Pro-Iran regime supporters pray on the sidelines of an annual protest, this year a static protest, held by pro-Palestinian group Al-Quds in central London on March 15, 2026. The U.K. government banned an annual pro-Palestinian march organized by a group "supportive of the Iranian regime." A static protest and counter-protest went ahead in place of the march. 

 

Terrorism is a method designed to obliterate the enemy—to eliminate it, immobilize it and render it irrelevant.

That was the logic of the Shoah. And today, a similar logic is visible in the attempt to criminalize the Jewish people and physically attack them, just as Israel itself is attacked.

It is a profound miscalculation. Instead of weakening the Jews, their identification with the Jewish state strengthens them.

Yet a disturbing new phenomenon has emerged. Antisemitism is multiplying while simultaneously adopting a strange and astonishing posture: the defense of the ayatollahs.

Even respected newspapers and television panels portray the Iranian regime—and its proxy Hezbollah—as victims of “Zionist imperialism.” Some Italian outlets now speak of a supposed “Lebanese genocide,” expanding the accusation to Israel’s necessary war against Hezbollah aggression.

This inversion is not new. For decades, antisemitism has disguised itself as criticism of Israel.

It began with the infamous 1975 United Nations resolution declaring “Zionism equals racism.” It continued through the Durban conference of 2001 and through the obsessive campaigns at the United Nations, embodied by figures such as Francesca Albanese.

Billions have been spent promoting accusations that Israel is colonialist, genocidal and criminal.

Reality has been turned upside down. Israel—threatened with genocide for decades and attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, with that explicit aim while Iran orchestrated the violence—has been transformed into the supposed enemy of humanity.

The step from portraying Jews as monsters to attacking them is very short.

The attacks are becoming routine: assaults on children and mothers in parks, on people praying, on students—from Manchester to Bondi and beyond.

Yet what still astonishes is the willingness to defend the Iranian regime and Hezbollah simply to demonize Israel.

We are told that Israel dragged Donald Trump into the war. That rabbis are responsible. That Benjamin Netanyahu is the culprit. And some commentators even ask whether the ayatollahs were truly so dangerous after all.

Never mind the IAEA reports, the evidence of enriched uranium or the regime’s own declarations.

Thus, the most brutal regime in the Middle East—a regime that violates every human right—becomes a pillar of the new antisemitism because it attacks Israel. The hatred of Jews merges seamlessly with anti-Americanism.

The war has ignited this phenomenon. Attacks on Jewish institutions have followed one after another across Europe and North America.

In Amsterdam, a Jewish school was bombed. In Liège, a synagogue was attacked. Incidents followed in Greece and Rotterdam. In Michigan, a Lebanese terrorist attempted to massacre children at a synagogue kindergarten before killing himself. Toronto witnessed attacks against both the Beth Avraham synagogue and the Shaarei Shomayim congregation.

Jewish communities worldwide have been warned they are targets. They are advised to remove their kippahs and Stars of David and avoid revealing their movements.

The hatred resembles the explosion of hatred that followed Oct. 7, 2023. It combines Islamist propaganda with elements of radical left-wing politics—activists, radical collectives, Salafi and Shi’ite preachers—fueled by money, ideology and political interests.

Just as happened after Oct. 7, the current wave of antisemitism sweeping across the world completely ignores the nature of Israel’s enemy—its cruelty, the killing of tens of thousands of its own citizens, the persecution of women dissidents and gay people, and its long-standing leadership of international terrorism.

It denies what the Iranian regime itself has repeatedly declared: its intention to destroy Israel, the United States and the West, and its use of nuclear blackmail as a strategic threat.

In this sense, the new form of antisemitism is even more disturbing than the one that hides behind the defense of the Palestinians. It now goes further—seeking to preserve and legitimize the ayatollahs’ regime itself.

Iran has quickly organized itself as a central actor in this campaign. Reports indicate coordination behind attacks on Jewish communities.

Yet the champions of antisemitism in politics and media refuse to acknowledge this reality. True to tradition, they blame the Jews.

But what we face today is a large and violent movement. It must be confronted before it consumes others as well.

The Jews already understand this. And this time, they will not be caught asleep.

WHY SHOULD ONLY ISRAEL BE SINGLED OUT FOR OPPROBRIUM?

Whose ‘stolen’ land is it, anyway?

Throughout history, wars have had territorial consequences, especially when they were won but not started. 

 

By Paul Driessen 

 

JNS

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

“The Conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204,” 15th-century miniature by David Aubert 

 

Land acknowledgements have become de rigueur at academic commencements, award ceremonies and other programs. They might read: “We acknowledge that the land on which we gather was taken from Indigenous People who stewarded it for centuries before European colonialists seized it.”

In accepting her Grammy, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish used her opportunity to criticize immigration policies, saying, “No one is illegal on stolen land.”

But, of course, “rightful” land-ownership questions are hugely complicated by history and reality. Consider Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East in the past, and Ukraine and Tibet today.

These lands were not stolen the way a burglar grabs jewelry. Most were purchased or taken through war and conquest across the globe and throughout human history.

They raise fascinating questions. At what points do conquests, and thus land titles, begin and end? Who holds a “legitimate” title, and who decides that is legitimate? Should all claims be treated the same, or do some have more “legitimacy” than others?

Europe has been a battleground for millennia—over fiefdoms, states, countries and empires. Pax Romana once governed the continent and Britain before the Visigoths, Celts and other tribes vandalized the Roman Empire. Religious, ideological and political forces fragmented Christian Europe for centuries. Two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union created modern-day maps.

Muslim armies occupied Spain and Portugal from 700 to 1492. Mongols invaded Eastern Europe in 1237. Ottomans ruled southeastern Europe for two centuries.

The Americas inherited Europe’s history and philosophy of discovery, conquest, religious conversion and resource extraction. Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro took advantage of superior weapons, smallpox epidemics, and alliances with subjugated tribes to dismantle the Aztec and Inca empires.

The United States secured lands and resources from France through the Louisiana Purchase; California and the Southwest through wars with Mexico; and the rest of North America from Britain and Spain, and from Native American tribes.

Nowhere, however, is the “stolen land” trope more vocal and vicious than toward Israel.

The Middle East has been a bridge and a battlefield for trade, culture, and invading armies since time immemorial. After the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land, they defeated the Amorites, Canaanites and Philistines, who had conquered previous occupants. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were seized by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, who exiled most of the Jewish people until Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated Babylon and permitted their return.

Alexander the Great ushered in Greek rule. Following another Jewish period, Rome took control, subdued Jewish uprisings and renamed the region Syria Palestina to insult the Israelites by recalling their mortal enemies, the Philistines. The Byzantine era followed, then centuries of Arab-Islamic conflicts with Byzantine and Crusader forces.

Mamluks drove the Crusaders out, paving the way for the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which lasted until the end of World War I, when the British and French established “mandates” and drew Middle Eastern boundaries similar to those that exist today.

Jewish immigrants purchased land from local and absentee Arab landlords before and after the World Wars. After World War II, Jewish immigration surged. Land ownership in the pre-1948 area that is now Israel was roughly 15% Arab, 9% Jewish, and 76% British Mandate land and “unregistered” plots.

At no point did Jews entirely disappear from the Promised Land. At no point in Middle East history was there a “Palestinian” nation or people. Some Palestinians now claim to be descended from Philistines, but they were killed or exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar, who sent the Jews into Babylonian captivity. Remnants of the Philistines assimilated into the Babylonian Phoenician populations.

Arab countries attacked Israel after it achieved nationhood in 1948. Some 700,000 Arabs left Israel, assuming they would return upon Arab victory, while 800,000 Jews were displaced from Muslim countries across North Africa and the Middle East. The 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel wars also ended in Israeli victories and territorial expansion. (Today, Israel has less than 0.2% of the land area of Muslim countries across North Africa and the Middle East.)

Under millennia-long practices, norms and international law, victors win the lands and spoils of war. There is no “stolen” Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian or other land in Israel.

Nor have any conquered or displaced people ever had a “right of return” to their former homes. And yet, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO and their supporters demand such rights for Palestinians. Indeed, the Hamas and PLO charters say Israel and Israelis must be driven out, “from the river to the sea.”

Wars have consequences, but they don’t include the “right of return,” a doctrine of “stolen land” or some precept of “once Muslim, forever Muslim” applied to Spain, Portugal, southeastern Europe or Israel.

Imagine the chaos that would erupt if the International Court of Justice began proclaiming “rightful returns” to lands “stolen” by conquests throughout history.

When Muslim Arab armies conquered the Middle East, sacking Jewish and other ethno-religious cities and forcibly converting millions, they claimed ownership of all those lands. Will the ICJ demand that those lands be returned to descendants of their “rightful owners” of yore?

Should DNA tests be used to settle claims by descendants of Aztecs and Incas—or tribes subjugated by them—to properties in Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile? What about those who can trace their ancestry to Celtic, Saxon, Etruscan, Roman, Vandal, Dacian or other ancient Europeans who were conquered, decimated, exiled or assimilated throughout the ages?

Should Turkey be recognized as the current owner and governing authority of Greece? Will China end its “occupation” of Tibet? Will the “international community” boot Russia out of Crimea and Donetsk?

Why should only Israel be singled out for opprobrium? Why are countries demanding that it alone among nations return not only areas it took in wars it did not start, but lands Jewish immigrants purchased 80 to 110 years ago? And what happened to the original 1948 pre-war State of Israel created by the United Nations?

That absurd notion is the product of vacuous thinking by people who can sing and chant slogans, but have no grasp of even basic history. It belongs in the dustbin of irrational ideas.

REPUBLICAN SEN. THOM TILLIS DOESN'T WORRY ABOUT WHAT TRUMP THINKS OF HIM

‘I’m sick of stupid’: from excoriating Noem to breaking with Trump, Thom Tillis goes for fiery final act in Congress

The Republican senator from North Carolina will not seek re-election after Trump threatened to primary him

 

By Chris Stein

 

The Guardian

Mar 16, 2026

 

 

Thom Tillis, the senior Republican senator from North Carolina.

 

In the last US Senate hearing before Kristi Noem’s ouster, some of the fiercest criticism the homeland security secretary received came not from outraged Democrats, but from an ally of Donald Trump.

“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms Noem, disaster,” said Thom Tillis, the senior Republican senator from North Carolina, at the outset of a 10-minute skewering of the secretary he dubbed a “performance evaluation”.

Tillis has become known in Congress for giving people and policies he does not like such treatment in recent months, after he achieved something rare for Republicans: freedom from worrying about what Trump thinks of him.

After Tillis broke with the president on his marquee spending bill in 2025, Trump threatened to back a primary challenger to Tillis, and the senator quickly announced he would not seek re-election. Since then, he has adopted the persona of the Senate GOP’s internal critic, taking public issue with poor choices made by the Trump administration, though never the president himself.

“I’ve joked a number of times with people that say: ‘Well, you’re being more outspoken now that you’re not running.’ I use the line: ‘No shit, Sherlock,’” Tillis said.

“When I disagree, I disagree. Now I just have fewer constraints on the wordsmithing I have to do before I say something. That’s the reality of it.”

Tillis’s denunciations of administration officials he thinks should be fired and policies that should be dropped have put him firmly in the Senate’s small camp of Republican dissenters in recent months, alongside Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins.

He called for Noem’s resignation after immigration agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, then took her to task when she appeared before the judiciary committee on which he sits, just before Trump fired her. Tillis has been similarly critical of Stephen Miller, the powerful White House aide and architect of the president’s mass deportation campaign, and continues to block the nomination of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, because he objects to the justice department investigating the central bank’s current chair, Jerome Powell.

It’s all music to the ears of Senate Democrats, who are hoping to wield voter disenchantment with Trump to retake the chamber’s majority in the November midterm elections, and must win Tillis’s seat in North Carolina to be successful. But Tillis, a 65-year-old with a southern drawl, cropped gray hair and a fondness for bolo ties, has made clear that the point is to help Trump – not the opposition.

“I decided, by just making the decision not to run for re-election, I can speak truth to a president that I hope goes down in history as the most successful Republican president in the history of this country,” Tillis said on the Senate floor in January.

 

Senators Thom Tillis (left) and Adam Schiff on Capitol Hill on 9 December 2025 in Washington DC. 

 

“He has that potential, if he starts to recognize advice that he’s getting that I think is bad advice and won’t age well.”

It’s a tough needle to thread in a Republican party where allegiance to Trump is mandatory to succeed, and the threat of presidential retaliation hangs over those who speak out. In interviews, advisers to the senator and observers of his career say a unique convergence of political factors has opened the way for Tillis to spend his final months in the Senate disagreeing, with little concern for the consequences.

“Get focused on fixing the problems – that’s always been Thom Tillis’s mantra,” said Paul Shumaker, his longtime political adviser. “He’s now able to be more vocal about it. He’s able to be more vocal about it because he doesn’t have to worry about the dynamics.

A former management consultant who worked for IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tillis got his first taste of politics advocating for construction of a bicycle path in the Charlotte suburbs. He served on his town’s board of commissioners, then won election to the state house of representatives in 2006.

As the 2010 election neared, Tillis, then the minority whip, set his sights on an audacious goal: taking back control of the chamber from Democrats who had lost the majority only rarely in the prior century. He approached the problem like the consultant he once was, recalls Jordan Shaw, a former longtime aide to Tillis who is now a Republican strategist.

“The tool that he used was an Excel spreadsheet and a PowerPoint presentation, where he took candidates and donors through a very detailed data analysis he had done on each district and each candidate and each member and how much it would cost to take back the house,” Shaw said. “And he was right.”

A red wave crashed across the country that year, as voters turned on Barack Obama’s administration just two years after they swept him into the White House. In North Carolina, the Republican party won large majorities in the state house and senate, and Tillis became house speaker the following year. He brought the same data-driven approach to managing the legislature, debuting a coding system for bills that assigned them red, yellow or green labels based on their level of priority, and making staff and lawmakers wear wristbands that read “jobs and economy” to remind them of their priorities. If anyone was off message, Shaw recalled, he would tell staff to snap the bands against their wrists.

 

Thom Tillis speaks to a reporter before a weekly Republican policy lunch at the US Capitol in Washington DC on 3 June 2025. 

 

But North Carolina Republicans did not confine their legislating to those two areas. Under Tillis, the party’s lawmakers passed a voter ID law that was at the time among the most restrictive in the country, among a host of reforms to voting that made it harder to cast ballots. They cut funding for education, tightened access to abortions, refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and redrew federal and state legislative district lines to cement the GOP’s hold on the legislature, which it still controls to this day.

“The fact of the matter is that he was the speaker of the state legislature at a time when North Carolina took a hard-right turn, became this sort of laboratory of conservative experimentation, broke from decades of bipartisan consensus, and … that’s still the central theme of our politics in the state today,” said Asher Hildebrand, a former Democratic congressional aide and campaign staffer for Obama who now teaches public policy at Duke University.

In 2014, Tillis challenged the state’s Democratic senator Kay Hagan, who was first elected in 2008, when Obama carried the state. On election night, Shumaker recalls telling Tillis that despite expectations in the press that Hagan would win, the data showed that he had the edge.

“You’re a data guy, I’m a data guy. Give me one speech, make it a victory speech,” Shumaker recalls Tillis saying to him. Having no concession speech ready was a risk, but it worked out: Tillis narrowly beat Hagan, and North Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since.

Despite the conservative policies he pursued in the state legislature, Tillis gained a reputation as one of the more moderate members of the Republican conference in the US Senate, especially as the Trump era wound on and the party shifted further right.

 

Tillis during a hearing with then-secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem in Washington DC on 3 March 2026. 

 

It didn’t always work out. In 2019, he opposed Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall along the southern border, which would have diverted millions of dollars from construction projects on North Carolina military bases, then reversed himself weeks later.

Re-elected in 2020 after what was then one of the most expensive Senate races in US history, Tillis gained a reputation under Joe Biden as a Republican whom Democrats could work with. Despite being a major proponent of a 2012 constitutional amendment in North Carolina that banned same-sex marriage, he voted for the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which protected those same rights nationwide, a compromise bill to address gun violence and the Democratic president’s $1tn infrastructure bill. In 2023, the North Carolina GOP censured him for those votes.

How deep Tillis’s rebellious streak ran was not obvious at the outset of Trump’s second term. The senator supported all of his cabinet nominees, and only objected when the president tried to appoint Ed Martin, a defender of the January 6 insurrection, to lead the US attorney’s office in Washington DC.

But it was later that year, as the Senate was considering the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s proposal to cut taxes while funding mass deportations and other administration priorities, that Tillis made his stand. To partially offset the bill’s costs, Republicans proposed historic cuts to Medicaid, which the senator announced he could not support.

 

Tillis with Donald Trump during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 2 March 2020. 

 

On Truth Social, Trump quickly accused him of speaking out “in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult re-election”, then insulted him: “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!” The day after he came out against the bill, Tillis announced he would not seek a third term.

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there any more, guys?” an exasperated Tillis later said on the Senate floor.

Reflecting on how his retirement took place, Tillis said it was Trump’s accusation of grandstanding that he could not tolerate.

“That comment alone was just like: I’m not gonna deal with this stuff,” he said. “But to be frank, and the president and I’ve talked about this, I was already moving that direction anyway. It just seemed like the time was right, given our differences.”

The closing lines of his retirement statement offered a hint of how he would spend his final year and a half in office: “I look forward to solely focusing on producing meaningful results without the distraction of raising money or campaigning for another election. I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability.”

The sort of umpiring the senator had in mind became clear in the months that followed. A member of the Senate banking committee, Tillis said he would not consider any replacement for the Fed governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump tried to fire. Though Tillis has spoken approvingly of Warsh, he is holding up his nomination until the justice department ends its inquiry into Powell, a Republican Trump appointed during his first term, and whom Biden nominated for a second term.

And he has grown outright vitriolic about Miller and Noem, accusing them of providing the sort of “bad advice” that leads Trump astray. For Miller, the outrage was Greenland and comments that the White House deputy chief of staff made that the autonomous territory of Denmark should “obviously” be part of the US.

 

Tillis and the Democratic senator Chris Coons lay wreaths at the memorial for Denmark’s international efforts after 1948, at Kastellet in Copenhagen on 17 January 2026. 

 

“That’s stupid, too. And I’m sick of stupid,” he declared at the end of a lengthy floor speech in which he condemned Miller’s comment as both “absurd” and insulting to a Nato ally whose soldiers died alongside Americans in Afghanistan. More recently, he told CNN Miller was a “big problem” for the administration, and should be fired.

When Noem appeared before the Senate judiciary committee earlier this month, his criticism ranged not just from her handling of immigration enforcement – which in Tillis’s view had resulted in the wrongful arrests of too many US citizens – but also her handling of recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina.

Perhaps, the senator wondered, her decision to kill a dog and goat, then write about it in her memoir, was a harbinger of the poor judgment she would exhibit as homeland security secretary.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices,” Tillis said.

“At that same lunch hour, you killed a goat. You killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly. You are a farmer! You don’t castrate a goat; they behave badly. You should have probably done that before, but my point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.”

Though his dissent from the administration has limits – Tillis, for instance, did not back any of the war powers resolutions seeking to terminate US hostilities with Iran or Venezuela – the outspokenness has earned him new respect from across the aisle.

“I am not at all surprised that he’s speaking out forcefully,” said the Democratic senator Chris Coons, who co-chairs the Senate human rights caucus with Tillis and has worked with him on intellectual property issues.

“When he really went after Secretary Noem, it was clear that the foundation of it was his annoyance at her failure to deliver for the people of North Carolina.”

Tillis acknowledged that data was a driver of his recent discontent, particularly the evidence it provides that some of Trump’s policies are unpopular enough to risk blowing back on vulnerable Republicans. His turning on Noem came in tandem with a decline in Trump’s approval ratings on immigration, while the idea of seizing Greenland and the administration’s tariffs, which he also criticizes, are similarly unpopular.

“We’ve got to focus on the people’s concerns about items on the agenda right now that I think are just not resonating in some of these purple states. It’s that simple,” he said. “It’s a data thing to me. This is not an ideological thing.”

It may also be reflective of how his state has changed since Republicans ran rampant over Democrats 16 years ago. Though no Democratic presidential or Senate candidate has won in North Carolina since 2008, it remains a swing state of fast-growing suburbs filled with college-educated voters who may lean right on economic issues but have little interest in conservative social stances, said Morgan Jackson, a top Democratic strategist in the state.

 

Tillis at the ‘bipawtisan Doggi Gras’ in Washington DC on 25 February 2026. The ‘pawrade’ will be the last of its kind, as Tillis will retire at the end of 2026.  

 

“I think Tillis has moved away from culture issues largely for political expediency, not to offend those suburban voters that are growing rapidly in the state,” said Jackson, who has advised Roy Cooper, the former governor running for Senate.

Had Tillis pursued re-election, he may have had problems with North Carolina’s Trump-supporting base. But Shumaker said he still would have been as outspoken as he is today, because his path to victory runs through the state’s large volume of unaffiliated voters.

“We had to have separation on certain issues, or you’re not going to win in North Carolina. That’s the dynamics of winning in North Carolina. So he is where he’s always been,” Shumaker said.

Cooper’s race against the former Republican national committee chair Michael Whatley will be one of the most hard-fought Senate contests of the year, in conditions that may be the most favorable North Carolina Democrats have experienced since Obama was first elected. But though Tillis has said his goal is to see Republicans elected in swing states, Jackson said his statements could harm Whatley’s campaign, which has thus far focused on his allegiance to Trump and the expected benefits of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“It sort of puts a D and an R on the same side against Whatley, and it undermines Whatley’s credibility when he’s out there championing what an amazing bill that was,” Jackson said.

As for what Tillis will say next, there’s no telling. One thing about him is certain: you will not see his name on a ballot again.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied with a laugh, when asked whether he was truly done with federal elected office. “100%.”