“A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’” the great French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand is supposed to have said. “A diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Whether Talleyrand actually said it hardly matters. The spirit is right: Diplomacy, like politics, is the art of the possible.

Put another way, diplomacy is the art of getting what you want without needlessly making it impossible for the other side to give it to you.

For the first time in decades, an American secretary of state has a plausible path to the pantheon.

By that standard, the United States has produced few truly great diplomatic tenures in the past half-century. There have been capable secretaries of state and important agreements, but remarkably few achievements with the durability of the great settlements of earlier eras.

Madeleine Albright's tenure remains inseparable from NATO expansion and the deterioration of relations with post-Soviet Russia. Colin Powell's is shadowed by his 2003 presentation at the United Nations and the Iraq War. Condoleezza Rice brought competence, but no settlement that transformed America's strategic position.

Hillary Clinton's much-advertised “reset” with Russia aged badly. John Kerry helped produce the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear deal, both of which were abandoned by the first Trump administration. Rex Tillerson never found his footing. Mike Pompeo was more effective, but his major diplomatic projects did not fundamentally reorder America's position abroad.

Antony Blinken helped oversee AUKUS with Britain and Australia, an important strategic arrangement, though more an extension and deepening of existing alignments than a new diplomatic architecture.

America's earlier history offers a much higher bar. Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, William Seward, Hamilton Fish, John Hay, George Marshall, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger helped shape American diplomacy in ways that outlasted the administrations they served.

Their work changed not merely the headlines of the day but America's long-term position in the world.

A few years ago, almost no one would have guessed that Marco Rubio might be the next American diplomat with a plausible claim to join that company.

When Trump nominated Rubio for secretary of state, commentators wondered whether he would moderate the president's more unpredictable foreign-policy instincts. Old Republican voices, sidelined after Trump's rise, and left-leaning academics alike expected friction between Trump and a man long identified with the GOP's interventionist wing.

That prediction has not held up.

The senator Trump mocked became his best diplomat Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

On his second day in office, Rubio told State Department personnel that their mission was to ensure American foreign policy remained centered on the national interest: whatever makes the country “stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”

He added that conflict would sometimes be unavoidable, but never at the expense of national security, the national interest, or America's core values.

The language signaled a break from the old habit of treating international approval as an end in itself.

That shift can be dismissed as political adaptation. It is also evidence that Rubio has absorbed something larger: The pre-Trump Republican foreign policy consensus is gone, and a new one is being built in its place.

At the Munich Security Conference this year, Rubio delivered a broadside against unfettered free trade, deindustrialization, mass migration, and an international order detached from the interests and identities of the nations expected to sustain it.

He also spoke explicitly about the shared language, religion, culture, and ancestry connecting Europe and America — language difficult to imagine from a secretary of state only a few years ago.

The record is becoming more substantial.

In 2025, Rubio played an important role as NATO members agreed to a new 5% defense spending commitment by 2035. He has kept open the possibility of negotiations with Iran, even amid anger from some Israelis over the administration's approach.

He has repeatedly pursued efforts to bring Ukraine and Russia toward negotiations after years in which diplomacy between the two sides largely stagnated.

And on Venezuela, Rubio has been credited as a central figure in the administration's campaign against Nicolás Maduro, a dramatic reversal in U.S.-Venezuela relations.

On Cuba, Rubio has paired pressure with calls for political change and dialogue, while also speaking directly to the Cuban people.

Rubio has therefore become something unusual: a secretary of state who is not merely influential inside the administration but increasingly visible to the public.

In 2026, he has at times seemed to eclipse nearly every other Cabinet official in political stature. His popularity among Republican voters is especially striking for a secretary of state, an office that usually produces prestige without a mass constituency.

Barely 18 months into his tenure, that does not yet make Rubio a great secretary of state. It does make the possibility serious.

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The unanswered questions are enormous: Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Ukraine, North Korea, and the Ortega regime's recent actions in Nicaragua could all complicate or diminish his record.

Durability is the test. A diplomatic achievement that vanishes with the next administration is not much of an achievement at all.

But Rubio has already helped push NATO toward higher defense commitments, pursued talks over Ukraine, increased pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, and strengthened Washington's effort to counter Chinese influence around the Panama Canal.

If those gains endure — and if he can turn today's openings into settlements that survive Trump — Rubio's legacy will look very different from that of the secretaries of state who preceded him.

The pantheon is not his yet. But for the first time in decades, an American secretary of state has a plausible path to it.

And why stop there?

Washington still has not learned the North Korea lesson

Jimmy Carter did more damage to American foreign policy in one weekend than most diplomats manage in a career.

In June 1994, President Bill Clinton sent Carter (no relation) to Pyongyang as a private citizen, with no authority to negotiate or speak for the U.S. government. Two days later, Carter cut a deal anyway. Then he called CNN before he called the White House. Clinton learned that his own North Korea policy had changed by watching television.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers reach the obvious conclusion.

That episode, recounted on page 34 of Frederick H. Fleitz’s new book, "North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office," makes up the best two pages in the book. It also contains the clearest explanation of why the book deserves attention.

Fleitz spent more than two decades inside the machinery of American national security policy — at the CIA, State Department, House Intelligence Committee, and National Security Council. He was in the room, or close enough to it, for much of what he describes. This is not a book assembled from newspaper clippings. Fleitz names names, places officials on opposing sides of consequential fights, and lets the record judge them.

The Carter episode establishes the pattern Fleitz traces across three decades. North Korea manufactures a crisis. Washington sends someone to talk. Pyongyang extracts a concession. The concession is celebrated as a “breakthrough.” North Korea breaks the agreement once the cameras leave. Then the cycle begins again.

Why did it continue under presidents of both parties? Because it worked.

Fleitz does not spare the Clinton administration. He describes the 1994 Agreed Framework — the deal Carter set in motion — as a bad bargain from the start. The administration called it a “framework” rather than an “agreement,” he argues, to avoid the Senate ratification a treaty would have required. Pyongyang received two light-water reactors and years of fuel oil. Washington received a promise to surrender spent fuel rods that never arrived.

The Bush years receive the same treatment. Fleitz recounts envoy Chris Hill dismissing intelligence about North Korea’s secret uranium-enrichment program. Dick Cheney later told journalist James Rosen that Hill was “deceitful, perfectly prepared to lie to the president.” Hill’s reply — "I’m not Richard Nixon" — is the kind of detail that makes an insider’s account worth reading.

Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Fleitz is writing about policy, but he understands that policy is made by people with ambitions, loyalties, grudges, and blind spots. His book is not a dry institutional history. It is a fight among real officials over real consequences.

The 2007 destruction of Syria’s North Korean-built reactor at al-Kibar receives similarly careful treatment. Fleitz reports that the Bush administration tried to keep Israel’s strike hidden from Congress — a detail that reveals as much about Washington’s instinct for secrecy as it does about North Korea’s proliferation network.

The Trump chapters give the book its greatest energy because Fleitz supports his case with numbers rather than adjectives. North Korea tested no missiles in 2018, only a handful of short-range missiles in 2019, and no intercontinental ballistic missiles until 2022. That year, under President Joe Biden, North Korea set a single-year record of roughly 165 missile launches.

Fleitz also details the February 2018 sanctions package, the toughest imposed on Pyongyang to that point, and Trump’s warning that "phase two" could become "very, very rough" if sanctions failed. Whatever one thinks of the rhetoric, it reads as the voice of a president wielding leverage rather than asking politely for cooperation.

Fleitz states his central conclusion plainly: North Korea respects strength and exploits weakness.

In his telling, every bad deal in the book was struck when an American president negotiated from a position of distraction, exhaustion, or political vulnerability: the 1994 Agreed Framework under Clinton, the near-deal at the end of George W. Bush’s second term, the Iran nuclear agreement under Barack Obama, and a reported secret arrangement with Iran under Biden.

The one moment Pyongyang backed off and came to the table, Fleitz argues, came in 2018, when the regime confronted a president threatening its destruction rather than pleading for another agreement.

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That thesis will invite argument, as it should. Trump did not eliminate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, and the regime remains dangerous. But Fleitz makes a persuasive case that pressure created negotiating space while accommodation repeatedly rewarded bad behavior.

The lesson extends beyond North Korea. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are drawing closer. Washington still faces the temptation to mistake talks for progress, signatures for compliance, and diplomatic activity for strategic success.

For that reason, "North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office" is not merely a history of failed negotiations. It is a warning about a pattern that American policymakers keep repeating.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers examine the evidence and reach the obvious conclusion. Weakness does not moderate regimes such as North Korea. It teaches them what they can take next.

Assimilate or hit the brakes

Immigration remains one of the defining questions of American politics because it forces a nation to answer fundamental questions about itself. Who belongs, who may enter, and what obligations do newcomers assume?

America is undeniably a nation shaped by immigrants. Yet acknowledging that history does not require abandoning the principles that made immigration successful in the first place. The United States became a destination because those who came entered a constitutional republic with laws, institutions, and a distinct civic culture.

The first obligation of any immigration system is control of the border. Enforcement cannot depend upon which political party occupies the White House.

A serious immigration policy begins with a simple proposition: Immigration should strengthen the country.

America faces demographic challenges, an aging population, and increasing pressure on entitlement programs. Productive immigrants who enter legally, work, pay taxes, and contribute to economic growth can help ease those burdens.

At the same time, immigration policy exists primarily to benefit American citizens, not employers seeking cheaper labor. Large inflows of low-skill labor can place downward pressure on wages and strain public resources.

America is not simply an economy or a geographic territory. It is a constitutional nation built upon individual liberty, equal justice under law, religious freedom, private property, free speech, and limited government.

Recent elections in several American communities have also highlighted another reality often ignored in immigration debates. Immigration does not merely affect labor markets or public finances. Over time, it reshapes the electorate itself.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The growing political influence of Muslim candidates in some local and state elections demonstrates how demographic change eventually becomes political change. In a constitutional republic, every citizen possesses the same right to vote, participate, and seek office regardless of religion. The relevant question is not faith, but whether elected officials support equal rights, constitutional government, and the civic norms that hold a diverse nation together.

The first obligation of any immigration system is control of the border. Enforcement cannot depend upon which political party occupies the White House.

Immigration succeeds when it serves the national interest. America should welcome those who enter legally, contribute productively, respect the Constitution, and seek to become part of the American nation.

Liberals in MAGA clothing run covert campaign against Trump-backed candidate

A green energy political action committee has spent over $700,000 on faux-MAGA ads attacking Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) to boost primary challenger Charlie Hatcher.

“Charlie Hatcher is an America First conservative who gets things done,” Invest in Tomorrow’s advertisement states. “Pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump, Charlie Hatcher is the trusted conservative leader we need.”

'If you’re an extremist on American energy, you’re on our target list.’

Despite what the ad’s content may suggest, Invest in Tomorrow isn’t a conservative organization. The PAC is funded by Democratic donors and former Obama-Biden officials aiming to punish politicians who oppose green energy subsidies.

“As the Trump-endorsed candidate in this race, I am being targeted by left-wing liberals from California because I am one of President Trump’s closest allies,” Ogles told Blaze News when reached for comment. “More than $1 million is flowing to my opponent from Gavin Newsom’s top donors and former Biden officials.”

Trump endorsed Ogles in October.

Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen donated $6 million to the PAC between February and June 2026, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. Larsen previously donated $10 million in crypto to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. The San Francisco tycoon is worth nearly $13 billion.

“I’m a big believer in Gavin,” Larsen told Politico in May. “His instincts are incredible. It’s super early, but we’re already supporting him in any way we can.”

Paul Harris/Getty Images

CleanChoice Energy CEO Tom Matzzie chairs the PAC and contributed $50,000 in February. “If you’re an extremist on American energy, you’re on our target list,” Matzzie told Punchbowl News.

Despite claiming not to know Hatcher’s views on green energy, Matzzie said the PAC wants to “communicate a message to the other members of Congress that if you take these extreme positions, the industry is watching.”

Although Matzzie told Punchbowl the PAC aims to avoid being “sucked into those partisan games,” he’s pedigreed in left-wing politics. Matzzie previously worked for the Democratic National Committee, AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, and John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Former Biden Department of Energy Loan Programs Office Executive Director Jigar Shah donated $50,000 to Invest in Tomorrow in March 2026. His Obama-era predecessors Mark McCall and Peter Davidson donated $200,000 and $26,525 respectively. McCall is currently managing director at green private equity firm Lime Rock New Energy, while Davidson is CEO of asset management company Aligned Climate Capital.

Ogles and Hatcher are running in Tennessee's newly redrawn 5th District. Though solidly Republican, nearly 83% of voters were previously in a different district and are new to Ogles, according to the Tennessean.

Formerly the Tennessee commissioner of agriculture, Hatcher received Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's endorsement on July 16.

Invest in Tomorrow also campaigned against Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) during his primary campaign for Texas attorney general. The PAC ran advertisements accusing Roy of being insufficiently MAGA. Roy ultimately lost to state Sen. Mayes Middleton.

"As leaders within the clean energy industry, ITC PAC is proud of our role in ending Chip Roy's political career, investing nearly $1.5 million to reach GOP voters where they are — including on conservative cable, streaming sites like Rumble, and on MAGA social media — to remind them that Chip Roy betrayed their leader," Invest in Tomorrow posted on X in May after Roy's loss.

The House Freedom Caucus Fund has spent over $560,000 to defend Ogles against Invest in Tomorrow's campaign, according to a spokesperson.

“This desperate attempt to SILENCE me is futile,” Ogles told Blaze News. “I will not be silent, and I will never stop fighting to put America First.”

Chris Larsen, Jigar Shah, Peter Davidson, Tom Mattzie, and Charlie Hatcher did not respond to requests for comment. Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC, Aligned Climate Capital, and CleanChoice Energy also did not respond for comment.

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The path to America-first AI

America’s AI debate is a hot mess. Policymakers, technologists, investors, and activists cannot agree on the destination, the strategy, the acceptable costs, or even what “winning” the artificial intelligence race means.

That confusion shuts ordinary Americans out of a debate that will shape their jobs, businesses, institutions, and way of life. Yet an America-first AI regime cannot be designed only by Washington policymakers, Silicon Valley moguls, or a priesthood of engineers. It must serve the people who build businesses, sign paychecks, raise families, and sustain the country.

America’s technological order should be built around productive citizens rather than a handful of companies pursuing a woo-woo race to turn the planet into a cyber-utopia.

My Independence Day forecast looks more accurate now than it did when I wrote it: No single political authority controls America’s technological future, and no shared moral authority guides it. We still have the Declaration, the Constitution, federalism, and one another. Almost everything else remains unsettled.

The Kimi shock

Since July 4, factional warfare among the AI elite has intensified after the release of Kimi, a Chinese open-source model that reportedly outperformed leading American closed-source systems on important benchmarks.

Kimi did not emerge from an isolated Chinese laboratory. Its engineers trained it by distilling capabilities from American proprietary models — the very systems OpenAI, Anthropic, and their allies argue must remain closed to preserve America’s lead.

The result presents a serious problem. America has poured immense financial, scientific, and political capital into closed frontier labs. If Chinese developers can cheaply reproduce much of their practical value, Washington faces a nightmarish choice: either cede global AI leadership and control to Beijing or allow the pursuit of AI dominance to transform our form of government into something we may not recognize as “American.”

America’s historic model combines private innovation, free markets, and strategic federal investment. That model has supported both prosperity and national power. But if massive collaboration between government and closed-source hyperscalers cannot sustain an AI edge, Americans deserve a debate about what comes next — not a panic-driven transfer of more power and money to the same institutions.

How can America face the future if its greatest strategic advantage has become a liability? Without public agreement on what should replace the old model — or even what kind of country a “refounded” United States should be — what can we do next?

Moor Studio/iStock/Getty Images

Three rival factions

Right now, among the AI elite, three factions have emerged in response to this problem.

The first faction argues that Kimi changes less than it appears. Chinese engineers did not surpass American frontier models across the board; they optimized around the most expensive benchmarks and competed where open systems could win. Closed labs can adjust, Washington can revise its strategy, and American dominance can survive.

That may be partly right. Frontier labs still possess enormous resources, talent, and political support. They will not disappear simply because open models become more useful.

The second faction believes such economic and political concerns will soon become obsolete. Its members expect recursively self-improving artificial superintelligence to transform or absorb human civilization. Their task, as they see it, is to accelerate the transition and ensure that it occurs under acceptable management. If done right, we would enter a new age that would be pleasurable beyond comprehension.

The test of an America-first AI policy is whether advanced technology strengthens the constitutional nation and the people who give it life.

The left-coded version appears in Effective Altruism. The right-coded version insists that America, not China, must command the coming superintelligence. Both treat maximum acceleration as a moral imperative. From that perspective, open-source AI is dangerous because it disperses capability, slows the drive toward a single frontier breakthrough, and weakens the control of the institutions leading the race.

The third faction rejects the bargain behind closed-source supremacy. Its argument is that hyperscalers are frightening Americans into financing their rise as private governors of technological progress. The companies gain ungodly wealth and authority; Washington gains the hope of planetary AI dominance; citizens inherit the cost and the risk.

Kimi strengthens that argument because it competed by optimizing for what businesses actually need: efficient computing, useful workflows, enterprise deployment, and practical web applications. Open models can undercut closed systems precisely where American economic life is strongest — decentralized experimentation by workers, entrepreneurs, and firms.

This faction therefore urges America to embrace and encourage domestic open-source AI. The point is not that every model must be public or that frontier capabilities require no safeguards. It is that America’s technological order should be built around productive citizens rather than a handful of companies pursuing a woo-woo race to turn the planet into a cyber-utopia.

Burcu Demir/iStock/Getty Images

The real America-first path

Of the three positions, the third offers the clearest route to America-first AI because it begins with the right political subject: the American people. Technology should enlarge their capacity to create, compete, govern themselves, and live well. They should not be treated as raw material for a government-corporate project aimed at controlling the future.

The first faction is also correct that closed frontier labs will remain part of the system. Some Americans genuinely want to invest heavily in the most powerful possible models. The federal government also believes its military, financial, and geopolitical position may depend on sovereign access to frontier AI.

That belief creates the greatest danger.

Washington may conclude that preserving its global dominance requires technological control beyond civilian resistance. If officials decide they must choose between the survival of the federal regime and the survival of America’s constitutional order, “national security” will become the justification for hoarding data, compute, models, and authority on a scale the country has never seen.

China would then win without beating America at the frontier. By flooding the world with useful, inexpensive, business-friendly open models, Beijing could tempt Washington into becoming more centralized, secretive, and coercive — less recognizably American.

America should refuse that trap. It should protect genuinely dangerous capabilities, preserve a competitive frontier sector, and make room for open models that empower American businesses and citizens. The test of an America-first AI policy is not whether it produces the most powerful machine at any cost. The test is whether advanced technology strengthens the constitutional nation and the people who give it life.

If our AI strategy requires America to stop being America, China has already won.

‘Birthright senatorship’ betrays America First

A few weeks ago, Americans celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — our formal rejection of hereditary rule and political power by birthright.

Now South Carolina Republicans are being asked to embrace precisely that principle in a Senate primary.

South Carolina does not need another half-century of political inheritance. It needs a genuine changing of the guard.

After initially saying Darline Graham Nordone would hold her late brother Lindsey Graham’s U.S. Senate seat only temporarily while the state prepared for a special election, President Trump encouraged her to seek a full six-year term. She agreed.

This candidacy began with a promise that proved disposable. A lie. Nothing about it has improved since.

Nordone’s central qualification is obvious: She is Lindsey Graham’s sister. Her campaign amounts to “birthright senatorship” — an inherited claim on public office dressed up as party unity.

America First voters were promised an assault on the swamp: entrenched power, donor networks, insider dealing, and political advancement based on access rather than merit. They were not promised a new hereditary class with Senate seats passed from one family member to another.

To borrow Graham’s own words from the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight, this is a sham, and South Carolinians should see through the charade.

Graham’s speech during that battle was one of his finest moments in the Senate. It may have helped save Kavanaugh’s nomination. It did not create a family title to the office Graham held.

His sister is not entitled to inherit his seat because he died in office.

The proposed Graham dynasty is especially offensive because this seat has already been dominated by two men since 1956: Strom Thurmond and Lindsey Graham. South Carolina does not need another half-century of political inheritance. It needs a genuine changing of the guard.

Most voters cannot leave their children a lucrative career, much less a seat in the United States Senate. Public office is not family property. It belongs to the people, who are supposed to choose among candidates with records, ideas, and qualifications of their own.

Nordone has no meaningful public record in politics or policy that would justify elevation to one of the nation’s most powerful offices. What fills that void instead is support for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; a career inside federally subsidized state bureaucracy; and an endorsement from Rep. Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat whose support revived Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Blaze Media Illustration

None of that recommends her to voters who were told they were dismantling the old order.

For years, South Carolina politics has been dominated by the Haley-Graham cocktail circuit: polished Republicans who chased dragons abroad while much of their state declined beyond the comfortable enclaves of Charleston and Columbia.

Graham’s death was tragic. His foreign-policy views were often badly out of step with America First voters, but no decent person wished for his sudden passing. He deserves mourning and respect.

His sister does not deserve a coronation.

The Republican Party should be especially wary of this arrangement because its voters have spent a decade rebelling against political dynasties. They rejected the Bushes, resisted the Clintons, and rallied behind Trump in part because he attacked a system in which the right surname, donor list, or social circle mattered more than accountability.

A Truth Social post should not be enough to transform blood relation into political legitimacy. Neither should the swift organization of party officials, donors, and consultants eager to preserve their access.

If Nordone wants the seat, she should earn it on the strength of her own record and convictions. So far, she has offered neither. Her campaign asks voters to treat kinship as qualification and temporary appointment as entitlement.

That is the political world America First was supposed to destroy.

South Carolina Republicans should refuse to build a Graham dynasty in the name of draining the swamp. They should reject birthright senatorship and choose a senator rather than accept an heir.

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The path to America-first AI

The Kimi shock

Three rival factions

The real America-first path

‘Birthright senatorship’ betrays America First

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China Meddling? Bring In More Students!

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