Before relinquishing power in January, President Joe Biden may turn America's proxy war with Russia into a direct nuclear conflict.
Elements of the Biden administration, various lawmakers from both major parties, Ukrainian officials, and others appear convinced that attacks on Russia using American long-range missiles might put Kyiv in a better bargaining position should the Eastern nations ever sit down to negotiate an end to the war, which has lasted over 1,000 days and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Critics have suggested not only that the move might protract the war, which the majority of Ukrainians now want to end with immediate negotiations, but that it might trigger a nuclear holocaust or at the very least prevent — by design — President-elect Donald Trump from brokering peace upon taking office.
After authorizing Ukraine's use of long-range missile systems against targets in Russia — a move long resisted by U.S. officials concerned about escalation and identified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a trigger for war between Washington and Moscow — Kyiv launched six U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System missiles Tuesday morning at a weapons depot in Karachev, a Russian city 70 miles inside the country, in the Bryansk region.
'We must not fear doing more now.'
According to CNN, Russian air defenses allegedly shot down five of the ATACMS supersonic missiles, and the sixth was damaged. Pieces of the damaged missile rained down near a military facility, causing a fire but resulting in neither death nor damage.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the attempted missile strikes and suggested that these and subsequent long-range missile strikes would be interpreted as U.S. military actions.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said in a statement, "The [Russian] president mentioned this several times. If long-range missiles are going to be applied from Ukraine into Russian territory, it will also mean that they are operated by American experts, military experts, and we will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and will react accordingly."
In his Tuesday address to the European Parliament, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, "We must not fear doing more now."
"While some European leaders think about, you know, some elections or something like this at Ukraine's expense, Putin is focused on winning this war. He will not stop on his own. The more time he has, the worse the conditions become," said Zelenskyy.
The Institute for the Study of War indicated that as of June, Putin had captured roughly one-fifth of Ukraine, with Russian forces occupying 75% of the total area of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts.
"Today is the best moment to push Russia harder, and it's clear without certain key factors Russia will lack real motivation to engage in meaningful negotiation," added Zelenskyy.
Hours later, Russia reportedly conducted missile strikes on Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, and Sumy, as well as drone attacks inside Ukraine.
The U.S. embassy in Kyiv announced Wednesday morning that it was shutting its doors, citing the potential of a "significant air attack."
Russian state media indicated that Moscow revised its nuclear doctrine this week in hopes of "making conventional warfare unachievable," qualifying attacks by a non-nuclear state in conjunction with the support of a nuclear state as a joint attack, satisfying the need for for nuclear deterrence.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Federation's security council, noted on X, "Russia's new nuclear doctrine means NATO missiles fired against our country could be deemed an attack by the bloc on Russia. Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kiev and key NATO facilities, wherever they're located. That means World War III."
Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled that he would also respond with nukes to conventional attacks on Russia or Belarus. Russia has over 5,000 nuclear warheads and boasts a supersonic missile with a range of 625 miles.
Sergey Naryshkin, director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, claimed that the West realizes "the revisions Putin outlined have largely undermined the attempts by the United States and NATO to achieve a strategic defeat of our nation. Furthermore, the expanded criteria for using nuclear weapons essentially rule out the possibility of defeating the Russian Armed Forces on the battlefield."
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told the Associated Press, "I'm unfortunately not surprised by the comments the Kremlin has made around the publication of this new, revised document," adding that Russia has routinely sought to "coerce and intimidate both Ukraine and other countries around the world through irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and behavior."
The U.K. and other NATO members condemned the "irresponsible rhetoric" and reiterated their support for Ukraine.
The Biden administration had a policy update of its own.
Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Washington Post reported that Biden authorized the provision of antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine.
"When they're used in concert with the other munitions that we already are providing Ukraine, the intent is that they will contribute to a more effective defense," said one of the officials.
While the U.S. is not one of the 164 parties to the Ottawa Convention, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, Biden reportedly resurrected an Obama-era policy in 2022 banning the transfer and use of American antipersonnel land minds outside Korea.
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck suggested that the Biden administration is painting Russian President Vladimir Putin "into a corner."
"A man who is a bloodthirsty killer — you don't keep backing him into a corner, or what happens? Eventually he says, 'I'll have absolutely no credibility' [with] his people who have just been bombed with U.S. missiles, which he just said two days ago will be an act of war," said Beck. "We have entered a moment of madness. What Joe Biden did is impeachable."
'Americans do not want World War III.'
A day prior to the ATACMS strikes, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) insisted that Biden had committed "an unconstitutional Act of War" that qualified as an impeachable offense.
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Texas Rep. Keith Self (R) penned a letter to Biden Tuesday, challenging his decision to authorize Ukraine's use of ATACMS against Russia.
While Self suggested the missile systems might have proved strategically useful earlier in the conflict, at this stage in the war, their use is "counter-productive to President-elect Donald J. Trump's stated goal towards a negotiated peace."
'This is the faceless power of failing experts in action.'
"If this desperate move by your administration represents an attempt by deep-state operatives to hamstring the incoming Trump presidency, it's a dangerous miscalculation," wrote Self. "I am very concerned that this miscalculation could have catastrophic results. Americans do not want World War III."
"January 20 can't get here fast enough," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "It looks like a green light for escalation on the part of Ukraine. ... What would happen if Russia would launch and retaliate missiles into the territory of a NATO member? Then our treaty obligations would be triggered. Then we're talking about a full-scale war."
Hawley noted further that the man who authorized the use of the long-range missiles against a nuclear power was considered too decrepit by his own party to stay in the presidential race earlier this year.
Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson stressed that "what is happening in regard to Russia and Ukraine while we have no functional President is one of the last, most reckless and outrageous acts from the supposed 'adults in the room' who have consistently driven our nation towards the cliff the last four disastrous years."
"This is not 'democracy,'" continued Peterson. "This is the faceless power of failing experts in action: thwarting the will of the people in the midst of the final 'lame duck' period of an aging dementia patient of a President. This is a form of masochistic, suicidal recklessness enacted by weak men."
Peterson added on "Blaze News Tonight," "There is really something that I think that is despicable about the self-assured foreign policy expert in this country. Of all the different sectors of government experts who get degrees, foreign policy people dress themselves up in the suits and in the trappings of -isms and -istics, and, 'We know all this stuff and we have domain knowledge that you don't have.' They're consistently the most evil, dangerous, and really foolish sector of the entire government complex."
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At the core of the argument against Donald Trump lies a persistent claim that he threatens national and international norms. But breaking norms isn’t inherently bad; not all norms are good. So even if Trump challenges America’s political norms, that alone isn’t enough to disqualify his candidacy. The crucial questions are these: Which norms does he break? Are they truly norms, or are they just someone’s preferences? And if they are norms, are they good or bad?
These days, the American left complains the loudest about threats to “precious” norms. But this concern is largely performative — a superficial display of reverence. The left fundamentally hates norms. Leftists don’t reject only traditional American norms (although they do); they reject norms altogether. For them, defining anything as “normal” is a form of coercive bigotry that stifles individual autonomy, cultural diversity, and tolerance of “difference” writ large. Any serious analysis of threats to norms must acknowledge that the left has spent the past century working to demolish them.
For the sake of the nation — and for the sake of any genuine norms that remain — don’t let the normongers win.
This reveals an odd reality: Those most agitated about norm-breaking are the ones who break norms the most.
The left arrogantly assumes the right to decide which norms deserve respect. Leftists seem to believe that all the norms they disregard are bad, while the ones Trump allegedly violates are good. Curiously, their commitment to norms only appears when Trump challenges them. This selective concern for norms, paired with their hostility to traditional social standards, exposes their true motive. The left’s hand-wringing over norms is simply a rhetorical strategy to justify breaking long-standing protocols for treating current and former presidents, as well as presidential candidates.
The phenomenon of people who despise the very idea of norms lamenting that our norms are under attack has become so common in public discourse that it deserves its own term. I propose we call it “normongering.”
Pronounced aloud, normongering closely resembles “warmongering,” an adjacent concept. While a warmonger eagerly promotes war and conflict, a normonger despises norms yet stirs up political warfare and rhetorical conflict by falsely claiming that norms are under threat and in need of defense. The normonger frames his political aggression as a reluctant, defensive response to an unexpected assault, creating the misleading impression that he escalates hostilities only with regret.
The left has achieved major victories in weakening or destroying norms related to citizenship, pronoun usage, apparel, marriage, drugs, law enforcement, fitness, personal finances, elections, etiquette at meals, the workplace, sex, faith, diet, energy consumption, education, art, employment, parenting, and every other sphere of life. This unrelenting opposition to norms and normality remains a defining trait of left-wing politics. Perpetual conflict against norms and the “status quo” is its central activity.
Normongering serves as a powerful strategy for the left because it allows progressives to portray themselves as something they are not: normal people committed to defending the status quo.
Most Americans — and people in general — like norms. They seek to uphold existing norms and expect others to do the same, as norms provide a framework for public interaction, governance, and social situations. Unsurprisingly, the party that constantly calls for “fundamental transformations,” “comprehensive reforms,” and vague “change” also wages continuous war on norms. Meanwhile, leftists posture as the defenders of these norms, using this stance as a form of misdirection — an attempt to distract the public from the extensive list of norms they have already dismantled.
Do they really use appeals to the value of norms as a strategy for attacking them? Certainly. This is the defining trait of normongering, and it almost always appears as a hysterical reaction to Trump or his policies.
For instance, a long-standing norm has been to afford the president a degree of respect from both the press and citizens in positions of power. However, our media and celebrities have shattered that norm, routinely comparing Trump to Hitler. What has he done that compares to attempting world domination and the murder of 6 million Jews? In reality, nothing of the sort — except, they argue, that he threatens “our norms.”
Traditionally, impeaching a president was a last-resort measure for addressing executive misconduct. Elected officials were generally reluctant to pursue impeachment, understanding that it could lead to civil strife and divert resources from pressing governmental issues. Yet Democrats promised to impeach Trump even before his inauguration, absent any high crimes or misdemeanors. They made good on that promise, impeaching him twice. Why not? He was a threat to our norms!
The outrageous lawfare directed against Trump also reflects this norm-breaking approach. Armed agents descended on Trump’s personal residence over a dispute regarding the storage of presidential records. “No one is above the law!” declared Democrats. Yet these same individuals dismissed egregious records violations by Hillary Clinton (whom “no reasonable prosecutor” would indict) and Joe Biden (who, they argue, simply made honest mistakes due to age and forgetfulness).
This selective application of justice also extends to efforts aimed at keeping Trump’s name off the ballots in 2024. Meanwhile, a show trial in New York convicted Trump of 34 felonies, during which standard precedents and evidentiary procedures were ignored.
Americans have grown accustomed to the left’s pervasive disdain for norms, but we may now be approaching a Herculean level of normongering that could alter the nation’s future. Progressives have spent the past four years claiming, without evidence, that if Trump wins, he will become an “authoritarian dictator” who will “end our democracy” and that 2024 will be “our last election.” This rhetoric alone defies all norms of public discourse, but it could also signal a willingness to breach the most crucial norm in American politics: the peaceful and orderly transition of executive power.
If Trump secures a clear and decisive win in November, will Democrats respect the choice of the American people? Recall that in 2020, during a scenario exercise called the Transition Integrity Project, prominent Democrats discussed plans to contest the presidency — even in the event of a “clear Trump win.” After the events of recent years, we can expect they will be even more committed to opposing the outcome of a fair and free election that doesn’t align with their preferred candidate.
If Trump wins, the normongers will refuse to seat the choice of the people. If they truly believe someone they call “literally Hitler” is taking office, they won’t simply congratulate him, hold an inauguration, and wait for another election in four years. Instead, they may employ every available procedural and judicial tactic to defy the result, justifying their actions by claiming Trump’s presidency poses such a severe threat to “our democracy” that they cannot honor the outcome. Should they succeed, they would have undermined our nation’s most fundamental norm — a peaceful transition of power — by invoking an imagined veto over the will of the people.
If they get away with it, the normongers may turn out to be correct: 2024 could very well be America’s last free election. Harris and her comrades have a long list of norms they are eager to violate when they take power: expanding the Supreme Court, ending the Electoral College, granting (more) benefits to people who enter the nation illegally, defying parents’ primary right to make decisions about their children’s health and education, paying reparations, and so much more.
Of course, all of these “comprehensive reforms” (read: “violated norms”) will be framed as attempts to protect the hallowed norms of “our democracy.”
For the sake of the nation — and for the sake of any genuine norms that remain — don’t let the normongers win.
The House Oversight, Ways and Means, and Judiciary Committees brought their nearly yearlong impeachment probe of President Joe Biden to an end Monday, concluding that the Democrat who unwittingly made Kamala Harris' second presidential bid possible has engaged in "egregious" and impeachable offenses.
According to the investigators' nearly 300-page report, "overwhelming evidence demonstrates that Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family."
"Among other aspects of this conspiracy, the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden," said the report.
Bank records reportedly show that when accounting also for the Biden family's business associates and their companies, the international "influence peddling schemes totaled over $27 million from foreign sources" just from 2014 to 2023.
Contrary to the repeated suggestion by Biden and boosters that he had no hand in his son's shady dealings with foreign nationals from Ukraine, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere, the report maintains that Biden "knowingly participated in this conspiracy" — that it is "inconceivable that President Biden did not understand that he was taking part in an effort to enrich his family by abusing his office of public trust."
In August 2019, Biden said, "I have never discussed with my son, or my brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses."
The following month, Biden said, "I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."
Days after indicating that he stood by his previous protestations, Biden noted on Oct. 15, "I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We've always kept everything separate."
Biden made similar denials on at least a dozen more occasions, well into his presidency.
Despite his protests, the report indicates that no such distance existed and that some of the proceeds from the influence-peddling scheme indeed went to Joe Biden. Among the funds from the scheme that ended up in Joe Biden's bank account, hundreds of thousands of dollars were allegedly "directly traceable to China."
'Joe Biden has exhibited conduct and taken actions that the Founders sought to guard against in drafting the impeachment provisions in the Constitution.'
The report indicated that Biden's active participation was sometimes expressed in American policy changes, as evidenced by the leveraging of a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee to Ukraine to secure a result favorable to a company affiliated with his son, convicted felon Hunter Biden.
Not only does the report accuse Biden and his ilk of engaging in this conspiracy, it claims they also did their best to cover it up:
Foreign money was transmitted to the Biden family through complicated financial transactions. The Biden family laundered funds through intermediate entities and broke up large transactions into numerous smaller transactions. Substantial efforts were also made to hide President Biden’s involvement in his family’s business activities.
House Democrats may be prickled to learn that precedents they set in 2019 in their impeachment of President Donald Trump have been turned on Biden.
The House Democrats of yesteryear argued that "'abuse of office,' defined as the exercise of 'official power to obtain an improper personal benefit, while ignoring or injuring the national interest,' is an impeachable offense."
House Republicans were evidently willing to accept this legal interpretation as instructive in their investigation of Biden.
The House Democrats of yesteryear also apparently argued that "'the House may properly conclude that a President's obstruction of Congress is relevant to assessing the evidentiary record in an impeachment inquiry' and 'where the President illegally seeks to obstruct such an inquiry, the House is free to infer that evidence blocked from its view is harmful to the President's position.'"
House Republicans, met with obstruction and refusals to cooperate from the White House, the Biden-Harris administration, and the DOJ, were again willing to embrace the supposed wisdom of their peers and similarly infer guilt.
Extra to hammering Biden over his alleged sale of American political destiny for self-enrichment, the report separately accuses Biden of using "his official position to conceal his mishandling of classified information as a private citizen."
Robert Hur, who led the investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents, apparently figured the president too decrepit to face legal culpability, though he ultimately chose ultimately not to exonerate him outright.
The report underscored that "Joe Biden has exhibited conduct and taken actions that the Founders sought to guard against in drafting the impeachment provisions in the Constitution: abuse of power, foreign entanglements, corruption, and obstruction of investigations into these matters."
It recommended that under the Constitution, the remedy is clear: The House must impeach Biden and the Senate should remove him from office.
Although the report could prove a black eye for the Democratic president whose political career is now all but over, it may similarly dog the Department of Justice, since it reiterates and buttresses past claims about the DOJ's apparent efforts to give Hunter Biden "special treatment" and spare him from the kind of accountability those outside the top echelons of the Democratic Party might otherwise face.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stated on X, "The evidence produced by our impeachment inquiry is the strongest case for impeachment of a sitting president the House of Representatives has ever investigated. We have exposed the truth."
"The facts speak for themselves, and Democrats can no longer stretch the truth to cover for President Biden," wrote House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "As Democrats celebrate Joe Biden and crown Kamala Harris as his heir apparent this week, Americans should remember the reality of the Biden-Harris Administration: crime, chaos, and corruption."
Politico noted that it would be historically anomalous now for an impeachment vote not to follow the inquiry, not to mention politically risky for House Republicans facing re-election.
While an impeachment vote might succeed in the House, where Republicans enjoy a sliver majority, it is all but guaranteed to fail in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
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There’s a well-established pattern since the start of the Trump era, but in the past two campaign years it’s more condensed, and even more dangerous. Donald Trump sees a political victory, and Democrats follow it in short order with an attack, either political, legal, or violent in nature. Immediately after this week’s debate — in which […]
Special Counsel Jack Smith's 165-page book report is another anonymously sourced manifesto intended to warrant impeachment of President Trump.
The sister-in-law of a Virginia candidate for Congress doubled down on remarks Sunday dismissing the assassination attempt.
The nearly 300-page report on Biden family corruption matters for many reasons, the most important of which is to restore America’s standing in the world.
House Republicans published a report Monday presenting the evidence against President Joe Biden as guilty of 'impeachable offenses.'
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