The Claremont Institute kicked off its "Golden Age Agenda" in San Diego on Saturday by honoring Vice President JD Vance with its 2025 Statesmanship Award.

The conservative think tank appears to regard Vance, who is far and away the front-runner in the 2028 Republican nomination contest, according to a recent Emerson College Polling survey, as best positioned and dispositioned to carry on President Donald Trump's project of "American renewal and greatness."

Vance provided additional insights into what his leg of the race might look like should he be handed the baton, as well as into the nature of the left.

Ahead of the vice president's remarks, however, Ryan Williams, the institute's president, reflected on President Donald Trump's selection of Vance to be his running mate — a decision that was made nearly a year ago and just days after the attempted assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Williams emphasized that Trump's "gutsy pick" broke the mold of conventional Republican vice presidential selections, as the decision appeared to be motivated not by improving the president's chances of winning Ohio nor by reassuring the establishment.

If anything, Vance actually terrified the establishment, as evidenced by various deep-pocketed Republican donors' open denigration of the Appalachian populist and Rupert Murdoch's reported lobbying campaign to dissuade Trump from picking Vance.

Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Williams suggested that Vance was instead chosen because of who he is and what he stands for.

Vance is a "premier advocate" "for a transformative course correction after years of middle American economic stagnation, a bipartisan blindness on the importance of secure borders and sovereignty, and a return to prudence and strategic clarity in foreign policy," said Williams.

What's more, "Vance's story is an American story — a kid rising from tough family circumstances in middle America; serving his country honorably in the Marines and then making his way in law and business; becoming a senator from his home state and then ascending to the vice presidency. This kind of success and political ascent is really only possible in America."

After expressing gratitude for the award as well as to both the institute and his wife, Vice President Vance — fresh off casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate last week to pass the president's "big, beautiful bill" — provided a survey of the political landscape.

Vance noted that rather than learn their lesson after their trouncing at the polls in the 2024 election, the Democrats have embraced the politics that alienated so much of the electorate, as evidenced by Democrats' support for "33-year-old communist" Zohran Mamdani in the New York Democratic primary.

'They hate the people in this room.'

Whereas Trump's victory in 2024 was "rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Mamdani's coalition is almost the inverse of that," said Vance.

"If you look at his electoral performance, precinct by precinct, what you see is a left that has completely left behind the broad middle of the United States of America. This is a guy who won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers, and especially ... young, highly educated New Yorkers, but he was weakest among black voters and weakest among those without a college degree. That's an interesting coalition," said the vice president.

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

After pointing out the various contradictions manifest on the left, Vance underscored that the elites-championed coalition of "Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists" is not bound together by shared affinities — not even the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or Karl Marx — but by hatred.

"They hate the people in this room. They hate the president of the United States. And most of all, they hate the people who voted for that president of the United States in the last election in November," continued Vance. "This is the animating principle of the American far left."

While careful not to conflate everyday Democrat voters with the American far left, Vance said the label accurately applies to the party's leadership, who are "arsonists" willing to "make common cause with anyone willing to light the match."

'There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal or at least socially parasitic.'

The vice president further suggested Mamdani is a perfect mascot for the Democratic Party, as he "captures so many of the movement's apparent contradictions in a single human being" and is "not trying to build prosperity. He's trying to tear something down."

After faulting the left for lacking a positive vision for the future, Vance discussed ways of maximizing American prosperity and continuing to usher in the "golden age" promised by Trump on Jan. 20.

The vice president noted that by employing the "stick" that is tariffs and the "carrots" that are lower taxes and fewer regulations, the administration hopes to make it easier to save, invest, build businesses, work dignified jobs, and support a family in the United States.

Vance made abundantly clear that this work under way to bring about American renewal is not another liberal project that treats the U.S. as an economic zone and an "idea" with an infinitely replaceable population.

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

"We are not just producers and consumers," said Vance. "We are human beings made in the image of God, and we love our home, not just because we earn a living here but because we discover our purpose and our meaning here."

"Every Western society, as I stand here today, has significant demographic and cultural problems. There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal or at least socially parasitic. It tends to feed off of the healthy host until there's nothing left," continued the vice president.

"They've gotten awfully good at tearing things down, but they haven't gotten good at building back."

'This country is not a contradiction.'

After hammering themes of disorientation, disenchantment, and disaffiliation and emphasizing the importance of social cohesion and satisfying the "obligations that we have to our fellow countrymen," he then identified a number of remedies, many of which the Trump administration is presently pursuing, including defending American sovereignty by securing the border and protecting citizens from "unfair foreign taxes" and "preserving the basic legal privileges of citizenship" like voting or access to state-run benefits programs. He indicated that the government must also avoid entangling Americans "in prolonged, distant wars."

Vance noted further that citizenship in the 21st century not only means respecting American heritage but necessarily building upon it "together as one American family" — to advance "groundbreaking innovations and to leave homes, and libraries, and factories that our descendants will look at someday and feel a sense of awe."

"This country is not a contradiction," he concluded. "It's a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations. It's a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty, but more importantly, it's our home."

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JD Vance rejects Democrats' narrative, names the 'real threat to democracy'

Democrats and elements of the liberal media have suggested ad nauseam that President Donald Trump, his supporters, and like-minded Republicans constitute threats to democracy.

After a Biden official's group got Trump temporarily removed in 2023 from the presidential primary ballot in Colorado, former President Joe Biden tweeted, "Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America's standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy."

Years after calling her political opponents "enemies of the state," Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in April 2024 that Trump is "a great threat to our democracy."

'It was a radical success.'

Less than a day after a Democratic donor who claimed "DEMOCRACY is on the ballot" in the 2024 election allegedly tried to assassinate Trump, New York magazine rushed to inform its readers that "Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, and saying so is not incitement."

It's clear that this mantra is little more than a political cudgel intended for those who threaten to diminish Democrats' hold on power. Nevertheless, its repetition has prompted some on the right to seriously reflect on that which actually threatens the American republic's democratic processes.

In his keynote speech at the Ohio Republican Party dinner in Lima, Ohio, on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance made clear that the apparent effort by Democrats to import and then normalize new voter blocs rather than engage and help homegrown Americans — to seek out a new demos as opposed to serving the current demos — is the real threat.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The vice president stressed that illegal immigration is "the most important issue confronting this country" and "the most important issue that was destroying this country for over the past four years."

"If I had stood here in October of 2024, and you had told me that after 45 days of the Trump administration we would have illegal border crossings down between 95% and 99%, I would have said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. I believe the president is very serious about this, and I believe the president is very effective, but there is no way that we're going to have illegal border crossings down that much,'" said Vance. "I'm happy to report that one and a half months into the Trump administration, we had illegal border crossings down 99%. It was a radical success."

"I believe that saved the United States of America," continued Vance, "because we know exactly what the Democrats [would do] — not because we had to read their minds but because Democrats would go out and say that what they wanted to do with those 20, 25 million illegal aliens is give every single one of them the right to vote and turn them into permanent wards of the Democratic Party."

'Now, we have largely solved that problem.'

Democratic lawmakers have worked feverishly in recent years to give foreign nationals the right to vote.

Certain jurisdictions in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. There are also indications that some noncitizens have been registered in Democratic enclaves to vote in federal elections — a troubling matter that the Trump administration is taking seriously.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Orange County registrar of voters for refusing to provide the DOJ with records pertaining to the "removal of non-citizens from its voter registration list and for failing to maintain an accurate voter list in violation of the Help America Vote Act."

— (@)

Meanwhile, in the District of Columbia, noncitizens are allowed to vote in local elections so long as they were in the city for at least 30 days before the election. According to the Washington Post, of the over 500 foreign nationals who voted last year — including Ethiopians, Salvadorans, and Iranians — 310 registered as Democrat, 169 as independent, 28 as Republican, and 16 as Statehood Green.

Democrats evidently aspired to go far beyond local elections with their noncitizen voting push.

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The Democratic National Convention's 2024 platform endorsed a mass amnesty plan that would have paved the way to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.

The Maine Wire noted that the platform incorporated language from the U.S. Citizenship Act, an inert bill from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) that would change the word "alien" to "noncitizen" in the immigration code and allow illegal aliens to become "lawful prospective immigrants," thereby setting them on the path to legally voting in federal elections.

Even though Trump saw gains in each of the seven swing states in the 2024 election, giving voting rights to millions of yesteryear's illegal aliens could significantly alter America's political destiny.

"If we allowed that to happen, if we allowed the Democratic Party to import voters rather than persuade voters, that would have been the end of American democracy," said Vance. "You hear the American media say all the time that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. The threat to democracy is Democrats importing voters rather than persuading their fellow citizens."

The vice president proceeded to provide his audience with some good news.

"Now, we have largely solved that problem," said Vance. "If you look, for the first time in 50 years — the first time in 50 years — we now have net negative illegal immigration."

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Exclusive: JD Vance tells BlazeTV's Steve Deace how Trump dodged the 'bad decision' his predecessors made in the Middle East

Friends and foes alike have expressed skepticism in recent days regarding President Donald Trump's approach to the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Trump appears to have once again earned their trust by neutralizing the Iranian nuclear program, striking a tenuous peace between Tehran and Jerusalem, and securing a U.S. exit out of what easily could have become another bloody Middle Eastern quagmire.

Vice President JD Vance provided BlazeTV host Steve Deace with critical insights on Tuesday both into the thinking that guided the president's successful actions in the Middle East and into how Trump avoided the damning misstep that tripped up his predecessors.

Vance, who deployed as a Marine to Iraq in 2005, indicated that he "always wondered kind of what went wrong" with past military interventions in the Middle East. This recent episode in the region buttressed his understanding that the answer is "that we allowed mission creep. In other words, we started with one mission, and then it turned into another mission, and it turned into another mission."

This phenomenon would account, in part, for why the U.S. military was formally involved in Afghanistan for two decades and in Iraq from 2003 until 2011 — protracted conflicts that claimed the lives of thousands of American service members and cost trillions of dollars.

Vance suggested that previous presidents lacked the clarity of focus and the restraint that Trump exercised in recent days.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

"You didn't have the kind of presidential leadership to say, 'We are going to do what we came to do, and then once we've accomplished that successfully, we're going to get out,'" Vance told Deace. "And what did the president say we needed to do? We needed to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. We did that, of course, with incredibly competent troops and, really, an amazing military operation."

"The president just never let that mission creep settle in to the way the generals were thinking about it, the [way] diplomats were thinking about it," continued the vice president. "I really have to give the president all of the credit here, because I think, look — American history has told us that given the situation that [Trump] was in, every American president of pretty much my lifetime has made a bad decision in the Middle East. He was able to get in there, do what he said he was going to do, and then put the region back on the path to peace."

— (@)

Vance indicated further that Trump has changed the nature of the game, particularly where international expectations go, noting that foreign powers have come to expect the U.S. to "permanently entrench ourselves in that region of the world; to try to build democracies; to build separate nations, sometimes even separate cultures within a country where you didn't have any democratic culture."

The reason why the U.S. defied expectations this time around is because the man in charge "has made it very clear that the only thing the United States is going to be on the hook for is accomplishing our national objectives and our national mission."

'We don't want to have to serve as the policemen of the world.'

While emphasizing a willingness from the Trump administration to engage in diplomacy, Vance emphasized that America's interests remain the top priority — that "America first" is Trump's guiding principle in such matters.

Deace suggested that many in the MAGA coalition have been torn between a love for Israel and a desire to limit American engagements in the Middle East, particularly those that might draw American troops abroad.

Vance indicated that Trump "has been able to thread the needle very well" by simultaneously recognizing Israel as a "very important ally" with which there are multiple opportunities for cooperation, and the need, both for the U.S. and Jerusalem, for the U.S. to give up the role of "policemen of the Middle East" and leave that responsibility to the Israelis and the "rational" Gulf Arab states.

"We want Israel and the Gulf Arab countries to police their own back yard," said Vance. "We don't want to have to serve as the policemen of the world."

— (@)

In addition to seeking further disentanglement from Middle Eastern affairs, the vice president suggested there is also room for criticism of the action taken on the part of friends in the region.

'I think so long as we have political leaders in America who are laser-focused on the United States, yes, we can be pro-Israel.'

Vance noted that while Israel "is a great friend of ours, and we are in agreement on the deep cultural value question," that "doesn't mean that on every question of foreign policy we're always going to be aligned."

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Vance cited as an example Trump's stern call Tuesday morning with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the president made clear that the ceasefire needed to be respected.

"I think so long as we have political leaders in America who are laser-focused on the United States, yes, we can be pro-Israel. Yes, we can say that our Israeli friends have a lot of, you know — there are a lot of ways in which we can work together," Vance told Deace. "Allies often do work together, but sometimes allies have disagreement, and I think we just have to be honest about that."

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JD Vance joined liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails REALLY fast.

Vice President JD Vance is not exactly a shrinking violet. The Marine veteran who rose from relative poverty to become second in command of the world's greatest nation has a habit of seeking out fruitful confrontation.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, for instance, Vance told European officials to their faces that they were stepping toward tyranny and turning their backs on the values they once shared in common with the United States. Just weeks later, he bashed the U.K.'s censorship regime with leftist British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seated right next to him in the Oval Office.

While he has long participated in fiery exchanges with Democratic lawmakers and other antagonists, both in person and on Elon Musk's X, Vance evidently wanted to bring the conversation to leftists on their own turf.

The vice president created an account Wednesday on the liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails pretty quickly.

Vance kicked off his Bluesky residency by writing, "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you."

'I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids.'

Accompanying his initial post was a screenshot of the Supreme Court's majority decision in United States v. Skrmetti, in which the court upheld Tennessee's ban on sex-change genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers for minors — clearly a touchy subject for the Bluesky crowd.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Vance highlighted a portion of the decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the 'wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.'"

Roberts noted further in the excerpt, "Contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts' view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves."

Vance added in a follow-up message, "To that end, I found Justice Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating. He argues that many of our so-called 'experts' have used bad arguments and substandard science to push experimental therapies on our youth."

"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids," continued Vance. "What do you think?"

— (@)

Regardless of whether Vance's intention was to troll the netizens of Bluesky, the result was the same.

Apoplectic leftists immediately piled into the comments various smears and accusations. Many threatened to report Vance in hopes of getting him banned for some perceived offense or another.

The attacks were, however, interrupted roughly 12 minutes after Vance's first post when the platform suspended him, according to Axios reporter Marc Caputo.

Leftists looking to vent were confronted with a message that read, "Not found. Account has been suspended."

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Despite the appearance that Vance's account may have been suspended because of his politics or perhaps because he shared a court ruling that struck at the heart of the sex-change regime, Bluesky claimed in a statement obtained by Forbes, "Vice President Vance's account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts, which have targeted public figures like him in the past."

"The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity," continued the statement. "We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky."

As of Thursday morning, Vance's initial posts were buried in negative comments, although he had netted over 7,500 followers. According to the user tracker Clearsky, he had been blocked by over 81,000 users at the time of publication.

Blaze News reached out to the vice president's office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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The White House Can Lower Drug Prices By Fixing The Market, Not Price Controls

President Trump shouldn’t adopt socialist-style price controls.

Rubio, Vance outline the 'work of a generation,' next steps for the American renewal: 'This is a 20-year project'

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ways forward for the country under the Trump administration and beyond at the American Compass New World Gala on June 3.

Although the two Republicans, who appear to be contenders in the 2028 presidential election, hit different beats, they were largely singing the same tune about prioritizing Americans, strengthening the country, and abandoning the failed globalist thinking that has undermined security, prosperity, and dignity in the United Sates.

Their outlooks on the future provided some indication of the staying power of President Donald Trump's vision as well as how it might evolve in the years to come.

Returning to reality

Rubio kicked off his speech by countering the progressive notion that human nature changes over time, stressing that "technologies change, the clothes we wear change, even languages change, governments change — a lot of things change, but the one thing that is unchanged is human nature."

Rubio suggested that this static nature accounts for why history often repeats itself and helps explain humans' unshakable "desire to belong," which naturally scales up to nationalism, despite nationhood being a relatively "new concept" in the grand scheme of things.

"If you put humans anywhere — a handful of people anywhere — one of the first things they start doing is trying to create things that they can join or be a part of," said Rubio. "The advent of the nation-state is a normal evolution of human behavior because people think it's important to belong to something, and being part of a nation is important. And I think that's really true, obviously, increasingly in how geopolitical decisions are made."

'We've undermined our position in the world.'

Despite man's immutable desire to belong and the naturalness of this desire's expression in nationalism, Rubio suggested that many in the West nevertheless entertained the fantasy that the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant the inevitable and imminent universalization of liberal democracy — that "the entire world is going to become just like us"; that "nationhood no longer mattered when it came to economics"; "that right now the world would no longer have borders"; and that it didn't matter where things were made.

Rubio noted that this idealistic outlook "became part of Republican orthodoxy for a long time," which accounts for why the GOP long proved indifferent to the outsourcing of labor and the offshoring of productive capacity.

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The decades-long flirtation with liberal globalism "robbed a nation of its industrial capacity, of its ability to make things," thereby hurting the economy, hurting the country, robbing people of jobs, and eating away at the social fabric of the nation, suggested Rubio.

"What you find is because of all of those years of neglect, because of the loss of industrial capacity, we didn't just undermine our society, we didn't just undermine our domestic economy — we've undermined our position in the world," said the secretary of state, whose department recently signaled an interest in taking up the mantle of Western civilization.

'You can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people.'

Now that America and the rest of the world are facing a "crunch," the days of illusion are over, and geopolitics are adjusting accordingly.

Rubio indicated that the Trump administration is undertaking a reorientation of domestic and foreign approaches "to take into account for the fact that you can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people and unless you're able to make the things that your economy needs in order to function and ultimately to defend yourself."

Accordingly, Rubio suggested that the country moving forward needs to:

make decisions with the nation-state in mind and engage the world "in a way that prioritizes our national interest above all else";
guarantee America's access to the requisite "raw material and industrial capacity that is at the core both of the decisions that we're making and the areas that we're prioritizing"; and
rectify trade imbalances with fully developed countries.

While this direction is possibly good news for the American people, it bodes poorly for stubborn champions of the globalist dream.

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, for instance, recently complained about the MAGA vision for the future.

The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation's economic future, rejecting two generations of integration and interdependency with the rest of the world in favor of American autarky, of effectively closing our borders to goods and people from around the world so that the United States might make itself into an impenetrable fortress — a garrison state with the power to dictate the terms of the global order, especially in its own hemisphere. In this new world, Americans will abandon service-sector work in favor of manufacturing and heavy industry.

After presenting the possibility of a powerful, indomitable, and reindustrialized America as a terrifying prospect, Bouie stumbled upon the truth of the project under way, stating, "The aim, whether stated explicitly or not, is to erase the future as Americans have understood it and as they might have anticipated it."

Kicking bad habits

Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, pressed Vance about the project of "reshoring and reindustrialization" that the Trump administration is pursuing.

Vance noted that at its core, the project is about addressing "stagnating living standards" affecting normal Americans "who just want to start a family, work in a decent job, earn a livable salary, and have dignified work."

'The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job.'

The vice president suggested that the offshoring of industry, an under-investment in technology, heavy industrial regulation, and high energy costs are among the factors that have made it difficult for "normal people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life."

He also identified a "misalignment between the ... normal Americans and the talking heads in Washington" and an unworkable separation of the making of things from the innovating of things — a issue he raised in his March speech at the American Dynamism Summit — as problems warranting remedy.

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Blaze News previously noted that in his American Dynamism speech, Vance suggested that the Trump administration plans to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, partly by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor.

In his conversation with Cass on Tuesday, Vance reiterated that America needs to effectively get innovators and labor back on the same page and in the same country and to ensure that educational institutions are equipped to supply them with talent.

Vance also criticized "pro-globalization" elements of the leadership class who are indifferent to "whether a given part of the supply chain existed here, or China, or Russia or somewhere else" yet frequently champion foreign entanglements fought with outsourced munitions and technologies.

"The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job," Vance told Cass, "until four months ago when the American people actually gave the country a government it deserved. And obviously we're in the very early days, but I think that we've done more in four months to solve these problems. But this is not a five- or a 10-year project. This is a 20-year project to actually get America back to common-sense economic policy."

When asked by NBC News' Kristen Welker last month whether he figured the MAGA movement could survive without him as its leader, President Donald Trump said, "Yes, I do. ... I think it's so strong. And I think we have tremendous people. I think we have a tremendous group of people. We talked about a number of them. You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who's fantastic."

Trump added that Vance is "a fantastic, brilliant guy" and "Marco is great."

A straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February reportedly found that 61% of the over 1,000 attendees said they would support Vance as the future GOP standard-bearer.

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Liberals freaked out over Vance's Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department's Substack.

The State Department raised some eyebrows when it launched a Substack last month. Its latest Substack essay highlighting both the importance of renewing Western civilization and the failure of global liberalism might be enough to give liberal establishmentarians ulcers and national conservatives butterflies.

Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford said of the recent essay, "To put it simply, the Department of State has been ground zero for undermining Western values and putting American interests last. This turnaround is just incredible to see, and it's not getting the attention it deserves."

President Donald Trump has set about bringing the "golden age of America" into existence. While Trump's is a U.S.-focused endeavor, his administration appears to be simultaneously working on the renewal and strengthening of Western civilization, broadly understood.

'Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty.'

Vice President JD Vance, for instance, made abundantly clear in his controversial February speech to America's allies at the Munich Security Conference in Europe that it is high time to "change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction."

While prioritizing the interests of America at home and abroad, the State Department has similarly been thinking in civilizational terms, as evidenced by a recent post titled "The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe" on the agency's new Substack. The essay has already upset the usual suspects and wowed conservatives long accustomed to seeing liberal bromides and platitudes from their government.

— (@)

Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, noted in the essay that the relationship between America and Europe "transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics," representing a "unique bond forged in common culture, faith, familial ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage."

Samson noted further that:

Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty. This tradition flows from Athens and Rome, through medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America's founding documents. The Declaration's revolutionary assertion that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" echoes the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other European heavyweights who recognized that all men possess natural rights that no government can arbitrate or deny. America remains indebted to Europe for this intellectual and cultural legacy.

Samson stressed that the deep, unique, and historic relationship between the U.S. and Europe warrants protection, which can take the form of constructive criticism, much like Vance's comments in Munich.

Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images

The vice president angered European elites with the suggestion in his speech that the more concerning threat posed to Europe is not China, Russia, or any other external actor but rather "the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America."

Vance also put Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European nations on blast for their suppression of political movements and ideas unfavorable to their respective ruling classes; for their dismissal of citizens' concerns and common sense; for their routine attacks on religious liberties; and for their disastrous mass migration policies.

'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy.'

Samson echoed a critique now popular among national conservatives and thinkers in the president's orbit, suggesting that the globalist liberal campaign to "usher in an era of unprecedented peace" in the wake of World War II "by overcoming the anchors of nationhood, culture, and tradition" has proven to be a colossal failure.

"This promise lies in tatters," wrote Samson. "What endures instead is an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself."

Blaze Media Illustration

After recycling a number of Vance's complaints — hammering again on Britain for arresting Christians over silent prayer; on the German government for its clampdown on critics and on the country's ascendant right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany; and on the European Union over its latest censorship scheme — Samson conceded that similar tactics were brought to bear in America against President Donald Trump and his supporters in recent years.

"What this reveals is that the global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy," wrote the State Department adviser. "Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people."

By committing to its Western heritage and by reversing the liberal project of deracination, disenchantment, and disorientation, Samson indicated that Europe will be better equipped to stand "firm against external threats and internal decay" and to cooperate with America on "shared foreign policy goals."

'We finally have political leaders who are brave enough to face the crisis head on.'

"Our relationship is too important, our history too valuable, and the international stakes too high to allow this partnership to be undermined," wrote Samson. "Therefore, on both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come."

One of Samson's professors at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C., Dr. Matthew Mehan, associate dean and associate professor of government for the Van Andel Graduate School of Government, told Blaze News, "It is heartening to see from our government a seriously candid psychological operation, one that seeks not to gaslight our allies but to remind them who they truly are and what we have deeply in common, in our shared Western history and our principles of natural right and law."

"This is exactly right," Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R) said in response to excerpts of Samson's post shared on X by Blaze Media digital strategist Logan Hall. "Globalism, liberalism, censorship, mass migration — for decades, the West has been war with itself. We finally have political leaders who are brave enough to face the crisis head on."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Photo by John McDonnell/Getty Images

Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) noted, "The West has spent the last 30 years governed by people who were ashamed of their past and hate Western civilization. President Trump is embracing our heritage, which built the greatest nation on the face of the Earth."

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, similarly suggested it was remarkable to see this essay from the State Department, calling it "eloquent and true."

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Vance defends use of Alien Enemies Act, calls out meddlesome judges

Vice President JD Vance spoke at length Monday with Ross Douthat of the New York Times about the successes and setbacks that the Trump administration has faced so far in its counteroffensive against the nation's longstanding "invasion" by foreign nationals.

Vance justified the use of the Alien Enemies Act, raised concerns about the judicial activism getting in the way of immigration enforcement, spoke to the ruinous impact of the "invasion" overseen by the previous administration, and detailed what success looks like on this issue.

The vice president underscored that the administration is not impelled to deport illegal aliens by hatred but rather by a commitment to the common good and an understanding that rapid immigration, particularly of the unlawful variety, strikes at national unity and "social solidarity."

He noted further that while the country has been confronted with an unsustainable "invasion," the administration has remedies available and the willpower to pursue them.

Alien Enemies Act

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring that Tren de Aragua is "a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization" aligned with the Venezuelan Maduro regime that "is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."

"I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies," added Trump.

The administration ousted 137 Venezuelan aliens under the law on the day of the proclamation but was promptly barred from executing additional removals under the AEA by a federal judge who deemed Trump's invocation of the AEA through the proclamation "unlawful."

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Numerous federal judges have issued additional prohibitions against removals under the AEA in the months since, including U.S. District Judge Clay Land, who ruled Wednesday that while the president "should be afforded substantial deference in the execution of his duties under Article II of the Constitution," the administration could not send a Venezuelan national packing.

When pressed about the AEA, Vance suggested Monday that the courts "should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people's elected president of the United States."

Seizing upon Douthat's remark that there aren't five million people waging war, Vance said, "OK, but are there thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people? And then when you take their extended family, their networks, is it much larger than that? Who are quite dangerous people who I think very intentionally came to the United States to cause violence, or to at least profit from violence, and they're fine if violence is an incidental effect of it? Yeah. I do, man."

The vice president added that "people under-appreciate the level of public safety threat that we're under."

— (@)

The vice president bemoaned the media's apparent lack of intellectual curiosity about the "level of chaos, the level of violence" in migrant communities with large populations of illegal aliens, where "truly premodern brutality" has apparently become the norm.

Finding the normalization of such brutality in the U.S. intolerable, Vance suggested that the AEA "vests us with the power to take very serious action against this" and indicated that the administration has a responsibility to do so, adding, "It's bad. It's worse than people appreciate."

Vance minced no words regarding the impact of the judicial activism that has so far stood in the way of taking such "serious action," stating, "You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they're not allowed to have what they voted for."

The vice president appeared optimistic, however, stating that "we're very early innings here on what the court is going to interpret the law to mean."

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Douthat likened the approach taken by the administration to the cartels and their foot soldiers to that taken by previous administrations to "anyone associated with Islamic terrorism and so on in the aftermath of September 11," suggesting that the legal process has, in some cases, been sidestepped, that the system in place is "ripe for war-on-terror-style abuses" and that injustices may be inevitable.

While Vance entertained Douthat's concerns — which were couched in a broader conversation about Vance's simultaneous fidelity to American law and to Catholic moral teaching — he intimated the parallel may be weaker than some in the media might want to admit, alluding to the case of MS-13 affiliate Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his portrayal as a man traduced whose civil rights were violated.

"I haven't asked every question about every case, but the ones where I have asked questions and I try to get to the bottom of what's going on, I feel quite comfortable with what's happened," said Vance. "And the one that I've spent the most time understanding is the one of the Maryland father."

Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Democratic lawmakers and the liberal media did their apparent best to leave the American public with the impression that Abrego Garcia was an "innocent father" betrayed by his adoptive government.

It turns out that the Salvadoran national who was returned to his homeland by the Trump administration was an illegal alien linked to a terrorist gang, identified by two immigration courts as a danger to the community, and accused of both domestic abuse and human trafficking.

Vance discussed the controversy over Abrego Garcia's deportation — a decision that has been kicked all the way to the Supreme Court — and noted, "I understand there may be disagreements about the judgments that we made here, but there's just something that it's hard to take serious when so many of the people who are saying we made a terrible error here are the same people who made no protests about how this guy got into the country in the first place or what Joe Biden did for four years to the American southern border."

The vice president noted further that if the media alternatively framed the situation as the president "considering sending the very worst violent gang members in America to a foreign prison — so long as that is a legal thing to do" — then there would likely not be so much "passionate resistance."

Success

While the vice president indicated he would like to see "the gross majority" of illegal aliens who entered the country under the previous administration deported — he suggested the number was around 20 million — Vance said "that is actually a secondary metric of success."

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

"Success to me is not so much a number, "said Vance. "Success to me is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country."

The path to success so-defined, he continued, is reliant not only on the administration's efforts but on the courts as well.

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JD Vance pushes America First position on India-Pakistan conflict: 'None of our business'

The decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region has resulted in numerous bloody skirmishes and three full-fledged wars — in 1965, 1971, and 1999. In the wake of a horrific terrorist attack in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir last month, fighting has resumed and threatens now to embroil the two nuclear powers in another major war.

When pressed on Thursday to comment about the Trump administration's concern "about the potential for nuclear war between India and Pakistan," Vice President JD Vance told Fox News' Martha MacCallum that while concerned and keen on de-escalation, the U.S. is "not going to get involved in the middle of war that's fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America's ability to control it."

"Look, we're concerned about any time nuclear powers collide and have a major conflict," said Vance. "What we've said, what Secretary Rubio has said, and certainly [what] the president has said is we want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible."

Tensions once again came to a head between India and Pakistan on April 22 when terrorists massacred 26 people, mainly Indian tourists, near Pahalgam, a town in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir.

'It's a shame.'

Indian officials believe that the group claiming responsibility for the massacre, the Resistance Front, is actually a proxy for the Pakistan-based jihadist terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, reported the New York Times.

President Donald Trump stated in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack, "The United States stands strong with India against Terrorism. We pray for the souls of those lost, and for the recovery of the injured."

While India did not publicly blame the Pakistani government massacre, New Delhi nevertheless responded with missile strikes on alleged terrorist training sites in Pakistan while also reportedly arresting thousands of people in Kashmir.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that India's May 6 (local time) strikes amounted to a "heinous act of aggression [that] will not go unpunished."

President Donald Trump said Tuesday in response to the news of India's military operation against Pakistan, "It's a shame," adding, "I just hope it ends very quickly."

'What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit.'

Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted later on May 6 that he was monitoring the situation closely and echoed Trump's hope that "this hopefully ends quickly."

In recent days, India and Pakistan have reportedly traded artillery fire and drone strikes. Sharif claimed Wednesday that the Pakistani military had shot down five Indian jets.

"We can't control these countries," Vance, who was in India at the time of the terrorist attacks, told MacCallum. "India has its gripes with Pakistan. Pakistan has responded to India. What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit."

"Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict," continued the vice president. "We're worried about these things, but I think the job of diplomacy — but also the job of cooler heads in India and Pakistan — is to make sure this doesn't become a nuclear war."

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Pakistan and India have 170 and 180 nuclear warheads, respectively.

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'Genocidal language': JD Vance, Democrat strategist James Carville blast Ilhan Omar over anti-white comments

Vice President JD Vance and Democratic strategist James Carville both blasted Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) this week over her apparent racial animus. Whereas Vance characterized the Minnesota congresswoman as a "disgrace," Carville suggested she was a political liability whose supporters "are more trouble than they're worth."

Omar was asked in a February 2018 interview about President Donald Trump's Executive Order 13780 — the so-called "Muslim travel ban" that placed restrictions on entry to the U.S. by nationals from terrorist hotbeds such as Syria and Omar's native country of Somalia.

"Do you think President Trump doesn't want people like you in the country? Because he says it's not personal; it's national security," Mehdi Hasan, a liberal talking head known for his "anti-Israel agitprop," asked Omar in the interview.

'Our country should be more fearful of white men.'

"If we were really being honest about what could be masqueraded as a national security issue, we know that no one from any of these countries has ever posed a threat within this country," said Omar.

Hasan noted later in a portion of the interview that has repeatedly gone viral that "a lot of conservatives in particular would say that the rise of Islamophobia is the result not of hate but of fear — a legitimate fear, they say, of 'jihadist terrorism,' whether it's Fort Hood or San Bernardino or the recent truck attack in New York. What do you say to them?"

Omar — who previously summarized the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as "some people did something" and whose community saw dozens of young men, including the first known American Islamist suicide bomber, return to Somalia to fight for Islamic terrorist groups — appeared keen to downplay the relative threat of Islamic terrorism.

"I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country," said the Democratic congresswoman. "And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men."

'This is blatant racism.'

An excerpt from the seven-year-old interview recently resurfaced and, with the amplification of influencer accounts like Libs of TikTok, quickly went viral.

Vice President JD Vance commented on the excerpt, which had over 17.5 million views at the time of publication, writing, "This isn't just sick; it's actually genocidal language."

"What a disgrace this person is," added Vance, who previously suggested that Ilhan Omar would be "living in a craphole" if the U.S. hadn't welcomed her.

Omar punched back, claiming she was "referring to the rise of white nationalism in an annual report issued by the Anti-Defamation League that said white supremacists were responsible for 78 percent of 'extremist-related murders.'"

"PS you should look up what 'genocidal' actually means when you're actively supporting a genocide taking place in Gaza," added Omar.

Other critics piled on, with some X users issuing reminders about Omar's past difficulty filing accurate tax returns and others calling for her deportation.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) said of Omar's comments, "This is blatant racism. Who condemns it?"

'There are people that actually agree with her.'

Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) said Omar "never ceases to be an embarrassment for Minnesota."

Carville similarly took aim at Omar over her comments days later at the Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit when discussing how Democrats might "regain their mojo," emphasizing that they aren't doing her party any favors.

"Ilhan Omar says that white men are responsible for most of the deaths in the United States," Carville said Wednesday. "So let me get this straight: 69% of the people — I'm stuck on that number; I don't know — but 69% of people who're going to vote are white. Of that, [48.5%] are males. So I don't know, my rough math is 33%. Let's go out and piss off 33% of the people that vote."

"That's a smart strategy," added Carville sarcastically. "There are people that actually agree with her, and I think these — honestly — I think these people are more trouble than they're worth."

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Vance defends use of Alien Enemies Act, calls out meddlesome judges

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

JD Vance pushes America First position on India-Pakistan conflict: 'None of our business'

'Genocidal language': JD Vance, Democrat strategist James Carville blast Ilhan Omar over anti-white comments

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Returning to reality

Kicking bad habits

Alien Enemies Act

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Success

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