Iran turned down opportunity after opportunity to forgo its nuclear enrichment, and, just as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Iran was in non-compliance with its non-proliferation obligations, yet again, Iran declared it was opening up yet another enrichment facility. All this as Iran’s leadership pledges to liquidate Israel.

Iran has taken American hostages and killed Americans by the hundreds—from Beirut to Khobar, to Iraq to Israel. It has attempted to assassinate Donald Trump and several of his cabinet officials not to mention American journalists living here.

Ignoring all this political irresponsibility and blood lust would, itself, be irresponsible. When Israel took out Iraq’s nuclear capabilities in 1981, the world denounced Israel when it should have thanked her. Given Iran’s threats and actions, Israel acted as it did in 1981—and will be denounced again. But given Iran’s continued tote board of killing, war declarations and actions, this was a peace mission and Israel should again be thanked.

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The basic duty of government is to maintain public order and safety while protecting the rights of its citizens. The government of Los Angeles and the state of California have failed miserably—and repeatedly—on both points.

Mismanagement and dereliction of duty led to the destruction of the Palisades and Alta Dena in January. Actual malice today toward federal authority and law enforcement by LA’s mayor and city council threatens to burn down the rest.

When ICE began detaining criminal illegal aliens, Bass and her council roared in anger, inciting mobs to attack federal agents enforcing the law. This week, the council tried to order its police chief to expose these agents to further danger by revealing operations before they took place.

When Chief Jim McDonnell warned that would constitute a crime, the council’s president scoffed—calling the arrests “abductions.”

LA’s leadership believes they’re above the law of the country in which they exist. They are radicals bent on national destruction, not responsible officeholders interested in public order and safety.

I’m Ed Morrissey.

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Religion had a good week at the Supreme Court. The justices ruled unanimously in favor of a Catholic group. They held that Wisconsin improperly discriminated based on religion when it denied Catholic Charities a tax exemption.

Catholic Charities Bureau in Superior, Wisconsin, cares for disabled people. It was denied the tax exemption routinely given to religious organizations. Shockingly, lower courts actually justified the denial on the grounds that the organization provides services without proselytizing—and serves non-Catholics!

Justice Sotomayor wrote that the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s interpretation of the state’s tax exemption discriminates between religions along theological lines. Catholic doctrine requires caring for all those in need without condition.

This decision vindicates the American constitutional right to religious freedom and free exercise — as well as common sense.

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“What is there to negotiate?!” California Governor Ronald Reagan responded, when a reporter asked him why he wouldn’t negotiate with rioters at Berkley in 1969. Quote “All of this started because people who know better told our young people they had the right to choose which laws they wanted to obey, and which they didn’t.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom are people—today—who should have known better. Both, in taking office, swore to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States and California—not the right to attack federal law enforcement officers and obstruct justice.

Kamala Harris stated the administration’s enforcement of immigration law is “cruel” and “stoking fear.” Mayor Bass said the federal enforcement of our laws “sow[s] terror in our communities and disrupt[s] basic principles of safety in our city.” Governor Newsom called Trump a “dictator” and federal enforcement “reckless” and “cruel.”

Bass and Newsom failed to prevent fires that devastated California earlier this year—they caused and are fanning the flames of this one.

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One month ago, House Democrats started a melee at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark. That signaled radicals across the country to escalate, and Los Angeles agitators clearly got the message when ICE began enforcing the law in California.

Gavin Newsom and mayor Karen Bass refused to intervene to protect federal law enforcement officers when they came under attack. Bass declared “we will not stand for this” when those enforcement operations began. After two days of violence directed at ICE officials, Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to LA as protection for federal officers. Newsom then rallied Democrat governors to oppose the move and to stop ICE enforcement activities.

That’s nothing less than a full-party endorsement of riots and obstruction of law enforcement. Trump got elected in large part to enforce these laws across the country; the Democrat Party wants radicals to run riot in the streets to prevent the will of the voters from being fulfilled.

Let this serve as a warning in every election about the nature of Democrat leadership.

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It was on January 5 of this year when President Trump—on my Salem program— said his preference was for “one big, beautiful bill.”

And thus he started a snowball rolling down Congressional Hill and that gathered momentum and should be on his desk, perhaps by July 4, certainly not later than Labor Day. Trump willed H.R. 1 into being the way he willed his return to the Oval Office: By speaking clearly and repeatedly about what had to be done.

Turns out the commander-in-chief is also the “closer-in-chief.”

The president worked closely with Speaker Johnson, Leader Scalise and Majority Whip Emmer. He got what he promised on the campaign trail last year in it—including no tax on tips and no tax on overtime.

Now, he’ll help Senate Majority Leader Thune, Whip Barrasso and Conference Chair Tom Cotton in the Senate pilot H.R. 1 through the narrows of that body.

All the Senate has to do is polish up H.R. 1 and the Congress can go home for a well-earned summer vacation.

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Recent stories in the New York Times report on how Democrats are trying to regain lost constituencies. One reports that the Democrats have a “$20 million effort, that aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men….” promising to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.”

Let’s save them some money. Stop speaking like this—nobody understands it outside of a faculty lounge. Second: All this comes after 60 years of liberal social policy saying fathers don’t matter. Meanwhile, Marxist academics were writing books on toxic masculinity, with schools teaching boys to be ashamed of themselves. Why: they could even become girls! As John Dewey put it: “the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

The study of syntax and language about virality in spaces isn’t gonna do it. Here’s what might help Democrats: abandon the Marxist/Critical Theory radicalism and be normal.

I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

I’m Seth Leibsohn.

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The Free Palestine/Globalize the Intifada movement started after the October 7 attacks to promote Hamas’s cause—and it immediately took violent forms. For too long, the lack of response from progressive-elite prosecutors encouraged even more radical violence aimed at Jews.

The lack of immediate and significant consequences created the impunity that produced horrendous attacks over the past few weeks: Two Israeli embassy workers executed outside a Jewish museum, Pennsylvania’s governor got firebombed out of the state’s mansion—and now over a dozen Jewish demonstrators have been injured in a firebombing by a Free Palestine terrorist in Boulder.

The Trump administration has seen enough. The family members of the alleged perp all had their visas revoked by the State Department; ICE has detained them for expedited deportation. The DOJ has indicted the attacker for hate crimes above and beyond his indictment in Colorado.

The only way to combat the terror movement that chants to “globalize the intifada” is to globalize the consequences for pursuing it. Let this only be the start.

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