Clarice Feldman is on vacation, so I borrowed from my ‘week in review’ column an editor’s pick of the week’s top stories, modified for the article format. It’s one of many things contained in our Members Weekly Digest newsletter written by the editors of American Thinker. If you can, consider subscribing.
There are more than three big stories this week to sum up this time. Americans are beginning to get a sense of the new pope. Tariffs are having their impact. The CPI shows inflation shrinking. The U.K. continues to appall us with its wokesterly governance, which is now seeing some backtracking on immigration, as is Gavin Newsom’s California. We can also add news of how bad Joe Biden’s mental decline was and the press that covered it up. But these are honorable mentions.
At the top of the week’s news is President Trump’s triumph in the Middle East, a tour so successful it will be talked of and studied for the ages. The Arab states that Trump visited are absolutely thrilled to see him back in power. They gave us all a demonstration of how regal, royal, and hospitable they can be in their receptions of our president — Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris. Even the leftish establishmentarian Atlantic Council was impressed, summing it up with: “There has never been a US presidential visit to the Middle East like this one.”
Sure, there was a sideshow about a proffered gift of a Qatari jet, which President Trump accepted. But the heart of the matter was in Trump pulling the Arab world back into the U.S. orbit, with big trade deals, the U.S. to be the beneficiary of hundreds of millions if not trillions in investment, and the Arab states getting what they need in terms of AI technology and arms shipments to deter or beat back Iran.
China is now playing second fiddle. That’s a huge win for the U.S. in terms of international clout and diplomacy, done without arms, through marshalling the business power of the U.S. There were even lagniappes — Syria got a promise of sanctions to be dropped, and the last U.S. hostage held by Hamas in Gaza was released. The restoration of the Abraham Accords appears to be in the offing.
It’s all good. Trump is handling this like a boss.
On the domestic front, it’s not so easy. Trump had a pretty good budget plan in the works, which would have provided tax cuts, raised the standard deduction, ended taxes on tips, expanded the child credit, provided some logical relief from student loans in extreme cases, and would offer other benefits.
Sadly, it went down in flames as some fiscal hawks on the GOP nixed the whole thing on Friday. All the goodies promised will now come to nothing. Now it’s back to the drawing board, presumably with hopes of coming up with something better, instead of what the Democrats want, which is something way worse. It’s going to be a battle.
A third, surprise issue which drew a lot of attention was President Trump’s decision to extend refugee status to white South African farmers, a small group under extreme duress as South Africa’s black-majority leftist government seeks to expropriate their land without compensation, and enacts discrimination in jobs and everything else. There’s also the extralegal issue of how they are exposed to physical danger from violent crime which sees no unenforcement, while some of the political parties are out chanting “kill the Boer.”
It’s a textbook case for refugee status, but the left’s reaction against them — screaming unfounded accusations that the refugees are line cutters, plus vows to get out of the NGO business to avoid serving them and other bizarre behavior speaks of a refusal to see what is going on in that country. It’s a refusal to accept the refugees’ humanity. And it’s a bias in favor of fake refugees from underdeveloped countries looking for welfare and American jobs, of whom millions have already been let in, fake asylum claims in hand. Trump’s allowing of the South Africans in as refugees exposed the hypocrisy of the left as only being concerned about humanity, and made them look like heartless pigs.
Jesus Christ is King
