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With the eviction of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka from the inner precincts of the White House and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson besieged and taking fire from virtually all sides, neoconservatives - even the NeverTrumpers among them - must be quietly harboring renewed hopes that their restoration may soon be within reach.
With the eviction of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka from the inner precincts of the White House and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson besieged and taking fire from virtually all sides, neoconservatives - even the NeverTrumpers among them - must be quietly harboring renewed hopes that their restoration may soon be within reach.
And, as should become clear Tuesday, those hopes reside largely with the Trump administration's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who's been on a tear against Iran for several weeks now. Her campaign culminated recently in her unsubstantiated claims--in contradiction to the most recent findings of her own State Department and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not to mention Washington's P5+1 partners--that Tehran is not in full compliance with the two-year-old Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Why Tuesday? Because Haley will give a formal policy address on Iran policy at Neocon Central, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). That's the same "think tank" that acted as the Bush administration's principal cheerleader for the 2003 Iraq invasion and provided the Pentagon with a number of its "scholars" as consultants to put together the totally failed strategy that followed Washington's conquest of Baghdad. Who can forget the machismo-filled "black coffee briefings"--featuring the likes of then-Defense Policy Committee chair Richard Perle, serially mistaken Iran "experts" Michael Rubin, Michael Ledeen, and Reuel Marc Gerecht (the last two now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies), and former CIA director James Woolsey--that bolstered the propaganda blitz about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda, his enormous WMD factories, his fast-developing nuclear weapons program, and the gratitude which we should all feel toward the tremendous sacrifices and promise of Ahmad Chalabi as the George Washington of Iraq? If ever there was a highly developed "echo chamber" for going to war in modern U.S. foreign policy, it was AEI that provided the initial shouting points. All of that makes the title of Haley's impending address, "Beyond the Echo Chamber: Considerations on U.S. Policy Toward Iran," especially ironic, not to say ominous.
Haley, who has hardly been camera-shy since her appointment and will no doubt get an additional media boost from her demands Monday that the UN Security Council take much stronger action against North Korea following its latest nuclear test, clearly has her eyes set on higher office, no doubt including the presidency itself. As the country's most influential national-security reporter, The New York Times' David Sanger, noted just a few days ago, she appears to be the front-runner to succeed an increasingly beleaguered and publicity- and media-averse Tillerson should he or Trump decide that it's not worth his sticking around. A total foreign-policy novice just eight months ago, Haley could soon find herself running U.S. foreign policy, at least to the extent that the State Department remains a factor in the policy-making compared to the Pentagon and the White House itself.
A Darling of the Neocons
As noted by Phil Weiss in April, Haley had become been a darling of the neocons well before she arrived at Turtle Bay. Part of the credit or blame belongs to her close ties to fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsay Graham, long a neoconservative favorite for his staunch defense of Israel, belligerence toward Iran and Russia, and chronic interventionist instincts, especially as regards the U.S. military. It's not coincidental that her most influential adviser, by all accounts, is David Glaccum, who served for years as Graham's chief counsel.
Not coincidentally, however, neocon hopes may lie as well with the generous political funding provided to Haley by Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's and Trump's single biggest donor.
Between May and June, 2016, Sheldon Adelson contributed $250,000 to Haley's 527 political organization, A Great Day, funds that she used to target four Republican state senate rivals in primaries. (Only one was successfully defeated.) Adelson was the largest contributor to her group, which raised a total of $915,000. The next largest donor, Koch Industries, contributed $50,000.
Perhaps Adelson gained an unusual interest in South Carolina's state senate, but it seems more likely the investment was a show of support for Haley's hawkish pro-Israel positions. Adelson, who is also the largest donor to the extreme right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), has long pushed stridently anti-Iran positions, suggesting in late 2013 that Washington detonate a nuclear weapon in Iran's territory unless Tehran complied with demands that it completely abandon its nuclear program.
And, as Weiss wrote, Haley had come through for Adelson already in 2015, when she signed without any reservation the first law against boycotts of Israel-- about the same time as Adelson convened an anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas.
Courting AIPAC
Although she reiterated support for the eventual, if hypothetical, creation of a Palestinian state in February when Trump himself put that traditional position very much in doubt, her tenure at the UN has been characterized by staunch support for Israel against virtually any criticism. At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March she became the "belle at the ball," as Weiss put it, by serving up the kind of red meat that gets them going:
I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement. It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time. So how are we kicking? We're kicking by, number one, putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back--we're going to have the backs of our friends, but our friends need to have our back too. If you challenge us, be prepared for what you're challenging us for, because we will respond.
The next thing we did was we said, the days of Israel-bashing are over. We have a lot of things to talk about. There are a lot of threats to peace and security. But you're not going to take our number one democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them. And I think what you're seeing is they're all backing up a little bit. The Israel-bashing is not as loud. They didn't know exactly what I meant outside of giving the speech, so we showed them.
So when they decided to try and put a Palestinian [former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Bush administration favorite Salam Fayyad] in one of the highest positions [Special Envoy to Libya] that had ever been given at the U.N., we said no and we had him booted out. That doesn't mean he wasn't a nice man. That doesn't mean he wasn't good to America. What it means is, until the Palestinian Authority comes to the table, until the U.N. responds the way they're supposed to, there are no freebees for the Palestinian Authority anymore.
So then they tested us again. And a ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don't know who the guy is or what he's about, but he's got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid state. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous. You have to pull it. The secretary general immediately pulled the report. And then the director has now resigned.
Last thing. So for anyone that says you can't get anything done at the U.N., they need to know there's a new sheriff in town.
You get the picture. It's the kind of attitude that one heard a lot at those "black coffee briefings."
Since then, Haley has made attacking Tehran at the world body--even making a special trip to Vienna with the apparent intention to press the IAEA to make demands of Iran that go beyond the letter of the JCPOA -a top priority. Only the escalating crisis over missile launches and nuclear tests by North Korea--a nation that, in contrast to Iran, actually has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them--has consumed more of her attention. And, consistent with her actions as governor, she has most recently threatened to slash U.S. funding to--and possibly withdraw from--the UN Human Rights Council if it follows through on its mandate to publish a list of international companies that do business with Jewish settlements on the West Bank by the end of the year.
Romancing AEI
Like the "black coffee briefings" of yore, AEI's public programs ordinarily involve panel discussions or, perhaps, one featured speaker followed by comments by selected discussants. Single-speaker events speeches are usually reserved for important annual occasions, like the presentation of the Irving Kristol Award dinners to such recent winners as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2015 - when he was actively campaigning against the JCPOA), David Petraeus (2010), and Iraq War booster Bernard Lewis (2007 shortly after he predicted that Iran would launch a nuclear attack on Israel on Aug 22, 2016). Dick Cheney, a member of AEI's board of trustees, has been accorded the platform there on a number of occasions, most recently in September 2015 at the height of the congressional debate over the JCPOA, which he denounced in the strongest terms, suggesting that war with Tehran might be a better option. Indeed, that occasion was the last one in which a single speaker at AEI devoted an entire remarks to Iran. Haley will now follow in his path, albeit as an incumbent U.S. official.
But perhaps the most memorable of the single-speech events at AEI was a fierce attack delivered by Newt Gingrich one month into the Iraq invasion on the State Department for gross incompetence, especially compared to the military. The former House speaker, who was also a member of the Defense Policy Board chaired by AEI's Perle and an AEI fellow at the time, clearly used the occasion to campaign for secretary of state to replace the increasingly hapless Colin Powell, then a victim of a Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal," as Powell's long-time chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson put it, that, with AEI's help, led the charge to war within the administration. The speech was considered so over the top that it ultimately backfired against Gingrich, who was reduced to uncharacteristic silence, particularly after Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, tartly observed, "It is clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy."
Haley will not likely make the same mistake, but it's a precedent worth bearing in mind. After all, Adelson spent $15 million on Gingrich's failed 2012 presidential campaign.
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With the eviction of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka from the inner precincts of the White House and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson besieged and taking fire from virtually all sides, neoconservatives - even the NeverTrumpers among them - must be quietly harboring renewed hopes that their restoration may soon be within reach.
And, as should become clear Tuesday, those hopes reside largely with the Trump administration's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who's been on a tear against Iran for several weeks now. Her campaign culminated recently in her unsubstantiated claims--in contradiction to the most recent findings of her own State Department and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not to mention Washington's P5+1 partners--that Tehran is not in full compliance with the two-year-old Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Why Tuesday? Because Haley will give a formal policy address on Iran policy at Neocon Central, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). That's the same "think tank" that acted as the Bush administration's principal cheerleader for the 2003 Iraq invasion and provided the Pentagon with a number of its "scholars" as consultants to put together the totally failed strategy that followed Washington's conquest of Baghdad. Who can forget the machismo-filled "black coffee briefings"--featuring the likes of then-Defense Policy Committee chair Richard Perle, serially mistaken Iran "experts" Michael Rubin, Michael Ledeen, and Reuel Marc Gerecht (the last two now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies), and former CIA director James Woolsey--that bolstered the propaganda blitz about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda, his enormous WMD factories, his fast-developing nuclear weapons program, and the gratitude which we should all feel toward the tremendous sacrifices and promise of Ahmad Chalabi as the George Washington of Iraq? If ever there was a highly developed "echo chamber" for going to war in modern U.S. foreign policy, it was AEI that provided the initial shouting points. All of that makes the title of Haley's impending address, "Beyond the Echo Chamber: Considerations on U.S. Policy Toward Iran," especially ironic, not to say ominous.
Haley, who has hardly been camera-shy since her appointment and will no doubt get an additional media boost from her demands Monday that the UN Security Council take much stronger action against North Korea following its latest nuclear test, clearly has her eyes set on higher office, no doubt including the presidency itself. As the country's most influential national-security reporter, The New York Times' David Sanger, noted just a few days ago, she appears to be the front-runner to succeed an increasingly beleaguered and publicity- and media-averse Tillerson should he or Trump decide that it's not worth his sticking around. A total foreign-policy novice just eight months ago, Haley could soon find herself running U.S. foreign policy, at least to the extent that the State Department remains a factor in the policy-making compared to the Pentagon and the White House itself.
A Darling of the Neocons
As noted by Phil Weiss in April, Haley had become been a darling of the neocons well before she arrived at Turtle Bay. Part of the credit or blame belongs to her close ties to fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsay Graham, long a neoconservative favorite for his staunch defense of Israel, belligerence toward Iran and Russia, and chronic interventionist instincts, especially as regards the U.S. military. It's not coincidental that her most influential adviser, by all accounts, is David Glaccum, who served for years as Graham's chief counsel.
Not coincidentally, however, neocon hopes may lie as well with the generous political funding provided to Haley by Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's and Trump's single biggest donor.
Between May and June, 2016, Sheldon Adelson contributed $250,000 to Haley's 527 political organization, A Great Day, funds that she used to target four Republican state senate rivals in primaries. (Only one was successfully defeated.) Adelson was the largest contributor to her group, which raised a total of $915,000. The next largest donor, Koch Industries, contributed $50,000.
Perhaps Adelson gained an unusual interest in South Carolina's state senate, but it seems more likely the investment was a show of support for Haley's hawkish pro-Israel positions. Adelson, who is also the largest donor to the extreme right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), has long pushed stridently anti-Iran positions, suggesting in late 2013 that Washington detonate a nuclear weapon in Iran's territory unless Tehran complied with demands that it completely abandon its nuclear program.
And, as Weiss wrote, Haley had come through for Adelson already in 2015, when she signed without any reservation the first law against boycotts of Israel-- about the same time as Adelson convened an anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas.
Courting AIPAC
Although she reiterated support for the eventual, if hypothetical, creation of a Palestinian state in February when Trump himself put that traditional position very much in doubt, her tenure at the UN has been characterized by staunch support for Israel against virtually any criticism. At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March she became the "belle at the ball," as Weiss put it, by serving up the kind of red meat that gets them going:
I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement. It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time. So how are we kicking? We're kicking by, number one, putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back--we're going to have the backs of our friends, but our friends need to have our back too. If you challenge us, be prepared for what you're challenging us for, because we will respond.
The next thing we did was we said, the days of Israel-bashing are over. We have a lot of things to talk about. There are a lot of threats to peace and security. But you're not going to take our number one democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them. And I think what you're seeing is they're all backing up a little bit. The Israel-bashing is not as loud. They didn't know exactly what I meant outside of giving the speech, so we showed them.
So when they decided to try and put a Palestinian [former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Bush administration favorite Salam Fayyad] in one of the highest positions [Special Envoy to Libya] that had ever been given at the U.N., we said no and we had him booted out. That doesn't mean he wasn't a nice man. That doesn't mean he wasn't good to America. What it means is, until the Palestinian Authority comes to the table, until the U.N. responds the way they're supposed to, there are no freebees for the Palestinian Authority anymore.
So then they tested us again. And a ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don't know who the guy is or what he's about, but he's got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid state. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous. You have to pull it. The secretary general immediately pulled the report. And then the director has now resigned.
Last thing. So for anyone that says you can't get anything done at the U.N., they need to know there's a new sheriff in town.
You get the picture. It's the kind of attitude that one heard a lot at those "black coffee briefings."
Since then, Haley has made attacking Tehran at the world body--even making a special trip to Vienna with the apparent intention to press the IAEA to make demands of Iran that go beyond the letter of the JCPOA -a top priority. Only the escalating crisis over missile launches and nuclear tests by North Korea--a nation that, in contrast to Iran, actually has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them--has consumed more of her attention. And, consistent with her actions as governor, she has most recently threatened to slash U.S. funding to--and possibly withdraw from--the UN Human Rights Council if it follows through on its mandate to publish a list of international companies that do business with Jewish settlements on the West Bank by the end of the year.
Romancing AEI
Like the "black coffee briefings" of yore, AEI's public programs ordinarily involve panel discussions or, perhaps, one featured speaker followed by comments by selected discussants. Single-speaker events speeches are usually reserved for important annual occasions, like the presentation of the Irving Kristol Award dinners to such recent winners as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2015 - when he was actively campaigning against the JCPOA), David Petraeus (2010), and Iraq War booster Bernard Lewis (2007 shortly after he predicted that Iran would launch a nuclear attack on Israel on Aug 22, 2016). Dick Cheney, a member of AEI's board of trustees, has been accorded the platform there on a number of occasions, most recently in September 2015 at the height of the congressional debate over the JCPOA, which he denounced in the strongest terms, suggesting that war with Tehran might be a better option. Indeed, that occasion was the last one in which a single speaker at AEI devoted an entire remarks to Iran. Haley will now follow in his path, albeit as an incumbent U.S. official.
But perhaps the most memorable of the single-speech events at AEI was a fierce attack delivered by Newt Gingrich one month into the Iraq invasion on the State Department for gross incompetence, especially compared to the military. The former House speaker, who was also a member of the Defense Policy Board chaired by AEI's Perle and an AEI fellow at the time, clearly used the occasion to campaign for secretary of state to replace the increasingly hapless Colin Powell, then a victim of a Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal," as Powell's long-time chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson put it, that, with AEI's help, led the charge to war within the administration. The speech was considered so over the top that it ultimately backfired against Gingrich, who was reduced to uncharacteristic silence, particularly after Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, tartly observed, "It is clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy."
Haley will not likely make the same mistake, but it's a precedent worth bearing in mind. After all, Adelson spent $15 million on Gingrich's failed 2012 presidential campaign.
With the eviction of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka from the inner precincts of the White House and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson besieged and taking fire from virtually all sides, neoconservatives - even the NeverTrumpers among them - must be quietly harboring renewed hopes that their restoration may soon be within reach.
And, as should become clear Tuesday, those hopes reside largely with the Trump administration's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who's been on a tear against Iran for several weeks now. Her campaign culminated recently in her unsubstantiated claims--in contradiction to the most recent findings of her own State Department and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not to mention Washington's P5+1 partners--that Tehran is not in full compliance with the two-year-old Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Why Tuesday? Because Haley will give a formal policy address on Iran policy at Neocon Central, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). That's the same "think tank" that acted as the Bush administration's principal cheerleader for the 2003 Iraq invasion and provided the Pentagon with a number of its "scholars" as consultants to put together the totally failed strategy that followed Washington's conquest of Baghdad. Who can forget the machismo-filled "black coffee briefings"--featuring the likes of then-Defense Policy Committee chair Richard Perle, serially mistaken Iran "experts" Michael Rubin, Michael Ledeen, and Reuel Marc Gerecht (the last two now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies), and former CIA director James Woolsey--that bolstered the propaganda blitz about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda, his enormous WMD factories, his fast-developing nuclear weapons program, and the gratitude which we should all feel toward the tremendous sacrifices and promise of Ahmad Chalabi as the George Washington of Iraq? If ever there was a highly developed "echo chamber" for going to war in modern U.S. foreign policy, it was AEI that provided the initial shouting points. All of that makes the title of Haley's impending address, "Beyond the Echo Chamber: Considerations on U.S. Policy Toward Iran," especially ironic, not to say ominous.
Haley, who has hardly been camera-shy since her appointment and will no doubt get an additional media boost from her demands Monday that the UN Security Council take much stronger action against North Korea following its latest nuclear test, clearly has her eyes set on higher office, no doubt including the presidency itself. As the country's most influential national-security reporter, The New York Times' David Sanger, noted just a few days ago, she appears to be the front-runner to succeed an increasingly beleaguered and publicity- and media-averse Tillerson should he or Trump decide that it's not worth his sticking around. A total foreign-policy novice just eight months ago, Haley could soon find herself running U.S. foreign policy, at least to the extent that the State Department remains a factor in the policy-making compared to the Pentagon and the White House itself.
A Darling of the Neocons
As noted by Phil Weiss in April, Haley had become been a darling of the neocons well before she arrived at Turtle Bay. Part of the credit or blame belongs to her close ties to fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsay Graham, long a neoconservative favorite for his staunch defense of Israel, belligerence toward Iran and Russia, and chronic interventionist instincts, especially as regards the U.S. military. It's not coincidental that her most influential adviser, by all accounts, is David Glaccum, who served for years as Graham's chief counsel.
Not coincidentally, however, neocon hopes may lie as well with the generous political funding provided to Haley by Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's and Trump's single biggest donor.
Between May and June, 2016, Sheldon Adelson contributed $250,000 to Haley's 527 political organization, A Great Day, funds that she used to target four Republican state senate rivals in primaries. (Only one was successfully defeated.) Adelson was the largest contributor to her group, which raised a total of $915,000. The next largest donor, Koch Industries, contributed $50,000.
Perhaps Adelson gained an unusual interest in South Carolina's state senate, but it seems more likely the investment was a show of support for Haley's hawkish pro-Israel positions. Adelson, who is also the largest donor to the extreme right-wing Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), has long pushed stridently anti-Iran positions, suggesting in late 2013 that Washington detonate a nuclear weapon in Iran's territory unless Tehran complied with demands that it completely abandon its nuclear program.
And, as Weiss wrote, Haley had come through for Adelson already in 2015, when she signed without any reservation the first law against boycotts of Israel-- about the same time as Adelson convened an anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas.
Courting AIPAC
Although she reiterated support for the eventual, if hypothetical, creation of a Palestinian state in February when Trump himself put that traditional position very much in doubt, her tenure at the UN has been characterized by staunch support for Israel against virtually any criticism. At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March she became the "belle at the ball," as Weiss put it, by serving up the kind of red meat that gets them going:
I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement. It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time. So how are we kicking? We're kicking by, number one, putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back--we're going to have the backs of our friends, but our friends need to have our back too. If you challenge us, be prepared for what you're challenging us for, because we will respond.
The next thing we did was we said, the days of Israel-bashing are over. We have a lot of things to talk about. There are a lot of threats to peace and security. But you're not going to take our number one democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them. And I think what you're seeing is they're all backing up a little bit. The Israel-bashing is not as loud. They didn't know exactly what I meant outside of giving the speech, so we showed them.
So when they decided to try and put a Palestinian [former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Bush administration favorite Salam Fayyad] in one of the highest positions [Special Envoy to Libya] that had ever been given at the U.N., we said no and we had him booted out. That doesn't mean he wasn't a nice man. That doesn't mean he wasn't good to America. What it means is, until the Palestinian Authority comes to the table, until the U.N. responds the way they're supposed to, there are no freebees for the Palestinian Authority anymore.
So then they tested us again. And a ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don't know who the guy is or what he's about, but he's got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid state. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous. You have to pull it. The secretary general immediately pulled the report. And then the director has now resigned.
Last thing. So for anyone that says you can't get anything done at the U.N., they need to know there's a new sheriff in town.
You get the picture. It's the kind of attitude that one heard a lot at those "black coffee briefings."
Since then, Haley has made attacking Tehran at the world body--even making a special trip to Vienna with the apparent intention to press the IAEA to make demands of Iran that go beyond the letter of the JCPOA -a top priority. Only the escalating crisis over missile launches and nuclear tests by North Korea--a nation that, in contrast to Iran, actually has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them--has consumed more of her attention. And, consistent with her actions as governor, she has most recently threatened to slash U.S. funding to--and possibly withdraw from--the UN Human Rights Council if it follows through on its mandate to publish a list of international companies that do business with Jewish settlements on the West Bank by the end of the year.
Romancing AEI
Like the "black coffee briefings" of yore, AEI's public programs ordinarily involve panel discussions or, perhaps, one featured speaker followed by comments by selected discussants. Single-speaker events speeches are usually reserved for important annual occasions, like the presentation of the Irving Kristol Award dinners to such recent winners as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2015 - when he was actively campaigning against the JCPOA), David Petraeus (2010), and Iraq War booster Bernard Lewis (2007 shortly after he predicted that Iran would launch a nuclear attack on Israel on Aug 22, 2016). Dick Cheney, a member of AEI's board of trustees, has been accorded the platform there on a number of occasions, most recently in September 2015 at the height of the congressional debate over the JCPOA, which he denounced in the strongest terms, suggesting that war with Tehran might be a better option. Indeed, that occasion was the last one in which a single speaker at AEI devoted an entire remarks to Iran. Haley will now follow in his path, albeit as an incumbent U.S. official.
But perhaps the most memorable of the single-speech events at AEI was a fierce attack delivered by Newt Gingrich one month into the Iraq invasion on the State Department for gross incompetence, especially compared to the military. The former House speaker, who was also a member of the Defense Policy Board chaired by AEI's Perle and an AEI fellow at the time, clearly used the occasion to campaign for secretary of state to replace the increasingly hapless Colin Powell, then a victim of a Cheney-Rumsfeld "cabal," as Powell's long-time chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson put it, that, with AEI's help, led the charge to war within the administration. The speech was considered so over the top that it ultimately backfired against Gingrich, who was reduced to uncharacteristic silence, particularly after Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, tartly observed, "It is clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy."
Haley will not likely make the same mistake, but it's a precedent worth bearing in mind. After all, Adelson spent $15 million on Gingrich's failed 2012 presidential campaign.
A group named after the Polish-born lawyer of Jewish descent who coined the term genocide issued a "red flag alert" for the United States on Monday after billionaire Elon Musk—a top ally of President Donald Trump—twice flashed what was widely seen as a Nazi salute during a post-inauguration event.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention said that "Musk's act is a frightening signal of things to come" and rejected the notion that the billionaire's gestures were unintentional.
"In light of Musk's important influence on the new administration," the group said in a statement, "the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is issuing a Red Flag Alert for genocide in the United States."
The Lemkin Institute urged Americans to "respond with critical thinking" to any suggestion that Musk's salutes were merely awkward or odd-looking—but ultimately benign—expressions of enthusiasm.
"Is it possible that any person—especially in South Africa (where support for Nazism was very strong) or the USA (where the History Channel has introduced almost all but the youngest generations to the Nazi salute)—is unaware of this salute or what it means?" the group asked. "It is almost impossible that this was an unfortunate mistake. Finally, can we really believe that someone who is so often in the public eye would risk an arm gesture—twice—that looks almost exactly like the Nazi salute while he is supposedly celebrating Donald Trump's election to president? We strongly believe that Elon Musk's gesture was intentional. We will be happy to be proven wrong."
"Musk's Hitler salute cannot and must not be swept under the rug. The U.S. press, cowed as it has been under President Biden, cannot be trusted to cover the new president's administration with any backbone or honesty. It is up to the American people to defend the Constitution and this country's core values against all threats," the organization continued. "Trans people, refugees, and migrants are not the threats. The billionaires with close ties to our new president who flash the Nazi salute and seek to replace the old elites with a new caste—that is the real threat to America."
Musk's salutes drew widespread alarm, including from public officials in Europe—where Musk has attempted to boost far-right parties.
"Such a gesture, given his already known proximity to right-wing populists in the fascist tradition, must worry every democrat," German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wrote in response.
Far-right extremists, for their part, celebrated Musk's gestures, which they appear to have had no trouble interpreting.
As Rolling Stone reported, "The Proud Boys Ohio chapter posted a clip of the Musk video to its Telegram channel with the text, 'Hail Trump!'"
President Donald Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship "seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans."
A coalition of immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration on Monday over the newly inaugurated president's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, a move that campaigners and legal experts condemned as both immoral and flagrantly unconstitutional.
The lawsuit was filed by several branches of the ACLU, the Asian Law Caucus, the State Democracy Defenders Fund, and the Legal Defense Fund on behalf of groups with members whose children born in the United States would be denied citizenship under President Donald Trump's new order, which runs up against the clear text of the 14th Amendment and more than a century of legal precedent.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that "denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional—it's also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values."
"Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is," said Romero. "This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration's overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail."
The groups behind the new lawsuit noted that Trump's order leaves many expectant parents across the United States fearful and uncertain about their babies' futures. The organizations pointed to one couple who arrived in the U.S. in 2023 and is awaiting a review of their asylum application.
"The mom-to-be is in her third trimester," the groups said. "Under this executive order, their baby would be considered an undocumented noncitizen and could be denied basic healthcare and nutrition, putting the newborn at grave risk at such a vulnerable stage of life."
"Taken as a whole, Trump's words and actions reveal the enormity of the danger we're facing, which compels us all to mobilize to fight back."
Theo Oshiro, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, said Monday that "birthright citizenship is a cornerstone of our democracy."
"Our members, who come from all over the world, have created vibrant communities, loving families, and built this country over generations," said Oshiro. "To deny their children the same basic rights as all other children born in the United States is an affront to basic values of fairness, equality, and inclusivity. We are grateful for the bravery of our members who have taken on this case, and are prepared to fight alongside them."
The order was part of a flurry of immigration-related actions that Trump took on the first day of his second White House term, including an emergency declaration that directs the U.S. armed forces "to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control" at the southern border.
Trump also signed an executive order suspending refugee programs, a step that had an immediate impact. Reuters reported that "nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled" under the order.
Additionally, The Washington Post reported that "asylum seekers who made appointments to come to the U.S. border Monday afternoon were blocked at international crossings after Trump officials halted use of the CBP One mobile app, which the Biden administration used as a scheduling tool."
"Trump also ended all 'categorical' parole programs that under President Joe Biden allowed 30,000 migrants per month to enter the country via U.S. airports, bypassing the border, for applicants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua," the Post added.
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, said that "taken as a whole, Trump's words and actions reveal the enormity of the danger we're facing, which compels us all to mobilize to fight back."
"This is a fight not just to protect immigrants," said Matos, "but to also defend our democracy."
"This move not only erases accountability for one of the darkest days in our nation's history but also emboldens far-right extremists and grants them free license to continue their ideological reign of terror," said one critic.
Democracy defenders on Monday night swiftly condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pardon roughly 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and commute the sentences of some others.
The widely anticipated move, which Trump made with television cameras in the Oval Office, came just hours after he returned to power on Monday afternoon—despite being convicted of 34 felonies in New York last year and facing various other legal cases, including for his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic former President Joe Biden that culminated in inciting the 2021 Capitol attack.
"Just hours after promising to bring 'law and order back to our cities,' Trump pardoned more than a thousand January 6th rioters and put violent offenders right back in our neighborhoods—people who assaulted police officers, destroyed property, and tried to overturn our freedom to vote," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, in a statement.
"By giving January 6th rioters a free pass, Trump is rewarding political violence and making all of us less safe," he continued. "No one should be above the law in the United States of America, and our first responders and the American people deserve better than this."
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the grassroots progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, said that "Trump's pardons of January 6 rioters, including those convicted of violence against law enforcement, mark a grave and unprecedented attack on the rule of law and American democracy. This move not only erases accountability for one of the darkest days in our nation's history but also emboldens far-right extremists and grants them free license to continue their ideological reign of terror."
"These are not patriots, these are traitors who will now be free to recruit others into what Trump views as his own personal militia," he asserted. "By granting clemency to these individuals, who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, Trump is signaling that political violence and the rejection of democratic norms are acceptable tactics in service to his authoritarian agenda. This is a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy and the safety of our communities."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of watchdog Public Citizen, said that "it is perhaps on-brand that Donald Trump has kicked off his second term with an assault on our democracy, just as he ended his first term."
"This isn't just about degrading the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law in theory, his disgraceful actions here send a message that political violence is acceptable, so long as it is in support of him and his pursuit of unchecked power," she continued. "We intend to fight against these types of abuses over the next four years to maintain the integrity of the rule of law."
Accusing the Republican of "condoning insurrection," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón similarly warned that "this will not be the last time President Trump attacks democracy" and vowed that her organization stands "ready to defend it."
During the insurrection, Kase Solomón said, "people died and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured protecting members of Congress from the attack that followed. These deaths and injuries should not be in vain. To pardon those involved is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power."
"Trump was charged with multiple crimes for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election which ended in the insurrection at the Capitol," she noted. "Only his reelection, coupled with an extremely misguided ruling from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity, allowed him to escape trial. In pardoning those who attempted to violently overturn the election and invalidate 80 million votes, Trump is showing his contempt for our justice system and our democracy."
Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now president of the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, warned that "giving a pass to those who participated, all of whom were convicted after trial with ample evidence and process or pleaded guilty to crimes, sends a message that the right of the people to choose our own leaders no longer matters because the results can merely be overturned by force."
"And," he said, "it raises a terrifying question: What happens if Trump doesn't want to leave the White House at the end of his term?"
Trump commuted the sentences of Jeremy Bertino, Joseph Biggs, Thomas Caldwell, Joseph Hackett, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola, Zachary Rehl, Stewart Rhodes, Edward Vallejo, and Jessica Watkins. The others—whom Trump called "hostages"—received "a full, complete, and unconditional pardon."
"I further direct the attorney general to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021," Trump's order said. "The Bureau of Prisons shall immediately implement all instructions from the Department of Justice regarding this directive."
Shortly before leaving office on Monday, Biden issued a final wave of pardons, including for members of the U.S. House of Representatives select committee that investigated the insurrection. The Democrat said that he could not "in good conscience do nothing" to protect them and the pardons "should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense."
This post has been updated with comment from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.