Trump Brings Back Russiagate

◼ Trying to turn the page from all things Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump has revived Russiagate. He accuses Barack Obama of “treason” for promoting the hoax that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. To fan the flames, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified scads of 2016 intelligence emails. She claims they show that Obama DNI James Clapper and other intelligence officials knew the Kremlin had not interfered in the election, yet Obama had them rush out an intelligence-community assessment (ICA) claiming that it had. It’s sleight of hand: Clapper was talking about Russian espionage against election infrastructure (e.g., voting machines, registration rolls) — and what he said was that Russian intel hadn’t succeeded in undermining vote-counting, not that its operatives had refrained from probing for weaknesses. The ICA, by contrast, focused on Russian cyber ops in the nature of hacking the DNC emails and publishing online anti-Clinton campaign messaging. Even Trump’s CIA — in a report issued just days before Gabbard’s email dump — found that the ICA had been correct in expressing “high confidence” that Russia meddled in the election to denigrate Hillary Clinton. The Democrats’ dirty trick was the contention that Trump had conspired with Putin — a fabrication of the Clinton campaign, largely based on the bogus Steele dossier. Obama was well aware of Clinton’s ploy, which his DOJ and FBI disgracefully used to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Trump’s campaign. He pushed out the ICA while he was still president, knowing it would feed the Trump-Russia collusion frenzy. But such abuses of power are not crimes — as no one should know better than Trump, who spent 2024 convincing the Supreme Court that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for their official acts.

◼ Yesterday, during his appearance at a “Winning the AI Race” summit in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump launched the White House’s AI Action Plan. The president’s project contains three major planks. It establishes a set of procurement rules that prohibit the federal government from purchasing any AI product that, in Trump’s words, “has been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas.” It seeks to “expedite construction of all major AI infrastructure projects,” by waiving or reversing Biden-era environmental obstacles and “easing Federal regulatory burdens.” And it encourages the export of American hardware and software, “to preserve and extend American leadership in AI and decrease international dependence on AI technologies developed by our adversaries.” These policies are all within the federal government’s remit, and all are welcome on the merits. At the outset of the event, Trump said that he had come “to declare that America is going to win” the global AI race. This goal is imperative, and, while it will take more than some brave words and a handful of executive orders to achieve, Trump’s ambitious approach represents an excellent start.

◼ The Trump administration is touting yet another nebulous trade deal (the authority under which it was made, whether it will actually happen, and the exact terms of the agreement are all unclear), this time with Japan. The major win is supposed to be that Japan, already the top source of foreign investment in the U.S., will make $550 billion in foreign investment in the U.S. Foreign investment is the flipside of the trade deficit, which Trump believes is a problem, so he is effectively promising to continue the trade deficit with Japan. Meanwhile, Americans would pay a tax of 15 percent on Japanese imports, and Japan would open its markets to more American products. Higher taxes on Americans, lower taxes on foreigners, and incoherence on what the goal of the deal even is: all the hallmarks of Trump’s trade policy.

◼ Representative María Elvira Salazar (R., Fla.) is sponsoring immigration legislation, the Dignity Act, that has a few good provisions. It funds a modernization of border infrastructure and ICE. And it imposes the E-Verify system to ensure that everyone hired has legal status. The rest of the bill, however, is flawed. Supporters claim that the bill does not offer amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. This is true if they mean full citizenship. But it offers a form of legal-resident status. That is the core of “amnesty.” Passing this bill would be the first official step toward creating a permanent-resident underclass with a perpetually renewable legal status that falls short of citizenship. It is the kind of arrangement that the Republican Party was founded to oppose. The American republic does not want and is not fit for a racialized helot class. Such an arrangement would also encourage illegal entry. Some of the bill’s enforcement mechanisms seem designed precisely to mollify restrictionists and then to be abandoned in practice. The bill’s advocates will try to highlight headline-grabbing penalty enhancements to convey “toughness.” This is in fact an insult to the American people, who do not desire the appearance of cruelty but do want the reality of firmness and fairness.

◼ The New York Times published a stomach-churning report describing how, in a push across several states to combat a national organ shortage, medical professionals have rushed to remove vital organs from patients before they have died, to perform transplants. Such disturbing incidents have become much too common, notwithstanding a system of protocols to prevent them. One Alabama hospital tried to remove a comatose woman’s heart as it was still beating. Other donors have been removed from ventilators while showing obvious signs of life, such as crying or looking around the room. While the feeling of immense urgency to secure an organ for a dying patient or loved one is understandable, cases like these are unacceptable. Physicians must remember that their highest responsibility is to do no harm, which requires never attempting to trade one life for another.

◼ For eight days, the union representing several thousand city workers in Philadelphia, AFSCME District Council 33 (DC33), was on strike. Mayor Cherelle Parker (D.) had offered a 3 percent per year wage increase for a three-year contract. DC33 said that wasn’t enough and refused to collect the trash. Philadelphians took matters into their own hands and began working together to take trash bags to makeshift sites around the city. The AFL-CIO called them “scabs.” The strike wound up being for nothing, as DC33 accepted a new contract that was basically the same as Parker’s offer. Striking against the public should be illegal, and collective bargaining should not be allowed in the public sector. Harsh? It’s what Franklin Roosevelt thought, and it was the norm in the U.S. until the 1960s. Philadelphia provided olfactory evidence of the injustice of government unions.

◼ To a certain generation (and perhaps every generation), no figure embodied the bombast, spectacle, and energy of professional wrestling better than Terry Bollea. Better known as Hulk Hogan, Bollea rose improbably to fame from a modest station. He adopted the “Hulk” moniker from the then-popular Incredible Hulk TV show. Bollea, with his muscular, 6-foot-7-inch frame, dwarfed Lou Ferrigno, its star. World Wrestling Federation (later World Wrestling Entertainment) owner Vince McMahon, impressed by Bollea, welcomed him into competition and completed his stage name by dubbing him “Hogan.” His star was already on the rise by the time he appeared, complete with blond locks and handlebar mustache, as the ostentatious wrestler “Thunderlips” in 1982’s Rocky III. “Hulkmania” began shortly thereafter, as Bollea almost singlehandedly brought professional wrestling into the mainstream. Subsequent decades were rougher. His steroid use became public, and a personal life whose unraveling the world would later witness began to catch up with him. A protracted divorce (one of two) and other personal drama brought him to the brink of suicide. A sex tape, recorded without his knowledge, made its way to Gawker. Bollea — backed by Peter Thiel, aggrieved at the publication for outing him as gay — sued the publication into oblivion. Amid all the chaos, and despite his life’s immense physical toll, Bollea remained a consummate entertainer to his last days. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, one of his last major public appearances, Bollea delivered the expected theatrics (ripping his shirt off) while making a surprisingly heartfelt endorsement of the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, his fellow WWE Hall of Famer. “I didn’t come here as Hulk Hogan,” he told an audience that had loved him as precisely that. “My name is Terry Bollea.” So it was. But he is sure to be remembered as the Hulkster. Dead at 71. R.I.P., brother.

◼ “I will get back onstage if it f***ing kills me,” Ozzy Osbourne said in 2022, and he made sure of it. The front man of Black Sabbath wasn’t its most talented member. That distinction belonged to the band’s chief composer, guitarist Tony Iommi, who revolutionized music with his genre-defining and magnificently dissonant riffs. But Ozzy was arguably the greatest talent scout in heavy metal history. He hired guitar wizard Randy Rhoads in 1979, Zakk Wylde in 1987, bassist Robert Trujillo (who later joined Metallica) in 1996. He had long suffered from mild motor dysfunction, and his speech was often slurred and incomprehensible. But once he was in front of an audience, something would click—his performances never failed to demonstrate his stage skill and charisma. A diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, in 2019, likely came as confirmation rather than revelation. Dead at 76, two weeks after Black Sabbath’s farewell concert in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, England. R.I.P.

◼ Ed Feulner believed that people are policy. But he didn’t just believe it. He lived it. Born in Chicago in 1941, in college he entered a conservative movement still in its infancy. He went about growing it. He helped organize the Republican Study Committee and served as its executive chairman. He and other movement leaders created the Philadelphia Society in 1964 as an intellectual clearinghouse for their ranks. Feulner founded the Heritage Foundation, which launched in 1973. He became its president in 1977, serving in that role until 2013, and then again in 2017–18. Under his tenure, it became the premier conservative think tank in Washington. In 1980, he spearheaded the Mandate for Leadership, a practical policy framework for the incoming Ronald Reagan administration (which heeded it). Feulner also helped start the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network, which remain essential incubators of conservative policy beyond the Beltway. Later in life, he served as chairman emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum. In addition to his movement activities, he wrote nine books, was a faithful Catholic (active in his parish and a Knight of Malta), and was a devoted husband to his wife, Linda, for four decades, as well as a beloved father and grandfather. He lived to see many of the great figures of our movement pass into history. A magnanimous man, he was unsparing in his praise of them. With Feulner’s own passing, it is now obvious that he was one of those greats. Ed Feulner believed that in Washington, there are no permanent victories and no permanent defeats. His life and legacy prove that this is true. His passing nonetheless remains a loss for the movement he did so much to build. R.I.P.