What the Hell Is Going On

In the wake of a decisive US strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities, many questions are being asked. Did Donald Trump make the right call? What about the intelligence? Is this the start of US military action in Iran or a one-off? And what are the implications for Gaza, the region, and Iran in the coming months?Kenneth M. Pollack, PhD., is Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. Previously he was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he worked on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries. Dr. Pollack has also worked on long-term issues related to Middle Eastern political and military affairs for the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he was a senior research professor at the Institute for National Security Studies at National Defense University.Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

Five days in, Israel's battle to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure continues. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched the campaign in the wake of a decision by the IAEA Board to censure Iran a resolution declaring that Iran is in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, one day past a Donald Trump imposed deadline of 60 days for Iran to agree to relinquish its uranium enrichment capabilities. Iran has responded with indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Can Israel destroy Iran's nuclear program? Is that possible without the United States? What role will the United States play? And can the Tehran regime survive? Haviv Gur is a veteran Israeli journalist who serves as Senior Analyst for The Times of Israel. He has covered Israel's politics, foreign policy and relationship with the Jewish diaspora since 2005. He has reported from over 20 countries and is fluent in Hebrew and English. He served as director of communications for the Jewish Agency for Israel, the country's largest NGO. He travels around the world educating people on Israel and reporting on timely events and developments in and about Israel as a premiere analyst.Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

The aftermath of Biden's open border policies continues to haunt America as the consequences of mass illegal immigration continue to snowball. Changing attitudes towards, net positive, productive legal migration reflects the sentiment stirred up by the surge in illegal immigration we experienced the last four years. How does this affect workforce participation and address population decline? What role does the welfare state play? How are foreign adversaries using this mess as an opportunity to establish influence operations through universities, social media, and in foreign born communities? Has something changed about the nature of illegal migrants to America? And where is an immigration reform bill in Congress to address these issues permanently?Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute where he researched demographics, economic development, and international security in the Korean peninsula and Asia. He is also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, a founding board member of the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea, and has served as consultant or adviser to the US Government and international organizations. His most recent book is the Post-Pandemic Edition of Men Without Work (Templeton, 2022). His demographic work on immigration focuses on societies facing population decline and the crucial role of skilled immigrants, both of which he addresses in his Working Paper, “America's Immigration Mess: An Illustrated Guide.”Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

Donald Trump has promised Americans that in three years, with the help of Congress' “Big Beautiful Bill” and a $25 billion-dollar downpayment, his dreams of a golden dome protecting the nation will become a reality. Inspired by Israel's highly successful Iron Dome, Trump has selected General Guetlein of the Space Force to lead the missile defense shield project, signaling a focus on space that is bound to ratchet up the arms race in the skies. With our adversary's missile capabilities growing by the day, can a ‘golden dome' save us? What does it mean for deterrence? And how much time and money will it take?Dr. J.D. Crouch has had a distinguished diplomatic career as a leader in national security and missile defense. Dr. Crouch served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W Bush and George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on policy for missile defense, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. As an advisor to the U.S. Delegation on Nuclear and Space Arms Talks with the former Soviet Union, Dr. Crouch is a foremost expert in missile defense and serves as a Senior Advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

John Ondrasik is standing up for Israeli hostages in the best way he knows how. Having written and performed songs with strong social messages over the last several decades, he is responding to the horrors of Hamas' October 7th attacks by rewriting the words to his hit song “Superman (It's Not Easy)”. Ondrasik's revised lyrics turn pain into resilience, but why aren't other artists speaking out? Ondrasik has sung about 9/11, about Afghanistan, about Ukraine, and about terror attacks in Israel. But he is almost alone in the music industry. Why are artists so afraid to do the right thing, and stand against terrorism? John Ondrasik is a Grammy-Award nominated singer-songwriter who has spent the last several decades writing deeply personal songs with strong social messages in six studio albums featured in over 350 films, TV shows, and advertisements under his hockey moniker, Five for Fighting. Most recently, John has been using his platform to advocate for Israel and denounce the holding of Israeli hostages and the Oct. 7th attacks by the terrorist group Hamas. He has recently updated the words of his song Superman to highlight Israeli hostage Alon Ohel, and the other hostages still held by Hamas.Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.Listen to Superman here.

China's Ministry of State Security has infiltrated and is conducting espionage at all levels of Stanford University. By law, all Chinese nationals are required to report back to the Chinese Communist Party on their research and daily activities when asked. Sometimes this spying is voluntary and conducted by those who wish to see America fall behind in the global tech race. Other times, Chinese nationals are coerced into spying on their school, friends, and teachers through transnational repression. How can universities and Congress work together to prevent Chinese espionage? And how is the Chinese government buying influence in American universities and American society writ large? Elsa Johnson is the managing editor of the Stanford Review and a sophomore studying international relations and East Asian studies.Garret Molloy is a staff writer and the business manager of the Stanford Review. He is a sophomore studying Hayek, economic history, and libertarian thought.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here. Read Elsa and Garret's reporting here.

America's immigration law and system are broken. President Biden allowed millions of people to enter the United States illegally. And now President Trump is using obscure laws to try to fast-track a massive deportation campaign. Expedited removal and deportations without court hearings are legal and supported by the vast majority of Americans. However, members of Congress have the power to clarify immigration laws and fix a system clogged up by an influx of asylum cases – if they choose to use it. How many deportation cases actually require a court hearing? And how can Trump work with Congress to further his immigration agenda?Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. At GWU, he is also the Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center and Executive Director of the Project for Older Prisoners. Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, and members of Congress, and has testified before Congress over 100 times. His latest book is The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (Simon and Schuster, 2024).Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Harvard has finally released its 311-page report on the antisemitism Jewish students face on one of America's most elite college campuses. The stories of Jews being forced to conceal outward displays of their religion, being shut out of academic and extracurricular spaces alike, and facing systemic harassment are horrifying. However, the intensity of the antisemitism at Harvard is also unsurprising. And the manner in which this report was released indicates the university has no real intention of fixing the root causes of Jew hatred on its Cambridge campus. How did Harvard University go from being a quarter Jewish to becoming a bastion of antisemitism? And how does foreign funding perpetuate antisemitism at elite universities? Maya Sulkin is a reporter at The Free Press. Before that, Maya was chief of staff of the FP. She started at the FP as an intern in 2021 while a student at Columbia University.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here. Read Maya's article in the Free Press here.

Gen Z may not be the liberal base of support many on the left hoped they would be. Today, there is a growing split between voters under 30, with 22-29 year olds favoring Democrats by 6.4 points and 18-21 year olds favoring Republicans by almost 12 points. As America's youngest voters are growing up in the age of COVID lockdowns, social media, and cancel culture, conservative and MAGA ideology is emerging as the new counter-culture, giving young men in particular an opportunity to escape the world around them. How will the youngest voter cohort change the bases of both parties? And how will young voters change as they grow older? Milan Singh is the founder and Director of the Yale Youth Poll. Originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is a junior in Pierson majoring in Economics. He has previously worked as a researcher at Slow Boring; a data science fellow at Decision Desk HQ; and social policy intern at the Niskanen Center. This past summer, he worked as a consultant for Blueprint and WelcomePAC. Outside of the classroom, he is one of the Opinion Editors for the Yale Daily News.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

As President Trump continues to try to end the war in Ukraine, Russia is playing for time. For as long as the U.S. continues to support Ukraine, Russia's military effort will remain weak and unsustainable. But if Russia is able to stall in negotiations, and degrade American and Western support for Ukraine, they could very well emerge victorious. How should Ukrainian leadership respond to continued American attempts at war-ending negotiations? And what are the consequences if America withdraws its support for Ukraine? Frederick W. Kagan is the director of AEI's Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He is the author of the 2007 report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq, and the book Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010). His Critical Threats Project, alongside the Institute for the Study of War, releases regular updates on Iranian activity in the Middle East, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and transnational terrorism on the African continent.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Following a surprise Oval Office announcement by President Trump during Bibi Netanyahu's trip to Washington, the United States has once again restarted negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Thanks to Israeli attacks on Iranian air defenses and its proxies, coupled with crippling U.S. sanctions, Iran has never been weaker and America has never had more leverage over the Islamic Republic. However, Iran's nuclear program is also significantly larger and more advanced than it was in 2015 or throughout the first Trump administration. What should Trump demand in a new nuclear deal with Iran? And is the administration's current approach a recipe for success, or are they being played by the Ayatollah? Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chairman of the Tikvah Fund, and the Chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition. He previously served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in Donald Trump's first administration. His most recent book is If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century (Wicked Son, 2024). Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

On this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc discuss Dany's article, #WTH The Tariff Tsunami. No one should be surprised by Trump's tariff war. The real question is, what is the President trying to accomplish? Some in the administration argue that the tariffs create leverage to bring about a myriad of free trade agreements the U.S. would not be able to get otherwise. Others argue tariffs will bring back American manufacturing. And some presidential advisors just seem to love tariffs for the sake of tariffs. Is Trump pursuing a radical free trade agenda? Or are these tariffs going to be a permanent fixture throughout his tenure? Read the transcript here. Read Dany's article in the WTH Substack here.

President Trump's executive actions are being blocked left, right, and center by federal courts issuing nationwide injunctions – or orders for the government to halt a given policy that judges deem unlawful. However, the constitutionality of these national injunctions is up for debate. Should the Supreme Court decide that judicial policy pronouncements are indeed unconstitutional, what will that mean for Executive power? Could it mean that Congress will need to resume doing the work it has shirked for years? And what will it mean for the Trump agenda?John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

President Trump is reportedly considering abandoning America's longstanding role commanding NATO forces as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), changing the U.S. combatant command structure, and canceling modernization plans for U.S. Forces Japan. While it's true that Europe needs to step up to the plate on its own defense needs, abandoning the SACEUR position would place U.S. troops under foreign command, give Washington less leverage over our allies, and weaken deterrence. How can Trump better advance his goal of boosting European defense spending? And where can the Defense Department make cuts that bolster deterrence? Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Before joining AEI, Kori was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; a professor at West Point, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University; and worked in the State Department, National Security Council, and Department of Defense. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg. Her upcoming book is The State and the Soldier: The History of Civil Military Relations in America.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

UK residents are currently paying some of the highest prices in the world for electricity. How did Brits go from being an energy superpower to showering in the gym because it's too expensive to heat water at home? Perhaps because both Labour and Tory politicians are banning the production and use of cheap hydrocarbons in the pursuit of a “Net Zero future.” How is Net Zero irreparably damaging Britain's economy? And what does the UK example mean for other states attempting to permanently phase out hydrocarbons?Robert Bryce is an author, speaker, and film producer. He has been writing about energy, power, politics, and innovation for more than three decades and is the author of six books on the subject. His most recent book is A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations (PublicAffairs, 2020). Bryce is also the executive producer of the documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, and the co-producer of the docuseries Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid. He frequently writes on his popular substack robertbryce.substack.com.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here. Subscribe to Robert Bryce's Substack here.

The fundamentals of the economy are strong. So why are the Dow Jones down and fears of a recession up? Perhaps because President Trump is rocking the economic boat by threatening tariffs on historic trading partners, only to rescind them the same day; taking a chainsaw to government expenditures when he should be using a scalpel; and talking about structurally changing the U.S. economy. Will Trump's disruptive approach to the international economy enrich Americans in the long run? Or are the tariffs, and the flip-flopping, going to backfire? Michael Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the Professor of Practice at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Dr. Strain also writes as a columnist for Project Syndicate.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Canada's economy is in the toilet, has an electorate that is overwhelmingly left wing, and a healthcare system that encourages physician assisted suicide over basic treatment. Canada's systemic problems have meant that Canadian voters were slowly starting to wake up, and were on track to deliver a blow-out for the conservative party in the next elections. But while Trump's tariff threats have been omnipresent, his threat to make Canada the “51st state” rallied Canadians around the flag and around the governing Liberal Party. How has Trump's rhetoric hurt conservative chances of victory? And why would Canada make a terrible 51st state? Colin Dueck is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and has served as a foreign policy adviser on several Republican presidential campaigns. Colin is the author of four books on American foreign policy and national security and the AEI report True North: Canadian Politics, the Tory Alternative, and the United States.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Partisans believe that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “ambushed” in the Oval Office. The story is rather different. In fact, President Trump was genuinely enthusiastic about signing a minerals deal with Zelensky that would enrich both nations and vest the United States in Ukraine's future. But Zelensky, acting on poor advice or out of his own stubbornness and exhaustion, used the Oval Office meeting to challenge Trump and Vice President Vance in front of American media, leading to a public spectacle that may permanently damage U.S.-Ukraine relations and Ukrainian security. Is the U.S.-Ukraine relationship salvageable?Read Marc's article, Zelensky must mend the breach with Trump — or resign, in the Washington Post here. Read Dany's latest commentary on the Trump-Vance-Zelensky meeting here.

California has invested tens of billions of dollars in preventing climate change, billions more than California's investment in adapting to the effects of climate change and directly preventing disasters. And now, the devastation of the recent Los Angeles wildfires is further proof that governments need to focus on protecting citizens through cheap and simple investments in climate adaptation rather than expensive and inefficient investments in climate change prevention. Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute, and the author of the best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). He has been named one of Time's 100 most influential people and one of the UK Guardian's “50 people who can save the planet.” His latest book is Best Things First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World's Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises (Copenhagen Consensus Center, 2023).Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Donald Trump's first weeks in office have been beyond busy. With a flurry of executive orders and other actions, he is remaking the federal government and American society writ large at lightning speed. In this special WTH episode, Megyn Kelly shares her feelings about Trump 2.0, the direction of the country under his leadership, and how his approach the second time around differs from the first. How is Trump remaking the country in his own image? And how durable will his legacy be once he leaves office? Megyn Kelly is the founder of Devil May Care Media and hosts The Megyn Kelly Show. She was a journalist at Fox News from 2004 to 2017 and moderated five presidential debates, including the 2015 Republican primary debate. From 2017 to 2018, she worked at NBC News. Kelly has been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, and her memoir Settle for More became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Before her media career, she practiced law for nine years.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here. Find the Megyn Kelly Show here.

China's entry into the World Trade Organization, normalizing trade relations with the PRC, was billed to the American public as a rising tide that lifts all boats. But decades later, many of the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs to cheaper Chinese goods have not recovered. And while the first “China shock” left millions of textile and low-skill manufacturing workers without a job, Chinese trade practices are now targeting sectors crucial to American prosperity and national security. How can the U.S. protect vital industries from unfair trade practices? And why is it so difficult to help those who lose their job to trade find new work? David Autor is the Daniel and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics and co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research Labor Studies Program and the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. Autor is also an elected Fellow of the Econometrics Society, the Society of Labor Economists, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. In 2019, the Economist labeled Autor “The academic voice of the American worker.”Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

For decades, police, politicians, and community leaders alike covered up what is likely the largest peacetime organized crime spree in British history: The sexual grooming, exploitation, and trafficking of minors by predominantly Pakistani Muslim migrant communities. While new light is now being shed on this scandal by Elon Musk and brave journalists in Britain, there is an untold number of victims who will likely never see proper justice. How did British fixation on community relations lead to the sexual exploitation of minors? And what does the uncovering of this story, and the corruption that allowed it to occur, mean for the rest of the Western world? Dominic Green is a fellow at the Royal Historical Society, a Wall Street Journal contributor, and a Washington Examiner columnist. He was previously a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and editor-in-chief of The Spectator's U.S. edition. Dr. Green is the author of five books about British history and society. Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

On President Trump's first day in office, he issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” attempting to change the current understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment by declaring that the children of illegal immigrants or people on temporary visas born in the United States are not granted citizenship. While many Americans may agree that the unfortunate realities of “birth tourism” and “anchor babies” in the U.S. need to be curbed or stopped, Trump's executive order has been criticized as unconstitutional and the wrong way to approach the issue. How are presidents of both parties subverting Congress in their pursuit of legislative goals? And how did President Obama's action on DACA and President Biden's declaration on the Equal Rights Amendment help create precedent for Trump's actions today? Adam White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School's C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

In the 300th episode of What the Hell is Going On? Dany and Marc discuss Marc's column in the Washington Post, Donald Trump finally gets his honeymoon. When Trump first entered the Oval Office in 2017, the Democratic Party was in full “resist” mode, Trump was a Washington outsider, and protests engulfed America's capital. Today, Trump enters office understanding the levers of government and how to wield them, issuing a flurry of executive orders and memoranda putting federal employees back to work, attempting to end birthright citizenship, canceling federal DEI programs, and more. How will Trump's second term differ from his first? And how long will Trump's political honeymoon last? Read Marc's column in the Washington Post here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Many who follow Russia's invasion of Ukraine have come to the same conclusion: Russia can defeat Ukraine with its “incredible” strength. However, Russia is much weaker than even many in the American media let on. The Russian military is bleeding troops for minor gains on the battlefield, running out of men to fight, and has so little equipment it's turning to movie studios to recoup donated Soviet military equipment from the 1950s. How long can Putin continue his illegal war on Ukraine? How can Trump leverage Russia's weakness to bring Putin to the negotiating table? George Barros is the Russia Team & Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead on the Russia and Ukraine portfolio at the Institute for the Study of War. George's work focuses on open-source research and geospatial analysis of Russia's war in Ukraine, Russian information operations, and Ukrainian politics. Prior to joining ISW, he worked in the U.S. House of Representatives as an advisor on Ukraine and Russia for a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.Read the transcript here. Find ISW's Ukraine Conflict Updates here.

While many understand the failures of the late Jimmy Carter's presidency, he is often referred to as our “best ex-president” because of his humanitarian and diplomatic efforts following his loss to President Reagan. However, the rose-colored glasses through which many Americans view his post-presidency ignore his disastrous meddling in foreign affairs and blatant antisemitism since leaving office. Despite his humanitarian efforts, Jimmy Carter was not the elder statesman his allies alleged him to be. Rather, Carter's true legacy is that of someone who wished to remain president without the constitutional fetters of the office, undermining his successors of both parties. Steven Hayward is the Edward L. Gaylord Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He was previously a resident scholar at UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies and the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Hayward is the author of The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry (Regnery 2004). Read the transcript here.

In this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc discuss Marc's column in the Washington Post, Does Trump want Putin to get Ukraine's $26 trillion in gas and minerals? Ukraine is a mineral superpower, with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals in the world. And with the help of U.S. assistance, Ukraine has successfully defended roughly 80 percent of its known mineral deposits. If the U.S. continues to help Ukraine secure and develop its natural minerals, we can not only deal a strategic blow to Beijing and Moscow, but also bring enormous financial benefits back to the American people.Read Marc's article in the Washington Post here. Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Americans have lost faith in the expert class, and in some cases, for good reason. So-called “experts” didn't just destroy livelihoods during the COVID pandemic or make China rich through normalized trade relations, they also looked down upon and antagonized the American people in the process. What role will experts play in the second Trump administration? And how can the expert class begin to regain the trust of the American people? Robert Doar is the president of the American Enterprise Institute. While at AEI, Mr. Doar has served as a co-chair of the National Commission on Hunger and as a lead member of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity. He first joined AEI in 2014 to lead the Institute's opportunity and mobility studies program after serving for more than 20 years in leadership positions in the social service programs of New York State and New York City. He is the host of the podcast One on One with Robert Doar. Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

In roughly ten days, opposition forces in Syria were able to accomplish more than they did in a decade and topple the tyrannical Assad regime. But as the dust settles, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham – the U.S. designated terrorist organization that led the march to Damascus – will have to prove that it has moved on from its anti-Western Jihadist ideology and is committed to rebuilding a Syrian state that meets the needs of its people. Why did Assad's regime collapse so quickly? And what does the future of Syrian governance look like? Hassan Hassan is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of New Lines Magazine, an initiative of the New Lines Institute, and the founder of the institute's Human Security Unit. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University and the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2016, Reagan Arts). Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

After repeatedly pledging to the American people that he would not pardon his son Hunter, Joe Biden gave his son one of the most sweeping pardons in presidential history. The presidential pardon power has a long history of abuse, but never before has a pardon been so broad, over such a long period of time, and issued by someone possibly implicated in the case. Why did Biden choose to pardon his son now? And what does the pardon mean for the future of political lawfare? Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. At GWU, he is also the Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center, and Executive Director of the Project for Older Prisoners. Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, and members of Congress, and has testified before Congress over 100 times. His latest book is The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (Simon and Schuster, 2024).Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our substack here. Find The Indispensable Right here.

Late Tuesday night South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, accusing the opposition party of “legislative dictatorship” and vowing to eradicate “pro-North Korean anti-state forces.” Almost as suddenly as martial law was declared, the legislature voted unanimously for it to end – sending the very military forces that attempted to lock down the National Assembly packing. What do Yoon's actions mean for the future of South Korean politics? How might a collapse of South Korea's conservative party affect U.S.-Korean relations? And what are the broader implications for American allies and partners in Asia? Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and U.S.-China competition. He also teaches at Princeton University and serves as chair of the board of the Open Technology Fund. Zack previously served as the assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council and as a special assistant to the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy at the Department of Defense. His upcoming book is Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries (Yale University Press, 2025).Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the world is heading towards an era of depopulation. And for the first time in human history, this era of depopulation will be by choice. All over the world, women are choosing to have fewer and fewer children even as medical advances continue to prolong life. The result will be that people born today will live in graying societies in which the elderly and retired vastly outnumber the young and employed who are critical in supporting older generations. Why are people around the world choosing to have fewer children? And what do graying societies mean for the global economy? Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute where he researched demographics, economic development, and international security in the Korean peninsula and Asia. He is also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, a founding board member of the US Committee on Human Rights in North Korea, and has served as a consultant or adviser to the US Government and international organizations. His most recent book is the Post-Pandemic Edition of Men Without Work (Templeton, 2022).Read the transcript here. Read Eberstadt's Foreign Affairs article here. Subscribe to our substack here.

Many of President-elect Donald Trump's announced cabinet nominees are well respected and will likely have an easy path to Senate approval. Others, not so much. So Trump has proposed doing something no president has ever done before: Skirting the Senate approval process altogether via recess appointments. This appointment scheme delegitimizes Trump's cabinet picks, sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations, and is likely unconstitutional. John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

President Donald Trump made gains among nearly every single demographic group in his historic victory, particularly with Hispanic and young voters. As the Democratic Party asks itself how it lost to Trump – a man they cast as a dictatorial threat to Democracy itself – it will have to look inward and realize it has moved from being the “party of the kitchen table” to the “party of the faculty lounge.” Working middle-class voters don't identify with a party that spends more time criticizing anyone who disagrees with them as bigoted than working to make peoples' lives better. Will Democratic leaders learn from their mistakes and move to the center on cultural issues? Or will the Democrats continue to pander to their progressive base? Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Before joining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Teixeira is co-founder of the Liberal Patriot Substack and co-author of the books The Emerging Democratic Majority (Scribner, 2002) and Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes (Henry Holt & Company, 2023).Read the transcript here.Subscribe to our Substack here.

For the first time since 1892, a former president has regained the office he lost. President. In a landslide victory, Donald Trump won an extremely diverse coalition worried about the state of America's economy and southern border. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, lost ignominiously, and will have some soul-searching to do in the wake of failed identity politics and attempts to cast Trump and his supporters as a threat to American ideals. Who are the voters that drove Trump to victory? How might Trump's second term differ from his first? And what can American leaders on both sides do right now to unite the country? Subscribe to our Substack here.

President Donald Trump has routinely said he supports immigration, as long as it's legal, including when Marc interviewed the former president for the Washington Post. Then in the pages of National Review, Marc's AEI colleagues Michael Strain and Ramesh Ponnuru debated the extent to which Trump supported legal immigration during his presidency and now on the campaign trail. So, we are bringing Strain and Ponnuru onto the pod to debate the extent of Trump's support for legal immigration, and how he might and should address immigration reform in a potential second term. Ramesh Ponnuru is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies politics and public policy with a particular focus on the future of conservatism. Concurrently, he is the editor of National Review, where he has covered national politics and public policy for 25 years, and a columnist for the Washington Post.Michael Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the Professor of Practice at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Dr. Strain also writes as a columnist for Project Syndicate. Read the transcript here. Read Marc's interview with President Trump in the Washington Post here. Read Michael Strain's article in the National Review here. Read Ramesh Ponnuru's article in the National Review here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

On this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc speak to Fred Kagan about Israel's strike against Iran over the weekend, retaliating against Iran's unprovoked October 1 missile barrage against the Jewish state. Israel's strike, involving over 100 aircraft, effectively took out Iranian air defense systems and decimated Iran's missile production capabilities. However, either because of Israel's strategic calculation or pressure from President Biden, Israel chose not to target Iran's nuclear or oil production. Did Israel effectively put a halt to the tit-for-tat escalation with Iran? Or did it miss an opportunity to prevent a much more dangerous Iran down the road?Frederick W. Kagan is the director of AEI's Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He is the author of the 2007 report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq, and the book Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010). His Critical Threats Project, alongside the Institute for the Study of War, releases regular updates on Iranian activity in the Middle East, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and transnational terrorism on the African continent.Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan launched his political career with his “Time for Choosing” speech, a moment so famous it simply became known as “The Speech.” Ushering in a new era of conservatism, future President Reagan argued that Americans were at a pivotal moment and had a choice to make: Did they want a massive welfare state or lower taxes, government, and greater capitalist innovation? To stand up to the enemies of freedom and American ideals or let Communism spread across the world? To let the government be run by elites or run by the people? On the sixtieth anniversary of this speech, one thing is clear: Reagan's principles are timeless, and as relevant now as they were sixty years ago. Peter Schweizer is an investigative journalist and author of five New York Times bestselling books. Peter is also the founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute, host of The Drill Down podcast, and was previously a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House for President George W. Bush. He is the author of Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Knopf 2003).Read the transcript here.Watch Reagan's Time for Choosing speech here. Subscribe to our Substack here. Find Peter's podcast here.

After a year of fighting between Israel, Iranian proxies, and now Iran itself, it's still unclear how this war will end. Hezbollah and Hamas are militarily devastated. The Iranian regime has never looked weaker. But the Israel-Hamas war is also nowhere close to being settled, Israel is only now beginning its operations in southern Lebanon, and the world is still awaiting Israeli retaliation for Iran's October 1 missile attack. In this episode of WTH Live! Elliott Abrams, David Deptula, and Eyal Hulata join Dany at AEI to discuss what the future of Israel's de facto war with Iran should and will look like. Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He previously served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula (Ret.) serves as the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Gen. Deptula was the principal attack planner for the Operation Desert Storm air campaign, commander of no-fly-zone operations over Iraq in the late 1990s, director of the air campaign over Afghanistan in 2001, and has served on two congressional commissions charged with outlining America's future defense posture. Gen. Deptula retired from the Air Force in 2010 after more than 34 years of distinguished service.Eyal Hulata is a senior international fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Eyal previously served as Israel's national security advisor and head of Israel's National Security Council (NSC). During his tenure, Eyal coordinated the national effort on Iran, coordinated the maritime border agreement with Lebanon, and co-headed the Strategic Consultation Group with his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan. Read the transcript here. Subscribe to our Substack here.

Chinese companies control 80% of the shipping cranes in U.S. ports. And the People's Republic of China is now the largest foreign investor in U.S. shale gas. And Chinese companies operating in the U.S. are regularly caught stealing American intellectual property, personal data, and even genomic data. Why should we care? Because Chinese companies are legally beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and have given the CCP the opportunity to cripple critical American infrastructure in the event of any confrontation between the U.S. and China. In this episode of WTH Live! the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party outline the threat certain Chinese companies operating in the U.S. pose to national security, and how to combat it. Congressman John R. Moolenaar represents Michigan's Second Congressional District and serves as the Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. Rep. Moolenaar also serves as Michigan's senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations and as the Co-Chair for the School Choice Caucus. Prior to joining the House, Rep. Moolenaar served in the Michigan State Senate and Michigan House of Representatives. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi represents Illinois's Eighth Congressional District and serves as the Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, making him the first South Asian American in history to lead a Congressional Committee. He also serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.Read the transcript here.

One year ago today, Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre of Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. In this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc discuss Dany's article in the WTH Substack, WTH 10/7: It's not just a war on Israel. In the year that followed October 7, 2023, Jews have been the subjects of antisemitic attacks around the world. Iran and its proxies have opened up a seven front war on the Jewish state. And Western leaders have routinely failed to address the problems exposed after October 7, at home and abroad. The time for action was yesterday. But it is never too late to speak out against hate and reject tribalism at home, and the time is now to stop Iran and support American allies abroad. Read Dany's article in the WTH Substack here.

General (Ret.) Frank McKenzie was the Commander of United States Central Command when the U.S. took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. What can we learn from Gen. McKenzie's time as CENTCOM Commander? It's simple: America's enemies respect our strength. And when we fail to punish bad actors, stand by our allies, or uphold our commitments, our enemies – from Iran to Russia to China – are emboldened. In our conversation with Gen. McKenzie, we discuss his new book, lessons from his service under multiple administrations, and the decision making leading up to America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. General (Ret.) Frank McKenzie the former Commander of United States Central Command. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the University of South Florida's Global National Security Institute, the Executive Director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, and as a Distinguished Senior Fellow on National Security at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century (Naval Institute Press, 2024).Read the transcript here.