No Crimea, No NATO: What Conservative Realism Should Demand

President Trump is hosting Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House—alongside a scrum of European leaders—just three days after sitting down with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. And he’s framing the deal in blunt-Trump terms: Ukraine won’t be getting back Crimea, and NATO membership is off the table. Zelenskyy, he says, “can end the war almost…

Alaska, Peacemaking, and the Peril of “Quick Fix” Diplomacy

If you’re looking for tidy endings, geopolitics is the wrong genre. President Trump and Vladimir Putin sat down in Anchorage, and—surprise—no white-smoke peace deal drifted over the Chugach. Still, the two leaders talked for hours about Ukraine, pledged to keep talking, and signaled that President Zelenskyy will now be heavily engaged. Reports suggest he’s heading…

An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Ruling on DOE Layoffs

In a major 6–3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court gave President Trump the green light to move forward with a massive layoff of 1,400 employees at the Department of Education, about 40% of its staff. This is no small move; it’s a critical step toward fulfilling President Trump’s longstanding promise to dismantle the federal education…

An Analysis of Last Week’s LA Immigration Ruling

On Friday, July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order restricting the use of “roving” immigration enforcement operations by federal agents in Los Angeles and six surrounding counties. The order applies to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sets specific limits on how agents may conduct arrests during ongoing immigration…

Elon Musk’s “America Party”: Reform or Ruin?

Elon Musk’s decision to launch a third party—the America Party—wasn’t some impulsive billionaire brainwave after a bad day on the stock market. It’s been building for a while. Musk has grown increasingly disillusioned with both the Republican and Democratic parties, viewing them as two wings of the same bloated bird. But the final straw came…

An Analysis of Trump’s Decision to Arm Ukraine

Today, President Trump green-lit a NATO-backed arms deal that will send Patriot missile systems and possibly long-range weapons to Ukraine. This new arrangement—quietly hammered out between Washington and NATO—has President Trump giving the go-ahead for European allies to send their own military systems to Ukraine, including air defenses and potentially long-range missiles. The U.S. will…

An Analysis of the Recent Trump Asylum Ruling

On July 2, a major legal ruling shook the immigration debate when U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss struck down one of President Trump’s most aggressive attempts to rein in the chaos at the southern border. The case centered on a sweeping executive proclamation issued by the president on January 20—his first day back in office—declaring…

An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Firing Federal Workers

On July 8, 2025, the Supreme Court handed President Trump a major procedural victory by issuing an unsigned emergency order that lifted a lower court’s injunction. That injunction—issued by a federal judge in San Francisco—had blocked Trump’s executive order authorizing mass layoffs across 19 federal agencies. This ruling doesn’t declare the executive order fully legal…