What the Hell Is Going On

Following a year of record-high antisemitic attacks and incidents on college campuses, students, professors, and administrators need to be held to account. But fighting hate speech in academia while upholding freedom of speech is a tricky line to balance. That’s why Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) are introducing the COLUMBIA Act – which would empower the Department of Education to appoint independent antisemitism monitors on campuses of concern – and were pioneers of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which codifies the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. We talk about the role Civil Rights Act Title VI protections play for institutions receiving federal funding and get into how foreign actors are helping spread antisemitism in the US.Representative Mike Lawler represents New York’s 17th Congressional District. Prior to serving in the House of Representatives, Rep. Lawler represented New York’s 97th District in the State Assembly. He serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.Representative Ritchie Torres represents NY-15 in Congress. He is a member of the Committee on Financial Services and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Before joining Congress, Rep. Torres served on New York City’s City Council.Read the transcript here.

This week, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan, K.C., announced on CNN that he will seek arrest warrants for Israel’s democratically elected Prime Minister and Defense Minister, as well as three members of Hamas leadership because of “crimes against humanity” related to October 7 and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that underpins the ICC, which therefore has no legal jurisdiction in Israel. The ICC has admitted a “State of Palestine,” which theoretically grants jurisdiction over actions in “Palestine” and over Hamas figures. How should Washington respond to the ICC’s extrajudicial investigation? And how will the ICC’s announcement affect its global standing?Tom Cotton is a United States Senator from Arkansas. Senator Cotton’s committees include the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member of the Air Land Power Subcommittee. Before joining the Senate, Senator Cotton was a member of the House of Representatives and served on active duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.Read the transcript here. Sign up for the Substack here.

President Biden is pushing through climate regulations at record speed as his administration, activists, and international organizations warn of an impending climate disaster absent drastic policy changes. But as the US pauses exports of liquefied natural gas and attempts to spend over a trillion dollars on climate initiatives, few stop to ask the question, “Is the world really headed towards climate apocalypse?” In short, no. Climate science relies on scenarios, of which there are thousands. However, billionaires, policymakers, and climate forums have ensured that the most extreme, outdated, and implausible scenario is now the global “baseline.” What do climate scientists actually think of RCP 8.5? And how can US policy better reflect the realities of climate change? Roger Pielke Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, and energy and climate. He is concurrently a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan; a research associate of Risk Frontiers (Sydney, Australia); and an honorary professor of University College London. Dr. Pielke is a regular contributor for and oversees the popular substack The Honest Broker. Read the transcript here.

Former president Donald Trump is on trial in New York over hush money payments made before the 2016 election. The only problem? Hush money payments as part of non-disclosure agreements are not illegal. New York state prosecutor Alvin Bragg alleges that by improperly filing the payments in Trump’s business records he was trying to conceal “another crime” – campaign finance law violations. Here’s the problem: Bragg not only lacks authority to prosecute campaign finance violations, but even the Biden administration’s Justice Department did not pursue campaign finance violation charges against Trump. Is Bragg’s case against Trump constitutional? And how will such politically motivated cases eat away at America’s rule of law? 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.

Self-proclaimed “anti-Israel” and “anti-war” protests have gripped college campuses ever since Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack killed, injured, and took hostage thousands of Israeli civilians on October 7. However, in recent weeks, protesters have begun taking siege to universities across the country, setting up 77 “encampments” on quads, vandalizing property, barricading themselves in buildings, and physically and verbally assaulting Jewish students who dare to pass by them. The response from many college administrators and faculty has been timid, when not directly supportive of protesters that have turned violently antisemitic. Where does this antisemitism come from? And what can we do to stamp out the pervasive Jew-hatred plaguing our universities? Adam Lehman is the President and CEO of Hillel International, the largest Jewish student organization in the world. Adam started his career at Skadden, Arps, and spent two decades as an executive and entrepreneur, including as a Senior Vice President at AOL. He was a Harry S. Truman Scholar at Dartmouth College and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.Read the transcript here.

President Joe Biden is one of the least popular presidents in the history of presidential polling. Former President Donald Trump faces 91 charges across four criminal cases. Despite their woes and the overwhelming desire of the American people to vote “none of the above,” President Biden and former President Trump will still face off for the second time this November. How will these two senior citizens make the sale? What will most likely hurt them on November 4? Does a third-party candidate have a real shot at the presidency?Amy Walter is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Amy is also a contributor to the PBS NewsHour, a regular Sunday panelist on NBC’s Meet the Press, and appears frequently on CNN and Fox News. Previously, Amy was the political director of ABC News and an inaugural fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.Matthew Continetti is the director of Domestic Policy Studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. His work has a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party in the 20th century. Matt was also the founding editor and the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon.Read the transcript here.

Last weekend, for the first time since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran launched a direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. In total, some 170 drones, 120 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, and more than 30 cruise missiles targeted Israel, with most coming from Iran, and some from Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen. In response to what was a well-advertised attack, Israel, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Jordan (among other Arab countries) deployed from land, sea, and air with jets, missile defense, and a guided missile cruiser among a sophisticated array of defensive assets. As a result, a reported seven missiles landed mostly harmlessly in Israel, with injuries restricted to shrapnel injuring a young Bedouin girl. Israeli and American leaders were quick to celebrate Iran’s failed attack and the “restoration of deterrence.” But are the Israelis correct in celebrating Iran’s inability to cause real damage? Or are they ignoring the very real risk that seven Iranian missiles actually hit the State of Israel? What will Iran learn from this exercise? And how did their attack reflect the lessons Russia is learning on Iranian equipment in 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.Download the transcript here. Find the Critical Threats Project's Iran Updates here.

Joe Biden and the Democratic Party love labeling Donald Trump and his MAGA followers as the greatest threat to American democracy. So why are Democratic-aligned Super PACs funding self-declared MAGA candidates in GOP primaries? In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim explains that there are two reasons: The strategy has (so far) helped Democrats win in general elections; more importantly, Democrats long for a time when they were part of the heroic resistance against Trump. But this strategy could backfire: Democratic lawfare against Trump is helping him win over voters who think “the system” is rigged against them. And the moment a Democrat-funded MAGA candidate wins a general election, their warnings about MAGA’s threat to democracy will fall flat on its face.Barton Swaim joined the Wall Street Journal as an editorial page writer in 2018. He writes a regular column on political books. Before joining the Journal, he was an opinion editor at the Weekly Standard. He is the author of The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Simon and Schuster, 2016).Read the transcript here. Read Barton's article Why Democrats Can’t Quit Trump here.

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Joe Biden stood by America’s closest Middle Eastern partner, providing diplomatic cover and military aid. Recently, however, the Biden administration has become increasingly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli operations in Gaza. In March, Biden refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire without conditioning it on the release of Israeli hostages or acknowledging the atrocities of October 7. Why the sudden shift in tone from the Biden administration? Will the growing rift between Biden and Netanyahu affect Israel’s war aims in Gaza? And how will Biden’s failure to stand by Israel affect American partnerships in the region?Dan Senor is the host of the podcast Call Me Back and co-author of New York Times bestselling books The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation and Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. He is a former Defense Department official, was a senior advisor to former Speaker Paul Ryan’s campaign for vice president, and was a foreign policy advisor to Senator Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. Dan was educated at the University of Western Ontario, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Harvard Business School. He is currently a partner at Elliott Investment Management.Read the transcript here. Find Dan Senor's podcast here.

According to President Biden, his stewardship of the economy – which he has dubbed “Bidenomics” – should be praised as the best America has ever seen. Unemployment is down and jobs are up. So why exactly are Americans giving such poor ratings to Bidenomics? Perhaps it’s because Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. And while inflation may be lower today than it was three years ago, its compounding effects mean that prices are still sky-high. On top of that, Americans recently hit a record high of over a trillion dollars in credit card debt. In short, it doesn’t take a PhD to understand that Americans are hurting. Gary D. Cohn is the Vice Chairman of IBM and served as chief economic advisor and the 11th Director of the National Economic Council to President Donald Trump. Before serving in the White House, Mr. Cohn was President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs, a member of the firm’s Board of Directors, and Chairman of the Firmwide Client and Business Standards Committee. Mr. Cohn began his career at U.S. Steel before moving to New York to trade on the New York Commodities Exchange.Read the transcript here.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, students, parents, and teachers were told they have to stay home from school in order to stop the spread of disease. Anyone who questioned that advice was labeled a conspiracy theorist who does not "trust the science." Now, the public is waking up to the real effects of “long COVID” -- the longer students stayed away from school, the more they are choosing to stay home today, with all the learning and social loss that implies. Who suffers the most? Minorities and the poor. Who cares? Not the teachers' unions or the government that caused this disaster.Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specializes in empirical research on K–12 schooling. He is a national expert on a range of educational issues that affect students across the country—including Career and Technical Education, school choice, Advanced Placement, standardized testing, and how the nation’s schools responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.Download the transcript here.Read the WTH substack here.

Following the terrorist attacks of October 7th, Harvard University was among several elite bastions of higher education to show its true colors – moral relativism, raw antisemitism on campus, and poor leadership. Harvard, like other elite institutions, has and will continue to suffer reputational damage for its response. And indeed, the rot of higher ed is deep. It is not that a liberal bias has metastasized into illiberalism, but rather that illiberalism has been layered on top of a creeping and extreme form of leftism. What is going on in our country’s top universities? Who is to blame? How do we solve it?Lawrence H. Summers was Chief Economist of the World Bank (1991-93), US Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001), Director of the US National Economic Council (2009-10), and President of Harvard University (2001-06).Download the transcript here.Read the WTH Substack here.

Super Tuesday wrapped up as predicted, with Trump sweeping the GOP win and Haley dropping out. Barring a meteorite, this means we are locked into a Trump-Biden rematch. But the newest Harvard-Harris CAPS poll reveals an America that is not as certain as primary voting behavior suggests – overwhelmingly, they profess a desire for a non-Biden non-Trump choice at the polls. For voters, immigration has become a national priority, even in states (Alaska) that are nowhere close to the southern border. Meanwhile, inflation, which affects everyone, has moved farther down in voters’ anxieties. And then there’s the large majority of voters who are comfortable marking on a poll that they believe Trump is a felon or that Biden is incompetent, but then vote for them anyway. This week, we try to get some clarity about these puzzling contradictions. Mark Penn is the chairman of the Harris Poll, as well as leading research companies including the National Research Group, Harris Insights & Analytics and HarrisX. He is the co-founder of the Harvard-Harris Poll, a monthly poll on key public opinion topics crucial to Americans like taxes and healthcare. He's also the president and managing partner of the Stagwell Group, a private equity fund. He previously held senior executive roles with Microsoft, WPP, and senior strategic roles on electoral campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Prime Minister Tony Blair.Download the transcript here.Read the WTH substack here.Check out Mark Penn's poll here.

Two years ago, at the start of the war in Ukraine, $300 billion in Russian assets were frozen in Western banks. The assumption behind Western economic pressure on Russia was that sanctions and seizures of oligarchs’ funds would have a chilling effect on both Russia’s economy and the pursuit of the war in Ukraine. They have not. As a result, for only the second time in history, the United States is considering seizing Russian assets. Congress, in the lead, has brought the Biden administration around. The President needs new authorities to move forward. But seizing the frozen $300 billion – only $5 billion of which is in the United States – and re-distributing it to Ukraine for reconstruction and other reparation efforts is fraught. Will the Euros go along? Will this radical change affect how states approach seizing aggressors’ assets? Perhaps more importantly, is the Biden administration’s signal of approval for the policy just talk, or will Washington finally pull together measures that hit Russia where it hurts?Stephen Rademaker, currently Senior of Counsel at Covington and Burling LLP, has wide-ranging experience working on national security issues in the White House, the State Department, and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Serving as an Assistant Secretary of State from 2002 through 2006, he headed at various times three bureaus of the State Department, including the Bureau of Arms Control and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Previously, he served as General Counsel of the Peace Corps, Associate Counsel to the President in the Office of White House Counsel, and as Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council. Download the transcript here.Read the WTH Substack here.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine exactly two years ago, Yaroslav Trofimov has been covering the war on the ground. His newest book, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence, is a stunning account of the lead-up to the war and how Ukraine has consistently upended the conventional wisdom about its prospects for victory. But in recent weeks, the Ukrainians have faltered, with support from the United States hung up in a divided Congress. What is the lesson of history? That our enemies will vanish – as long as America is resolute. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He has covered the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 and has been working out of Ukraine since January 2022. He joined the Journal in 1999 and previously served as Rome, Middle East and Singapore-based Asia correspondent, as bureau chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as Dubai-based columnist on the greater Middle East. He is the author of three books, Our Enemies Will Vanish (2024), Faith at War (2005) and Siege of Mecca (2007).Download the transcript here. Read the WTH Substack here. Check out Yaro's new book here.

Alexei Navalny was allowed one book in his Siberian prison. He chose Fear No Evil by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who joins us for an important conversation today to speak about his correspondence with Navalny and his own experience in a Siberian forced labor camp. Why did Navalny return to Moscow, and to certain arrest? What were his aims? What is it like to be held in what Sharansky refers to as his “alma mater” -- solitary confinement? And given Navalny’s murder, has Putin’s regime etched another notch in its belt, or is it still doomed to fail, as Sharansky predicted long ago? We talk Putin, Hamas, liberalism and neo-Marxism with one of the greats.Natan Sharansky is a former Soviet refusnik, an Israeli politician, author and human rights activist. In 1978, Sharansky was convicted of treason and spying on behalf of the United States, and was sentenced to thirteen years imprisonment in a Siberian forced labor camp. Sharansky served as Minister of Industry and Trade from June 1996-1999. He served as Minister of the Interior from July 1999 until his resignation in July 2000 and as Minister of Housing and Construction and Deputy Prime Minister from March 2001 until February 2003. In February 2003, Natan Sharansky was appointed Minister without Portfolio, responsible for Jerusalem, social and Diaspora affairs. In November 2006 Natan Sharansky resigned from the Knesset and assumed the position of Chairman of the then newly-established Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. In June 2009, he was elected and sworn in as Chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel, a post he still holds. Natan Sharansky is the author of four books: Fear No Evil (1988), The Case for Democracy (2004), Defending Identity (2008), and Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People (2020).Download the transcript here.Read the WTH Substack here.Read Navalny's letters to Sharansky here.

The Department of Justice released a report that Joe Biden willfully retained classified documents – but can’t be tried because - long story short - he is non compos mentis. The Dems are outraged. Is it justified? On the other side of the aisle, Trump is facing 14th Amendment charges to keep him off the ballot. Is that legal? And finally, the House is mired in debates ongoing about passing a border bill. What was wrong with the Senate bill? As usual, there is a lot going on this week – but we have the guest to help us understand it all.Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.Download the transcript here.

Media outlets have just begun to report on the rot of the United Nations Relief Works Agency – but the issue goes much farther back than October 7th, and the consequences will extend long past today. The top lines are that the Western-funded UN agency taught antisemitic propaganda in Palestinian territories for years; funded Hamas endeavors leading up to and including October 7; and has actually perpetuated the victimhood of Palestinians. To address the future of Israel-Palestine, one thing is clear: external “aid” cannot be funding and teaching extremism and terrorism.P.S.: For more UNRWA background, listen to our episode on the topic with Brett Schaefer.Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is the senior vice president for research at FDD. He previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he followed and froze the funding of Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Jonathan has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. He has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East and U.S. national security. His most recent book is Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021).Download the transcript here.Check out the WTH substack here. Read Jonathan Schanzer's testimony here.

America seems to be on a locked path towards a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. But is this what people want? The polls say no. And is this really our only option? No Labels, the organization looking at presenting a third-party candidate, agrees. Decried (mostly by Democrats, for now) as a spoiler, No Labels leadership believes that for the first time, a third party candidate has a shot at winning the election. And what is their path to victory? Winning unconventional states, making a common sense case to Americans, and broadening the election. All will be revealed, maybe, by Super Tuesday.Pat McCrory is the national co-chair of No Labels. He served as the 74th governor of North Carolina from 2013 – 2017, and the 53rd mayor of Charlotte before that. While serving as mayor of Charlotte, McCrory served on the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council from 2002 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. Download the transcript here.Read the WTH Substack here.

Trump won the New Hampshire primaries, but Nikki Haley is staying in the race. We had a lot of questions for our guest on what this might mean for the next few weeks of primary voting, what this might mean for a potential third party candidate down the line, and yes, what this might mean for a Biden-Trump rematch. But there are some known quantities, too. Team Biden can't imagine anything better than to challenge Trump -- he might be the one Republican they can beat. And vice versa for Team Trump… Joe Biden is their ideal opponent.Josh Kraushaar is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider, and is a political analyst for Fox News Radio. Download the transcript here. Subscribe to the WTH substack here.