How do Israel, China view their dispute over Iran - analysis - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

China has managed to maintain mostly positive relations with both Tehran and Jerusalem, being an important trade partner of Israel while having strategic ties with Iran.

 

Members of the Iranian Navy attend the joint Navy exercise of Iran, China and Russia in the Gulf of Oman, Iran, in this handout image obtained on March 12, 2025; illustrative.

(photo credit: IRANIAN ARMY/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

One of the most crucial issues hovering over the recent Israel-US-Iran war and the future of the standoff between these countries has little to do with them, but rather with another major power: China.

To date, China has managed to maintain mostly positive relations with both Tehran and Jerusalem. In economic terms, China has been an important trade partner to both countries, with trade with Israel in 2024 estimated at between $22-24 billion and in 2025, estimated at around $27 billion, making Beijing one of Israel's largest trade partners.

Chinese airlines were one of the few airlines that kept flying to Israel during portions of the recent years of wars, when most other foreign airlines had canceled their flights much earlier.

And the two countries have genuine and substantial respect for each other's long-standing ancient histories and cultures.

However, the dispute between the Jewish state and Beijing over Iran has significantly rankled those relations at times.

An illustrative image of hands shaking against a backdrop of Chinese and Israeli flags. (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

The Jerusalem Post, over the years and more recently, has spoken to numerous Israeli, Chinese, and American officials about the situation to try to better understand the sides' positions on the hot-button issues in the dispute.

While there are differences in views on other issues, like Gaza, this article focuses on disputes regarding Iran relating to: ballistic missiles, air defenses, spy satellites, and indirectly, allegations that Israel has provided air defense technologies to Taiwan.

At the outset, it can be said that China and Israel are on the same page in opposing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

However, after that, the sides part ways on Iran.

Even regarding the nuclear issue, China has opposed Israel's use of force to prevent Iran's potential to advance toward a weapon, emphasizing the diplomatic arena instead.

Other disagreements are on both strategic and tactical issues.

For example, the US got closer than ever to Israel militarily launching the recent joint war against the Islamic regime.

Not only does China oppose the war, but it is also gratified if and when Washington gets stuck in a quagmire, which will drain its resources, energy, and attention from other geopolitical issues.

In some cases, China has directly benefited from US President Donald Trump's conduct of the Iran war and diplomacy surrounding it, by stepping in to become closer to countries that might otherwise be stalwart US allies.

But these issues are in some ways more between Beijing and Washington, with Israel being impacted indirectly.

The real Israel-China-Iran issues start with air defense.

China does not specifically confirm selling air defense systems to Iran, but its view is that it has the right to sell such air defense items to Iran, since the purpose is defense.

Interestingly, China also criticizes Israel for allegedly providing air defense technology to Taiwan.

Numerous foreign reports have said that Taiwan's TDOME and other air defense progress by Taipei has been with quiet Israeli help.

Israel has not publicly commented on such allegations, and Rafael, the developer of Iron Dome, had not commented on the issue at press time, but the absence of a clear denial in this sensitive case likely signals there is some truth to the allegations.

Pressed about whether an exchange would be possible in which Israel stops assisting Taiwanese air defense, and China ceases to help with Iranian air defense, the Post understands that China would reject such equivalency.

Rather, China believes it has the right to sell defensive items to Iran, but that Israel cannot sell such items to Taiwan because it views Taipei as part of its own country and sovereignty.

Next, there are allegations that in 2024, China sold a spy satellite to Iran, which Tehran used against the US during the recent war.

The Financial Times reported in mid-April that Iran secretly acquired the Chinese ‌spy satellite in late 2024, allowing it to target US military bases across the Middle East, an account Beijing has dismissed as untrue.

According to that report, The TEE-01B satellite, which Chinese company Earth Eye Co. built and launched, was acquired by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Aerospace Force after Beijing had already launched it into space, citing leaked Iranian military documents.

Iranian military commanders ⁠directed the satellite to monitor major U.S. military sites, the newspaper said, citing time-stamped coordinate lists, satellite imagery, and orbital analysis. The images were taken in March before and after drone and missile strikes on those locations, the Financial Times said.

As part of the deal, the IRGC received access to commercial ground stations operated by Emposat, a Beijing-based provider of satellite control and data services with a network extending across Asia, Latin America, and other regions, according to the report.

The Chinese foreign ministry at the time denied the report, calling it untrue, and adding, "Recently, some forces have been keen on fabricating rumors and maliciously associating them with China. China firmly opposes this kind ‌of practice ⁠driven by ulterior motives."

While China, on record, denies that it has assisted Iran offensively in any way regarding the satellite in question, the Post understands that the Chinese view is that it is not prohibited from selling commercial satellites to Iran.

In fact, many countries buy and sell commercial satellites, which could potentially have dual-use commercial and spying purposes.

While these other issues are important to both the US and Israel, they pale in comparison to the question of whether China has and may continue to provide materials for producing solid fuel for Iran's long-range ballistic missiles.

Here, China vehemently denies any direct assistance to Iran for offensive purposes.

However, the Post understands that China would not deny that it believes it has the right to ship dual-use items, such as fuel, to Iran, just because the other side might try to "cheat" on the terms of sale and secretly direct the fuel toward offensive missiles.

Further, the Post understands that China will not institute invasive supervision to physically guarantee that the fuel is never used by Iran for ballistic missiles.

Why is this last issue so crucial?

Top Israeli defense officials have said that Iran's ballistic missile supply has been reduced from the 2,500 total pre-war down to between several hundred and 1,000 post-war.

These same officials have also said that during the war, Israel and the US bombed 2,600 Iranian military industrial complex targets, a large volume of which related to the ballistic missiles industry.

In other words, not only has Iran's existing ballistic missile supply been harmed, but also its future ability to build such missiles.

Iran can't replenish its missiles alone

If in June 2025, Israel bombed 100 targets related to ballistic missiles and the military industrial complex, the damage this time to Iran was around 26 times larger, including to supply chain materials which Tehran needs for building the missiles.

So serious is the damage that top Israeli defense officials have told the Post that, absent heavy outside assistance, it would take Iran two years or more to rebuild its missile apparatus to the same 2,500 missile pre-war point.

More specifically, those top officials expressed concern that Chinese assistance on the ballistic missiles issue, such as with dual-use fuel, could speed up Iran's recovery process unpredictably.

If this happened, one of Israel's central achievements of this war, pushing off the ballistic missile threat for a period of years, could be endangered.

China has not only rejected any allegations of assisting with offensive weapons, but has accused those of raising such allegations of having improper agendas, such as wanting to destabilize current talks to end the war.

Previously, the Post has reported that Mossad Director David Barnea would say that China and Russia must think ten times about helping Iran

Despite that, Israeli defense officials are still very concerned about the issue.

At the same time, even if China disappoints Israel on this issue, as it has with its support for Iran's economy during the sanctions battles, Jerusalem is likely to continue to pursue the best possible relations with Beijing, given China's status as one of the two world superpowers.

The Chinese Embassy in Israel sent the following statement in response to the article

1. Regarding arms sales and non-proliferation, China always abides by international law and its international obligations in international affairs. It does not provide arms to regions in conflict or to parties engaged in hostilities.

2. Regarding the Taiwan question, there is but one China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The one-China principle has become a prevailing international consensus and a basic norm of international relations.  A total of 183 countries in the world, including Israel, have already established and developed diplomatic relations with China on the basis of the one-China principle. China firmly opposes other countries providing air defense technologies or any other weapons to the Taiwan region. China appreciates that the Israeli government keeps adhering to the one-China policy, and believes that the Israeli government will not do anything that undermines China’s core interests

3. Regarding the report that “Iran used Chinese spy satellites to target US military bases in the Middle East”, it is entirely fabricated. China firmly rejects the politicization of normal economic and trade cooperation, circulation of speculative, misleading, and false information targeting China.

4. Regarding the Middle East situation, China maintains friendly relations with all countries in the Middle East and adheres to the principle of upholding justice over affinity. It does not take sides or play one against another. China consistently believes that Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should be fully respected, and that the sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity of all countries in the region must also be respected.

In light of the current situation, President Xi Jinping made a four-point proposition on safeguarding and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East, that is, stay committed to the principle of peaceful co-existence, the principle of national sovereignty, the principle of international rule of law, and a balanced approach to development and security. The proposition reflects China’s consistent position and active effort for promoting ceasefire and peace, and advocating dialogue in resolving differences. China stands ready to continue working with the international community to contribute to the early restoration of peace and stability in the Middle East.

5. Regarding the Iranian nuclear issue, China has consistently advocated for a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation, and opposes the use of force and illegal sanctions. All parties should fully respect Iran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy as a State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and Iran should continue to honor its commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. 

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-894606

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International Law Can't Stop Tyrannical Regimes - Gerald M. Steinberg

 

by Gerald M. Steinberg

Whether in London, Ottawa, Berlin, or even Wellington, no plausible interpretation of international law requires democracies to wait passively for such catastrophic threats to become real.

 

• [Former head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth] Roth and his chorus, including morally blind academics claiming legal expertise, promote an imaginary "rules-based international order" that paralyzes democracies while protecting despotic dictators.

• Under their absurd version of international law, preventive and preemptive strikes – like those carried out by the US and Israel – would be prohibited except against what they refer to as immediate, obvious, and universally acknowledged threats. In this form of unilateral disarmament reminiscent of European pacifists of the 1920s and 1930s, nothing can be done to restrain the world's malicious dictators and warmongering aggressors before they begin mass slaughter.

• Whether in London, Ottawa, Berlin, or even Wellington, no plausible interpretation of international law requires democracies to wait passively for such catastrophic threats to become real.

When a terror regime builds missiles, arms proxy militias, and advances toward nuclear capability while proclaiming its desire to destroy its neighbors, inaction is suicidal. Whether in London, Ottawa, Berlin, or even Wellington, no plausible interpretation of international law requires democracies to wait passively for such catastrophic threats to become real. Pictured: The International Criminal Court building in The Hague, Netherlands. (Photo by Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas//AFP via Getty Images)

Grandiose declarations by Western politicians claiming preventive force against murderous regimes is somehow illegal have become de rigueur. The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway and most European countries have weighed in with parallel and often identical statements on the essential importance of obeying international law while waging war against Iran and its terror proxies, such as Hezbollah.

Such statements are a revealing snapshot of the shallow and dangerous Western discourse on war, law, and justice. Much of this is thanks to NGO personalities like Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, who have transformed rational conversation on human rights and the use of force in self-defense into ideological weapons. Roth and his chorus, including morally blind academics claiming legal expertise, promote an imaginary "rules-based international order" that paralyzes democracies while protecting despotic dictators and terrorist tyrants.

Even in New Zealand, the issues have been given a prominence far beyond their merit. According to Helen Clark, the former prime minister, "international law has been breached" by US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime whose mottos are "death to America" and "death to Israel." Opposition leader Chris Hipkins followed Clark's lead, pontificating that "adherence to international law shouldn't be a matter of discretion." The current PM, Christopher Luxon was more careful, acknowledging a lack of necessary information.

Clark is a Ken Roth groupie, and her foundation brought this false prophet of human rights to New Zealand in February. The foundation's literature lauded Roth as a "leading global advocate for human rights," sentiments echoed by the Amnesty International branch in New Zealand. But in reality, rather than furthering humanitarianism, Roth, Clark and their cult have erased Iran's vicious terror war and denied justice to its many victims.

Under their absurd version of international law, preventive and preemptive strikes – like those carried out by the US and Israel – would be prohibited except against what they refer to as immediate, obvious, and universally acknowledged threats. In this form of unilateral disarmament reminiscent of European pacifists of the 1920s and 1930s, nothing can be done to restrain the world's malicious dictators and warmongering aggressors before they begin mass slaughter. The legal facade and its related institutions such the United Nations and the International Criminal Court are painfully removed from the strategic, diplomatic and military realities of the 21st century.

In particular, those who condemn the strikes against Iran by claiming the mantle of international law erase more than four decades in which the Islamic Republic of Iran waged a murderous campaign against the United States and Israel. The Tehran regime's leaders were clear from the beginning: Washington is the "Great Satan," Israel is the "Little Satan." Countering and ideally destroying both is central to the regime's theology.

In weaponizing these slogans, Iran built a network of proxy forces – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias across Iraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) created a military machine with thousands of ballistic missiles and drones to attack Israeli population centers and block vital shipping lanes, and armed terror cells that carried out heinous slaughter from Jerusalem to Bulgaria to Buenos Aires. The so-called "international community," including powerful NGO leaders like Ken Roth, politicians such as Helen Clark, and United Nations agencies tasked with guarding international stability and justice, turned a blind eye, and hypocritically condemned counterstrikes.

The nuclear dimension of Iran's aggressive ambitions makes stopping the threat of mass destruction from Iran more urgent still. The uranium enrichment program, ballistic missile development, and openly genocidal zeal toward Israel created a uniquely volatile combination. A regime that blatantly calls for the elimination of another state and works to implement that objective cannot plausibly expect its neighbors to view the nuclear project as legitimate civilian energy production.

By ignoring this reality, Western politicians and pundits in the international law chorus are indulging in dangerous fictions. Until a nuclear missile aimed by a rival at Tel Aviv, Brussels, New York – even Wellington or Auckland – is on the launchpad, they will have the world believe that preventive action is wrong. In this way, they ask democracies to welcome near-catastrophe before being permitted to act in self-defense.

In reality, no legitimate legal system, including international law, can expect victims to ignore visible and credible threats of annihilation. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter recognizes the inherent right of self-defense, and does not demand national suicide. Moreover, it does not ask countries to allow slow-moving assaults like the Iranian one against the US and Israel. From the Caroline affair of the 19th century to the strategic doctrines of the Cold War, states have recognized that a government facing an overwhelming and accelerating threat may – indeed, must – act to defend its citizens before they are attacked. This is the essence of justice.

In contrast, when a terror regime builds missiles, arms proxy militias, and advances toward nuclear capability while proclaiming its desire to destroy its neighbors, inaction is suicidal.

Whether in London, Ottawa, Berlin, or even Wellington, no plausible interpretation of international law requires democracies to wait passively for such catastrophic threats to become real. 

Professor Gerald M. Steinberg is founder and president of NGO Monitor. His research focuses on Middle East diplomacy and security, the politics of human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and Israeli politics and arms control. Publications include "The UN, the ICJ and the Separation Barrier: War by Other Means," Israel Law Review, 2005; Best Practices for Human Rights and Humanitarian NGO Fact-Finding (co-author), Nijhoff, Leiden, 2012; Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process: Between Ideology and Political Realism, 2019; "Applying the IHRA Working Definition to the UN and Human Rights NGOs", in Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Political Climate (2021); "European Funding for Palestinian NGOs as Political Subcontracting", in INSS Strategic Assessment (2021). His op-ed columns have been published in The Wall Street Journal (Europe), Financial Times, and other publications. He has appeared as a commentator on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and NPR. His expertise includes BDS, lawfare politics and Europe relations,NGOs and foreign funding.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22482/international-law-tyrannical-regimes

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Ten years of Biden weaponization produced enemy list that makes Watergate water under the bridge - Amanda Head

 

by Amanda Head

According to Senator Marsha Blackburn, it’s only a matter of time before there will be more indictments.

 

Over the past decade, a series of investigations, declassified documents and reporting appear to show a pattern of federal agencies under former President Joe Biden's administration directing law enforcement, intelligence, and regulatory tools against political opponents, particularly President Donald Trump and his allies.

"What they did, seemingly, was to target people that they knew supported the president and that the president was talking with," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., whose records were obtained by the Biden DOJ, told Just The News. 

"You get the feeling that they had a short list or an enemies list or a target list, and while they were trying to pull him in and say it was a conspiracy, then you have to just surmise that their intent was they could surveil us and try to make us coconspirators." 

The list of targets also includes conservative private citizens, pro-life activists and parents. While roots of the weaponization trace to 2016-era Russia collusion inquiries during Biden’s vice presidency, the pattern intensified after 2021 with Biden as president, with directives that appeared to lower investigative thresholds and prioritized ideological targets. 

A June 2021 National Security Council strategic plan, declassified in 2025, explicitly authorized the DOJ, FBI, DHS, and other agencies to monitor “concerning non-criminal behavior” tied to domestic terrorism. 

It flagged conservative symbols (Gadsden flags, Second Amendment references), active-duty military personnel, gun owners, traditional Catholics, and those spreading what officials called “xenophobic” disinformation or resisting COVID policies and school curricula. Whistleblowers described how this led to FBI probes of school-board parents and pro-life networks, while ignoring comparable left-wing activity.  

The Biden administration also unevenly applied the FACE Act – a federal law prohibiting the use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone obtaining or providing reproductive health services, including abortion, or exercising religious freedom at a place of worship.

A DOJ review found prosecutors collaborated with abortion-rights groups to track pro-life demonstrators’ travel and advocacy, withheld exculpatory evidence, and imposed average prison terms of nearly 27 months on pro-life defendants—more than double those given to pro-abortion violators. 

Federal funding flowed to state-level efforts against Trump. 

In 2022, the Biden DOJ invited Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to apply for a $2 million sole-source grant under a community-violence program while she built her election-interference case against Trump and coordinated with the White House and House January 6 investigators. Willis’s office won the grant and ultimately in total received more than $18 million in DOJ grants during the prosecution.

Also in 2022, the FBI opened its “Arctic Frost” probe into Trump’s alternate-electors strategy, which targeted nearly 400 Trump associates and conservative groups on thin predication, according to internal memos and Senate records. An anti-Trump FBI supervisor, Timothy Thibault, drove the case by circulating liberal media claims, echoing the earlier Crossfire Hurricane pattern. 

Arctic Frost, which was later absorbed into Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s probe, obtained toll records – phone metadata including call times, recipients, durations and general location data – from the personal cellphones of at least eight Republican senators (including Blackburn, Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson) and one House Republican, covering the days around the Jan 6, 2021, Capitol riot via grand jury subpoenas with nondisclosure orders. 

"We do know that there was a subjective approach to the telecom companies on whose records they released," Blackburn also told Just The News. "What we also know is that you had judges who were willing to work with the DOJ and while they were broad-based with this, they also couldn't define exactly what it was they were looking for."

She also said: "So you had Jack Smith and the Arctic Frost team cherry-picking what judges they would take these orders to, and then they thought they could get a non-disclosure orders on this. This is much larger and more widespread than Watergate because you had over 400 conservative individuals and organizations that were surveilled by Jack Smith and Arctic Frost."

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, after nearly two years of oversight, documented a “two-tiered system” involving censorship partnerships with tech firms, retaliatory treatment of whistleblowers, and politicized prosecutions that extended to Trump allies. These accounts portray a sustained use of federal power to neutralize perceived electoral threats rather than pursue neutral justice.  

Amanda Head

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/ten-years-biden-weaponization-produced-enemy-list-makes-watergate-water

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IDF uncovers massive Hezbollah explosives, weapons cache in Lebanon - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

IDF troops locate 900-kg booby-trapped device and stockpiles of rockets and mortars, as forces continue operations to remove threats and eliminate terrorists in southern Lebanon.

 

Reserve troops from the IDF's 226th Brigade, under the command of the 146th Division, are operating south of the Forward Defense Line to prevent a direct threat to the communities in northern Israel.

During activity, the troops located a booby-trapped pit belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization, containing an explosive device weighing approximately 900 kilograms, intended to harm troops operating in the area.

In an additional activity, the troops located a position belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization containing a stockpile of mortar shells and rockets intended to harm Israeli civilians and troops operating in the area.

"The IDF will continue to operate with determination against threats to Israeli civilians and IDF troops, and is acting in accordance with directives from the political echelon," the IDF stressed in a statement.

The booby-trapped pit                                                                  IDF spokesperson

IDF: Earlier this week (Monday), IDF soldiers identified two Hezbollah terrorists in the area in which the soldiers are operating, south of the Forward Defense Line, posing an imminent threat. Shortly after, the Israeli Air Force, guided by the soldiers, eliminated the terrorists.

As part of an activity in the area over the past 24 hours, IDF soldiers located and confiscated numerous weapons, including firearms, grenades, magazines, missiles, and military equipment belonging to Hezbollah terrorists.

The IDF continues to operate in order to remove threats to Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, in accordance with directives from the political echelon.

The weapons cache discovered                                                         IDF spokesperson

The weapons cache discovered                    IDF spokesperson

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426270

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Massive building push in Jordan Valley - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

The Supreme Planning Council approved the construction and regularization plans for several Israeli towns in the Jordan Valley.

 

Bezalel Smotrich                                                                            Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

The Supeme Planning Council on Wednesday granted final approval for construction and regularization plans for the settlement of Sa-Nur in northern Samaria, along with expansion and regularization plans for Neve Gedid and the moshav Mishoa in the Jordan Valley.

The approvals followed joint efforts led by Finance Minister and minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich together with the Settlement Administration, culminating in the formal authorization of the projects.

Under the approved plans, hundreds of housing units are set to be built across the three communities. Sa-Nur received approval for 126 housing units as part of its final regularization process, Neve Gedid was authorized for 349 housing units alongside final regularization, and Mesoah was approved for 168 additional housing units aimed at expanding the community.

The decision is part of a broader series of measures recently advanced to strengthen settlement activity in the region. Officials involved in the process said the move is intended to reinforce both the civilian presence and security infrastructure in northern Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

Smotrich praised the approval, describing it as “a historic moment" and saying it marked the correction of what he called a longstanding injustice stemming from the Disengagement Law.

“After years of struggle, we are removing the disgrace of the Disengagement Law from northern Samaria," Smotrich said. “We promised to regularize the settlement and build the country and we are delivering. This approval sends a clear message that we are here to stay. Sa-Nur is returning to being an integral part of the map of Jewish settlement, and this is only the beginning." 

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426269

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Approval granted for 126 permanent homes in Sa-Nur - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

Twenty-one years after the Disengagement, a plan to build 126 permanent homes in Sa-Nur was approved, with private houses alongside apartment buildings around the historic fortress.

 

Smotrich and Yossi Dagan                                                                            Roi Hadi

Twenty-one years after the Disengagement, Israeli authorities today approved a major step toward renewing settlement in the area.

The Supreme Planning Council approved the local outline plan for the town of Sa-Nur, marking the first permanent construction plan authorized for a community evacuated during the disengagement.

The project, initiated by the Samaria Regional Council and promoted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich together with council head Yossi Dagan, covers roughly 58,000 square meters.

Under the approved plan, 126 housing units are expected to be built alongside public buildings, infrastructure and open areas surrounding the historic fortress located at the center of the town.

The initiative is being advanced in coordination with professional teams from the Samaria Regional Council, the Settlement Administration and the Civil Administration. As part of the process, Smotrich and Dagan held a working meeting in Sa-Nur following a groundbreaking ceremony at the site.

Smotrich described the approval as “a historic moment" and said it represented the correction of what he called “a terrible injustice" created by the disengagement from northern Samaria.

“After years of struggle, we are removing the stain of the Disengagement Law from northern Samaria," he said. “We promised to strengthen settlement and build the country, and we are fulfilling that promise. This approval sends a clear message that we are here to stay. Sa-Nur is returning to the map of Jewish settlement, and this is only the beginning."

During discussions at the Sureme Planning Council, Dagan recited the “Shehecheyanu" blessing and called the approval another milestone in reversing the Disengagement.

“The advancement of 126 permanent housing units in Sa-Nur is the most Zionist and moral response to the Disengagement," Dagan said. “We promised to return home, and now we are entering the stage of permanent construction and renewed roots in northern Samaria."

He added that the approved maps and building plans were now becoming “a reality on the ground," expressing hope that Sa-Nur and the wider northern Samaria region would continue to grow and attract additional families in the coming years. 

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426275

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‘Major scandal:’ Feds and Sen. Johnson allege government coverups of COVID origins, vaccine deaths - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

Indictment alleges quid pro quo between EcoHealth Alliance, Fauci senior advisor started with an "upper-mid tier" wine delivery. Sen. Johnson says FDA knew government database "masked" vaccine injuries, rejected transparency update.

 

David Morens, senior advisor to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci for 16 years, spent much of his career studying the threat of viral outbreaks posed by birds, especially when infections jump from wild fowl to poultry. Now he's facing the possibility of prison.

The chickens have come home to roost for Morens, two years after congressional subpoenas exposed his avowed practice of circumventing the Freedom of Information Act to hide conversations about the origin of COVID-19 and suggesting he did so in cooperation with Fauci, whom Morens called "too smart" to get caught.

An April 16 federal indictment, unsealed Tuesday after Morens' arrest, alleges conspiracies with two others, an agreement to illegally hide their conversations and a quid pro quo rewarding Morens with a "cult favorite" Napa Valley wine for promoting the natural origin theory of COVID and discrediting the lab-leak theory.

Morens surrendered his passport Tuesday and is scheduled for arraignment May 8 in federal district court in Greenbelt, Md., the court docket shows. His conditions for release prevent Morens from leaving the continental U.S. without prior approval by the court and from communicating with "Co-Conspirator 1" and "Co-Conspirator 2."

Morens conditions of release.pdf

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chair Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is following up the disclosure of an alleged coverup of COVID origins with what he calls a Food and Drug Administration coverup of lethal COVID vaccine injuries.

"The FDA knew" COVID vaccines were "showing safety signals for mass death," Johnson told the Just the News, No Noise television show Tuesday night, saying his hearing Wednesday will reveal FDA staff making similar statements about withholding "sensitive information" from emails that could encourage vaccine hesitancy.

"We've gotten documents" showing the authors of the "analytical algorithm" in the government's passive Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System warned then-Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks in March 2021 that it would "mask" adverse events, and offered Marks an "updated version that will unmask" safety signals.

The updated version found "49 cases of extreme masking, 25 safety signals, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, Bell's palsy, 25 of these types," Johnson said. 

"And the FDA ignored it, and they continue to say, well, we're not seeing any safety signals," he said. "This should be a major scandal."

NIH terminated Wuhan grant as another EcoHealth grant application was pending

The indictment's detailed descriptions of two co-conspirators and "Company #1" make clear they refer to Peter Daszak and his shuttered EcoHealth Alliance, which rose from the ashes as Nature.Health.Global a year ago, and Gerald Keusch, former associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University.

The referenced communications match those ascribed to Daszak, EcoHealth and Keusch in the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic's staff memorandum in May 2024, which first exposed Morens' admission that he evades FOIA by using a personal Gmail account and hand-delivers sensitive documents to "Tony" or uses "his private gmail."

Neither Daszak, whom Morens called his "best friend," nor Keusch has been indicted. Morens has no listed lawyer in the court docket as of Tuesday evening, and Nature.Health.Global did not answer requests for a response from Daszak and Morens, its president and affiliated scientist respectively. 

Fauci was accused of lying under oath shortly after the Morens revelations, first telling the subcommittee he had "never conducted official business via my personal email" and then switching to the present tense: "I do not do government business on my private email."

A FOIA production to the White Coat Waste Project, a vocal critic of Fauci's record on animal testing, revealed Fauci telling a Washington Post reporter he would send her materials on "my gmail account" in fall 2021, when he was under congressional scrutiny for "cruel" taxpayer-funded experiments on puppies as alleged by WCW.

Just the News could not reach Fauci through his known contacts: Georgetown University, where he's been a distinguished professor for nearly three years, and lawyer David Schertler, who represented Fauci before the subcommittee.

NIAID used EcoHealth as a pass-through to fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function research, which "modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent," as then-National Institutes of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed to the subcommittee two years ago.

But NIH terminated EcoHealth's grant to fund WIV research in April 2020 while it investigated the Chinese lab as a potential source of COVID, as EcoHealth was awaiting word of whether it had received a $7 million NIH grant to fund an "Emerging Infectious Disease Regional Center."

Promote natural origin for an 'upper-mid tier' cabernet

The most eye-opening allegations that don't appear in the subcommittee's work concern exactly how Morens used his credentials to help Daszak fight off the lab-leak theory and promote natural spillover, and how Daszak thanked him.

The "same day" he received it, Co-Conspirator 1 — believed to be Daszak -/ forwarded NIH's termination letter to Co-Conspirator 2 —believed to be Keusch — who urged Daszak to wait to challenge it until "the EIDRC funding comes through."

Morens emailed Co-Conspirator 1 — Daszak — from his NIH account around June 11, 2020, saying, "let’s win this anti science battle, get you refunded and fiber funded, then settle scores and kick some ass," the indictment says.

Daszak shipped two bottles of The Prisoner, which Liquor Barn sells for $60 and calls an "upper-mid tier" cabernet "sitting above everyday supermarket reds but below single-vineyard, estate-bottled Napa cult wines," from Bounty Hunter Rare Wine & Spirits to Morens' home in Maryland around June 25, 2020, the indictment alleges.

"This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind- the-scenes [sic] shenanigans in my battle against your bosses [sic] boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill," Daszak allegedly wrote, and "hope I will be able to return the favor one day."

Morens emailed Daszak to thank him for the wine, the indictment says. "Now i am actually going to have to do something to deserve it," Morens wrote, suggesting he write a "scientific commentary that outlines the importance of what [CO-CONSPIRATOR 1] and others have been doing, but without mentioning [CO-CONSPIRATOR 1] or the grant termination[.]”

The next day Daszak emailed Morens at his Gmail account "promising additional things of value," as the indictment paraphrases. "Consider this my phase II gift. Phase 111 might actually involve a meal - the Michelin starred restaurants are opening in Paris - DC and New York will do eventually!" Daszak wrote.

(The indictment phrases this as if Morens had already written the commentary before receiving the wine, but the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland specifies Morens offered to write it as a thank-you for the wine.)

U.S. v. Morens searchable indictment.pdf

Morens submitted the commentary July 3 to a "prominent medical journal," arguing for COVID's natural spillover against lab-leak, to benefit Daszak and EcoHealth, the indictment says. It was labeled as "funded in part by the intramural research program" of NIAID.

The description matches a group commentary, "The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters," whose authors include Morens, Keusch and current acting NIAID director Jeffery Taubernberger. It was published in September 2020 in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

"A quantum leap in bat coronavirus surveillance and research is urgently needed," they wrote. "This work must emphasize virologic and behavioral field studies of humans and animals wherever they interface, and especially in disease hotspots, as well as virologic studies related to human and animal spillover risks and the means of reducing them."

After learning around Aug. 27, 2020 that EcoHealth got the $7.5 million EIRDC grant from NIH, which Keusch had warned Daszak not to blow by challenging the terminated WIV grant, Morens emailed Daszak from his NIH account: “Ahem.... do I get a kickback???? Too much fooking money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss....”

Daszak responded "of course there’s a kick-back [sic]. It starts with 5 more years of FoIA [sic] requests [...] I just hope it doesn’t culminate in 5 years in Federal jail [...]," the indictment says.

Senate staff pulled 'needle out of a haystack' to nab Morens

Critics of Morens and Fauci crowed at the indictment, led by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., who credited the subcommittee with exposing Morens attributing his FOIA-evasion skills to "FOIA lady" Margaret Moore in NIH's FOIA office, who was also subpoenaed. (Morens said under oath he was joking about Moore.)

"No one is above the law and under the Trump Administration, overdue accountability is finally here," Comer said.

Sen. Johnson credited his investigations staff with pulling a "needle out of a haystack," among 115,000 pages of documents his subcommittee obtained from a public university, to find the "FOIA lady" quote from Morens.

"So the wheels of justice turn slowly, but hopefully they will turn certainly, and this individual, at least, will be held accountable," Johnson told Just the News, No Noise.

"White Coat Waste was the first to uncover, document, and expose NIH's reckless funding for gain-of-function in Wuhan and beagle testing worldwide—two of the NIH’s biggest scandals," the organization said Tuesday. "But Morens wasn’t a lone wolf, and other lab leak cover-up lackeys are still in government raking in taxpayer-funded salaries." 

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/feds-and-sen-johnson-tag-team-alleged-biden-admin-coverups-covid-origins-covid

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SPLC’s Double Game: Funding extremists while spending millions to swing Southern elections - Steven Richards

 

by Steven Richards

While the SPLC was funneling money to extremist group insiders, it was spending lavishly to try to swing elections in the Deep South.

 

At the same time it was funding elements of extremist, racist groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center was doling out hundreds-of-millions of dollars to drive voters to the polls across several Southern states it claimed were trying to suppress minority votes.

For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has positioned itself as the nation’s preeminent watchdog, which maintained a controversial "Hate Map" that increasingly labeled benign conservative organizations and religious groups as hate groups.  

But a bombshell federal indictment returned by a grand jury in Alabama last week suggests the organization was playing a far more cynical double game: allegedly manufacturing the very extremism it claimed to be fighting to keep its fundraising machine humming.

According to federal prosecutors, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million from 2014 to 2023 to individuals associated with violent extremist groups, including the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America.

The DOJ alleges the SPLC utilized a network of shell companies – with names like "Center Investigative Agency" and "Fox Photography" – to disguise payments to individuals associated with those groups. 

While the SPLC claims these were legitimate payments for undercover informants to monitor threats, the FBI and DOJ allege the funds were used to ensure that "hate" remained visible enough to justify the SPLC’s mission and purpose. 

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an April 21 statement following the 11-count indictment for wire fraud and money laundering. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.”

South Carolina Rep. William Timmons, a Republican who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said that the federal government should reconsider the requirements for nonprofit status for groups such as SPLC to make it easier to scrutinize how they use their donations. 

“[A]ll these entities have disclosure requirements of filing that they have to do. And I think it's just been so opaque because it's so tedious and difficult to understand and to actually investigate,” Timmons told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. 

“[W]e need to have our eyes on this. We need to make sure that we're protecting our government, our society, our people, and I think that we have gotten wise to this, and we're on the right track. ... I think that we're going to continue to uncover more and more nefarious activity by a lot of different people. And we’ve got to make sure that we're, one, uncovering it, but two, holding them accountable and making sure that there's a deterrence to things like this happening in the future."

The "Vote Your Voice" Play

While the SPLC was allegedly subsidizing the leaders of racist movements in the shadows, it was aggressively moving some of its massive financial reserves to try to swing Southern politics. 

The organization’s "Vote Your Voice" initiative pledged $100 million from its endowment through 2032 to boost voter turnout and registration in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

The SPLC framed the massive expenditure as a necessary defense against "anti-democratic" state officials whom they claimed were suppressing the votes of "historically excluded" communities. In the wake of the 2020 elections, many Southern states had moved forward with plans to reform voting processes and were in the process of drawing new congressional districts based on the 2020 census.

“Our Vote Your Voice program began as a robust effort to increase voter registration and turnout, particularly in communities of color who would most benefit from a true inclusive democracy in the South,” said then-SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang in 2021. 

“However, to ensure a government exists that truly is by the people and for the people, we must expand our efforts to push against the anti-democratic statements and actions of many state and local officials in the Deep South."

Huang argued the states were employing “voter suppression tactics” to make it harder for all voters to vote, but especially “low-propensity voters of color.” The organization painted the reforms as a response to the “historic turnout” in the 2020 general election. 

However, critics warned that the initiative is less about civil rights and more about partisan engineering, considering the SPLC funding went to groups largely dedicated to turning out strong Democratic voting blocs. 

“The reason I’m so disappointed is that it’s not an attempt to contact all voters, or to make sure that all voters participate in the process,” said then-Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill at the time. It is a targeted effort to ensure that liberal special interest groups that have been targeted by the SPLC are identified and motivated to go to the polls.”

SPLC did not respond to a request for comment. In response to the indictment last week, SPLC said it would “vigorously defend” itself against what it described as false allegations. 

"Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do," interim CEO and President Bryan Fair said in a statement. "The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Rights Movement becomes a reality for all." 

Flush with Cash

The scale of the SPLC’s wealth has long been a point of contention for investigative watchdogs. As of late 2024, the organization’s consolidated financial statements showed nearly $790 million in net assets.

The conservative, nonprofit watchdog group Capital Research Center has long argued that the SPLC has deviated from its original mission and now uses its massive war chest to stoke division and paint benign conservative groups as vectors of hate.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that has so succeeded in pushing bigots out of the mainstream, that now over 40 years after their founding, they need to constantly find new bigots inside the mainstream to fight against,” the group wrote in 2023. “When there aren’t many left, that means dangerously expanding who is called a bigot.”

The recent indictment alleges that even as the SPLC publicly decried "white supremacy,” it was bankrolling the very figures who could provide the inflammatory social media posts and public controversies the SPLC needed to trigger a constant stream of donations, making it wealthier than many colleges and universities. 

It appears that SPLC reaped lucrative financial benefits from using “informants” inside hate groups. In one instance cited by prosecutors, the SPLC allegedly directed a source to promote the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and coordinate transportation for attendees – only to later use that same event as a fundraising hook to warn donors about the growing threat of extremism.

The source, identified as “F-37” in the indictment, was part of the “online leadership chat group that planned” the August 2017 event. 

"[F-37] attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00,” the indictment reads. 

After the rally, SPLC reported a surge in revenue. In 2016, a year prior, SPLC reported net assets and public donations at $51 million. The following year, by October 2017, SPLC reported $133 million. This rapid change was driven in part by contributions from public figures like George Clooney and Apple CEO Tim Cook, Fox News Digital reported.  

The rally, which occurred amid the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments, took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11-12, 2017. At least 30 people were injured when protesters clashed with counter-protesters and one person was killed by a motorist about a half-mile from the protests.

President Donald Trump faced withering criticism from the left for not responding immediately to the incident and later for saying there were “very fine people, on both sides,” describing those on both sides of the debate about the statues. 

President Joe Biden also invoked the Charlottesville rally as the primary justification for his 2020 presidential campaign. 

"In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime," Biden said in his 2019 video announcing his run for president. He spent the campaign frequently saying that “democracy is at stake" and warning that then-President Trump wanted to end it.  

Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/splcs-double-game-funding-extremists-while-spending-millions-swing

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Dying to vote? North Carolina removes 34,000 dead people from voter rolls - Allen Wooten

 

by Allen Wooten

“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections.

 

(The Center Square) -

Punch lines of dead people voting in North Carolina met a measure of demise, with the State Board of Elections saying it had removed 34,000 registrations for which the individual had died.

Using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known also as SAVE, the board submitted nearly 7.4 million records on April 17 in a routine list maintenance protocol.

“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible.

“Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”

Republicans’ majorities in the General Assembly moved oversight and appointments of the election board to the state auditor in 2024. First-term Republican Dave Boliek said the integrity of elections begins with effective management.

“The State Board of Elections is leading on voter roll cleanup, getting work done quickly and efficiently,” Boliek said. “This marks another positive step toward ensuring our state has secure elections, where only eligible voters are casting ballots."

Dead people on voter rolls is not evidencing a vote from them has been cast in any election, contrary to the jokes and sometimes sincere accusations of such. The state board does say it underscores “the importance of regular updates and strong interagency coordination.”

The state board, through county boards weekly, gets information from the Department of Health and Human Services on voters who die. The comparison used in the SAVE database search includes the voter’s name, date of birth and last four digits of Social Security number being sent to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency crosschecks with the Social Security Administration.

If a voter was registered in North Carolina, then moved or died in another state, this process helps discovery. 

Allen Wooten

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/dead-people-voting-meets-measure-demise-34000-removed

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California’s Climate Overreach - Edward Ring

 

by Edward Ring

California is strangling its own energy base—then blaming oil companies for the predictable fallout of shortages, wildfires, and policies built on ideology instead of economics.

 

Even if the most dire climate scenarios are accurate, and humanity must transition away from fossil fuel, it can’t happen overnight. The rational approach is to first develop alternative sources of energy without precipitously destroying the industries that reliably produce oil and natural gas. Once alternatives are available at a competitive price and in sufficient quantities, demand naturally migrates to the alternatives. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry, recognizing that their core business is to provide energy, actually stays healthy by also investing in the transition.

None of that is happening in California. The approach the state’s politicians have chosen is irrational and predatory. For more than twenty years, they have legislated and litigated the state’s oil and gas companies down to a fraction of their former size, making up most of the resulting energy shortage not with alternative energy, but with imports.

A recent and particularly brazen case of this ongoing harassment comes in the form of Senate Bill 982, something that only last week came perilously close to moving to a floor vote. Under the moral masquerade of requiring restitution for allegedly causing climate change, which in turn allegedly caused wildfires, what this bill really amounted to was a state-sponsored shakedown. SB 982 is a vivid example of how California’s legislature is determined to cannibalize and ultimately destroy entire industries in order to pay for disasters of their own making.

SB 982 would impose liability on fossil fuel companies for “climate-attributable damages,” expected to be assessed in billions of dollars. It would empower California’s attorney general to sue the state’s oil companies without even needing to prove fault, negligence, or specific causation by an individual company.

This bill is not only legalized extortion, but also a total disregard for economic reality. Combustible fuels remain the primary engine of civilization, and they’re not going anywhere for at least the next several decades. Despite this unavoidable fact, California’s in-state oil industry is already on the verge of implosion. The results are easily quantifiable.

Well production in the oil rich state has fallen from over 400 million barrels per year in the 1980s to barely more than 100 million barrels per year in 2024. A major distribution pipeline from fields in Kern County to Northern California refineries was shut down in late 2025 because there wasn’t enough oil left to permit the pipeline to physically move oil through it, nor enough to make it possible for the operators to break even. Additional regulatory harassment has driven two of California’s major refineries to cease operations, leaving existing refinery capacity insufficient to meet demand. Californians now import 75 percent of their crude oil and, by some reports, now have to import 20 percent of their gasoline from refineries in Asia.

Against this backdrop, SB 982 wouldn’t even permit oil companies to recoup the billions that this predatory legislation will empower the state of California to extort from them. Where they could find the billions (trillions?) to pay for “climate attributable damages” if they can’t raise prices to consumers is unclear.

A similar disregard for economic reality is what motivated the introduction of SB 922 to begin with. For years, California’s semi-numerate insurance commissioners, driven by ideology, have made it difficult, if not impossible, for the state’s insurance companies to pass through to rate payers the increases to their own reinsurance payments or to increase rates to reflect updated risk assessments. Then, when wildfires immolated more than 13,000 homes in the Los Angeles area in early 2025, many insurance companies had already canceled coverage and left the state. The remaining insurers offering coverage, including California’s state-funded FAIR insurance plan, were overwhelmed. Without a bailout, these insurers cannot cover the claims.

But the entire premise of SB 982 is flawed. Culpability for the wildfires doesn’t rest with California’s oil companies. The California State Legislature created these disasters because, for decades, they have waged a regulatory assault on California’s timber industry, along with property owners and ranchers who used to engage in grazing, thinning, and controlled burns. In the Santa Monica Mountains surrounding the burned neighborhoods in Los Angeles, herds of sheep, goats, and cattle used to roam the hillsides, and property owners were able to thin overgrown vegetation on their own land as well as adjacent public land.

All of this became nearly impossible, thanks to interference in the form of hyper-regulatory oversight that effectively eliminated nearly all of the practices that had prevented California’s forests and wildlands from turning into tinderboxes. Trees and scrublands became overgrown, with the vegetation dried out and stressed not because of “climate change” but because natural and prescribed fires were suppressed at the same time any other form of thinning was all but banned. More than any other single factor, environmentalist extremism has caused California’s catastrophic wildfires.

Rather than admitting their culpability for the entire disaster, the wiped out homes, lost lives, and ensuing economic cataclysm, California’s state legislature blames oil companies. This entire charade is a prime exhibit of why climate change alarm in California has become, more than anything else, a scam designed to deflect responsibility for bad policies and to redistribute wealth and power to bureaucrats who haven’t shown the slightest evidence of learning from their decades of negligent opportunism.

Thanks to what capacity remains for rational climate policy in California, the targets of SB 982’s predatory scheme were able to stall its progress in the legislature this year. But the state’s appetite for seizing billions from disfavored industries isn’t going to go away. A “compromise” that almost had SB 982 sailing into law was to “permit” oil companies to earn “credits” against eventual judgments if they could prove they invested in wind, solar, and carbon capture schemes, all of which are deemed to lower emissions. Notwithstanding the subjective and economically draining morass of “carbon accounting,” this supposed compromise will only intensify; it is yet another way to further impose on oil companies the responsibility for funding projects that, in many cases, are patently ridiculous, such as direct air capture of CO₂, or blatantly destructive to the environment, such as floating offshore wind.

The example California is setting with its war on fossil fuel is not anything for residents in other states to take lightly. The state’s particularly virulent strain of climate overreach is a national disease, stronger in some states than in others, but spreading its contagion everywhere. In 2007, despite having an allegedly conservative majority, the US Supreme Court actually found CO₂ to be a pollutant that could be subject to regulation by the US EPA. The Trump administration has directed the EPA to reverse the regulations that followed the decision, but an incoming Democratic administration will bring it all back.

Anyone still believing that extreme climate shakedowns will be confined to blue states should read a brilliant national overview of the problem. Published in the Spring 2026 edition of City Journal, “The Climate Litigation Swindle” is written by Heather Mac Donald, a researcher noted for uncommon diligence and impeccable logic. In a nearly 6,000 word essay, Mac Donald describes several avenues of litigation being pursued by climate activists throughout the United States. The audacity of these lawsuits is only matched by their vapidity. But that won’t stop lower courts, or a US Supreme Court, should it end up packed and flipped by a new Democratic administration, from granting credence to every absurdity these creative litigants can possibly conjure.

Climate extremists are part of a larger sickness infecting America. They are part of a movement that seeks to undermine our economy, discredit capitalism, disparage Western civilization and Western traditions, spread fear, resentment, despair and self loathing among our youth, and, through their ignorance and fanaticism, deny Americans the opportunities that preceding generations have taken for granted. They are a menace. They must be stopped. 

Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/04/29/californias-climate-overreach/

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