The political maneuver that unfolded this week in the Texas Senate runoff is best understood through a simple analogy.

Imagine a hunter placing a steel trap along a narrow path in the forest.

The trap is not hidden by complexity. It is hidden by inevitability.

The hunter knows that if the animal continues down the path it will eventually step into the mechanism. The trap works not because it deceives the animal but because the path offers no other direction.

Ken Paxton’s challenge to Senator John Cornyn and Senate Leader John Thune functions in much the same way. It is a device constructed so that every available move reveals something important about the character and competence of those who must respond to it.

In February of 1972, President Richard Milhous Nixon accomplished what generations of diplomats, academics, and foreign policy mandarins had insisted was impossible.

The fiercely anti-communist president who had built his career exposing Soviet espionage in the United States stepped onto the soil of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and altered the trajectory of global geopolitics.

For decades prior, Communist China had existed behind an opaque ideological barricade. Since Mao Zedong’s triumph in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ruled a nation that was diplomatically isolated, economically stagnant, and politically convulsive.

Washington had no formal relations with Beijing. American diplomats spoke of China only through intermediaries. The Cold War was defined by a bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, while China simmered as a volatile and unpredictable revolutionary state.

President Nixon saw something others failed to grasp.

The communist world was not monolithic. In fact, by the late 1960s, the Sino Soviet split had grown into a deep strategic rivalry. Moscow and Beijing were not merely ideological cousins. They became competitors.

Nixon and his duplicitous National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger recognized an opportunity of historic magnitude. By normalizing relations with China, the United States could exploit divisions within the communist bloc and weaken the Soviet Union’s strategic position. It was a geopolitical triangulation of breathtaking sophistication. The gamble worked.

Nixon could not have known that thirty years later…

[TTP: there is, perhaps, much in this article to both like and dislike, and enough grey area to have a great conversation. Tell us what you think in the comments!]

The United States literally began with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

(What that actually means, particularly the pursuit of Happiness part, is different for different people. At a minimum, however, we can all agree that Life means, well...life.)

The above quotation, of course, comes from the Declaration of Independence. But that document doesn’t define the structure of our government; the Constitution does.

And it’s from the Constitution that we get our federal system, under which (originally) the federal government had a few well-defined and finite powers such as defense, foreign relations, and adjudicating conflicts between the various states.

States, on the other hand, reserved all those powers not specifically prohibited to them or delegated to the federal government.

The truth is that the system worked very well for a long time. About 150 years.

But starting in the 1910s, with the passage of the 16th and 17th amendments, the line between the states and the federal government started to blur; in the 1930s, it began to fray; and by the 1990s, it was basically gone, which is the situation we find ourselves with today…

You know one place where federal control largely doesn’t extend?

The criminal justice system.

In a region that has been in conflict for time immemorial, a people have carved out a home for themselves.

The Kurds are a stateless ethnic group that spans across several countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

In Iraq specifically, not only have the Kurds managed to create an autonomous zone that they fiercely defend from all comers, but they are considering aligning with the U.S. to fight against Iran’s jihadist regime.

There is a saying amongst the Kurds: they have “no friends but the mountains.” This ethnic group has been caught in bloody conflict after bloody conflict.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds were not given any sort of sovereign territory. They were divided amongst the nations and left to preserve their way of life and culture in hostile lands. Every time they tried to declare independence, stronger powers shut them down.

The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even declared jihad against Kurdish insurgents demanding independence.

One thing the Kurds are good at is warfare. Their fighting force, the peshmerga, has become formidable due to its knowledge of the terrain, its bravery, and its toughness.

The Kurds have long sided with the U.S. in various conflicts.

Last week, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. They achieved an enormous tactical victory at the outset. Now, Republicans need to win the rhetorical war at home.

As any good attorney will tell you, he who frames the argument likely wins the argument.

To date, despite 86 percent support among Trump 2024 voters and 98 percent support among self-identified MAGA, Republicans have not succeeded in framing the argument to the rest of the country, which is currently divided 50-50.

Here are the two arguments they must make.

[TTP:  The Shield of the Americas summit was notable in many ways, but there was a small side story that was particularly sweet. Here’s your feel-good story of the week.]

On Saturday,Donald Trump and Marco Rubio hosted the Shield of the Americas summitin Doral, Fla.

In case you missed it, it was the meeting of several members of the Trump administration with 12 right-leaning heads of state from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and it was focused on security, particularly combatting the cartel crime that plagues our nations, as well as the other issues we all face and how we can work together to solve them.

If you've been reading my articles in recent days — and even in the weeks leading up to the event — you know I've been geeking out over it a little bit. I absolutely loved this idea and am only sorry we didn't do it sooner. I think it's a historic move that will literally change the world if successful.

But there was a much smaller story that came from it...

Americans would be wise to begin paying very close attention to a small rugged island in the northern Persian Gulf that few could locate on a map only weeks ago.

That island is Kharg Island (it’s sometimes spelled Khark Island.)

It is nothing less than the main distribution center for Islamic Republic of Iran’s oil.

At a moment when the United States and its allies are confronting the Islamic Republic during the ongoing military confrontation known as Operation Epic Fury, Kharg Island stands as one of the most consequential strategic locations in the entire Middle East.

If Iran’s regime derives financial oxygen from oil exports, then Kharg Island is the lung through which that oxygen flows.