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TRUMP AND GOP TAKE AIM AT THE “JUDICIAL COUP”

As one anonymous and unelected judge after another rules against the Trump agenda, Republicans must decide whether they want to abide by the will of the American people.

If Tren de Aragua gang members aren’t “alien enemies” of the United States, aren’t able to be deported by the American president under the ancient Alien Enemies Act, then language itself has lost its meaning. But that’s the world we’re living in.

In a way, it shouldn’t surprise us. The Left, after all, has been at war with the language — and at war with reality — for decades.

Indeed, they insist that men can become pregnant, that women can only be described by biologists, that pedophiles are merely minor-attracted persons, and that last year’s version of Joe Biden was the best Biden ever.

Nor should the current judicial war against Donald Trump surprise any of us. All throughout his first term, Trump and his agenda were sabotaged from within by entrenched deep-state leftists and by old-guard establishment Republicans.

In this second term, though, with Trump having remade the Republican Party and having cleaned up the executive branch, the attacks are coming from without — from the third and supposedly coequal branch of government that Thomas Jefferson once presciently warned could become despotic: the judicial branch.

Since his inauguration, Trump has been busy trying to unscrew the mess bequeathed him by four years of the Autopen Presidency, but he’s been opposed at nearly every turn — from mass-deporting illegal aliens to ending birthright citizenship to trimming down our grotesquely bloated federal government to imposing tariffs on predatory trading partners — by lower-court judges and, in some cases, by the very Supreme Court justices that he nominated for the bench.

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THE TIDE HAS FINALLY TURNED AGAINST SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM

bigbangOn a recent podcast episode, Joe Rogan and his guest Cody Tucker found themselves in a discussion that was clearly skeptical of the atheistic consensus among prominent thinkers of the past few generations.

That atheistic consensus generally states that the following is true. There was obviously once a Great Nothingness that suddenly became our universe and the existence of everything within it -- and all of this happened for no reason whatsoever.

Rogan asks a question that every person has likely asked themselves countless times, “wouldn’t it be crazy if there wasn’t something at some point in time?  That seems even crazier than [to think] there has always been something.”

He's not wrong.

To believe that nothing suddenly became everything for no reason whatsoever is an act of pure faith based upon no observable data.

What’s more, the proclamation itself an act of heresy for scientific atheists.

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THE GRAND DECEPTION OF ISLAM AS A RELIGION OF PEACE

islmpeaceA database search of 12 million books published in the 300 years before 9/11 reveals only one instance of the phrase “Islam is a religion of peace.”

It appears in fiction and is spoken by Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, an Iranian leader in Tom Clancy’s thriller titled Executive Orders.

But the dangerous notion that Islam is peaceful has been so frequently reiterated by world leaders, clerics, and the liberal media-academia complex that it has taken on the status of COWDUNG—a facetious near-acronym for ‘conventional wisdom of the dominant group.’

Denying 1,400 years of history, these apologists would have us believe that extremist Islam is a perversion.

Their sanitized version presents Islam’s prime motif of violent jihad—or religious war against infidels—as an individual’s “inner struggle” for spiritual growth.

To expose these falsehoods—which have circled the globe before the truth even got out of bed—conservative authors Tommy Robinson and Peter McLoughlin wrote Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam.

In light of Robinson’s early release from a British prison a few days ago, an overview of this important book seems fitting.

The key to understanding what the Koran signifies to Muslims is naskh….

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: NESOPHILIA

Tristan da Cunha ©2019 Jack Wheeler
Tristan da Cunha ©2019 Jack Wheeler

All right, I confess.  I am a nesophile.  I’m addicted to nesophilia.  It’s not on any list of psychiatric disorders, however.  The term was invented – a “neologism” – by one of the 20th century’s most eminent philosophers, Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) in 1938 while in Ireland.

When there, he combined the Greek word nesos – island, with philia – love, and declared he was a nesophile – a lover of islands.  That’s me.

I suppose that’s obvious by now – for I’ve lost count of the number of islands I’ve written about on TTP.

And there are so many more to go!  Yet I’ll be writing only about ones that are interesting, not even if they’re famous.  I just got back from Majorca and Ibiza, for example.  Nice enough, pretty enough – but, frankly, boring.  There’s no real there there, as Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, California.

So let’s take a quick look at some islands that would blow Gertrude Stein away – such as the one that has the bed Napoleon died in.

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BEAUTY AND LUNACY ON THE ADRIATIC SEA

albanian-bunkerSaranda, Albania. Standing on a hilltop here overlooking the Adriatic arm of the Mediterranean, you can’t help but be mesmerized by the beauty of the scene, the Adriatic coastline, “the wine-dark sea” as Homer so often described it, and off the coast the Greek island of Corfu. Yet you can’t help being puzzled by the small mound of concrete in the foreground. What is that, you ask?

It’s a one-man pillbox bunker with a slit in front for the soldier to fire at Albania’s enemies about to invade during the Cold War. Stalinist madman Enver Hoxha ruled Albania for forty years, from the end of WWII to his death in 1985. During which he built 750,000 of these bunkers in a country barely bigger than Massachusetts (11,000 square miles). He maintained his Fascist-Communist rule of total control by constantly claiming that Albania was surrounded by neighbor enemies – Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy – all of whom were preparing to militarily invade, seize, and destroy Albania at any moment. For forty years.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Albania quickly liberated itself from its Communist past. Today it is stunningly gorgeous, a delight to travel through. The mushroom bunkers still litter the countryside, kept as a reminder of how history can go lunatic, and for Albanians to make sure such madness never happens to them ever again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #296, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE NATURAL INFINITY POOL OF SOCOTRA

pool-of-socotraNational Geographic calls the remote island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean “the most alien-looking place on our planet,” because of its incredibly weird and bizarre plant life like the Dragon’s Blood Tree.

Yet it is safely far away from anarchic Yemen, peaceful and serene in its isolation. And it contains places of mesmerizing beauty – like this natural infinity pool on a cliff edge high above the ocean in full view. Socotra is spectacularly exotic, like nowhere else in our world. It is truly life-memorable to experience it. Wheeler Expeditions was there in the Spring of 2014 – and we’ll be there again soon. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #129 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE ISLAND OF SARK

la-coupeeThere are five Channel Islands in the English Channel. Best known are Guernsey and Jersey. Least visited is Alderney, along with tiny Herm. Most fascinating is Sark, Europe’s only remaining feudal fiefdom. No motor vehicles are allowed, excepting a few farmers’ small tractors. The governor and chief constable is called the Seneschal. He rides to his office on his bicycle.

It’s an ancient office with a tradition of many centuries. When I was there in 2010, it was held by Reginald Guille, a very friendly fellow as all Sarkese are. We rode our bikes around the island, even along La Coupée, the connecting path along the razor sharp high isthmus connecting two parts of the island – it’s pictured above.

There are gorgeous pocket beaches here, and beautiful natural swimming pools. Flower gardens are everywhere, the island could not be safer, cleaner, calmer, and more exquisitely charming. A few days here will do wonders for you. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #131 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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THE AVATAR MOUNTAINS

avatar_mountains The gigantic forest-covered stone pillars of Zhangjiajie in a remote region of Hunan are so famous for being a featured location in the Avatar movie they’ve been renamed the Avatar Mountains. You can take a cable car through them to view them from above. Hard to get to and certainly worth it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #269 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/30/25

The Collapse of Russia’s Sacellum


There’s smoke rising in the Vatican, and it’s not from frankincense. It is the signal flare of a geopolitical shift. Pope Leo III’s inauguration, wrapped in Eastern rites and Greek chants, was a direct challenge to Russia’s spiritual monopoly. The Vatican isn’t reaching across the aisle—it’s drawing a blade. By deploying the Filioque-neutral Augustinian tradition, Rome is constructing a theological bridge to Constantinople, creating the conditions for a historic reunification of Eastern and Western Christianity. If a Vatican III comes, it will dismantle Moscow’s global claim to Orthodox leadership.

Russia, meanwhile, is no longer a player—it is the battlefield. The Ukraine invasion was a strategic misfire that backfired spectacularly. NATO stiffened. Ukraine became a tech-driven kill zone. Sanctions cracked the fossil economy. Tensions simmer in Tatarstan and the Caucasus. Moscow’s church-state fusion, once a pillar of national unity, is now a fault line of ethnic and sectarian unrest.

Moscow thought it could sacralize its power through Orthodoxy. Instead, it has bound itself to a Church now under Vatican pressure. Patriarch Kirill is a Kremlin mouthpiece in robes, and the Orthodox world is splintering. The Ecumenical Patriarchate already broke ranks. Rome is playing for centuries; Russia is bleeding years.

The sacellum, or the sacred heart of civilization, always falls first. Russia’s is crumbling. America’s flickered dimly under Biden but now grows brighter. China’s, wounded but still standing, is watching. This isn’t about incense and vestments. It’s about civilizational control. The altar is now the battlefield and the very pillars of legitimacy beneath the Russian state are giving a metaphysical shrug.

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RONALD REAGAN SPEAKS TO US ON MEMORIAL DAY

To The Point publishes this historic speech by President Reagan on each Memorial Day.  r.

 

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THE BOWIE KNIFE

deuces-wild-kinfeSeptember 19, 1827- near Natchez, Mississippi.

It was a time where personal honor was worth more than life, and slights to it could be deadly.

Several men came to a sandbar in the Mississippi River as a result of such a slight—for a duel, where two aggrieved men would settle their differences with violence—in this case, with black powder pistols.  The main contestants had “seconds,” who were essentially referees for the duel.  One of those seconds this day was a Kentucky-born and Louisiana-raised slave trader, land speculator, businessman, farmer, adventurer, and international man of mystery named James Bowie.

What would happen on this date would change how the new Americans fought and would give the new nation one of its first, and iconic, weapons.

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THE JUSTICES MUST AT LONG LAST DEAL WITH “CHRONIC INJUNCTIVITIS”

This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration.

The court has long failed to address the problem, and what I call “chronic injunctivitis” is now raging across the court system.

Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy.

For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures.

Any one judge can halt the entire government.

Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law.

Kagan lashed out at the obvious “forum shopping” by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting “It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.”

In his first term, Trump faced a more than 450 percent increase in the number of such injunctions over the number issued under Obama — a rise from 12 to 64.

The number then went down to just 14 under former President Joe Biden.

With Trump back in office, district courts have now outstripped that record and may surpass the total from the first term in the first year.

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ON PEACE, COMMERCE, AND TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY

The antidote to war is not peace.

The antidote to war is commerce.

This concept of cultivating peace by fostering commerce traces its roots back to Montesquieu and the Enlightenment.

The thought is that increasing commerce leads to shared interests, recognition of the rule of law, and growing prosperity, all of which preclude armed conflict.

At the end of WWII, the U.S. realized that only America, with about fifty percent of the global GDP, could reignite the fires of international trade, production, and competition.

In league with its wartime allies, agreements like Bretton Woods were executed and multilateral regulatory and monitoring organizations like the WTO were established.

With its enormous financial, military, and market clout, America was able to get the flywheel of global commerce moving again.

It worked, of course.

In 1945, global GDP was approximately $1T, while today it is about $117T.

Even better, the percent of the world’s population living in extreme poverty shrank from fifty-five percent to less than ten percent today.

These epic improvements are all due to the expansion of global commerce and free markets, driven by the U.S. sharing its markets, finances, and enforcement power.

But we still have war….it’s obvious to the casual observer that the outstanding component of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy is increasing commerce…

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RUSSIA’S HYBRID WARFARE TACTICS TARGET THE BALTICS

On May 9, 2024, a fire broke out at an IKEA warehouse in Vilnius, Lithuania (Lrytas, May 20, 2024). Subsequent investigations revealed that the arson was orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU), and that the suspects were also planning similar attacks in Latvia (LRT, March 17).

The Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office classified the incident as an act of terrorism aimed at intimidating the societies of Lithuania and pressuring them to reduce support for Ukraine (LRT, March 17).

Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy extends beyond its war against Ukraine as it also targets other European frontline states through influence operations, election interference, and intimidation.

The Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are targeted by Russian hybrid tactics as a daily reality and direct challenge to their sovereignty.

Historically, Moscow has used political, economic, energy, and cyber tactics to undermine the Baltics.

Recent efforts, however, are markedly more aggressive, particularly as they involve military pressure.

Understanding the origins of Russia’s hybrid strategy is crucial to recognizing its evolving influence in the region.

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