An Oxford-educated British elitist picked an intellectual fight with an American “hillbilly” over the weekend, and guess who won? Yep, the “hillbilly”.

It was a showdown between JD Vance, the new American Vice President, and Rory Stewart, a podcaster.  It started when Vance gave an interview to Fox News in which he outlined his Christian belief in a hierarchy of love.

With superb haughtiness, Rory took to X to accuse Vance of misunderstanding the Gospel of John. Vance’s order of love is “more pagan tribal” than Christian, he pronounced, like some pope of correct-think.

Vance fired back, and it was glorious.

For how much longer will the world’s conscience now allow for two million people to be held hostage by Hamas, crammed into a 140 square mile Strip, stuck between the sea and two countries who will not let them enter: Egypt and Israel?

I was in Israel on October 7 and share the trauma of a nation under attack from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others. Now,

Hamas has vowed more October 7 attacks.

No nation in the world would accept a permanent terror base on its border, with over 200 miles of tunnels hiding weapons and training for destruction.

In this context, it would be Einstein’s definition of madness to try all the old options all over again in Gaza. Now it is time to think differently, as Trump 47 certainly is. And in so doing, he is fully aware that we cannot be cruel to the Palestinians. That they are a people who deserve homes, dignity and peace.

Recent statements by U.S. President Donald Trump and Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver Carone, as well as the trip by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Central America, have focused attention on the risks posed by the activities of China in Panama.

Aside from China’s low key military engagement with Panama, the real issue is the vast scope of its commercial presence there.

Beyond just the ports, China’s economic engagement and development of networks of personal influence and benefit in Panama have arguably facilitated its use of the country as Beijing’s global logistics and financial hub to promote its commercial advance in the region under conditions of limited transparency, with numerous shady dealings.

Further, beyond Panama’s government, virtually all of Panama’s most influential families have business dealings with PRC-based companies.   You may be amazed at how deep China’s connections within Panama are.

With Donald Trump back in the White House, leaders across the world are sitting up. They will have to get used to something very new: an America unembarrassed about putting its own national interests first, and specifically in making the security of its borders one of the central aims of its foreign policy.

The South American nation of Colombia received an early preview of how President Trump will project US power. After initially refusing to accept US military planes carrying Colombian illegal migrants, Trump threatened a wave of tariffs and visa restrictions on the country’s political leadership unless it agreed to accept back its own citizens.

Within hours, Colombia had complied with Washington’s demands. The actions he is taking now to protect America’s national sovereignty should serve as a role model for the UK and nations across Europe who are facing the same challenges posed by mass migration.

A strong and revitalized America is great not only for the American people, but for the entire free world.

In Latin America, word is out. And the word is FAFO.  The polite version is “Fool Around – Find Out.”  That first F stands for something else on Elon’s X.

Suddenly we are seeing a lot of them willingly cooperate with President Trump on the acceptance of repatriation flights for their own nationals in the U.S. illegally.

The reason looks pretty obvious: Nobody wants to be the next Petro.

President Trump's thrashing of far-left Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, who initially refused to take repatriation flights he had agreed to earlier, hollering like the pope about 'dignity,' before being forced to quickly reverse course and sing soprano, seems to have sent a message to the rest of Latin America's alien-exporting states, and now they're falling into line with Trump's agenda.

According to Reuters:

Change happens, according to the famous Hemingway quote about his bankruptcy, “gradually, then suddenly”. The same could now be said of the dismantling of gender ideology. Its moral bankruptcy, a decade of sterilizing and mutilating children’s bodies, looks to be over.

In the flurry of executive orders that Donald Trump has signed since re-entering the White House, here is the big one: prohibiting gender transitions for people under the age of 19.

“It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” reads the executive order, entitled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.

This means no more puberty blockers, no more operations, double mastectomies, castration, “facial feminizations” and all the rest of it. No more irreversible “gender affirming care”.

How did we get to this? How did anyone think that telling children that they were born in the “wrong body,” and that those bodies could be surgically and chemically rearranged was sensible? But this is hardly the first time medics have caused harm.

In 2017 it took almost three months for the White House to release an official portrait of the new First Lady who in a significant break from tradition had yet to move permanently into the executive mansion.

Fast forward eight years and this time things, like so much else in Trump 2.0, look very different.  A bold, confident, disciplined and always sharply tailored boss was the Melania that the public got today and, up until now, was a woman that only those who worked closest with her were allowed to see.

Melania’s lightning-fast pictorial statement - in bold black and white (another barrier breaking feature of the image) - makes clear that she too realizes that not only is there no time to waste in declaring herself part of a presidential triumvirate.

She is picture three in the line-up after her husband and his vice-president on the White House homepage.