Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Police departments across the country are finding it hard to recruit new officers as they must increasingly contend with: rampant drug-trafficking; untreated mental illness, especially in burgeoning homeless populations; sometimes dangerous illegal aliens drawn to so-called “sanctuary cities”; and broad-brush condemnations of law enforcement over controversial shooting incidents.

This would seem to be a particularly bad time to be releasing from federal prisons large numbers of felons, including some with records of violent crimes. Yet, the United States Senate is poised to do just that over the next few days via legislation known as the “First Step Act.”

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and every federal law enforcement association have warned against hastily approving this well-intentioned, but fatally flawed initiative without hearings or proper opportunity for debate.  Should the Senate do that, it won’t be just the cops, but public safety and national security, that are endangered.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On Capitol Hill today, a formidable group of American women mostly hailing from the Middle East will be warning lawmakers and their staff about the threat posed to females by the totalitarian Islamic code known as Sharia.  Their message is especially urgent since this brutally misogynistic doctrine is not only evident in their native lands, but increasingly in this country, as well.

Members of this Middle Eastern Women’s Coalition, led by a bestselling Turkish-American author named Rabia Kazan, will describe such egregious manifestations of Sharia as honor killings, child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The Coalition’s message is that those who seek to impose Sharia worldwide are on the march.  They must be challenged and resisted, not accommodated and appeased.  

We must start by heeding and amplifying these strong female voices speaking out for women and girls being silenced – and worse – by Sharia-supremacism.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump’s meeting today with the House and Senate’s Democratic leaders presents an opportunity for him to begin effecting behavior modification of those lawmakers. All other things being equal, it can be safely assumed they will behave even more badly in the new Congress than in the Republican-led one limping to a close at the moment.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

If Mr. Trump is going to prevail, for example, on funding for “The Wall” that he has unsuccessfully sought since his inauguration, he’s going to have to wield his veto pen – which he has to date been unwilling even to threaten to do.

In recent days, we have been reminded that George H.W. Bush vetoed forty-four bills in his four years in office.  Donald Trump can and must be willing to do so, too, if he wants those remaining in his presidency to be productive.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

According to the news outlet Axios, President Trump is considering appointing Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina to be his next Chief of Staff. He could not make a better, or more timely, choice.

Rep. Meadows currently chairs the House Freedom Caucus, which is made up of that chamber’s most principled conservatives and strongest supporters of the President. While Mr. Meadow’s leadership would be missed in the coming Republican minority, he would be far better positioned to help counter the Democratic majority’s excesses from the White House than in the legislature.

Most importantly, the President has come to like and trust Mr. Meadows as a brilliant, politically astute and reliable ally – a combination of qualities that is in very short-supply in official Washington these days. 

Mr. Trump – and the nation – would be exceedingly well-served by a White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump recently enthused about the idea of a “worldwide network to show the world the way we really are – Great!” We could have one practically overnight since the Voice of America is a U.S. government-owned and -operated television and radio network created during the Cold War basically for this purpose. 

Unfortunately, this vehicle for communicating factual information to audiences hungry to know the truth about this country and its views of developments overseas has been allowed to atrophy from its heyday as a frontline instrument for countering Communist propaganda.

Worse yet, retiring Senator Bob Corker’s parting shot at President Trump is a legislative initiative that would preclude needed reforms of the Voice of America and its management that’s riddled with highly partisan Obama holdovers. 

Mr. Trump should ensure that this Corker effort fails and we have once again “America First” broadcasting.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On December 1st, Canadian authorities detained the chief financial officer of a conglomerate that represents the leading edge of Communist China’s espionage, subversion and global domination initiatives. The U.S. government seeks the extradition of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou over her company’s suspected violation of American sanctions against Iran.

Ms. Meng’s arrest went down the same day that President Trump was meeting with Chinese dictator, Xi Jinpeng, in Argentina in an effort to address trade issues.  It underscores the point that, even if the bilateral, so-called “tariff war” were called off, China’s wider economic warfare against us would continue.

Meng Wanzhou should be extradited to the United States and interrogated – not only in connection with Huawei’s help to the Iranian mullahs, but its support for Chinese electronic intelligence-gathering, 5G-penetration and influence operations that are growing threats to us and the rest of the Free World.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave the term “tough love” new meaning in an important address to NATO allies yesterday.  His speech was particularly noteworthy for its strong affirmation of American leadership, as well as its harsh critique of those so-called “friends” seeking to undermine it.

Specifically, Mr. Pompeo warned against; policies of appeasement towards Russia, China and Iran; the notion that the more treaties, the safer we are; undue reliance on the United Nations; the submission of national sovereignty to multilateralism; and hostility towards Israel.

Secretary Pompeo’s remarks ironically coincide with a moment of national memorializing of former President George H.W. Bush, a globalist who embraced many of the nostrums our top diplomat aptly described as “the poisoned fruit of American retreat.”

Let us resolve now, as Mr. Pompeo and President Trump have promised, to provide robust American leadership, instead.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

A new front has been opened this week in the war the ayatollahs of Iran have been waging against this country for forty years.  A federal court in Washington, D.C. is hearing a suit brought on behalf of over 100 U.S. service members killed or wounded by Iranian-orchestrated and often highly sophisticated bombing attacks in Iraq. It will show that “Death to America” has been the practice of the Tehran regime, not empty rhetoric.

This is not the first attempt by U.S. citizens to bring the mullahocracy to justice.  Most, however, have been exercises in futility.

Here’s hoping that the present case will not only provide fresh documentation that the regime in Tehran is our unalterable foe. It should catalyze further efforts – both in court and elsewhere – to bring about the ultimate justice against such enemies: their overthrow by the Iranian people.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump decided over the weekend to pause further escalation in his use of tariffs as countermeasures in the economic war Communist China has been waging against the United States for decades. His critics are deriding him for doing so on the basis of what are likely to prove to be more empty Chinese promises to buy additional American agricultural and other products.

Actually, President Trump appears to have few illusions about China’s past practices and future ambitions. He understands that we must counter effectively, for example: Beijing’s massive espionage operations, intellectual property theft, cyberwarfare, subversive influence operations here, as well as its aggressive military build-up and seizure, expropriation and/or control of international waters, air space and strategic choke-points.

Mr. Trump and America must use whatever instruments, including further tariffs, are needed to address these present and growing dangers.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Republican legislators are reportedly considering prohibiting the sensible question whether respondents to the 2020 census are U.S. citizens.  Evidently, this is the sort of “bipartisanship” we can expect in the next Congress: serial GOP acquiescence to Democrats’ demands – especially those that contribute to the fundamental transformation of America.

Unfortunately, the radical left has already made great strides in making-over American society by alienating its young people from our country, symbols, values and history. A new FLAG/You-Gov poll provides chilling evidence of the success of the nation’s leftist-dominated culture and educational systems in instilling anti-patriotism in large numbers of those “Zillenials” privileged to be citizens.

This trend must be reversed if the United States is to survive as a constitutional republic.  Let’s start by finding out how many of those here are American citizens.

This is Frank Gaffney.