Secure Freedom Minute

“Happy New Year” is a wish, but not by any means a prediction. Whether it will prove to be a healthy, productive and prosperous one for Americans will depend in part on circumstances beyond our control, both domestically and externally. 

Here are a few ways in which we can improve the prospects for the twelve months ahead: 

Get right with God. With His Grace, all things are possible.

Prize this amazing country as we celebrate its first two-hundred-and-fifty years. We must devote ourselves to protecting and practicing our constitutional freedoms so that they can be enjoyed as well by future generations.

Recognize that there are those, both here at home and globally, whose aspirations for this year conflict with ours. Their hostile ideologies drive quests for power, control and dominance over us that must be deterred and, where necessary, resisted. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, President Trump warned the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian terrorist franchise Hamas that it must live up to its agreement to disarm. Then he added that, if that didn’t happen, there were numerous nations who would be willing to use force to “wipe Hamas out.” 

Unfortunately, Hamas spokesmen have repeatedly insisted that the jihadists never committed to lay down their arms. And it’s unclear whether even a single country – other than Israel – is prepared to engage in the kind of costly combat required to  disarm the terrorists, let alone eliminate their organization.

The likely sources for claims to the contrary are two unreliable so-called U.S. “allies”: Hamas’ enablers, Qatar and Turkey.

If Hamas is actually to be “wiped out” – as it must be – only Israel has the will and the capability to accomplish it. Make it so.

This is Frank Gaffney.

When President Trump meets Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu today, their conversation should reflect a fundamental transformation over the past year. Israel has emerged from a status some have described as a U.S. “protectorate” to an exemplar – and regional pillar – of the Trump Doctrine.

It expects American allies to bear the principal burden of their own security, and – with U.S. material support – that of their neighborhoods, as well. 

None does that more effectively than Israel.

She has laid low her enemies and ours and is greatly enhancing our mutual interests in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea.

Let’s pray that the partnership thus forged between Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu will be further strengthened today and that, pursuant to the Trump Doctrine, this powerful bilateral alliance – not misbegotten deals with actual foes – will be the centerpiece of U.S. Mideast policy going forward.

This is Frank Gaffney.

In recent days, President Trump has unleashed American military power against jihadists in Syria and Nigeria. Such actions are clearly necessary in light of their intensifying attacks in both countries and demonstrate his commitment that “our country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper.”

Fulfilling that warranted pledge, however, will require more than symptomatic treatment, important as it is. Prior to his first election to the presidency, Mr. Trump recognized and decried the ideology that animates such jihadism. 

And on December 20th, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard underscored the point, declaring that “the greatest near- and long-term threat to both our freedom and our security is…Islamist ideology.” 

Fortunately, the President can help counter this toxic ideology systemically by banning the organization that is its preeminent champion and enabler: the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Urge him to do so at BantheBrotherhood.org. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

On this holy day, Christians everywhere are celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, a Jewish baby named Jesus, and the civilization those two faiths have bequeathed to the world. As we pray for peace in the year ahead, we must seek God’s grace in countering those who threaten that peace. 

For example, in countries like Nigeria, Syria, Communist China, Iran and North Korea, Christians are being subjected to brutal persecution. 

And in each, the persecutors and their respective regimes seek to replace our Western civilization with one kind of totalitarian global order or another.

If we are to continue to enjoy, among others, the freedom of religion guaranteed by our nation’s Christian founders strongly influenced by the Judaic traditions Jesus honored, we must pray for His help in protecting America and Western civilization from those determined to destroy them. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Today, President Trump is supposed to receive recommendations of the Secretaries of State and the Treasury concerning arguably his second presidency’s most consequential national security decision to date. 

At stake is whether the United States joins other allied nations in banning the Muslim Brotherhood. Or alternatively, pretends that the organization is not leading a global Islamic movement to destroy our constitutional Republic and Western civilization. 

Dozens of leading American freedom-fighters just appealed to Mr. Trump to ban the Brotherhood, meaning the parent organization as well as all of its chapters and subdivisions, including the U.S. ones and their extensive infrastructure in this country.

By so doing, the President can clearly demonstrate that America will resist, not submit to, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies’ bid to transform ours from the land of the free to the home of the enslaved.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The threat the Chinese Communist Party poses not just to us, but the whole world is truly catastrophic. For example, China expert Gordon Chang recently illuminated the CCP’s global predations via immense, and often illegal, fishing operations.

Notably, he reports Communist China has fifty-setven thousand industrial fishing vessels that have over two recent years fished in the waters of more than ninety countries for more than twenty-two million hours.

Mr. Chang concludes that “thanks to Chinese illegal fishing and other factors, the seas have been stripped bare,” citing an expert as estimating that ninety-three percent of the world’s major fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited, or significantly depleted.

Such “locusts” of the seas imperil billions worldwide, as does the Chinese Communist Party that weaponizes them. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

On December 20th, President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a powerful warning to the AmFest audience. She declared that Islam’s sharia-supremacist ideology, which she called “Islamism,” is “the greatest near and long-term threat to our freedom and security.”

Director Gabbard’s warning could hardly be more timely as the President will imminently act on recommendations by the Secretaries of State and Treasury about whether, and to what extent, he should ban the world’s preeminent champion of that toxic ideology – namely, the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The Brotherhood’s most important enablers, Qatar and Turkey, clearly oppose any such sanctions. But the evidence that it is a foreign terrorist organization and its toxic “political ideology” seeks our nation’s destruction cannot be ignored, let alone given a pass. 

Take action now by calling on President Trump to ban the Brotherhood at BantheBrotherhood.org. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

2026 will be a challenging year. The United States will be preoccupied with potentially game-changing mid-term elections. Western European nations seem likely to slide further into what Team Trump calls illegal immigrant-induced “civilization erasure.” 

Then, there’s Russia’s intensifying bloodletting in Ukraine and  Western civilization’s unfinished wars with jihadists in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. 

The question to which we must give earnest, focused and sustained attention is: Will China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, perceive such distractions – at least some of which he relentlessly fosters – as an irresistible opportunity to transition from the pre-kinetic warfare his Chinese Communist Party has long waged against us to a shooting war?

An important webinar today will explore that prospect – and what we must be doing now to prepare for, and hopefully deter, it. You have a need-to-know. Join us at PresentDangerChina.org at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

President Trump will soon make what may be the most important national security decision of his second presidency. And scarcely anyone even knows it’s impending, let alone how fraught the wrong choice would be. 

Given the incredibly high stakes for our people and constitutional Republic, the lack of the necessary public awareness and national debate about this decision is completely unacceptable.

By Christmas Eve, Mr. Trump is supposed to get a report from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about how to handle the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Our Victory Coalition report describes the President’s “choice” as either ban the Brotherhood or face “civilization erasure” here. 

You have a need to know the right answer – and why. So does President Trump. Learn why he must ban the Brotherhood and encourage him to do so at BantheBrotherhood.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.