On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth marked the 80th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima, liberated from Imperial Japan in World War II at a cost of 26,000 killed.

This occasion, like the rest of Pete’s travels across the Western Pacific last week, offered a most-needed reminder of the importance of the vast region’s strategic islands – and the magnitude of the folly of allowing Communist China to dominate any of them.

Simply put: We risk having to pay again in blood and treasure to reverse another totalitarian foe’s imperialism – and the attendant threat to our vital interests in what the great strategist Cleo Paskal described in a recent PresentDangerChina.org webinar as America’s “Pacific heartland.”

We must now actualize Secretary Hegseth’s highly visible, and most welcome, commitments to support our allies there and counter our mutual enemy, the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s a bad time for official Washington to be consumed with a Signal group chat involving top national security officials and a highly partisan journalist. After all, Russia and China appear poised for military aggression that, if not deterred, could prove catastrophic.

Reportedly, there are multiple divisions worth of Russian troops massing in Belarus near its borders with NATO members Poland and the Baltic States. 

And the Chinese Communists are now exercising – without prior notice – the use of air and sea forces against Taiwan, the latest incremental step towards surprise attacks there, and perhaps far beyond. 

Regrettably, our ability to dissuade these “no limits” partners from engaging, presumably jointly, in aggression is largely locked in for the short-term – and probably seriously discounted. Therefore, we must ensure our adversaries are not further encouraged to strike by our perceived internal divisions and distractions.   

This is Frank Gaffney.

For a dozen years, millions of U.S. investors have unwittingly had their pensions, college savings and other funds used to underwrite companies working for the Chinese military. That means they’ve helped our mortal enemy buy the weapons that may be used to kill them – and countless other Americans. 

President Trump has announced an America First Investment Policy to end this insane practice. But top Wall Street leaders like Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, Ted Pick and David Solomon are helping to raise at least another $7 billion for one such company called CATL. Their “China First” policy subverts Mr. Trump’s, and threatens our national security.

Today, Paul Atkins will have his nomination to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission considered in a Senate Banking Committee hearing. We need to know: Will he help enforce America First investing – or further enable the Chinese threat?    

Yesterday saw a potential breakthrough in the conflict in Gaza. It wasn’t the result of diplomacy. Or thanks to the renewed Israeli offensive there, although it surely was a contributing factor.

Rather, for the first time since the war began when Hamas and not a few Gazan civilians murderously invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, Gaza saw large public demonstrations against – wait for it – HAMAS! 

Protesters waving white flags and denouncing the terrorists who have long oppressed, brainwashed and weaponized them and relentlessly used them as human shields, causing thousands of needless casualties and destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques and other infrastructure.

Unless Hamas kills more of its own people, they just might be able to terminate the jihadists’ reign of terror – and create conditions for finally ending the war in Gaza and allowing them to live far better lives elsewhere. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Last month, President Trump rolled out an “America First Investment Policy.” It explicitly seeks to end Wall Street’s longstanding practice of investing Americans’ funds in Communist Chinese companies – especially those tied to the People’s Liberation Army.

Four U.S. financial leaders – Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon – however, are determined to continue their China First investing. They hope shortly to raise $7 billion or more for what the Pentagon calls a “Chinese military company” named CATL. It’s also accused of exploiting slave labor.

Those helping finance what President Trump calls a “foreign adversary” need to be held accountable for making China ever more dangerous. They are imperiling our families and communities. 

China’s U.S. financial Four Horsemen may not care about yours. If you do, say so at PresentDangerChina.org. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court took a crucial step away from national suicide today. It rejected the impeachment of the county’s acting president approved by the country’s communist-dominated parliament. 

It remains to be seen if the Court will do the same for the actual, elected president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached for declaring martial law in the face of parliamentary subversion. As the South Korean people have recognized the threat to their freedoms posed by the so-called Democratic People’s Party that now dominates and weaponizes the legislature, they have launched massive demonstrations calling for President Yoon’s exoneration.

The Chinese Communist Party’s fingerprints are all over this constitutional crisis. Its threat to the Western Pacific would metastasize enormously if a vital American ally is taken out. Let us pray that the Constitutional Court stands in the gap once again and with President Yoon. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Elon Musk is going to the Defense Department today, but not as the “fake news” New York Times breathlessly reported, to get briefed on top secret plans for war with Communist China. 

Let’s pray it’s for Elon to take on yet-another immense service to the country – one he is arguably uniquely suited to render. 

President Trump wants a “Golden Dome” to protect America against missile attacks. Unfortunately, the Pentagon’s plan for doing so is virtually certain to take too long and pay too much for defenses that are insufficiently effective to reduce an attacker’s confidence in conducting a decisive strike – the essence of deterrence.

Fortunately, with Trump’s trust, a White House office and Elon’s record of swiftly and affordably getting big things done in space, we could deploy the defense we need there before the President leaves office. 

Make it so! 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rivaled the likes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Ayatollah Khameini and Syria’s Bashir Assad for the length of his rule, its ruthless dictatorship at home and its aspirations for imperial power abroad. 

In particular, in keeping with his Sharia-supremacist ideology, Erdogan has long sought to reconstitute the Ottoman empire and  become its ruling caliph. His recent success in replacing Assad with a murderous jihadist puppet seemed to clear the way for not only destroying our Kurdish and other friends in Syria, but running the table in the wider Mideast.

Suddenly, though, the would-be caliph is reckoning with violent revolts at home and relying on foreign jihadists to keep him in power. Official Washington’s reflexive response would likely be to try to prop us this supposed “NATO ally” who hosts key U.S. bases.

We should resist the temptation.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent affirmed yesterday the Trump administration’s determination to stop underwriting the growing threat posed by our greatest “foreign adversary”: Communist China. 

Thus, a U.S. CFO has finally supported an “America First Investment Policy” that will screen “outbound investment” to respect American investors’ commonsensical unwillingness to facilitate the CCP’s military buildup, human rights abuses and surveillance-state oppression. 

A dynamite PresentDangerChina.org webinar yesterday confirmed J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are nonetheless trying to sluice over $7 billion to a Chinese military company accused of using slave labor without transparently disclosing such material risks – let alone the dire implications for its securities’ value of President Trump’s America First policy.

Secretary Bessent: Screen out the CATL China First fundraiser. Now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Last month, President Trump told his administration to implement an “America First Investment Policy” to stop Wall Street’s underwriting – and greatly intensifying – the threat we face from Communist China.

This month, four prominent U.S. investment banks are defying his executive action by ramping up their China First investment policy. J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are helping a Chinese military company called CATL raise $7 billion dollars or more from American and other investors. 

They have so far failed to mention President Trump’s directive, let alone its potential negative impact on the value of this foreign adversary’s corporation and its securities.

The Trump team must make an example of CATL’s Initial Public Offering by disallowing its enabling by U.S. banks. It should also require prominent warnings about any such future deals that they put China, not America, First.  

This is Frank Gaffney.