Secure Freedom Minute

President Trump has set the stage for further, dramatic tariffs on a recalcitrant Chinese Communist Party, possibly exceeding 100% on its imports. He is catalyzing an economic disengagement from that mortal enemy that is long overdue.

As it happens, the President has another source of leverage in the form of an “America First Investment Policy” he unveiled on February 21st.

The essence of that policy is to reduce both dangerous “inbound” Chinese investments here and “outbound” U.S. investments that prop up the CCP, enable its military build-up and underwrite its totalitarian repression of the people of China.

Four Wall Street firms are intent, however, on maintaining their China First investment policy by raising over $7 billion for CATL, one of Beijing’s military and slave labor-exploiting companies. If you order them to stop, Mr. President, you will get Xi Jinping’s attention for sure.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a confirmation hearing for the man President Trump has selected to be the Nation’s top military officer: Lieutenant General John Caine. This warrior’s replacement of Joe Biden’s Joint Chiefs Chairman, General C.Q. Brown, couldn’t be more welcome – or needed.

General Caine, known by his Air Force pilot’s call sign “Raizin,” was not only selected over myriad active duty four-star officers. He was also pulled out of retirement to take on this key job at a particularly fraught moment. In contrast to the previous chairman, he has focused on war-fighting, rather than promoting divisive, cultural Marxist “Woke” agendas. 

The Trump team of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman Raizin Caine promises to provide the reboot of our military we urgently need. Let us pray they have time to reestablish the practice of “peace through strength.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

Just when it seemed the Chinese Communist Party’s penetration of America couldn’t get worse, it has. What could be more perilous than having, for example, 400 of China’s transformers in – and endangering – our electric grid and tens of thousands of PRC soldiers at large in our country? 

Well, decorated Green Beret veteran and newly minted Congressman Pat Harrigan has just revealed that there are GNC stores owned and operated by the CCP on eighty of our military bases. Every day, they purvey nutritional and other products that could be used to poison our servicemen and women. 

At a minimum, the Chinese are collecting detailed personal information on them that can be weaponized in various ways.

We may soon find ourselves in a shooting war with the Chinese Communist Party. Every one of these potential attack vectors must be addressed, and terminated, forthwith.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Donald Trump has staked his presidency on the proposition that the United States must once again be a manufacturing superpower, both for its economic and national security. Yesterday, he compellingly laid out the case for doing so and what it will entail in terms of reversing decades of trade policies that have imperiled both.

Specifically, the President is ending the practice whereby trading partners around the world impose tariffs and many other restrictions on American exports that have, heretofore, gone unreciprocated. He enumerated many of the most egregious examples of such unfair trade, and assigned U.S. tariffs that would “kindly” only partially level the field.

It remains to be seen how many countries will opt to close their markets further, rather than open them. My guess is that Donald Trump’s bet will substantially pay off, and help make American manufacturing great again.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Today, the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history concludes in Wisconsin. The prime reason is the expectation that, if the leftist candidate being supported by immense amounts of money from George Soros and other Democrat donors, Susan Crawford, prevails she will inject herself in deciding congressional redistricting. It would give the term “activist judge” a new meaning. 

Crawford appealed to donors at a January event billed as “a chance to put two more House seats in play in 2026,” supporting electoral maps designed to make those Republican districts into ones favoring Democrats, possibly impacting control of the federal House of Representatives.

While various courts across the country have injected themselves into redistricting disputes, it’s astounding that a judicial candidate is so nakedly selling her seat to interested partisans. That’s a precedent that should not be set in Wisconsin today. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Like the Minutemen at Concord almost exactly 250 years ago, patriots in Michigan have successfully pushed back an invading enemy – in this case the Chinese Communist Party set on establishing a toxic electric battery manufacturing plant in the state’s rural north.

Faced with concerted and sustained local opposition strongly  supported by House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar, the CCP’s Gotion High-tech has suspended its application for facility construction. 

This project also breaches restrictions on “foreign adversary inbound investing” in the U.S. energy sector laid out in President Trump’s new “America First Investment Policy.” 

Ditto one being pursued elsewhere in Michigan by yet-another PRC battery manufacturer – a Pentagon-designated “Chinese military company” called CATL, for which Wall Street is hoping to raise $7 billion, flouting presidential inhibitions on outbound investment to China, too.

Attention Minutemen! We must now stand against CATL’s fundraiser. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

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.