IRAN - AMERICA'S NEXT STEPS

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India: After Iran: America’s Next Steps]

What happens after the shooting stops?

This is Washington, DC’s main topic of conversation in the wake of Epic Fury annihilating Iran’s leadership.

The answer is fundamental to the balance of President Donald Trump’s Administration.  What follows removing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro?  What is next in Iran?  What happens if the Cuban Communists fall?

America has shown the world that it is the most formidable military power in history.  Unfortunately, during the 21^st Century, America has also shown its ability to lose the peace after winning the war.

With the end of the Cold War, America guiding nations toward pro-West free societies has ranged from the “good”, to the “bad”, to the “ugly”.

SOVIET EMPIRE

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, marked the end of 72 years of tyranny for Russia and many “captive” nations.  The countries of the USSR, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe had viable opposition elements.  Most Warsaw Pact nations were viable democracies before being conquered by the Nazis and Soviets.

Credible leaders, such as Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel, were ready to step in.  Dissident movements like Solidarity and Samizdat provided a core of policy and political activists to fill the power vacuum as Eastern European leaders fell.

The United States did not “nation build”.  It offered important support to the emerging leaders who were shaking off generations of oppression.

Bipartisanship dominated this effort.  The Clinton State Department and Speaker Newt Gingrich hosted delegations from the new nations to personally see Congress in action.  Prime Ministers, General Secretaries, and Parliamentary leaders spent days being mentored by the Clerk of the House and the House’s Chief Administrative Officer on how voting, legislative processes, and constituent services could be adopted to their respective settings.

Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, under a State Department contract, held week-long training sessions for Members of various Parliaments.  Senators, Members of Congress, and the House’s Chief Administrative Officer conducted these interactive seminars to provide real world, hands-on, insights on how to effectively represent their country’s interests while managing debate and opposing views.

The European Union stepped in to help align legal practices and guide the new nations into compliance and ultimately membership in the European Union (EU).  Nonprofits, such as the Atlantic Council and The European Institute facilitated dialogue with EU leaders and regional stakeholders.  European Ambassadors, posted both the U.S. and in Eastern Europe, served as coaches and mentors to their counterparts.

The key to this success was allowing each nation to evolve at its own pace based upon its own unique identity, history, and culture.  Adoption of “best practices” and “lessons learned” were offered but not mandated.

The only failure was Russia.  While Duma Members enthusiastically participated in Harvard’s courses, they could not anticipate that Boris Yelstin’s alcoholism and complicity in corruption would lead to the deal that brought Vladimir Putin to power.

AFGHANISTAN

The successes of Eastern Europe were totally lost on the Neo-Conservatives (NeoCons) that dominated the inner circles of President George W. Bush.

Afghanistan was a feudal society, divided among villages elders, clergy, and warlords, all owing titular loyalty to the Shah. 

Mohammadzai tribal leaders ruled Afghanistan for 155 years. The last Shah was toppled in a Soviet-backed coup in April 1978.  What followed were years of unrest.  This included civil war, the assassination of the Soviet puppet leader, and the full-scale invasion and occupation of the country by Soviet troops in December 1979.

A long guerilla war was waged by the pro-West Northern Alliance and Islamist factions known as the Mujahideen.  Eventually, the most radical of the factions, the Taliban, dominated the Mujahideen.

The Soviet withdrawal on April 14, 1988, left an uneasy coalition government between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. The leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated days before the 9-11 attack on America.  These events consolidated Taliban control but also led to the United States toppling the regime in December 2001.

The U.S. chose to “nation build”.  Ignoring history and culture, Bush officials installed Hamid Karzai in December 2001, after the Taliban government was overthrown.  Karzai had been the CIA’s “paymaster” for moving funds to Afghan guerillas.  He would prove to be corrupt and untrustworthy, selling the country’s mineral rights to China for $40 million to his overseas bank accounts.

Bush officials prevented the reemergence of the traditional feudal society and refused to bring back to Shah’s family for national unification.  Instead, they attempted to establish Western Democracy with a tight timetable of before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The fact that it took Western Europe over 600 years to evolve from feudalism to true representative government was lost in the arrogance of occupation.

Billions of dollars poured into the country for training and infrastructure, much of it wasted and defrauded by contractors and Afghan elites.

The weakened local communities depended on NATO and U.S. forces to keep the peace, while Western values and processes were force feed to the populace. This became fertile ground for the Taliban to arise and win. Karzai stole the 2009 Presidential election against several credible opponents. His crumbling credibility, rampant corruption, and suppression of dissent placed Afghanistan in a death spiral. 

In September 2014, Ashraf Ghani, one of two opposition candidates in the 2009 stolen election became President.  It was too little too late.  The Taliban were dominating the battlefield and ultimately the negotiations for retaking power.  Their forces rolled into Kabul on August 15, 2021, after a disastrous withdrawal of American forces.

IRAQ

In 2003, Bush’s Neocons waged a war based on highly questionable intelligence.  They proceeded to line their pockets with billions in bogus contracts while wrecking the country.

The U.S. likes to establish highly centralized governments.  This ignores the federal system and local governance that made America a success.  Partly, centralization is lazy.  Having everything inside the highly fortified Baghdad “Green Zone” meant diplomats, bureaucrats, and contractors could avoid learning anything about the real situation and not leave the comforts of Western food and entertainment.

Unfortunately, this was the recipe for disaster.  Rulers, going back to 1639, understood that Iraq was three separate nations: the Kurds in the north; the Shiites along the coast; and the Sunnis in the center. The British bundled Iraq together after the First World War to consolidate their hold through a puppet King.  This fiction fell apart in 1958 when the Ba’ath Party took control and continued to rule a contrived unitary state.  Saddam Hussein emerged as dictator in 1988.

The 2003 war toppled Hussein, ushering in twenty years of waste, fraud, abuse.  Instead of pursuing a federal system, Bush occupation officials forced a strong unitary state.  It was inevitable that the three historic areas would bridle at this contrivance. 

The most tragic were the Kurds.  They had enjoyed semi-independence with the establishment of a “no fly zone” over their region since the 1991 war.  They had oil and a strong traditional governance structure.  They reached out to Western companies to help develop their lands and were crushed by the U.S. State Department.

One example says it all.

Kurdistan is populated by small villages isolated in deep valleys by high mountain ridges.  These small villages enjoy ample water as each is situated by small streams. This was ideal for deploying small immersible turbines that could generate electricity for each village. A U.S. firm had the proven technology, and a strategic partnership was forged to bring electricity throughout rural Kurdistan.

Enter the U.S. State Department.  Bush officials halted the partnership asserting that only electricity generated by hydroelectric dams on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers would suffice.  They declared that decentralized electricity would weaken the Central Baghdad Government.  The Kurds and their U.S. company pointed out that (1) there was no plan to create hydroelectric dams to serve the entire country, (2) a network of power lines and substations would be easy targets for sabotage and impossible to defend, and (3) the region was subject to earthquakes that would disrupt a centralized grid.  The Bush bureaucrats refused to listen and stopped the project.  To this day, these villages are without electricity.

THE FUTURE

Venezuela has a viable opposition movement that had the last election stolen.  It has a Nobel Prize winner, María Corina Machado, as its titular head.  Trump seems content to let Interim President Delcy Rodriguez do the heavy lifting of steering the country back to credibility.  Her public statements distance her from “Washington’s Orders”, but her actions display begrudging cooperation.  Behind the scenes “carrots and sticks” are probably guiding the relationship. What happens next is going to be driven by internal forces, with the U.S. incentivizing a pro-West and free society outcome. Iran has a viable opposition inside and outside the country.  This includes the extensive Iranian diaspora residing in the United States and other countries.     The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was formed in 1981.  It is a 460-member coalition “committed to a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic”. The NCRI’s mission is to “hold free elections within six months of the fall of the theocracy and to ensure a peaceful transition of power to elected representatives”. Just as Epic Fury started, Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, announced the formation of a Provisional Government by the NCRI to transfer sovereignty to the people of Iran and establish a Democratic Republic based on a long established ten-point plan. The Ten-Point Plan was presented by Maryam Rajavi in December 2006 at a session of the Council of Europe. The NCRI’s plan for the future is, “a pluralistic republic based on the separation of religion and state, gender equality, the abolition of the death penalty, peace, coexistence, the elimination of double oppression against Iran’s ethnic and national minorities, and a non-nuclear Iran”. This well-organized effort, along with the possible symbolic national leader, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, could quickly fill the void as the current regime is toppled. There truly is hope after the bombs…as long as Trump and his team learn from the past.

PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES

The horrific murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, by their son are made more tragic because they were preventable.

Nick Reiner, Rob’s son, began his downward spiral to murder at age 15.  His eighteen attempts at failed rehabilitation are typical of the 1.36 million patients going through Rehabilitation Programs to address their Substance Use Disorder (SUD).

Drug Rehabilitation is now a $35 billion global industry.  Americans spent $9.44 billion on patient rehabilitation treatments in 2024.  U.S. Rehab spending is expected to rise to $16.22 billion by 2033.  Another $1.5 billion is allocated in Federal grants for Opioid Response Programs.

Approximately 60 percent of those who complete rehab programs relapse into addiction. Only 43 percent of those who enter rehab programs complete their treatment.

These multiple levels of failure have only motivated government and private foundations to spend more money pursuing the same approaches.  How many more lives will be lost before there is meaningful change?

It does not have to be this way.

On November 4, 2022, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued their updated Opioid Prescription Guidelines.  Their goal was to limit the exposure to Opioids when health professionals manage pain.

They unanimously recommend the use of Red-Light treatments as the preferred nonopioid therapy for chronic pain.  They also declared that Red-Light therapies were as effective as opioids for common types of acute pain.

Red-Light, known in the scientific literature as Photobiomodulation (PBM), has treated over 100 million patients in clinical settings without any documented side effects.  

PBM Therapy’s efficacy is supported by 2,466 Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) and 11,178 research studies, many published in leading scientific journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Lancet.  

There are 505 active PBM clinical trials registered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

PBM has been proven to improve the success rate of SUD rehabilitation. PBM eases the physical and psychological withdrawals from opioids and other drugs.  It dramatically reduces relapse.

Major studies have documented PBM’s role as an effective adjunct to traditional drug rehabilitation.

In 2020, Dr. Fredric Schiffer, Harvard Medical School, proved PBM reduced Opioid cravings by 51% versus 15.8% using traditional rehabilitation.

A Novel Treatment of Opioid Cravings With an Effect Size of .73 for Unilateral Transcranial Photobiomodulation Over Sham - PMC

In 2024, Dr. Jennifer Flora, Shepherd University, validated Schiffer’s findings.  She further documented a significant reduction in depression symptoms. Dr. Flora’s depression findings validated earlier studies conducted at Harvard Medical School by Dr. Michael Hamblin and Dr. Paolo Cassano.

Transcranial Photobiomodulation Therapy as an Intervention for Opioid Cravings and Depression: A Pilot Cohort Study - Jennifer Flora, Kelly Watson Huffer, 2024

What is Red-Light/Photobiomodulation?

Photobiomodulation (PBM) is a noninvasive, FDA cleared, medical technology that successfully manages pain and treats a variety of medical conditions.

The human body has 32 trillion cells.  Each cell has thousands of Mitochondria that process nutrients and light into the energy required to power the cell.  When we are injured, ill, or aging, this process breaks down, harming the cell and the body. Exposing all or part of the human body to intense Red and Near-Infrared light restores the Mitochondria’s ability to generate cellular energy.

PBM is a natural process aiding a natural process. 

Why is Red-Light/Photobiomodulation not generally available to those in need?

Bureaucratic inertia is preventing this proven treatment from being known and adopted:

-       The Centers of Disease Control (CDC) has never added its PBM therapy recommendations to their updated Opioid Guidelines media pages or educational material.

      CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain — United States, 2022 | MMWR

-        The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has never added PBM treatments to its rehabilitation recommendations. 

-       The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never published an updated and accurate description of PBM for expedited device clearance, even though the final rule process was completed in March 2023.

      Photobiomodulation (PBM) Devices - Premarket Notification [510(k)] Submissions | FDA

-       States dispersing Opioid Settlement money continue to purchase Naloxone EpiPens and fund failed rehab programs.

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, President Trump, and HHS Secretary Kennedy, should take immediate action to implement these life-saving approaches that have already gone through extensive scientific and regulatory vetting.

No one suffering from Substance Use Disorder should ever have to go through Nick Reiner’s ordeal.  No family member should be murdered because the rehab system refuses to pursue successful treatment options.

 

BATTLING OVER AMERICA’s MEMORY

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India]

The battle for America’s collective memory is erupting once again.

Leftists spent the last decade destroying America’s traditional identity and well-established historic narrative.  The Left filled classrooms, books, articles, parks, and museums with their mantra of a nation “built on stolen land and by slave labor”.  At the same time, they wantonly assaulted the physical touch stones of America’s origins by removing statues and other monuments. 

The Left intended to replace the connective fabric of American society with an alternative reality promoting a tyrannical communist government. They embraced the cautionary words from George Orwell’s “1984”: "Who controls the past controls the future”.

They are now howling from the roof tops as President Donald Trump is reversing their plans to reshape America.

America is unique.  It is a country based upon ideas - not based on geography, language, or tribe.  Our historic sites and markers ground us in who we are, and why we are. 

History is about collective memory and frames of reference.  Statues and historic sites are there to commemorate and remind, not to celebrate. Knowing and discussing our origin is fundamental to a civic culture where shared values hold us together.  Civil dialogue with those we disagree is the structure that allows our institutions, our communities, and ourselves to exist. 

Our Constitution is about forming “a more perfect union”.  This means America is always a work in progress.  The Constitution itself is the greatest “rules of engagement” for collective action that has ever been written.  Looking beyond ourselves to our origins reaffirms our nation and our individual and collective roles in it.

Starting in 2009, the Left anointed itself as morally entitled to determine what memories should be saved or destroyed. The chorus of Leftist commentators from the media, academia, and politics wove a tapestry of excuses justifying official and unofficial acts of destruction and desecration. Tax dollars were used to dismantle memories and insert radical anti-white, anti-capitalist, and anti-American content into classrooms, museums, and parks. This is the very essence of tyranny and fanaticism.

Humans have attempted to alter collective memory since competing Pharaohs chiseled away Cartouches and defaced hieroglyphs.  Carthage was destroyed, Rome was sacked.  Mongol hordes obliterated cities along the Silk Road.  Islamic hordes burned the Library of Alexandria.  Vikings ravaged monasteries and burned centuries old manuscripts.  Cromwell’s Puritan army smashed stained glass windows in countless churches.

World history has been saved by those who transcended their immediate impulse for destruction.  Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella calmed their Christian fervor when they saw the wonder of the Alhambra.  Napoleon’s armies avoided destroying European cities and towns during nearly twenty years of war. 

The Twentieth Century saw a disturbing shift in how history was viewed.  The rise of Communism and Nazism led to intentionally obliterating history on a strategic scale.  Worse, the followers of these dogmas made fabricating history a priority.  Destroying reality and then faking an alternative became one of the greatest threats to civilization.  Cultural treasures were lost to the ages as the Nazi’s raped Europe, the Soviets raped Eastern Europe, and Mao’s minions unleashed their Cultural Revolution.

The 21^st Century brought a new wave of Islamic hordes whose primary mission was to destroy anything, and anyone, not sufficiently promoting their fanaticism.  From the Taliban blowing up thousand-year-old Buddhist statues, to ISIS smashing the Tomb of Abraham and leveling Palmyra, the erasure of irreplaceable historic sites and artifacts has known no bounds.

Fanaticism is all about intolerance and silencing opponents.  It is all about indoctrination and erasing individualism.  Fanatics are not satisfied until they completely destroy independent thought.  Their dream is a “hive mind” - thinking and acting as one.  Leftists, Islamic radicals, and Communists want to anoint one leader who is all powerful, surrounded by blind devotion.  Their goal is the end of civilization as we know it. 

George Orwell, a Socialist who grew to understand the threat of tyranny, sent us a timeless warning: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

On March 27, 2025, President Donald Trump set about stopping the Left’s obliteration of America’s identity. He issued Executive Order 14253, stating:

“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.  This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.  Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

Trump’s Executive Order requires the Secretary of Interior to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history”.

As with most Executive Orders, the Interior Secretary then issued his own detailed guidance to implement the President’s policy.  On May 20, 2025, Secretarial Order 3431 required the heads of the  various federal land units to: “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).”

The Secretary’s Order outlined a process for compiling and reporting on such instances, including soliciting public input.  These reports will be reviewed and appeals heard before actions occur.  It will be months before this process is completed.

America’s Leftists are spreading false rumors of widespread removals of slavery documents and displays.  These same Leftists previously demanded the removal of Confederate statues and tore down memorials to Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.  These same Leftists are now waving signs, “Hands Off History!” to preserve their woke legacy. 

The absurdity of the Left’s outrage is that promoting slavery was at the core of the 19^th Century Democrat Party while stopping the spread of slavery was the founding principle of the Republican Party.  This divide continued beyond the Civil War as Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan as a paramilitary force to kill freed Blacks and their Republican supporters.  In the 20^th Century, Democrats promoted lynching of Blacks and opposed Republicans who tried to prevent this terror. 

The Left’s accusation about President Trump, and his Department of Interior, wantonly removing slavery displays is baseless.  Republicans would not erase their Party’s original reason to exist.

The Honorable Scot Faulkner served as the first Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, Director of Personnel for Reagan’s 1980 Campaign, Administrator of Personnel for the Presidential Transition, and on the White House Staff. His best-selling memoir, “Naked Emperors” is available on Amazon.com.

 

WINNING THE BUDGET BATTLE

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India and Newsmax]

The best way to effectively end waste and rein-in government spending is to have the U.S. Supreme Court declare the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (Public law 93-344) unconstitutional.

America’s public debt is currently $36.22 Trillion. It was only $475 billion when the Congressional Budget Act became law in 1974.

The Congressional Budget Act created the current framework within which the Federal Budget is proposed, passed, and implemented.  It placed Congress firmly in the driver’s seat, and blocked future President’s from taking actions deemed constitutional and prudent for over 171 years.

The result was instant and dramatic.  In the six years prior to the 1974 Act, the federal budget increased on an average of $13.4 billion annually.  In the seven years after the Act, the federal increased by over $49 billion annually.

The Peterson Foundation for the study of the National Debt observed: “From 1950-1974, federal deficits averaged 0.7% of GDP. After the Congressional Budget Act was adopted, from 1975-2007, deficits averaged 2.5% of GDP. And when the Congressional Budget Act was enacted in 1974, real (inflation-adjusted) U.S. government debt per person was $3,240.”

Today, U.S. Government debt is $106,024 per person.

Expanding Presidential power usually erodes democracy, expands government, and facilitates the rise of an increasingly unaccountable “Imperial Presidency”.  Ironically, giving Presidents more power to control spending would do just the opposite.

The struggle over government spending has been a fundamental point of contention since the earliest days of our Federal Government.

Article I of the U.S. Constitution outlines the power of Congress to create laws [Sections 1 & 8] and the prevailing nature of those laws once signed by the President or passed over a Presidential Veto [Section 7].
Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests all executive power in the President of the United States [Section 1].

This division of power and responsibility was validated by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1825, "the difference between the departments undoubtedly is that the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law." [Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. 1, 44 (1825)]

Earlier, Chief Justice Marshall, in his famous Marbury v. Madison, defined the difference between political acts belonging to the executive branch alone as opposed to those executive acts governed by congressional enactments: “He acts, in this respect.., under the authority of the law, and not by instructions of the President.  It is a ministerial act which the law enjoins on a particular officer for a particular purpose...”
[Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U.S. 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803)]

However, what happens if Congress creates programs that eventually become unnecessary or obsolete? What happens if Congress continues to authorize and appropriate funds for those programs? What happens if Congress provides more funds than recommended by the Executive Branch or exceeds documented need?

President Thomas Jefferson was the first to test the boundaries of Executive authority to second guess Congressional spending. In the wake of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson reported that, "the sum of $50,000 appropriated by Congress for providing gunboats remains unexpended. The favorable and peaceful turn of affairs on the Mississippi rendered an immediate execution of that law unnecessary.... "

Following Jefferson’s precedent, subsequent Presidents selectively withheld appropriated funds on programs that were no longer needed. They also asserted they were effectuating congressional intent not circumventing it.

The Depression and World War II provided opportunities for President Franklin Roosevelt to stretch budgetary discretion beyond Jefferson’s “economy” precedent. He moved funds away from what he deemed less important programs to more pressing programs. Post war demobilization gave President Harry S. Truman additional opportunities to hold back Congressional spending. Truman impounded $735 million in additional funds appropriated by Congress to increase to 58 from 48 the President's request for Air Force groups.

This expanded justification for Presidential Impoundment of Congressional funds became bi-partisan when President Dwight D. Eisenhower, set aside $137 million appropriated for the initial procurement of Nike-Zeus anti-missile system hardware. John F. Kennedy impounded $180 million appropriated by Congress over the President's request for developing the B70 Bomber. Lyndon B. Johnson unilaterally decreased federal spending by $5.3 billion to mitigate the inflationary impact of the Vietnam War.

Congress initially supported the President’s role in managing public funds. The Anti-Deficiency Act of 1905 provided that appropriations may, “… be so apportioned by monthly or other allotments as to prevent expenditures in one portion of the year, which may necessitate deficiency or additional appropriations to complete the service of the fiscal year for which said appropriations are made."

The Revised Anti-deficiency Act of 1906 stated: "Whenever it is determined...that any amount so reserved will not be required to carry out the purposes of the appropriation concerned, he [President] shall recommend the rescission of such amount ..."

President Warren Harding’s Budget Bureau Director, Charles E. Dawes, further asserted that an agency was not required to spend its total appropriation if it could fulfill its objectives by spending a lesser amount.

Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1951, continued to expand Presidential flexibility on managing and controlling spending: “In apportioning any appropriations, reserves may be established to provide for contingencies or to affect savings whenever savings are made possible through changes in requirements, greater efficiency of operations, or other developments subsequent to the date on which such appropriation was made.”

Legislative liberals began to challenge Presidential spending control.  Congressman George H. Mahon (D-TX) raised concerns regarding the passage of the 1951 Act: "I would not object, as I know other members would not object, to any reasonable economies in government. But economy is one thing, and the abandonment of a policy and program of Congress is another thing."

Recipients of federal funds began to challenge Presidential control of spending.  The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, began to constrict Presidential impoundment and other executive branch practices to control spending. 

These new battle lines hardened when President Richard Nixon mounted a more aggressive and effective effort to rein-in federal spending.  The Supreme Court, even under centrist Chief Justice Warren Burger, continued to build legal precedents against Presidential budget frugality.

“Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution vests "[a]ll legislative powers" in the Congress. No budget message of the President can alter that power and force the Congress to act to preserve legislative programs from extinction prior to the time Congress has declared that they shall terminate, either by its action or inaction.... Thus, in absence of any contrary legislation, the defendant's plans to terminate the CAA functions and the OEO itself are unlawful as beyond his statutory authority.” [American Federation of Government Employees v. Phillips, 358 F. Supp. 60 (1973)]

Nixon continued to impound congressionally appropriated funds. During the 1973-1974 budget year, Nixon refused to spend $12 billion. Congressional Democrats, sensing the decline in Presidential power in the wake of the mounting Watergate scandal, passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Nixon signed the law on July 12, 1974, one of his final major acts in office.

After extinguishing the President’s ability to control spending the federal budget more than tripled in just ten years.  From $269 billion in Fiscal 1974 to $851 in Fiscal 1984. Annual federal spending is now $6.5 trillion.

When the Republicans retook the House of Representatives after forty years, Newt Gingrich tried to reassert the President’s role in budget management by proposing the Line-Item Veto.  This was a key part of his 1994 “Contract with America”. It became a rallying cry for fiscal “hawks” from across the political spectrum. Former President Ronald Reagan added his voice to the renewed effort: “When I was governor of California, the governor had the line-item veto, and so you could veto parts of the spending in a bill. The president can’t do that. I think, frankly—of course, I’m prejudiced—government would be far better off if the president had the right of line-item veto.”

The bill was introduced by Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) on January 4, 1995, cosponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and 29 other senators. Related House Bills included H.R. 147, H.R. 391, H.R. 2, H.R. 27 and H.R. 3136. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on April 9, 1996.

Budget “hawks” from both parties cheered, and President Clinton began using the line-item veto and budgets became balanced.  Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), and others who opposed this “assault on Congressional prerogatives”, filed in court to void the law.  Their case was tossed out over lack of standing. Another case, filed by a city, succeeded in declaring the Line-Item Veto unconstitutional. [Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)]

On January 31, 2006, President George W. Bush proposed the “Legislative Line-Item Veto Act of 2006”.  Conservatives once again rallied to giving the President expanded budgetary powers. It was introduced in the House by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and passed overwhelmingly on June 22, 2006. However, the Senate killed similar legislation.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reveals daily evidence of how unbridled government spending wastes billions while lining the pockets of favored contractors and corrupt officials.

America is already barreling toward bankruptcy. Reestablishing the constitutionality of the President’s power to control spending is the only way to save us.

AMERICA's GOVERNANCE CRISIS

 

NewsX Senior Consulting Editor Vineet Malhotra sat down with Scot Faulkner who served as the Chief Administrative Officer for the U.S. House of Representatives and as Director of Personnel for 40th US President Ronald Raegan for a fireside chat on what the mood in South Asia is, vis a vis, the change in administration in the United States. Responding to a question on the heated discussion between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Friday, Faulkner revealed that the last time something like this happened in public eye was back in 1619 when the defenestrations happened in Prague, which eventually started the 30-year-war. Excerpts:

Q: Do you think this (Zelenskyy-Trump-Vance exchange) was the first interaction of its sort ever to happen in the Oval Office or anywhere in the world?

A: I was doing some history research before this, anticipating the question. In 1619, in Prague, the defenestration of the Holy Roman Emperors, Catholic delegation. They were thrown out of a third-floor window and it started the 30-years-war. So that seems to be the last time there was a this high profile meltdown for a diplomatic mission. So, it’s been quite a while, and that one wasn’t on CNN. It’s just absolutely stunning. My phone started blowing up last night, and I have friends on both sides of the aisle. And you can imagine one side says it’s Zelenskyy’s fault. The other side says it’s Trump’s fault. And everyone’s sort of throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes at each other.

Q: Do you think it was about time that somebody called out Zelenskyy for what’s happening?

A: Well, that’s an interesting question because what they are saying is that a deal was cut and that this was only was supposed to been sort of like a protocol meeting in preparation for the signing of the document deal with mineral rights. And then they were going to go into a press conference, and Zelenskyy decided to up the ante and sort of reopen the negotiations on the fly. Some of the people are saying that Zelenskyy was so used to working with Biden and his national security staff, which to this day, is still probably the weakest and most incompetent in the American history. And he wasn’t ready to encounter the buzzsaw of Trump. And then to, as one person put it, with Trump and Vance, there was ‘bad cop, worse cop’ (instead of bad cop, good cop). And so, Zelenskyy probably lost his cool when he shouldn’t have. But both sides sort of up the ante. And it’s sad because only two people benefit from it: Russia – because they hope that they can retain all their ill-gotten gains of territory and maybe force Ukraine to never be a NATO (member). And then China that’s sitting there saying, well, if this happens on Ukraine, maybe we ought to test our waters, literally, our waters around Taiwan. So, it was not one of the better moments for American history or world history or for in the future, Ukraine.

Q: You gave me a lot of interesting insights into what governments do and what governments emote and project in order to run efficiently. And you spoke about the 3Ts. Could you share that philosophy and that idea with our audience as well.

A: When you start to think of governance, we’re not just talking about elections and who gets elected and who represents who. We’re talking about the actual operations and mechanics of how a government operates, how it serves its citizenry. And you kind of harken back to basically Rousseau in the 18th century about the social contract that, you know, we all came here either by bus or car because we don’t build. We don’t build our own cars. So we, we voluntarily, hire a car or buy a car. So we have a transactional contract with that manufacturer. The same thing goes in government. None of us are going to sit there and build the roads that drive that car. We’re willing to, through a toll or gas tax or something, delegate to government building the roads. We delegate to government, the police and the signage on those roads. And so the social contract for government at every level: from national to federal to local, is that the citizens that it serves willingly delegate and willingly pay for certain basic services that we’re not going to do ourselves. And so transaction is a very fundamental thing because government needs to be able to make the value proposition that we can do certain things better than individuals because of collective action and economies of scale.

Then we’re into trust: the second T. We trust that government is going to do the right thing. Just like we all had a lunch break, we assume that the food we ate was not going to kill us, give us food poisoning. So there’s a certain trust level that comes with that social contract. And then finally to establish that that trust is real and is actually justified, we have transparency. Public processes should be public; public documents should be public; public meetings should be public and public decisions should be public. And you put a little asterisk for we don’t need to know the nuclear codes or some secret weapon being built or who the spies are. But overall, public things should be public. What’s happened in America and this goes back 30+ years, is that both Republicans and Democrats are to blame. Those three Ts have been destroyed, and that’s what led to last year’s election where America’s faith in government, in that social contract has completely collapsed because governments have been lying to them. And we’re finding that over the years, we basically have a government filled with aging, egotistical, greedy and corrupt people who have been lining their pockets. And this is where the DOJ’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) comes in. Peeling back the onion to see the waste, the fraud and abuse and the fact that we’re about to have the full files of the Epstein. We’re going to have the trial on PD. So we’re not only looking at corruption, we’re looking at perversion to a very sordid level. And so Americans today have little faith in government, little faith in the media that covers government, little faith in the academia that studies government and this is probably the worst crisis in governance in American history.

We had our Civil War, but that wasn’t about governance; it was about very fundamental issues on freedom and sectional competition. To this day, 77 percent of Americans are for what Musk is doing in terms of what we call draining the swamp and starting to expose all this waste. But the basics of governance that holds America together are right now in play, and we’ll see how it plays out.

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The inaugural NXT Conclave 2025 brought together some of the most influential global leaders, with Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi as the Chief Guest, reaffirming India’s leadership in global governance and innovation.

 

BATTLING FOR AMERICA'S SOUL

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India]

President Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) Movement are moving at lightning speed on a broad front to restore governmental integrity and restore American culture.

His revolutionary change agents are now confirmed and taking the helms in their respective agencies.  Along with legions of capable operatives, they are reversing decades of Leftist policies and eliminating large numbers of those loyal to the endless expansion of government.

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are exposing billions of waste, fraud, and abuse.  Their wide-ranging audits of Executive Branch operations are well on their way to exceeding the $2 trillion budget reduction goal.

The battle over national governance is only a small part of the more fundamental battle over America’s core values and civic culture.

America is unique.  It is a country based upon ideas - not geography, language, or tribe.  Our historic sites and markers ground us in who we are, and why we are. 

America’s civic culture thrives because it has maintained a common frame of reference supporting freedom of expression, representative government, limited government, and government dispersed among states and locales – the fundamentals of a federal system and republican governance.

The resiliency and longevity of America’s civic culture is based upon its citizens learning and understanding how their government works and their role in supporting and participating in it.

America’s Constitution is about forming “a more perfect union”.  This means America is always a work in progress.  The Constitution itself is the greatest “rules of engagement” for collective action that has ever been written.  Looking beyond ourselves reaffirms our nation and our individual and collective roles in it.

A critical element is our collective memory and frames of reference.  Statues and historic sites exist to commemorate and remember, not to celebrate. Knowing and discussing our origin is fundamental to a civic culture where shared values hold us together.  Civil dialogue with those we disagree is the structure that allows our institutions, our communities, and ourselves to exist. 

America’s unique civic culture and collective identity is the antithesis to tyranny.  President Ronald Reagan referred to America’s example of freedom and representative government as “the shining light on the hill” that inspired freedom loving people worldwide.

Those promoting Communism, Fascism, and other forms of oppression have continually assailed America to neutralize challenges to their power. Internally, those wanting unbridled political power have made common cause with outside forces in their attempt to undermine America.

In 1927, Stuart Chase, one of the founding members of President Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) “Brain Trust”, met with Stalin and Trotsky to gain inspiration for taking over America. In his 1932 “New Deal” book Chase mused, “Why should the Russians have all the fun of remaking the world?” 

Guided by Chase’s vision, the Left set about to methodically capture and control America’s cultural levers.  Hollywood fell first. Most news media fell by the late 1960s. Print media was corrupted from the start. Pro-America outlets, like Time Magazine, succumbed as their conservative founders retired or died. Academia was conquered during the 1960s in the wake of the “free speech movement” and then the anti-Vietnam War protests.

During the 1980s, the Left targeted America’s 13,425 school districts. Leftist teachers replaced moderate pro-American teachers as they retired.  These Leftist teachers promoted revisionist history supported by new textbooks like Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”, which became the standard high school textbook for a generation.

In some schools, world history courses narrowed to cover only events that occurred after 1200 AD. Large swarths of historical events and figures were eliminated.  The Texas State Board of Education voted to remove 450 historical figures. This included significant individuals like John Hancock. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that only 18 percent of High School graduates are proficient in American history.  

A parallel project was shrinking civics education to the point where only 23 percent of eighth-graders perform at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics exam, and only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government. 

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 ushered in an era of divisiveness. Obama campaigned as a proponent and symbol of racial harmony. Once elected, Obama and his Administration launched a wide range of actions to racialize America.  By the end of his eight years, racial and sexual demographics became the lens through which private and public actions were viewed. 

The era of “wokism” replaced meritocracy.  Martin Luther King’s famous quote,” one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was completely turned upside down.  Divisiveness and “tribalism” ate away at America’s common framework and values.

An intensified phase of undermining America’s civic culture began after a 2011 Harvard Study revealed that participating in historical/patriotic celebrations promoted conservative voting patterns. The Left began to methodically demonize America’s founding narrative, encompassing events and people.

Denigrating the American Flag, removing the National Anthem, and ending 4^th of July were the Left’s trinity for destroying America’s civic culture.

Statues were removed.  Athletes “took a knee” to denigrate America’s National Anthem, a “Black National Anthem” was sung as the preferred “more inclusive” alternative.

The Left’s goal was to fundamentally shift the inspiring narrative of America’s founding in 1776 to the darker, anti-American, narrative of the 1619 movement.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the intellectual force behind the 1619 movement, asserted the arrival of the first slaves at Jamestown was the true founding of America.  This was launched in 2019 as a counter to celebrating the 400^th Anniversary of the first democratically elected assembly in America.  Hannah-Jones barnstormed cable news asserting, “Independence Day does not mean the same thing to everybody.  We are forcing white people to confront what this holiday has meant to black people”.

On one show, Hannah-Jones’ assertion was supported by Leftist historian Jon Meacham, who reported that the July 4^th was “only about a document not about shaping a nation”.  Meacham asserted, “For generations we have looked at 1776 as our founding moment, our “nativity”, when it was actually 1619…For too long we have taught this one narrative that glorifies white supremacy, glorifies colonization.”

The Left elevated an obscure moment in America’s Civil War, “Juneteenth”, as the “more inclusive” alternative to celebrating the “white slave document” of the Declaration of Independence.

Juneteenth is based on the false narrative that slavery in America ended on June 19, 1865.  That was the day a Union General marched into Galveston, Texas and announced the Civil War was over and the slaves being held in that region were free. It took ratifying the 13^th Amendment on December 6, 1865, to officially free all of America’s slaves nationwide.  

The Left began an incessant drumbeat that America was “built by enslaved people on stolen land”. The noble narrative of a nation of immigrants thriving in freedom, commerce, and limited government, was replaced by shame.

The Left’s goal was to expand government to “right wrongs” and “make amends”. Key elements were reparations; Critical Race Theory (CRT); Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); and Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”).

The Left’s echo chamber of controlling media, academia, entertainment, and government reached its zenith with the George Floyd riots of 2020.  Demonizing Trump and his supporters as racists, fascists, and Nazis became one of the vehicles for sweeping Joe Biden into power.  Leftist control of social media silenced dissent.  They were on the brink of totally remaking America in their image.

Then the world changed.

The Leftist agenda, to flood America with illegal immigrants, create chaos through weakening the police, and steer the justice system from going after criminals to going after Trump and his supporters ignited a massive backlash.

It became increasingly clear to a growing number of Americans, that they were being lied to by every entity they trusted. One by one, the Left’s carefully constructed reality fell apart.  Crime spiraled out of control in cities. Inflation soared. America’s weakened foreign and military policy emboldened tyrants and Americans died.

On April 14, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Suddenly, one of the most important components of the Left’s fraudulent reality became the chief forum for exposing their lies.

President Biden’s steady mental decline became harder to hide. Trust in those who lied in order to gain, expand, and retain their power vanished. 

The 2024 election shocked the system back to reality.  The MAGA revolution and the DOGE audits gave new hope that America could be saved.

The struggle to save America is just beginning.

“We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,” explained Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.

There are 98,577 public schools in 13,425 school districts.  Each district is run by elected school boards where ultra-Leftist politicians dominate.  The 3,827,100 public school teachers are mostly liberal to Leftist. 94 percent of teacher union campaign funds go to Democrats.

In West Virginia, America’s most conservative Republican state, public school leaders promoted Che Guevara as their 2022 role model for Hispanic Heritage Month.

President Trump joined the battle by issuing an Executive Order on January 29, 2025, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”:

“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.  Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.  In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics…These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.

Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority…Similarly, demanding acquiescence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.”

Trump’s Executive Order directs federal agencies to end funding for any activities deemed undermining America’s civic culture. It is a clear signal that the decades long battle for the soul of America is a priority. 

While Trump is waging an office-by-office struggle to gain control of the Federal Government, parents and local activists are fighting to regain America-affirming education school-by-school, and classroom-by-classroom. 

Generations of young people are adults with at best ignorance about America, or at worst, a Leftist set of assumptions about their country.

What took the Left decades to destroy, may take years to reverse. Time is short.

All the world’s freedom loving people are watching.

 

 

LIGHTING THE WAY TO A HEALTHIER AMERICA

 

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is now national policy with Trump establishing the MAHA Commission and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). 

Americans are universally concerned about their health, but well-financed and entrenched interests are thwarting MAHA.  Big Pharma spends $400 million a year on lobbying and contributes $90 million each election cycle.  Big food spends $130 million a year on lobbying and contributes $42.5 million each election cycle. 

Funding and lobbying by Big Pharma and Big Food support the Medical Establishment’s unwillingness to embrace new medical approaches.  This inertia plagues American healthcare.

American food is harming us. Many colleagues echo my own overseas experience where the food tastes better and we lose weight, even when eating heartily.

Medical professionals are increasingly using “Healthspan” instead of “Lifespan” to define health.  Why live into your 90s if you lose your mobility and brain function. 

Care based on holistic thinking and patient-centric approaches are core elements of “Healthspan”.

MAHA is mobilizing people and policies to improve our diet and lifestyle, such as more exercise.  It promotes alternative approaches to healing and wellness.

Historically, the Medical Establishment has embraced dubious methods that proved ineffective.  First, they “cast out” demons.  Then they “bled out” humors and poisons. Patients, including pregnant women, were deprived fresh air and sunlight until Florence Nightingale prevailed over military bureaucrats during the Crimean War. 

Cutting on patients and drugging them are the current standards of care.  Certain circumstances warrant these actions, but a growing mountain of evidence is showing there is a better way to treat many conditions.

Light is the key to extending our “Healthspan.”

Just as Nightingale advocated, light heals.  Our cellular mechanisms are similar to plants.  We turn color when exposed to sunlight.  We need the vitamin D that sunlight provides.

The sub-atomic process that turns nutrients, including light, into energy for our cells is identical for plants and animals.

Late Twentieth Century scientists discovered that taking the red and near-infrared part of the light spectrum, and increasing its intensity, restores cellular function.  This process, known as Photobiomodulation (PBM), is increasingly accepted for health and wellness.

The first institutional use of PBM was to prevent the side-effects of chemotherapy in cancer patients.  Chemotherapy causes sores in the mouth and throat.  In the worst cases, these sores turn into Oral Mucositis, making the patient unable to swallow.  Feeding tubes and suspension of cancer treatment follows, sending the patient into a fatal tailspin.

PBM prevents the side-effects of chemotherapy.  It is so safe and effective that it is now the standard of care in most cancer centers.  St Jude uses a popsicle shaped device for delivering PBM into their young patients’ mouths. 

Photobiomodulation

PBM is not only safe and effective, it’s cost-effective.  Using PBM to prevent chemotherapy side-effects reduces the overall cost of cancer treatment by 70 percent per patient.

PBM reduces inflammation by unblocking the sub-atomic processes within the cell. This unblocking effectively manages pain.  This is so effective that in 2022, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommended PBM as the preferred alternative to Opioids as part of their revised Opioid Prescription Guidelines. 

CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain — United States, 2022 | MMWR

51 million Americans suffer from chronic pain.  Annually, over 100,000 die of drug use.  Over 2 million struggle with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). PBM solves these issues.

By restoring cell function, PBM accelerates the body’s ability to heal wounds and generate new skin tissue.  Patients suffering from burns, wounds, and skin ulcers heal months faster, leaving no scarring.

As Americans age and become diabetic, foot ulcers occur and, when treated using traditional techniques, usually lead to amputation.  PBM prevents amputation and restores functionality.

Areas of PBM Study - PBM Foundation

The greatest expansion of PBM clinical evidence is treating neurological conditions.

375,000 veterans have chronic conditions arising from battlefield blast injuries.  Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is linked to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and to a higher susceptibility for having Parkinson’s. Veterans’ hospitals in Boston, Salt Lake City, and Denver conducted extensive clinical studies using PBM to successfully treat these conditions. 

In 2019, their dramatic results led the VA’s Center for Compassionate Care Innovation (CCCI) to recommend PBM to treat Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

Center for Compassionate Care Innovation - National Center for Healthcare Advancement and Partnerships

Over 100 million patients have used PBM in clinical settings.  Millions more use PBM, or “red light” devices, in their homes.  There have been no documented side-effects. The American military integrates PBM into warfighter conditioning.  Around the world, major athletic teams use PBM for conditioning, performance improvement, and recovery.  In 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved PBM use in competition.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been clearing PBM devices for decades. Devices are inexpensive, simple to use, and only take minutes per dose.

Photobiomodulation (PBM) Devices - Premarket Notification [510(k)] Submissions | FDA

So why isn’t Photobiomodulation therapy a common medical option?