President Trump’s approval rating now stands at 53%, according to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll. That’s the highest it has been since the early days of his administration, and it is up eight points since Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that the president colluded with Russia.

Barr Stands Firm

Attorney General William Barr testified about the Justice Department’s budget before a House Appropriations subcommittee yesterday. Needless to say, most Democrats on the committee weren’t interested in the department’s finances. They wanted to talk about the Mueller report.

Barr made it clear he couldn’t get into significant details, but that Justice Department lawyers were working closely with Robert Mueller’s team to produce a thorough summary for members of Congress to review, while ensuring that national security secrets and grand jury information were protected.

The attorney general also revealed that a separate investigation into abuses of FISA warrants used to wiretap the Trump campaign was scheduled to conclude sometime in May or June, and that he is personally reviewing the deep state’s conduct that instigated the collusion investigation.

The Left & The IRS

As you know, Democrats are demanding that the IRS surrender Donald Trump’s tax returns. Even the state of New York is trying to get ahold of them. There should be universal outrage over the left’s weaponization of the IRS. 

I can’t imagine a worse message to send to the American taxpayer: Don’t get on the wrong side of the powers that be or we’ll expose your tax returns!  

Does anyone on the left see how bad this looks? Have they already forgotten the Lois Lerner scandals? When the left was running the IRS, it punished anti-tax organizations, pro-life organizations and groups fighting radical Islam. 

Why on earth would any reasonable person trust the left with more power?

Israeli Elections

As we go to press, the polls are closing in Israel after a hard-fought campaign in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a historic fifth term. Dogged by controversy and legal challenges, Netanyahu is facing a tough race from former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. 

The speeches and rallies are over. Israeli citizens of all backgrounds — Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze — have gone to the polls and voted for candidates representing multiple political parties (all 39 of them!).

In contrast, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in his 14th year of a four-year term in the Palestinian-controlled territories of Judea and Samaria. In other words, he ran for office in 2005, won, and then refused to allow another election. 

It is illegal to sell land to a Jew in the Palestinian Authority. And Abbas has insisted that any future Palestinian state would be Jew-free. Now that’s a real “apartheid state.”

In the other half of what would be a Palestinian state, Gazans held an election in 2006, and the people of Gaza voted for Hamas, a terrorist group. Any political opposition to Hamas has been crushed. Corruption is widespread. 

Just a few weeks ago, fed-up Gazans attempted to march peacefully in the streets. They were beaten by Hamas thugs and dozens of people were thrown in jail. Hamas frequently executes Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel.

The great irony is that between these two visions — a vibrant, multi-party Israeli democracy and the divided, dictatorial Palestinian factions — the United Nations, the European and American media, progressive political leaders in Europe and the United States passionately defend the Palestinians and frequently demonstrate their hatred of Israel.

Islamist Plot Thwarted

News broke Monday about the arrest of Rondell Henry, a naturalized American citizen from Trinidad, who was plotting to run over pedestrians at the National Harbor, a popular tourist site just outside of Washington, D.C.

Henry walked off his job two weeks ago and stole a rented U-Haul van from a northern Virginia shopping mall. According to investigators, Henry hated infidels (non-Muslims), and was inspired by ISIS to carry out a Nice-style attack that killed more than 80 people celebrating Bastille Day in France. 

Henry’s arrest is another reminder of the threat our country faces from Islamic supremacists. 

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill yesterday, House Democrats held a hearing on hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism. Interestingly, I did not see Jussie Smollett on the witness list. I’m sure he would have turned in an Emmy-worthy performance.

Kudos to my good friend Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America! Klein boldly noted that the vast majority of anti-Semitic hate crimes on college campuses today are perpetrated not by neo-Nazis but by radical Islamic student groups, and that far too much hatred is promoted by radical imams in far too many American mosques.

Conservative black activist Candace Owens also addressed the committee and blasted the left’s obsession with racial fear-mongering every four years.

One Courageous Cardinal

Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, who currently leads the Vatican’s liturgy office, is issuing a clarion call to the West and staking out positions at odds with Pope Francis, especially on the issue of mass migration. Consider this excerpt from a recent interview with Cardinal Sarah:

I am convinced that western civilization is passing at present through a mortal crisis. It has reached the extreme of self-destructive hate…  As a bishop, it is my duty to warn the West! The barbarians are already inside the city.

The barbarians are all those who hate human nature, all those who trample upon the sense of the sacred, all those who do not value life, all those who rebel against God the Creator of man and nature…

At the same time, the silent tragedy of abortion and euthanasia continue, and pornography and gender ideology destroy children and adolescents. We are accustomed to barbarism. It doesn’t even surprise us anymore! …

How could I not emphasize the threat posed by Islamism? Muslims despise the atheistic West. They take refuge in Islamism as a rejection of the consumer society that is offered to them as a religion… A West that denies its faith, its history, its roots, and its identity is destined for contempt, for death, and disappearance.

In another interview, Sarah warns that mass migration has become “a new form of slavery” that Christians should resist. He again warns:

If the West continues in this fatal way, there is a great risk that, due to a lack of birth, it will disappear… If Europe disappears … Islam will invade the world. And we will totally change culture, anthropology, and moral vision.