Democrats are anxious over a recent poll showing that nearly two-thirds of Democrats do not want President Joe Biden to run again. Worse still, from their perspective, is the survey's finding that Biden is trailing in a head-to-head matchup against his likely Republican opponent. The feeling is bipartisan: 70% of voters don't think Biden should run for reelection.

Yet Biden remains undeterred. And if the president is simply trying to wait out the doubters until his candidacy becomes inevitable, he might need a new strategy: History shows that many past presidents have both mulled and even chosen to drop out of the race later in the cycle than we are now.

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Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Phillips, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My testimony is built upon the premise that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is valuable to Israel and the United States but only if it functions properly. Today, with chaos in the West Bank mounting, the PA is in danger of collapse, due primarily to Iranian malign activity and corruption. These and other issues in the Palestinian arena all contribute to the challenge of curbing the deplorable Palestinian policy of rewarding terrorism through "pay-for-slay." At the conclusion of this testimony, I will offer a handful of concrete recommendations on how to tackle some of these challenges.

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The recently concluded 78th session of the United Nations in New York provides proof, if more were needed, that the world is unlikely to be a better place if China ends up running it.

Like Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chinese president Xi Jinping didn't bother to attend the annual UN gathering. He didn't need to be there. Though the United States remains the world's (and the UN's) largest financier of humanitarian and development aid, China already exercises disproportionate influence within the premier global governance body.

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The 78^th session of the United Nations General Assembly opened this month with dictators and elected leaders alike – the U.N. does not prefer one or the other – descending upon New York City to deliver mind-numbing speeches replete with misinformation and disinformation.

It's called the "General Debate" but if you see the UNGA (pronounced un-gah!) as a great deliberative body, I suggest you consult a competent ophthalmologist.

Those concerned about America's national security, however, can find morsels of significance in the word salads served up by our adversaries and enemies. (The difference between adversaries and enemies? The former intend to defeat us. The latter intend to destroy us.)

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Does anyone still remember the "Global War on Terror"? For roughly two decades following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the struggle against al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants was a fixture of U.S. foreign and security policy. Of late, though, this focus has receded, replaced by an emphasis on "great power competition" with China, as well as Russia. This attention has only been reinforced by Russia's current war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine—a conflict that has succeeded in galvanizing a unified Western response to Russian neo-imperialism. This shift has had concrete effects. It has altered military budgets, as the U.S. defense bureaucracy has de-emphasized special operations and low intensity conflict in favor of planning for conventional force-on-force competition with near-peer adversaries.[1] Just as profoundly, it has marked the end of counterterrorism as a significant orienting principle in U.S. policy planning. The Biden administration's October 2022 National Security Strategy, for instance, relegates the fight against militant Islam and extremist actors to what is, at best, a second-tier priority.[2] But if the fight against militant Islam has become less urgent for the United States, America's allies in the Muslim World are still very much embroiled in it—as well as the struggle for hearts and minds that serves as its central front.

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Next week marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, one of the most colossal strategic errors in modern Israel's history.

Three decades after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat shook hands as a beaming US president Bill Clinton looked on, the smiles have long ago been erased thanks to the disaster wrought by the agreement.

And since the legacy of that catastrophic capitulation by the Jewish state is still very much with us, it is worth gazing back, however briefly, at the folly of that regrettable attempt to appease terror with territory.

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I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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A new report about "anti-Muslim hostility" commissioned by the German government has faced a barrage of criticism after it was revealed that Islamist groups linked to Iran and Turkey were involved in producing the document. Unsurprisingly, the long-awaited report paints a highly distorted picture of Muslim discrimination in Germany: It brands virtually all criticism of Islam or Islamism as "anti-Muslim hostility" and reprimands German lawmakers and even reformist Muslims who oppose the spread of Islamism in Germany.

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In a widely predicted move, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) has now joined the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in adopting a boycott of Israeli universities. It represents a turning point in the discipline of anthropology and a milestone in the fall of American academia as a whole.

The resolution, which was adopted by a large margin of its members, prohibits Israeli universities from advertising in AAA journals and participating in other organizational activities. It does not, however, prevent Israeli anthropologists from presenting at AAA meetings or publishing papers in AAA journals.

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