The Supreme Court Should Strike Down the E. Jean Carroll Verdict

Townhall 

When the accusation is sexual assault or rape, the rights of the accused go out the window. Prosecutors and plaintiffs' lawyers in civil cases drag in character assassins who know nothing about the alleged assault but instead make their own claims – without proof – that they too were victims of the accused, often decades earlier. 

That's what happened to President Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, and why he is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the jury's decision. 

On Wednesday, the justices delayed for the 11th time answering whether they will take up E. Jean Carroll v. Trump. In May 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing sex columnist Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman's lingerie dressing room in the mid-90s. The jury awarded her $5 million. 

Court watchers speculate the justices are delaying until a companion case, also involving Trump and Carroll, weaves its way up to them. 

Timing aside, it's essential that the court strike down that jury verdict against Trump to halt the character assassination strategy. 

Men accused of sexual assault are losing their right to a fair trial because of misguided changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence that Congress made in 1995, only for sexual assault cases. 

That year, Congress kowtowed to the crazy notion that every woman who claims to be a victim of sexual assault is telling the truth and deserves to be hailed as a "survivor." Congress passed Rules 413-415, allowing a prosecutor or the plaintiff's lawyer in a civil case to drag in past accusers to voice their own grievances, no matter how unsubstantiated. 

The idea is to suggest to a jury that the defendant has a "propensity" to sexually assault women. It makes it easier to sway a jury when you lack real evidence. 

Carroll couldn't remember what year Trump supposedly assaulted her, never reported the assault to police, and couldn't produce store cameras or witnesses who saw it happen. Though she boasted that she had Trump's DNA on her dress, she declined in court to permit a DNA test and moved to exclude DNA evidence from the trial. 

What's her lawyer to do when there's no evidence to prove her implausible claim? Drag in "propensity" witnesses – in this case, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff. 

Leeds accused Trump of groping her on an airplane in the 1970s, though she couldn't remember the precise year, where she was flying or on what airline. She only recalled that Trump had his hand up her skirt. 

Stoynoff claimed that in 2005, Trump suddenly grabbed her and kissed her without her consent at Mar-a-Lago. 

Trump's lawyers are arguing that lower courts should never have allowed the jury to hear this inflammatory evidence. None of it is flattering, but none of it supports Carroll's charge that Trump assaulted her in Bergdorf Goodman.

In some cases, appellate judges are already acting to curb the abuses caused by Congress's political correctness. One year ago, the New York State Court of Appeals overruled Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction 4-3 because the trial judge had allowed the prosecution to bring in women to testify about their own grievances with Weinstein. Weinstein isn't getting off free, but he is getting a new trial.

Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala called the ruling "a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York." But one of the dissenting judges, Madeline Singas, argued the opposite, saying the ruling will "thwart the steady gains survivors of sexual violence have fought for in our criminal justice system."

Singas insisted that "crimes of sexual violence are far more nuanced and complex than other crimes" and that strict standards of evidence and proof "come at the expense and safety of women."

Don't fall for that politically correct blather. Every accused person, male or female, deserves a fair trial before a jury that is presented with actual evidence, not a "This Is Your Life" documentary of past misdeeds.

For well over a century, lawyers and judges nationwide have had to adhere to the well-known Molineux precedent, set down in a famous 1901 New York murder trial. It states that "the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged, and thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality." Sexual assault cases should not be an exception.

The Supreme Court should strike down Carroll's victory over Trump. It's time to move past one-sided MeToo injustice.

Podcast thread for May 27

 

the more things change....

America Is Not Caught in a 'Thucydides Trap'!

Townhall 

The distinguished political scientist Graham Allison, author of the 2015 Atlantic article "The Thucydides Trap," argued that often in history an established power will stage a preventive war against an ascendant adversary – for fear that otherwise it will soon lose its primacy.

His title derives from two passages in the first book of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (460-400/395? B.C.), author of "The Peloponnesian War."

Thucydides, on these two occasions, felt that the most likely cause of the Spartan-Athenian war (431-404) was Spartan fear of an increasingly powerful rival Athenian empire. That anxiety supposedly prompted a Spartan preventive invasion before, so Sparta believed it would be insidiously eclipsed by its more dynamic Athenian competitor.

Allison and others argue that this paradigm now applies to the United States. It is the supposed jittery established power – and a rising Communist China is the upstart contender. His theory implies that the U.S. might, like Sparta, take provocative steps to abort an inevitable Chinese-dominated world.

There are, however, a number of problems, ancient and modern, with Allison's intriguing thesis.

First, Thucydides left his history unfinished and unrevised. And so often he offers analyses that are contradicted by his other observations elsewhere in history.

For example, in a variety of passages, the historian contrasts the antithetical Spartan and Athenian systems. He does this to explain why they often fell into disputes even before the Peloponnesian War – such as after their shared successful effort against the Persians (480-479) and during the prior 15-year conflict, the so-called "first" Peloponnesian War (460-445 BC).

Sparta was oligarchic, Dorian, and an infantry power. It was a parochial landlocked society, overseeing a vast population of enserfed helots. Athens, in contrast, was radically democratic, Ionian, and slave-owning, with a huge navy and maritime empire. It was as cosmopolitan a city as Sparta was a closed society.

So there were many long-standing, deeply rooted differences that sparked tensions and war, besides the Spartans' fear of Athenian expansionism.

Moreover, the time-honored hegemon Sparta won the war, as do most such established superpowers.

The centuries-long dominance of the British Royal Navy explained why Britain was able to stop the upstart Hitler's blitz and planned invasion of Britain. The economy and resources of the established U.S. took only four years to crush the aspiring new hegemon, imperial Japan.

The same was true in the Cold War, when the U.S. wore down a supposedly ascendant Soviet Union.

Often, it is not even the traditional superpower that instigates the wars that they win. It is just as common in world history for a would-be new power to initiate hostilities or launch a war against a traditionally dominant nation. Compare the foolhardy conflicts that they often lose, like the wars, either hot or cold, that would-be hegemons Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union all started against the dominant U.S.

Moreover, great-power rivalries between a veteran powerhouse and a newcomer often never result in war. The U.S. gradually replaced the British Empire in the postwar era as the global policeman without a war. Britain and France peacefully accepted the "German miracle" of postwar West Germany's ascendance as Europe's dominant economic power.

A better prognosticator of the likelihood of war, ancient and modern, is whether the adversaries' political, economic, and cultural systems are similar or antithetical. If they are different, the chances of war between such opposing systems mount. (Contrast Athens and Sparta, Nazi Germany and Britain, imperial Japan and the U.S., etc.)

Finally, how does the supposed "Thucydides Trap" apply to the U.S. and China?

Despite the recent summit hype, not at all.

America is the traditional global power but is also radically ascendant; China is the upcoming challenger but is currently stumbling.

In all the key indicators – oil and gas production, food self-sufficiency, fertility, innovation, weaponry, constitutional stability, personal freedom, university STEM programs, naval carrier groups, air power, nuclear arsenals, space exploration, GDP per capita, and alliances – America continues to widen its advantages.

Thus, the U.S., as the status quo superpower, has no need to launch a preventive war against a struggling China.

Why?

One, Beijing is not ascendant vis-à-vis America in the key areas that count.

Two, both countries are nuclear powers, and neither wishes Armageddon.

In sum, there is historically no universal "Thucydides Trap" phenomenon of asymmetrical rivalries leading inevitably to war.

The titular "trap" is not even a complete analysis of all the major causes of the Peloponnesian War, as outlined by Thucydides himself.

Moreover, ascendant powers start as many wars as do fearful, stronger, and established nations. And the upstarts more often than not lose their risky gambits against the established powers.

So, we are not caught in a "Thucydides Trap." We can prevent any challenges from a weaker China from escalating to war through deterrence, alliances, maintaining a balance of power, occasional respectful negotiations – and our far greater power and resilience.

Progressives Use Marxist Communication Techniques To Keep Power

American Thinker 

Nothing’s ever truly new under the sun. Labels change; methods always persist. The strategic instincts that have driven political movements for centuries survive rebranding, new jargon, and better marketing. The argument is strikingly simple: follow the mechanics—how ideas are framed, institutions are seized, language is reengineered, and dissent is delegitimized—and you will see a structural continuity that matters more than the name on the label.

Sun Tzu is worth a sentence: victory often comes from shaping an opponent’s beliefs rather than brute force. The Art of War points to what matters in politics as much as on a battlefield: control the information environment so your adversary reacts to his imagined beliefs rather than facts. Use tactics that make you appear weak when strong, distant when near, divided when unified—these are levers for shaping decisions. In modern life, those levers are narratives, institutions, and social penalties; they are the preconditions for political outcomes long before ballots are cast.

Today’s political contests are fought first in the mind. Movements that prioritize narrative dominance win less by persuading skeptics than by making dissent socially and professionally costly. They do this through a handful of deliberate moves: frame opponents as morally corrupt so disagreement looks like complicity; redefine language so old terms carry new moral weight; capture institutions—academia, media, NGOs, corporate HR—so the cultural infrastructure rewards conformity; enforce speech norms through social penalties that substitute ostracism for argument. These are carefully crafted strategic actions, not accidents. The aim is not merely to win an argument but to make certain arguments and subsequent actions unthinkable in polite company; over time, a manufactured consensus appears inevitable and almost impossible to overcome.

As an aside, there’s a lot of that at play in the moment with Iran, which has better control of the narrative, but not the facts. The good guys have to understand that ceding control of the narrative means allowing the other side to dominate, regardless of how weak they actually are.

America’s progressives, who are Marxism’s heirs, often use the same tools that Marxists refined–cultural capture, linguistic engineering, institutional control, and moral framing–to capture politics and social issues.

Once you see the mechanics, parallels reveal themselves: narrative framing casts one side as oppressor and the other as oppressed, granting near automatic legitimacy and making dissent seem morally bankrupt; language is redefined so old categories no longer map to a new moral grammar; institutions are treated not as neutral arenas of debate, but as instruments to be captured and repurposed—academia to train cadres, media to set the agenda, corporate compliance to enforce norms; speech norms to be enforced not by argument but by social and professional penalties that make disagreement costly on multiple fronts.

Place Progressivism and Marxism side by side, and the parallels are structural—fixed in how each constructs and employs power, culture, language, and legitimacy to shape public behavior. The chart below sketches that comparison; connect the dots from the mechanics to the outcome.

These are by no means random tactics. They form a coherent, hard-to-defeat strategy: it manufactures consent by shaping the cultural environment, then translates that consent into policy and institutional change. When dissent becomes a reputational or economic risk, debate dies; when debate dies, power concentrates in the hands of those who control institutions and cultural norms, exactly as we see it playing out in real life every day.

So what should we do? Stop treating labels as proof, and accept how we are being manipulated in a well-researched, tested, and powerful fashion. Powerfully and forcefully defend vital institutions that are arenas for argument and debate: universities that not just tolerate but encourage genuine disagreement, media that report the news and seek truth rather than perform for their side, workplaces that protect free expression rather than enforce ideological litmus tests that go only one way. Insist on clarity of language: call out redefinitions that foreclose debate and demand precise language before policy follows. Restore a belief in the art of persuasion: tolerate uncomfortable ideas, reward intellectual courage, and refuse to let social penalties substitute for reasoned rebuttal. Finally, understand that there is a war going on for power and control and even more, that we’re fighting the same old enemies all over again, just with a different label.

Persuasion invites counterargument and correction; coercion closes off debate and concentrates power.

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Proof That Donald Trump Has Ushered in the 'New Age' of Republican Candidates

RedState 

When Donald Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015, most Republicans knew instinctively that he would be a different kind of candidate. He immediately called out the people coming across the southern border illegally for what they were, not Mexico's or anyone else's best. That made the tops of liberals' heads come off, but it was that no BS, not being afraid to call Democrat and leftist failures what they were. But Trump also spawned something else: a whole new breed of conservative politician. The latest is Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.

What makes Spencer Pratt different? Well, for one thing, of course, he is living out decades-old failed Democrat policies, enacted by incompetent, failed Democrat politicians. It has left him, his wife and children, and thousands of others homeless. And because of that failed one-party bureaucracy, they are still homeless a year later. Pratt is not running for mayor as a stepping stone to a larger office; he is running because he has nothing left to lose. It is the last, greatest action he can take against the failed California Democrat machine. 

No one had ever seen a candidate like Donald Trump, and no one has ever seen a candidate like Spencer Pratt. His campaign ads are genius. Each is better than the one before it. In the latest ad, Pratt has gone to what looks like Skid Row, armed with a stencil and a power washer. The result: a message that reads, "Imagine if the streets were this clean. Spencer Pratt for Mayor of LA."  

Like Trump, Spencer Pratt is done being polite. He is not afraid to call out the bull cookies that California Democrats have been feeding the residents of Los Angeles for years, even though they are the ones who voted for them. And while Mayor Karen Bass is trying to keep that one-party rule in power to fail some more, Pratt is running a non-partisan race and says, "I'm supposed to represent all of Los Angeles. That's my party, angry Angelinos."

Spencer Pratt does something else that Donald Trump continues to do. That is, scare the daylights out of "establishment" Republicans. After 11 years of Trump being in politics, and the American people speaking loud and clear about what they think of Trump and his America First agenda in 2024, there is still a wing of the GOP that is convinced that on January 20, 2029, as Trump boards the plane that will take him back to Mar-a-Lago, things in the Republican Party will go back to "normal." Normal meaning Republicans will revert to the Mitt Romney "lose with honor" way of doing things. Not a chance.

Spencer Pratt is the result of Donald Trump. But he is not the end result; he is just the beginning. Trump and Pratt, after him, are ushering in a new age of no-nonsense candidates who are not afraid of Democrats and have no problem shouting their dismal records from the rooftops, or the pile of burnt rubble that used to be their house, and they will build on what Trump started. Whether Pratt wins or loses, there will be many more on the way just like him.  

For the good people of Los Angeles, I truly hope that Spencer Pratt wins. But if he doesn't, the Republican National Committee should snatch him up to be in charge of campaign ads.

DOJ Takes On Leftist Attempt To Punish Any Lawyer Who Disagrees With Democrats

DOJ lawsuit represents a vital step toward ending an un-American war on disfavored attorneys and defenders of disfavored causes — a war that would do irrevocable damage to our justice system and republic 

The Federalist 

The Department of Justice last week announced the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to repay victims of left-wing lawfare. While it remains to be seen whether this funding could go to MAGA lawyers who are victims of frivolous left-wing ethics complaints brought before Democrat-dominated bar disciplinary authorities, other remedies are already underway.

With a new landmark lawsuit, the Trump Justice Department is finally fighting this “barfare” —leftist efforts to render the right defenseless by crushing or chilling conservative attorneys via stress-inducing probes, costly trials, and crippling penalties that include disbarment. On May 13, the DOJ filed a complaint against the bar disciplinary authorities of Washington, D.C., in defense of former Trump I DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, the Constitution, and the rule of law itself.

Those authorities investigated, tried, and convicted the accomplished litigator for a novel “thoughtcrime”: preparing a document proposing a legal course of action based on a reading of evidence that his DOJ superiors disagreed with.

As detailed in previous reporting at RealClearInvestigations, Clark, then-serving as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Division, believed that potentially election-altering irregularities occurred during the 2020 presidential election, including in Georgia. So after the contest he drafted a letter on the department’s behalf to Peach State leaders to address such matters. He designated the letter as “Pre-Decisional & Deliberative/Attorney-Client or Legal Work Product” and “FOR INTERNAL … USE ONLY,” and dubbed it a “Proof of Concept” document. The letter indicated that the DOJ had identified potential election-swinging issues and called on the state to convene a special legislative session to review and remedy such matters.

Clark presented the letter to his bosses, including Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, for review. They disagreed with its claims regarding 2020 election integrity issues and Clark’s plan to address them. Ultimately, the document would go unsent, only to leak after President Trump had left office during Democrats’ Jan. 6-related political and legal jihad.

After the inauguration of Joe Biden, no fewer than four authorities scrutinized the white-shoe lawyer for daring to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election and merely fighting for the DOJ to do something about it. The first three — the Jan. 6 Committee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and the Fulton County district attorney — would all strike out in their attempts to destroy him.

Barfare would serve as what Clark recently termed Democrats’ “weaponization tactic of last resort.” In July 2022, D.C. bar disciplinary authorities charged Clark with ethical violations, including “conduct involving dishonesty,” over his drafting and defending of the document. The then-Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee allegedly spurred the case by lodging an ethics complaint with the D.C. regime.

After three years of arduous and costly litigation, the disciplinary tribunal found that Clark had attempted “to make intentionally false statements about the results of the Justice Department’s investigation” into the 2020 election. What was the tribunal’s reasoning? That Clark’s views did not comport with those of his superiors, his superiors by default represented those of the department, and therefore, by ascribing his conflicting views to the department in his draft, unsent, “pre-decisional” letter, he was somehow being dishonest.

Despite admitting that there were “no factually comparable prior disciplinary cases,” the tribunal recommended that Clark be disbarred.

Clark is appealing the absurd and outrageous case — one that would render it potentially career-ending to provide legal advice that might conflict with that of one’s superiors. The case would also seem to make it fair game for disciplinary authorities to review and potentially render punishment over internal draft documents containing hypothetical legal proposals.

DOJ’s suit aims to halt his persecution via injunction. But its indictment of Clark’s persecutors runs deeper, and the ruling it seeks is far broader. The department asserts that the D.C. tribunal has engaged in a “pattern and practice of bad-faith and harassing prosecutions … based on viewpoint and political affiliation,” reflecting the “weaponization” of the bar disciplinary process.

The suit details that Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Jack Metzler, a defendant and key member of the Clark prosecution, “posted dozens” of anti-conservative messages during and after the case on social media, indicating the office’s bias and motivation for targeting conservative lawyers.

Following the filing of the Justice Department’s suit in Clark’s case, Metzler removed himself from a related case brought by his office, which is led by another named defendant, Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton P. Fox III. The office is likewise prosecuting a current DOJ official, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, for his allegedly unethical correspondence with Georgetown University Law Center.

As detailed previously, while serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Martin confronted the school over its alleged promotion of DEI, indicating its responses could affect its nonprofit status and federal funding. Fox’s office is pursuing Martin based on its opinion that he threatened the school’s constitutional rights. The kicker is that Fox’s office brought the Martin case after Martin had questioned Fox about his office’s alleged weaponization against Clark. DOJ calls the case “retaliatory.” The department recently intervened on Martin’s behalf, filing a statement of interest in his case and calling for its removal to federal court.

In addition, the Justice Department notes the D.C. bar disciplinary tribunal’s lenient treatment of leftists in contrast to its treatment of conservatives: When FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith was caught doctoring an email to convince the FISA Court to let the feds spy on Trump adviser Carter Page, the D.C. bar gave him a “slap on the wrist” with a retroactive one-year license suspension.

The suit closes with a trio of legal arguments that transcend Clark’s case or claims of a bar disciplinary authority run amok: first, that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits state and local bar disciplinary authorities from regulating the work of federal officials like Clark via bar disciplinary proceedings; second, that such authorities engage in unlawful discrimination by subjecting federal lawyers to disciplinary cases never before brought against non-federal lawyers; third, that by targeting federal attorneys over their work, such authorities are unlawfully interfering with presidential power. 

Barfare like that of the D.C. bar disciplinary authority would paralyze the federal government and our federalist system if successful. That is precisely what the left threatens with Democrat-aligned groups lodging additional ethics complaints against a range of targets from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche down to career department attorneys.

The DOJ’s lawsuit does not directly address lawfare activists’ targeting of non-government lawyers with disbarment and destruction for taking up verboten causes, such as constitutional scholar John Eastman’s work contesting the 2020 presidential election. Still, it may prove far more effective than the Justice Department’s proposed rule giving the agency the right to review (but not to quash) efforts to cripple conservative federal lawyers via the likes of the D.C. bar disciplinary authorities.

The lawsuit represents a vital step toward ending an un-American war on disfavored attorneys and defenders of disfavored causes — a war that would do irrevocable damage to our justice system and republic.

It Seems Democrats Have No Plan to Win Back Male Voters

Townhall 

Democrats, who have lost a large portion of the male voting bloc, apparently have no plans to actually win these voters back. They thought that, in 2024 at least, Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff would demonstrate a new brand of masculinity that would sway men to vote for Kamala Harris. They thought wrong, of course.

After decades of demonizing men and 'toxic masculinity' as the root cause of America's problems, it seems the Democrats do not care to win back male voters anytime soon. One of their mouthpieces, podcaster Jennifer Welch, said the Democrats need to attack 'MAGA men' even more, calling masculinity part of 'fascism.'

"We have to go after these MAGA men. One example would be Jesse Watters," Welch said. "This man talks incessantly about masculinity ... he goes on and on and on so much about the idealized man, and that's a part of fascism, this ... propelling this form of toxic masculinity."

"Why are you so obsessed with men, Jesse Watters? What's all that about? Why are you so obsessed with trans people? Why are you thinking about genitals all the time?" Welch continued.

The Left always does this. They push social issues, they attack men, and when the Right responds, the Left then asks why we're the ones so obsessed. Welch's not-too-subtle implication that Watters might be gay for thinking about men also shows they don't really care about homophobia or anti-gay slurs. They use that as a political cudgel against conservatives all the time.

Anything the Left doesn't like is fascism.

Meanwhile, the most fascist group of people on the planet is liberal white women. Orwell even wrote about them in '1984,' saying, "It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party."

It shows.

Amen.

This is exactly it.

Masculinity built this country. Masculinity protects this country. We need masculinity.

Democrats think we don't, however, and that will continue to bite them at the ballot box.

The Trump Administration Just Made a Massive Move to End Bogus Asylum Cases

Townhall 

According to a press release issued by the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration’s top immigration prosecutors will begin to pursue fraud cases against lawyers pushing fake asylum cases.

The release states that ICE attorneys have been given greater authority in enforcing laws that outlaw document fraud. Previous cases have focused largely on the asylum applicant, but the new policy will help the Trump administration to combat illegal immigration by specifically targeting the attorneys who draft and file the bogus applications.

“For many years, millions of illegal aliens have committed fraud in our immigration system. No place is this more rampant than in immigration court,” DHS General Counsel James Percival said in the press release. “Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country.”

“Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools,” Percival continued. “Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.”

This move isn’t the first time that the Trump administration has set their sights on activists attorneys attempting to perpetuate mass migration into the United States. In March of last year, the White House issued a statement lamenting “the immigration bar, and powerful Big Law pro bono practices” who “coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims” to scam courts into granting asylum status.

The Trump administration’s work on ending immigration scheme has allowed the United States to achieve net negative migration for the first time in 50 years.

No More Mr. Nice Guy: US Reportedly to Sharply Slash NATO Contributions Amid Europe Tensions

RedState 

Donald Trump has heavily criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since his first term in office, blasting European countries for failing to live up to their funding promises and leaving all the heavy lifting to the United States. Although some member countries upped their game following his push, supposed allies like Spain, Great Britain, and France have shown themselves to be fair-weather friends when it comes to actual crises and did not have our back when Operation Epic Fury commenced or when Iran attempted to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

With every action comes a reaction, and a new report indicates that the U.S. plans to sharply cut its military contributions to the alliance:

The U.S. intends to significantly reduce military contributions available to assist European allies in a ‌crisis, including fighter jets, warships and mid-air refueling aircraft, German news outlet Spiegel reported on Tuesday.

The NATO alliance is under unprecedented strain, with some European countries concerned that Washington may withdraw outright.

President Donald Trump has slammed European allies for not spending enough on their militaries and ‌pledged to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany. His ambition to take control of Greenland, a Danish overseas territory, has further inflamed transatlantic tensions.

🇺🇸🇪🇺 NEW: U.S. reduces NATO military support

The United States is scaling back key military assets assigned to NATO, including fewer fighter jets, reduced strategic bombers, and no submarine contributions, according to Der Spiegel and Reuters.

The move, discussed in a closed NATO briefing, has reportedly surprised European allies and highlights Europe’s heavy reliance on U.S. defense support amid ongoing tensions with Russia.

Source: Der Spiegel

The Euros are going to have to practice a concept known as self-reliance, according to the report:

Washington will also pull its submarines from NATO altogether, envoy Alexander Velez-Green reportedly told officials behind closed doors.

Europe will be responsible for maintaining its own supply of reconnaissance drones, a key weapon on the modern battlefield of Ukraine.

Hegseth's envoy stressed that the US is prepared to cooperate closely only with NATO partners who act quickly to close the gaps left by Washington's scaling back of support.

Some officials in the secret meeting interpreted the message as an indirect threat, according to Der Spiegel.

Trump had already ordered the Pentagon to pull 5,000 troops out of Germany after he was unhappy with remarks made by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in late April that the “Americans clearly have no strategy" regarding Iran and were being “humiliated” by Iranian negotiators.

The Euros were reportedly “blindsided” by the news of the drawdown.

Next up: a “Force Sourcing Conference” in June, where member countries will meet to discuss how to respond and how to cover the gaps in military coverage left by the U.S. pullback.

It looks like NATO’s old ways of doing business are now in the past.