☕️ MISSILE MEASURING CONTESTS ☙ Friday, June 20, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Heritage drops a hopeful hint; Newsom loses big in 9th Circuit; USDA guts DEI grants, starving DNC; East Palestine victims get help; Vance censored; war update hinges on missile math; much more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Today’s packed roundup includes: a Heritage Foundation primer and reasons for great encouragement; California’s oily Governor suffers legal setback as Ninth Circuit defers to Trump; USDA further starves chaotic, cash-strapped DNC by canceling hundreds of millions in bizarre DEI grants; overlooked, government-injured residents of East Palestine get a reprieve as Kennedy team investigates toxic harms; JD Vance runs into the censorious Democrat purity spiral on BlueSky; and a war news update explaining the simple and difficult missile-measurement dynamic that has become the only thing worth watching.

🪖 C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE 🪖

Shortly, you’ll understand the reason it took me a couple of days to put this together. My trip to Heritage was profoundly encouraging. But first, to understand why it was so encouraging, we need to learn a few things about Heritage and dispel some of the progressive propaganda.

The Heritage Foundation is generally regarded as the most influential conservative think tank in the US, the ‘king’ (if you will) of the conservative policy hill. Actually, Heritage is probably the single most influential conservative think tank anywhere in the world. Nobody else matches Heritage’s combination of donor firepower, staff size, lobbying influence, and its direct pipeline to government.

Think tanks are the political world’s idea factories— part research lab, part strategy shop, part PR machine. They cook up white papers, issue policy briefs, and publish op-eds aimed at shaping how lawmakers think, how media frames the issues, and how the public perceives political debates.

Some are ivory tower and academic; some are military-defense oriented; others operate more like shadow governments, drafting legislation and feeding talking points to politicians. Their influence depends on their proximity to power: a top-tier think tank like Heritage can literally write tomorrow’s laws today, while lesser outfits crank out ‘studies’ that no one reads. The best ones don’t just comment on policy— they create it.

Heritage is unquestionably one of the most significant forces in conservative politics. On top of its legislative and lobbying roles, it has evolved into an incubator for influential conservative media. For instance, Heritage started Townhall.com in 1995, and sold it to Salem Media in 2006. It also started the Daily Signal, which became independent last year but continues working closely with Heritage.

Critics argue that think tanks function more like an unelected “shadow government in waiting,” drafting laws in secret and pushing partisan personnel into new administrations. Critics complain this blurs the line between democratic governance and autocratic private policymaking. Indeed, most legislation does not begin in Congress, as you might expect, but issues out of legislative food trucks that serve up pre-packaged laws and executive orders to influential lawmakers.

The critics aren’t completely wrong. Under our current system, elected lawmakers act more like sales reps or spokespeople than intellectual originators. That might be a good thing. Let’s face facts: most of our elected officials aren’t likely to win an IQ contest. It’s also important to note that progressives started it; the conservative think tank ecosystem arose as a counterpunch to the blooming post-WWII army of liberal NGOs, lobbying firms, academic institutions, and foundations, which minted the model.

By the late 1960s and early ’70s, conservatives —especially those aligned with Barry Goldwater and the New Right— felt they were losing the narrative war. So they founded Heritage (1973) as a deliberate institutional weapon: part lobbying shop, part public relations firm, and part policy mill. It marked an activist shift away from the older, more reserved think tank model, like RAND or Brookings, which were academic, bipartisan, and painfully slow-moving.

Heritage was designed to be fast, ideological, and effective— operating at the speed of modern politics and media.

⛑️ Last year, Heritage became a liberal epithet and progressive bogeyman thanks to “Project 2025,” its sweeping blueprint to empower President Trump to take immediate, aggressive control of the federal government starting on Day One. Officially titled the “2025 Presidential Transition Project,” it was a four-part plan to deconstruct the administrative state, centralize executive power, push aggressive policy reversals (immigration, climate, education, public health, etc), and pack government with 10,000+ pre-vetted, loyal conservatives.

Heritage published a 1,000-page public version of the plan. It set progressives’ hair on fire. They did everything they could to undermine it, including doxxing lists of the vetted appointees and starting a hysterical propaganda war. Example headline from MSNBC, November 3rd, 2024:

It’s still early. But Project  2025 is already one of the most ambitious and influential policy initiatives in U.S. history. It has been compared to FDR’s New Deal and even the Federalist Papers themselves. It’s not just a policy shift. It’s prepackaged regime change within the executive branch, by legal means.

Having read the public blueprint as carefully as one can read a 1,000-page encyclopedia, I’ve often wondered about the rest of the project’s iceberg, that vast, non-public part bobbing below the surface. It represents an incomprehensibly vast amount of work. And its obvious success must make Heritage even more influential on Capitol Hill.

⛑️ During the first, chaotic months of the pandemic, Heritage was cautious, and supported limited mitigations. However, by mid-2020, Heritage had pivoted and begun criticizing extended shutdowns, school closures, and the economic wreckage caused by the indefinite exercise of emergency powers. It began promoting reopening plans, emphasizing in-person education, and stressing the constitutional limits on governors and federal agencies. By 2021, it had joined the anti-mandate wars, and filed amicus briefs in some of the biggest pandemic lawsuits, such as the case challenging OSHA’s vaccine-or-repeat-test rules and the CMS mandates.

In its legal briefs, Heritage described vaccine mandates as unconstitutional and an “abuse of executive power.” By 2022, Heritage publications frequently included terms like “public health tyranny,” “bureaucratic overreach,” and “scientific censorship.” It collaborated with governors like Ron DeSantis to craft alternative state health policies to preserve liberty, informed consent, and free choice.

Unquestionably, Heritage helped reshape the post-pandemic conservative agenda into one of dark skepticism toward technocracy and deep distrust of “experts.” It became a central intellectual force behind the anti-mandate movement— focusing on constitutional arguments, economic liberty, and parental control over health decisions.

🪖 That’s all terrific, and it is just what you would hope the world’s premier conservative think tank would do. But still, I have a minor gripe. There has long been one missing piece: Heritage has never directly criticized the vaccines.

I understand its caution. In 2021, I began my mask brief with the words, “this case is not about whether masks work.” The fact is they work about as well as a chain-link fence works to screen mosquitoes. But my legal case was about whether mask mandates were permissible under Florida’s constitution, and I didn’t want my appellate judges to worry about wading into “literally killing grandma” territory.

As a result, I won that case— making it the only anti-mask-mandate lawsuit to succeed at the appellate level anywhere in the United States, to this day.

🪖 Heritage has consistently and carefully framed its jab position as, “We are not against the vaccine. We are against the government forcing people to take it.” Fair enough. But with all the ‘nudging,’ sly coercive techniques, and censorship, and with vulnerable children, pregnant women, and adults being pressured and propagandized by false government health guidance, the libertarian position relative to the vaccines (keeping them voluntary) falls short of the mark.

Based on what I saw at Heritage on Tuesday, it appears the nation’s most influential think tank is preparing to wade into anti-vaccine waters.

Following the public panel where I spoke (which I’ve linked), Heritage invited about 30 MAHA influencers to a 2-hour private roundtable. About a half-dozen Heritage policy wonks also attended. I’m bound by a confidentiality agreement, but I can say they asked us for suggestions about how the vaccines could be rolled back. They did not take any clear position on the issue; but the fact that they organized the meeting, asked the questions, listened carefully, and engaged dynamically was incredibly encouraging.

I may be overstating the case to a modest degree, but it seems to me that, if Heritage joins the fight, the covid mRNA vaccines’ days are numbered. I was encouraged, and you should be, too.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Sorry, Gavin! Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom sued after President Trump issued an order taking control of the state’s National Guard during last week’s “mostly peaceful” LA Riots. After all, as ABC earnestly reported, it was just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

The case began when District Judge Breyer (brother of the late Supreme Court justice) issued a fiery 40-page ruling condemning Trump and returning control to California. But on the same day, just as the oleaginous Governor began taking a premature, if euphoric, public victory lap, the Ninth Circuit temporarily stayed Judge Breyer’s order and called for more briefing.

Yesterday, having reviewed the briefs, the Ninth Circuit renewed its stay of Judge Breyer’s order, properly concluding that courts must defer to the President in emergencies, and holding that the government had made the minimal showing that its actions were rational. It did not completely agree with all the government’s arguments; for example, it rejected the idea that courts lack any jurisdiction to hear any objection to federalization of a state’s national guard. In my view, that was also correct.

Meanwhile, the riots have mostly subsided, and the fun’s over since the car fires have gone out, likely rendering the whole argument moot. Trump retained control of the Guard the entire time.

Chalk up another legal win for the President.

🔥🔥🔥

This week, more bad news emerged for the DNC’s cash crunch. On Wednesday, Agriculture Daily ran a very encouraging story headlined, “USDA slashes DEI funding, redirects $148M to rural priorities.” I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why the Department of Agriculture is issuing DEI grants.

“Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. Therefore, “Under President Trump’s leadership, I am putting an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse that has diverted resources from American farmers and restoring sanity and fiscal stewardship to the USDA.”

Among nearly $150 million in canceled grants were lavish NGO programs intended to “reduce inequality, expand environmental justice through urban forestry” —urban forestry?— “and educate socially disadvantaged farmers on conservation practices.” In other words, untestable and unmeasurable gibberish.

Instead, grant applications will now be judged solely on project merit and alignment with funding priorities, including rural economic revitalization, infrastructure, and energy independence — goals Rollins described as “tangible improvements in rural America.”

The NGOs’ money train is crashing. Which brings us to the next optimistic story.

🔥🔥🔥

Never leave a man behind. Yesterday, the Hill ran a great story headlined, “NIH launching long-term health studies of East Palestine train crash.” As you may recall, the tiny town of East Palestine, Ohio, was ignored by the Biden Administration after officials blew up a toxic rail car spill, after deciding the best thing to do with a pool of poison was to completely aerosolize it.

CLIP: JD Vance announces study of long-term exposure in East Palestine (4:43).

The East Palestine disaster began not with a bang, but with the shriek of steel against steel. On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train, a mile and a half long and burdened with hazardous cargo, derailed in the quiet village of East Palestine, Ohio. What followed was not merely an accident— it was a chemical catastrophe cloaked in smoke and bureaucratic silence.

Thirty-eight cars jumped the rails. Eleven of them carried toxic chemicals. The most troubling offender was vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen once used in warfare and now barreling through heartland towns in anonymous tankers. As the wreckage hissed and smoldered, authorities made a fateful choice: a “controlled burn,” they called it. But what the residents saw was something else entirely— a monstrous, black, apocalyptic plume erupting into the sky, visible for miles and etched into memory like a scene from Chernobyl.

Within hours, birds dropped from the sky. Fish floated belly-up in streams. Pets convulsed and died. Meanwhile, the barely concerned Biden Administration insisted everything was “perfectly safe.”

The people of East Palestine were told to return home, to breathe air officials hadn’t tested properly, to drink from wells that reeked of sweet poison. Their health concerns were met with canned answers, their pain with platitudes. The EPA showed up late, Norfolk Southern showed up with stacks of NDAs and trivial offers of hush money, and the press showed up barely at all.

It’s about time they got a lifeline. Secretary Kennedy and NIH Director Bhattacharya explained that the new program will assess the effects of chemical exposure in East Palestine and its surrounding communities, in both the short and long terms. It will also focus on public health tracking and surveillance of the community’s ongoing health conditions.

It was bad news for Norfolk Southern. The study will hopefully provide data that is desperately needed by residents’ lawyers.

🔥🔥🔥

Purity spiral! Speaking of Vice-President JD Vance, he bravely joined BlueSky this week— and his account was immediately suspended. After enduring hours of relentless mocking, BlueSky grudgingly restored the Vice-President’s account. Then Vance immediately became the most individually blocked account on the progressive platform:

Vance’s very first post said, “Hello, BlueSky, I’ve been told this app has become the place to go for common-sense political discussion and analysis. So I’m thrilled to be here to engage with all of you.” Twelve minutes later, he was suspended.

To be fair, and using common sense, Vance never had a chance. At this point, progressive purity levels are cranked down far too tightly to allow any fascist propaganda by Trump’s vice president into progressives’ safe space. Fortunately, I’m guessing that Vance’s feelings aren’t particularly hurt.

Still spiraling!

🚀🚀🚀

War news update. This morning, Bloomberg ran a story headlined, “Trump Hints He’ll Hold Off Iran Strike, Give Diplomacy Time.” Between an avalanche of hot takes, sketchy anonymous reports, and maximum-level propaganda from both sides of the conflict, there is no way to tell what on Earth is going on between Israel and Iran. But we’ll try.

Bloomberg reported this morning that Trump said he thinks he will wait two more weeks before deciding whether to join Israeli bombing against Iran’s nuclear sites. Is that true? Who knows. Obviously, he wouldn’t announce an imminent bombing mission; that would be like telling the store clerk on the way in that you are just there to pick up a few items without paying.

But, if it is true, it is a much more interesting development than it might first appear.

This morning’s report in the Times of Israel quoted Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said Israel will just handle the bombing on its own if the US does not join. But that’s not his biggest problem. According to the Wall Street Journal —two days ago— Israel was already running low on defensive missiles:

“Neither the U.S. nor the Israelis can continue to sit and intercept missiles all day,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Israelis and their friends need to move with all deliberate haste to do whatever needs to be done, because we cannot afford to sit and play catch.” An increasingly obvious suggestion.

In the Times of Israel story, Netanyahu did not deny running low on interceptors. Instead, he promised that Israel would first destroy all of Iran’s missile launchers. But it wasn’t clear from the story exactly how the Prime Minister knows how many launchers Iran has got. So how could he know when they’ll be all destroyed? As noted, it’s a hardware sprint to the finish, and nobody knows how long the track is.

If it can’t destroy enough Iranian launchers, can Israel survive two more weeks of Iranian missile and drone strikes? That is the most significant and pressing question currently facing the conflict. It’s a deadly footrace, a dire clock ticking down to disaster. Having failed to decapitate Iran in its massive first strike, Israel now faces an embarrassing performance problem, measuring its missiles against Iran’s.

The conflict has become a competition of numbers. Will Iran run out of flying armaments before Israel runs out of air defenses? Nobody knows, including the parties to the conflict, since those particular numbers are some of the most closely guarded secrets of all. The IDF unsurprisingly and unhelpfully declined the Journal’s request for comment by politely saying, “Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on matters related to munitions.”

The mysterious comparative hardware differential is now the essential calculus of this conflict, and everything else is just noise.

Obviously, whether anyone likes it or not, the US will not stand by and watch Israel bombed to smithereens after its Iron Dome missile shield begins to malfunction, even if Israel started the fight. But what are the options? A ground invasion of Iran would be the next military move. But Israel lacks the numbers, and is already fiercely fighting both Hamas and Hezbollah on the ground in two different spots. The US is nowhere near staged to mobilize the necessary boots, and it would be political dynamite anyway, to put it mildly. Not to mention antithetical to Trump’s policy preferences.

From up in the cheap, uninformed seats, unless something miraculous manifests, a diplomatic solution seems the only sensible option. We shall see. Meanwhile, tomorrow my church’s pastor faces the unenviable job of persuading parishioners to sign up for January’s Holy Land tour and combined missile-watching party. (The last trip happened during the October 2023 barbarity.)

I’d bet my pastor is praying for some supernatural sales skills. Like Israel, he may need a miracle.

Have a fabulous Friday! Grab your java and head back here tomorrow morning, for the Weekend Edition roundup of essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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