President Trump’s decision to launch kinetic strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the heels of Israel’s extraordinarily successful military operations against the Islamic republic’s leadership, nuclear sites and military marked a turning point in a decades-old shadow war between Iran and its two archenemies. A nuclear threshold state, Iran found itself in the crosshairs of the U.S. and Israel over its extensive ballistic missile capability, proxy terrorist network and defiant refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and negotiate on its nuclear program in good faith with the Trump administration. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seriously miscalculated if he thought the comprehensive strategic partnership treaty that Iran signed with Russia earlier this year (or its 25-year strategic cooperation agreement signed with China in 2021) might have deterred Israel or the U.S. from attacking after the 60 days Mr. Trump granted for nuclear negotiations. Having destroyed Iran’s air defenses a year ago and decimated Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel left Iran few options for retaliation beyond what remains of its supply of drones and ballistic missiles. A central tenet of Iran’s national security strategy has always been to avoid drawing the U.S. into a war, which would risk the end of the Islamic republic’s unpopular, dictatorial regime. Rather than take on the U.S. directly, Iran has been more than willing to fight to the last Palestinian, Yemeni, Lebanese or Iraqi proxy, resulting in thousands of U.S. casualties, both civilians and soldiers. While war rages in the Middle East and the U.S. intelligence community focuses on other high priorities, such as China, Russia and North Korea, terrorism remains the national security threat with the shortest fuse.

Congressional Republicans are proposing significant reforms for Medicaid. Specifically, they want able-bodied, working-age adults to find jobs. They have requirements to work or, at the very least, be involved in community service before receiving assistance. We pushed these sorts of reforms when I was governor of Wisconsin. In my opinion, government assistance should be more like a trampoline and less like a hammock. We will help you if you are down and out, but if you are able, we expect you to return to the workforce. My predecessor measured success by the number of people in the state who received assistance from the federal government and Medicaid. My measure of success was just the opposite. A victory was moving people off assistance and into the workforce. True freedom and prosperity don’t come from the mighty hand of the government. They come from empowering people to live their own lives and control their destinies through the dignity of hard work. Other reforms include an end to providing taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments to illegal aliens. Why should hardworking citizens have to pay for those who fail to follow the laws of our country? The same goes for taxpayer funding of surgery to mutilate the sexual organs of minors. We should not do it. In the end, liberals want more people to be dependent on the government. They want voters to be indebted to them for more and more assistance. If you own your property and work in the private sector, there is not much you need from the government. These are the people who strike fear in the hearts of liberals. These are the people who will make America even greater in the years to come.

Calling the battle a “dogfight” is a misnomer because all the shooting occurred well beyond visual range. Neither side violated the other’s sovereign airspace. The ability of Chinese aircraft to shoot down Western platforms from afar should be front of mind to U.S. military planners war-gaming Taiwan scenarios. Though considered an advanced fourth-generation fighter, the J-10C is far from being China’s most advanced combat aircraft. In a shooting war, U.S. fighters would have to contest with even more sophisticated aircraft, such as China’s stealthy J-20. China’s technological aerial prowess is not the only concern. The ability of its industrial base to produce advanced platforms in copious quantities means U.S. pilots will have to fight outnumbered if war erupts. Note also that China’s air force is concentrated in the Indo-Pacific region, giving it a “home field” advantage in any fight over Taiwan, whereas U.S. airpower is dispersed in the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. U.S. forces in the Pacific would also have to contend with China’s growing arsenal of hypersonic weapons ? fearsome missiles that combine maneuverability with blazing speed. The ballistic missiles Iran has used to barrage Tel Aviv are primitive by comparison. For decades, the U.S. had a healthy lead in researching hypersonic weapons. Those days are over. In recent years, China has raced ahead and deployed hypersonic weapons, leaving the U.S., at least for the time being, in its contrails. The India-Pakistan clash provided a glimpse of what the U.S. military would face in a major fight with China, putting an exclamation point on the threat posed by ambitious Chinese modernization programs.

The long-held notion that Chinese fighter jets are inferior to their Western counterparts was rudely punctured during a massive aerial dogfight between India and Pakistan. Some analysts have cautioned against reading too much into this engagement, but the India-Pakistan clash was no trifling encounter. It lasted four days, involved more than 100 aircraft and provided a wealth of data that military analysts will mine for years to come. New Delhi initially denied any aircraft losses, but its defense chief has acknowledged that some of India’s planes were knocked out of the sky during battle. Independent news organizations report that Pakistani jets shot down at least one Rafale, marking the first time a modern Chinese-made plane has downed a Western platform. The People’s Liberation Army has poured huge resources into modernizing its air force over many decades. China’s J-10C is a formidable multirole fighter equipped with an advanced suite of electronics and air-to-air missiles. The mini proxy war between Chinese and Western-made platforms has far-reaching implications. For starters, the performance of Chinese-made jets will likely boost China’s arms exports at the expense of Europe’s defense industry. China’s inability to produce reliable jet engines was once the bane of its aerospace sector. Not anymore. J-10C variants now come equipped with high-performing Chinese-manufactured engines. The U.S. military has long taken comfort in the fact that Chinese pilots lack real-world combat experience, but this did not stop Pakistani pilots from downing Western aircraft in the clash. This suggests that combat experience now matters less because foreign pilots have access to increasingly sophisticated simulators.

The danger isn’t just to boys. Girls who undergo sex-change treatments can also suffer from lifelong complications. Then there’s the second big development from the past month. One of the leading pro-transgender activists in America, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, released the results of a trial she had been conducting on gender-confused children since 2015, all on the taxpayer dime. This matters because she refused to disclose her findings in the fall, arguing that people would take them out of context and hurt transgender children. Never mind that American taxpayers spent millions of dollars funding her work. Now we know why Dr. Olson-Kennedy was afraid. She gave puberty blockers to children as young as 8 on the assumption that the drugs would help them, but the drugs didn’t improve the children’s mental health at all. The children experienced no meaningful change in their depression symptoms, emotional health and other indicators of mental stability. In other words, the foundational treatment in a child sex change didn’t make children better off. This matters because the entire argument for child sex changes is that children need them to be happy and that without these treatments, they are more likely to commit suicide. Common sense says otherwise, and even the studies created by transgender activists also disagree. There’s a better way to help these children. Boys and girls who think they are transgender have proved to be more likely to struggle with depression, anxiety, autism and other mental and physiological issues. Addressing these comorbidities, not sex changes, should be the first treatment.

The Supreme Court rightly ruled Wednesday that states can protect children from sex-change treatments. The justices not only upheld the Constitution but also sided with the science that shows children are in danger. The medical evidence is abundantly clear that there is no benefit and tremendous harm from subjecting children to these irreversible medical interventions. ITwo big developments have further proved that no child should ever be pushed down the transgender road. The first major news is a groundbreaking study that looks at the effects of cross-sex hormones on boys who are trying to become girls. The study was published in Discover Mental Health. The conclusion is as powerful as it is painful: These biological boys are in for a lifetime of hurt. Consider what happens when these boys are administered hormones to repress their masculine development and give them female sex characteristics, such as breasts. These boys are five times more likely to develop blood clots and 10 times more likely to have a stroke. One study shows they are more than 26 times more likely to develop testicular cancer. Another study shows they are more than 40 times more likely to develop breast cancer. These boys are also at higher risk of permanent infertility, cognitive decline and possible autoimmune diseases. Many of these risks increase over time, so the longer the boys live, the more likely they are to suffer from entirely preventable medical conditions. However, they may not live that long at all. The most horrific finding is that these boys have an 80% higher mortality risk. A sex change quite literally endangers their life.

Though the Iran-Israel war began when Hamas invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, the roots of this conflict trace back much farther. The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed, and I’m quoting from its constitution, to “jihad in the way of Allah.” The jihad began in the seventh century CE when Arab Muslim armies defeated the Byzantine Empire in the Levant and conquered Iran, a sophisticated civilization under the Sasanian Empire. Zoroastrians, then the dominant Iranian religious group, suffered persecution, including massacres, the destruction of their temples and expulsions. Ayatollah Khamenei disparages his country’s pre-Islamic past, including even the era of Cyrus the Great, founder of the first Persian Empire in the sixth century BCE, who liberated his Jewish subjects and enabled their return to Jerusalem. He calls the centuries before the Muslim conquests an “Age of Ignorance” Recall that in 1979, ABC News correspondent Peter Jennings asked Ayatollah Khomeini how he felt about returning to his home country after years in exile. His answer: “Nothing. I don’t feel a thing.” In 1980, having become the Islamic republic’s first supreme leader, the ayatollah elaborated: “We do not worship Iran. We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” If you understand this, you grasp why it made no sense for President Obama, in his 2009 inaugural address, to admonish Iran’s dictator for being “on the wrong side of history” and offering to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

These were powerful statements. China responded, accusing Mr. Hegseth of fomenting a Cold War environment. Indeed, it should be clear, since the Korean War, that South Korea’s true ally is the U.S. No doubt, the Korean people remember China’s reaction to the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment in 2016 and the punitive economic measures taken by Beijing to economically punish South Korea. China has the economic tools to make life difficult for South Korea, and South Korea’s relationship with China is important to it for trade and other reasons ? but the U.S., as South Korea’s second largest trading partner and national security ally, will always be there for South Korea. It’s equally important that South Korea not be shy in stating that it is with the U.S. in the South China Sea, Taiwan and the whole of the Indo-Pacific region. And Mr. Lee’s efforts to reinstate an inter-Korean dialogue should be applauded. After four years of literally no contact with North Korea ? while that country built more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, signed a mutual defense treaty with Russia and militarily supported Russia’s war with Ukraine ? it’s time for a new approach to North Korea. Hopefully, that includes the Trump administration also reaching out to Kim Jong Un with some creative initiatives to get North Korea to, at a minimum, cease producing fissile material for nuclear weapons in return for a dialogue on sanctions relief and a path to normalization of relations. These are just a few of the issues the new Lee administration will be confronting.

Mr. Lee’s June 4 acceptance speech focused on reviving South Korea’s ailing economy, while remaining mindful of security, peace and democracy. He emphasized: “Reinforcing the Korea-U.S. alliance, strengthening trilateral cooperation with the U.S. and Japan and approaching relations with neighboring countries through the lens of practicality and national interest.” Mr. Lee also spoke about the importance of inter-Korean dialogue, the provision of humanitarian assistance to North Korea and economic cooperation with the goal of peaceful Korean unification. China is South Korea’s leading trading partner. The U.S. is a distant second major trading partner with South Korea. But it’s more than trade ― and tariffs ― that truly reflects U.S.-South Korea relations. It goes back to the Korean War and the 1953 Armistice Agreement that brought an end to the fighting and gave rise to the subsequent Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries. Indeed, it’s the U.S. military presence that serves as the trip wire that deters North Korea from provoking or invading South Korea. Mr. Lee also noted in his acceptance speech that South Korea “[w]ill expand Korea’s diplomatic reach, raise our international stature and enlarge our economic territory.” The U.S. has made it abundantly clear that the U.S. is pivoting to the Indo-Pacific region. At the recent Shangri-la Defense Forum, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said: “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia … It hopes to dominate and control too many parts of this vital region. … China’s behavior towards its neighbors and the world is a wake-up call.”

North Korean hackers used to rely on virtual private networks and aliases to hide their true identities in order to get information technology jobs. Now, according to reporting from Politico and Wired, AI-generated deepfakes are becoming key to Pyongyang’s success, rendering existing screening tools increasingly irrelevant. North Korean operatives create fake LinkedIn pages using stolen information and pirated or AI-generated profile pictures. In March, Pyongyang launched Research Center 227, an effort within its overseas intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, to focus on AI-enabled cyberattack capabilities. According to cybersecurity firm DTEX, Research Center 227’s objectives are to use AI to neutralize defenses, steal information and money, and automate information collection and analysis. Although the IT worker scheme long predates this center, the capabilities and skills it develops will enhance this operation and the other vast criminal enterprises that fund the regime. Chinese support is critical. A report from cyberintelligence firm Strider said at least 35 Chinese companies have supported North Korean IT workers’ plot. Large Chinese and Russian firms often provide day jobs for North Korean hackers. North Korea not only sends its hackers abroad but also creates companies in China and Russia to facilitate its cybercriminal activities. North Korea is deploying its hackers around the world and tasking them with bringing back funds for the regime. American companies need, at the very least, more robust guidance from their government if they hope to stand a chance at detecting and thwarting Pyongyang’s advances.