As international competition for trade, commerce and military power in the Pacific grow, America’s maritime decline threatens our national security and our economy. The only way to fix it is to rebuild American shipbuilding with American workers and American crews.

In the 20th century, we were a dominant maritime power, with massive fleets and shipyards that helped secure victory in World War II and meant most goods traveled the world on U.S.-built ships. But that edge has disappeared over time. For much of the 21st century, shipbuilding remained on the back burner of national priorities, shipyards shrank and closed, taking good-paying jobs with them.

China now dominates the world’s sea lanes and is massively outbuilding the United States on merchant and naval fleets. China has the world’s largest commercial fleet and is building over 1,000 vessels every year. In 2024, the United States built only five merchant vessels, while China built 1,400. China also has three times as many naval warships as the United States.

This has dangerous implications for our economic and maritime security. In the event of a military or trade conflict, President Xi Jinping could prohibit Chinese ships from entering American ports, an action that could cause industry bottlenecks, cut off supply to needed goods and jack up prices — basically overnight.

SEN WICKER: ENDING CHINA’S DRONE DOMINANCE WITH A MADE-IN-AMERICA REVIVAL

This is not just hypothetical. On April 3, 2025, China leveraged its virtual industrial shipping monopoly and prevented rare earth exports to the U.S., thereby kneecapping U.S. production on everything from smartphones to fighter jets. Although China’s action was ultimately narrow in scope, it showed the world that China could flex its muscle on the world’s seas with devastating effects for the United States and the global economy.

To maintain our economic and military leadership, America must rebuild its maritime industry.

And today, we have a president who seems to recognize this urgent need. In February, President Donald Trump unveiled his Maritime Action Plan, a blueprint to make American ships again. It would provide long-term and stable funding for U.S.-built ships, shipyards and mariners and cut regulatory red tape to meet the maritime needs of our country today.

REP. BRIAN MAST: DEMOCRATS’ 43-DAY SHUTDOWN WAS NOT A STRATEGY — IT WAS A DISASTER

We share the goal of revitalizing the U.S. maritime sector. That’s why we introduced the SHIPS for America Act with Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young and Mississippi Republican Rep. Trent Kelly. It’s the most ambitious and comprehensive legislation in a generation to set America on the path to regain our position as the greatest maritime power in the world. 

The SHIPS for America Act sets a national goal of expanding the U.S.-flagged international fleet by 250 ships over 10 years, upgrading and expanding America’s private shipyards for repairing and building commercial ships, training and employing skilled workers and providing funding through the creation of the Strategic Commercial Fleet Program. 

Whether you’re talking about Mare Island in California or Gulf Port in Mississippi, this comprehensive bill would deliver much-needed investments to America’s rusted maritime sector. It would modernize shipyards, strengthen workforce development and stabilize supply chains so that we can have a modern, capable merchant and naval fleet while reducing dependence on foreign suppliers. All of that sends a signal to the industry: American shipbuilding is back, and it’s time to invest in it.

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That will create thousands of good-paying American jobs where workers can actually raise a family, save for the future and get ahead. Our SHIPS for America Act is about more than building ships in ports. It’s about building every part of a ship in America.

From the steel that makes up the ship’s hull to the electronics that are necessary to navigate across oceans, this will galvanize every industry that plays a part in building ships, benefiting not just coastal cities, but hardworking communities in every corner of the country.

Never before have we witnessed such comprehensive alignment among Republicans and Democrats, industry and organized labor for rebuilding our great nation’s maritime industry.

It’s clear to us that the opportunity is now. Let’s get to work.

Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Armed Services, Environment and Public Works, Energy and Natural Resources, Aging, and Joint Economic Committees. He is chair of the Airland Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

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For more than 70 days, Senate Democrats claimed that they shut down the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because they wanted to reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It’s clear now that they shut down DHS out of fear of their own voters.

The loon wing of the Democratic Party—the folks who think Dr. Seuss is racist, Mr. Potato Head is sexist and children can change their genders at recess—is the largest and loudest segment of the Democratic Party. They hate our immigration laws. They want criminal illegal aliens to roam free while ICE officers rot in jail. And they have made it clear to every Democrat in office that a vote to fund ICE would haunt them for the rest of their natural lives.

But the American people don’t want open borders, and they don’t think cops are worse than criminals. They know it is bone-deep stupid to allow gang members, drug traffickers and terrorists to enter our country unchecked, and they support the ongoing effort to deport as many violent criminals as possible.

This left my Democratic colleagues with a choice: Stand up to the loon wing of your party or defund ICE. They chose the latter.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: GOP EYES DHS DEAL FUNDING ICE PROBES, BUT NOT REMOVALS, AS SHUTDOWN DRAGS

Democratic leaders pretended for more than a month that they would vote to fund ICE if the Trump administration enacted certain reforms. But as DHS adopted new policies, including a plan to have ICE officers wear body cameras, Senate Democrats revealed that it didn’t matter what ICE did; they weren’t going to vote to reopen the agency under any circumstances.

While Democrats performed this song and dance, more than 100,000 DHS employees went without paychecks, and chaos unfolded at every airport in America. And when I came to the Senate floor with my resolution to withhold pay from senators during government shutdowns, they blocked it.

They were willing to use the paychecks of federal employees as a political pawn, but they weren’t willing to share in that sacrifice themselves. The whole performance made most fair-minded Americans want to stick their heads in an oven.

SENATE REPUBLICANS RACE TO FUND ICE, CBP WITHOUT DEMOCRATS AS SHUTDOWN DRAGS

As the anti-ICE, pro-Karen wing has grown in prominence, Senate Democrats have developed a severe allergy to common-sense policies.

It’s why they voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill and the thousands of dollars of tax savings for the average American. And why they melted down when Republicans voted to rescind more than $9 billion in woke foreign aid, including funding for Sesame Street programs in Iraq, free vasectomies in Zambia and pastry-cooking classes for male prostitutes in Nepal.

I don’t hate my Democratic colleagues for losing their minds to appease their political base. I don’t hate anybody. But the loon wing’s dominance has changed how Republicans need to operate if we are ever going to get anything done.

HOUSE CONSERVATIVES ERUPT OVER SENATE GOP, WHITE HOUSE DEAL AMID SAVE ACT FIGHT

The sad reality is that many of our Democratic colleagues have become unable to engage in good-faith negotiations. Their only tactic is to shut down the government and plunge our country into a dangerous state of chaos.

That’s why I was so pleased that Republicans finally agreed to turn to budget reconciliation to pass ICE funding. The 1974 Budget Control Act’s reconciliation process established certain circumstances under which the Senate can pass major legislation with just 51 votes instead of the usual 60. This is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill last July.

Last week, we used the reconciliation process to pass three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol. This will ensure that the Trump administration can continue to keep our border secure and remove dangerous criminals from our country well into the future.

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But we don’t have to stop there. The Budget Control Act offers each Congress at least three opportunities to use the reconciliation process to address concerns facing the American people. We should use them all.

Since we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill last July, I have been urging my fellow senators to put reconciliation to use to address the cost of living in America. When moms and dads try to sleep at night and they can’t, it’s because they’re thinking about how expensive life has become since President Biden was in office.

The One Big Beautiful Bill made important changes to our tax code to keep more money in people’s pockets, including no tax on tips, overtime and some Social Security benefits. But we can do a lot more to help Americans make ends meet through reconciliation.

Senate Democrats aren’t just holding ICE hostage on behalf of the loon wing of their party. They’re stopping every effort we make to improve the lives of the American people. If we want to fulfill all the other promises we made to American families, reconciliation is our only opportunity. I hope we won’t waste it.

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Many predictions about the midterm elections in the United States are dire for the GOP: a wipeout in the House and perhaps losing the Senate majority as well. The GOP could weather the electoral storm that almost always chastens the party of a president finishing his sixth year in office.

But the GOP won’t avoid a “thumpin’” as George W. Bush put it after the 2006 rout of the GOP at the polls if today’s Republicans don’t step up and loudly proclaim the wisdom of beginning the battle with Iran, as well as the facts that we are not only winning the battle decisively but that the world will be a much better place when it is over, even if President Trump declares, as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant did in May 1864, that “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Grant prevailed within the year, but it was indeed a long and hard slog through Northern Virginia to the encirclement and eventual capitulation of Richmond and the Confederacy and the surrender of General Lee’s Army, even as other Union armies won on other fronts.

There will be no “Appomattox” in the battle with Iran, but there will be victory, and the GOP has to preach that inevitability as well as the great wisdom and necessity of the battle.

AMB. GORDON SONDLAND: THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAN’S ‘IMMINENT THREAT’ THAT POLITICIANS HATE TO ADMIT

Every candidate in every partisan race has to make the case, which is easy to make: The Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime, one run by “lunatics,” as Secretary Rubio declared as the battle began, one which has always terrorized its own people and the entire region (murdering tens of thousands of its own people in January), and one which has attacked 14 countries after America and Israel resumed their battle with it as it would have done so — with nukes! — had it been able to obtain such weapons, as the left in America and Europe refuses to see or admit, much less discuss.

It was not “a war of choice,” which the ignorant opponents of the battle spout almost daily, but rather one of the necessary preemptions of an existential threat to the region and the world.

The blockade of Iran by the U.S. Navy and the probable return of combat operations will inevitably bring the radical junta atop the rump regime to heel, but it will take time.

MORNING GLORY: President Trump must reject a second Munich and hold firm against Iran

President Trump has correctly informed his advisers this week (and the news was reported by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday night) that he is resolved to see it through. Bravo.

Americans have lost the muscle memory of victory. It will quickly regain an appreciation for resolve once the conflict is over.

The prediction of electoral catastrophe for the GOP would mean losing statewide races at least in Maine (Sen. Collins), Ohio (Sen. Husted), North Carolina (open) and either Texas (Sen. Cornyn) or Alaska (Sen. Sullivan) — a result which seems so unlikely as to almost pass over without comment, but that extraordinary result is possible if the GOP stays in its crouch over the battle with Iran. Each senator facing challenges and every House member must repeatedly explain the “why” and the “how” of the battle. If they do, the electorate will agree.

WINNING THE BATTLES, LOSING THE WAR? AMERICA MUST DEFINE THE ENDGAME IN IRAN

The GOP’s candidates must loudly and persuasively argue that the battle with Iran was long past due, that while the cost of 13 American lives and scores of Americans wounded is incredibly high for the families who bear that burden and the nation that mourns that loss, the battle and the blockade are stunningly successful and will inevitably crush the remnants of the old regime if the president has resolve. It seems certain that President Trump is not about “to go wobbly.”

The president understands the stakes and has made his resolute purpose known. Bravo.

The GOP must applaud and support him and explain that the cost felt at home at the gas pump is nothing compared to that borne by the families of the fallen and by the wounded, and the extraordinary benefit of a humbled Iran cannot be overstated.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS STAND BY TRUMP ON IRAN MILITARY ACTION DESPITE CAMPAIGN PROMISE

That battle to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons is in its eighth week and is going very well (except in the eyes of Democratic activists and the legacy media, but of course I repeat myself).

It has crushed the Iranian military, and now the blockade ordered by President Trump is grinding Iran’s economy into dust.

Patience will see the U.S. emerge with complete victory, but don’t expect Democrats or anti-American Europeans to ever admit that.

TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKES WERE MASTERFUL. NOW, HIS DEALMAKING SKILLS ARE CRITICAL TO STOP ANOTHER MIDDLE EAST WAR

Our allies around the Gulf and our closest ally, Israel, are very pleased to see Iran being brought to heel and the region made safe and stable for decades to come.

The anti-Trump forces have been unable or unwilling to see the extraordinary nature and success of the American military campaign, or the enormous boon to the region and the world that accompanies the humbling of the lunatic regime in Tehran.

The “Trump Distortion Effect” that operates on the left in America (which includes almost all of the legacy media), as well as in sclerotic Europe, automatically operates to condemn everything President Trump orders done, so the left has put aside a half-century of the abuse of the world and its own people by the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to blast Trump and Republicans.

LIZ PEEK: TRUMP IS PUTTING AMERICA FIRST BY BACKING IRAN INTO A CORNER

No matter. “Trust the people” was Winston Churchill’s famous advice. President Trump has frequently made the case for what he ordered the American military to do and continue doing. He has the resolve of Grant. Good.

The 1864-1865 campaigns by Union armies operating under Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman cost tens of thousands of Union casualties but finally broke the back of the slave empire of the Confederacy. The men in blue overwhelmingly voted for Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1864 over their former senior general, George McClellan, who ran on a “peace without victory” platform, which was in stark contrast to the GOP’s “peace with victory” stance.

The people who carry the greatest burden want nothing less than a commitment to winning. Trump has that, and everyone knows it.

The GOP needs to embrace “peace with victory” as its platform and argue the case every day from every stage and in every interview. It will take some months, and while the economy is very healthy overall, there is no escaping the temporary surge in gas prices. The GOP’s candidates must argue the necessity of that burden in the short term. Argue for winning. Argue for a free Iran and a stable and safe Middle East.

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There is no winning for the GOP in November without demanding and defending victory in this battle. Ignore the old “echo chamber” set up in the years of President Obama to defend the indefensible Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”), which attempted to enshrine in an executive order an Iranian glide path to nuclear weapons surrounded by a forest of ballistic missiles capable of hitting Europe and eventually the U.S.

President Trump and his administration understood the real danger. They refused the comfortable lies of the JCPOA.

President Trump correctly understands the threat from a nuclear Iran. So, he acted.

Serious Republicans must applaud Trump’s refusal to kick the can down the road. The GOP must make the same strategic argument that the president embraced. And they should start doing it now and never stop until November’s votes are counted.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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