In the news today, Australia grants asylum to five members of the Iranian women’s football team who were there for an international tournament when the US-Iran War commenced. Despite no particular indication that Australian authorities were having any difficulty doing the right thing on their own, Donald J. Trump has taken an interest–and seized credit–in the matter. Perhaps next fall the folks in Oslo will present President Trump with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Also in the news recently: The latest refugee figures from the U.S. Department of State. The figures are consistent with the official foreign policy of the current regime, which–with the active encouragement of the passel of junior oddballs, cranks, conspiracists, armchair Crusaders, and postlapsarian Claremont Fellows busily exchanging tweets, memos, fatuous triumphalist boasts, and fever dreams from cubicles in State, the VP’s office, and various other corners of the regime–is one of white, far-right, Christian nationalism. The figures show that only 1,651 refugees have been resettled in the United States since October 1st, the start of Fiscal Year 2026–all of them white South Africans. Current U.S. policy scoffs at claims brought by refugees who could have sought asylum closer to their country of origin. The distance, as the unladen African swallow flies it, between the U.S. and South Africa is some 8,000 miles. Recent reports suggest that despite freezes on refugee entries in general, and despite the fact that the regime’s total official global cap on refugees for FY 2026 was supposed to be all of 7,500 souls, the U.S. plans to import as refugees some 4,500 white South Africans, and only white South Africans, per month.
And Iranian women’s soccer players, to be sure. At least as long as they pop up on TV or in his hand-fed news feed, Mr. Trump is willing to take them too. It is positively shocking that he only has someone else’s Peace Prize so far.