It’s worth diving a bit deeper into Mr. Trump’s moves on Monday regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. It had been a long time coming, but he finally seems to have lost patience with Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. will send new weapons to Ukraine, including more Patriot missile defense batteries. Mr. Trump said the U.S. will manufacture those weapons and NATO will pay for them.

But Mr. Trump threatened another action that, over the long term, would likely have an even bigger impact: secondary tariffs on nations that buy Russian goods, particularly Russian oil, which is the lifeblood of Mr. Putin’s economy. Such tariffs would be a big blow to China and India, the two biggest importers of Russian fuel. The step also would likely cause major geopolitical reverberations for the U.S., which is probably why the administration has been reluctant to embrace the action until now.

The president said those tariffs will go into effect within 50 days unless Russia makes a ceasefire deal with Ukraine. Key Russian figures dismissed the threat.

One of the nation’s biggest annual gatherings of defense, intelligence, political and national security figures won’t include any senior Defense Department officials this year. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Monday that the values of the Aspen event “do not align with the values of the DoD.” Another Pentagon spokesperson said the forum promotes “globalism,” which refers to the idea that major economic and foreign policy decisions should be made by countries in concert with each other. Critics say that concept erodes national sovereignty and Americans’ freedom.

Before Monday’s announcement, Navy Secretary John C. Phelan, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, U.S. Space Command head Gen. Stephen N. Whiting and U.S. Special Operations Command head Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton were scheduled to speak at the forum. The Aspen Institute, which hosts the event, said it was disappointed in the Pentagon’s decision.

In terms of urban combat, and fighting in a densely packed environment filled with civilians, there’s nothing quite like the Gaza Strip. And in that context, the Israel Defense Forces deserve a great deal of credit for how they’ve conducted their war against Hamas.

Retired British Army Col. Richard Kemp, an expert on counterinsurgency operations and urban combat, made that case in an exclusive interview on the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast. Far from indiscriminately killing innocent Palestinians across Gaza, Mr. Kemp argues, the IDF operations have resulted in a far lower ratio of civilians to combatants killed than in other major urban operations this century, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The place is the most complex battlefield any army has ever had to fight on and that’s due to a number of things, first of all the very dense civilian population,” Mr. Kemp says.

And it’s worth remembering, he says, that Hamas actively tries to put innocent Palestinians in harm’s way to use civilian deaths as a public relations tool against Israel: “They want civilians in Gaza to die at the hands of the IDF.”

U.S. Coast Guard personnel helped save lives during the recent flooding in Texas. And that’s just one example of the vital work performed by the men and women of the Coast Guard, who need more resources to ensure they can do their jobs. 

Rep. Daniel Webster, Florida Republican and former chairman and senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, argues in a new op-ed for The Washington Times that Congress must adopt the bipartisan H.R. 4275 Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025. That legislation, he says, would “provide the bare minimum needed to keep the service from losing even more ground” and also would establish a secretary of the Coast Guard to better advocate for the service inside the Department of Homeland Security.

“The way ahead will not be easy, but it is crucial to the safety and security of those who operate on the sea or rely on those who do,” Mr. Webster writes.

The Food and Drug Administration took a key step last month to limit China’s access to Americans’ genetic data by closing a loophole in which federally funded clinical trials could share sensitive data with America’s adversaries. But the federal government and state legislators need to go further.

Michael Lucci, founder and CEO of State Armor, and Jacqueline Deal, an advisory board member of State Armor and president of the Long Term Strategy Group, dive into this complex subject in a column for The Times. They argue that access to Americans’ genetic information could help fuel the development of Chinese Communist Party bioweapons designed to target people of specific racial or ethnic backgrounds.

“Federal agencies should eliminate funding of Chinese medical and research institutions, which are all CCP institutions, and prevent the sharing of personnel between U.S. and Chinese labs and universities,” they write. “State policymakers must also protect their residents’ genetic information from the CCP.”

• July 15-17 — GenAI Summit, GenAI Week

• July 15-18 — Aspen Security Forum, Aspen Institute

• July 15 — Countering Communist Cyborgs: China’s Dystopian AI Ambitions and the Robotics Race, Hudson Institute

• July 16 — Fortifying Deterrence through Logistics: A Conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Patrick Kelleher and Maj. Gen. David Sanford, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 16 — Global Swing States and the New Great Power Competition, Center for a New American Security