Gatestone Institute, a pro-Israel foreign policy organization, is urging President Trump to scrap any potential plans to sell F-35 military jets to Turkey.
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Mr. Trump hinted during his recent meeting with Turkish President Erdoğan in Ankara that he might allow the country to rejoin the F-35 program.
The Gatestone Institute’s Con Coughlin said that selling F-35s to Turkey should elicit strong opposition in Congress, “which one hopes will be unwilling to lift the ban imposed on Turkey because of its close ties with Russia and Iran, as well as its ongoing, if temporarily subdued, hostility to Israel and Greece, and expanding its hold on occupied Cyprus.”
Mr. Coughlin warned about Turkey’s Islamist ties and accused Turkey of slow-walking Hamas disarmament in Gaza alongside Qatar.
“Trump’s willingness to even consider lifting the F-35 ban is being seen in the context of his charm offensive to forge closer ties with Erdogan, an initiative the American leader has undertaken despite the Turkish leader’s well-documented support for radical Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas,” he said.
“Efforts to pressure Hamas’s terrorist leadership into fulfilling its disarmament obligations have, though, been stymied by the interventions of Turkey and Qatar, the Gulf state that also supports a variety of Islamist groups, which have actively used their influence to delay the disarmament process.
“Apart from Erdogan’s long-held support for the Islamist ideology espoused by the expansionist Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, the Turkish leader has also been accused of actively thwarting the Trump administration’s attempts to disarm Hamas terrorists in Gaza as part of its peace initiative in the enclave.”
Colorado social media law gets free speech challenge
A coalition of free speech organizations has thrown its weight behind a legal challenge to a Colorado law that would force social media companies to warn young users about potential mental and physical health risks associated with platform use.
The ACLU, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation filed a joint amicus brief with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals this week, supporting a lawsuit brought by tech trade group NetChoice against the state.
The 2024 Colorado statute would require online platforms to show recurring pop-up warnings to minors — using either state-drafted language or wording based on government-approved research — warning them about the effects of social media on their well-being.
The warnings would have to appear every 30 minutes for users who have been online for over an hour or who logged on late at night.
A federal judge has paused enforcement of the law, ruling it likely violates the First Amendment.
The amicus brief argues that the law goes well beyond standard product-safety labeling.
“It would compel speakers to opine on the supposed harms of speech itself—and to communicate the government’s views on that speech,” said Cody Venzke, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.
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“Young people are not better protected in a world where the government forces speech to be labeled as ‘harmful.’ The First Amendment has blocked government attempts to regulate the ‘harm’ from drive-in movies, video games, and music lyrics. The Constitution ensures that these decisions are for speakers and listeners — not the government.”
Mr. Venzke drew comparisons to past failed attempts to regulate perceived harms from drive-in movies, video games, and music. He said courts have consistently sided with speakers and audiences, not government mandates, in these disputes.
The Colorado case is part of a larger legal battle playing out across the country, with similar coalition briefs filed in recent months against comparable social media and age-verification laws in Virginia, Louisiana and Texas.
Olympic committee’s transgender woes spread to ultimate frisbee
Concerned Women for America called for sanctions against USA Ultimate after reports of a trans-identifying male athlete competing on Team USA’s women’s U20 squad at the 2026 World Junior Ultimate Championships in Logroño, Spain.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee “must sanction USA Ultimate for directly violating President Trump’s Executive Order,” said CWA President and CEO Penny Nance.
She called the organization’s stance on transgender athletes “an affront to all female athletes and a disgrace to our country.”
The account HeCheated.org identified the transgender athlete as Leo “Nora’ Luloff and described her as a standout on the team — even, by some accounts, the best women’s player in the country.
CWA said the situation puts USA Ultimate, the national governing body for ultimate frisbee, in direct conflict with Mr. Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports.
Ms. Nance said that biological sex gives a competitive advantage that no policy of inclusion can erase, and said the situation amounts to the U.S. “making a mockery of fair play” on the world stage.
This is not the first time CWA went after USOPC. The group previously demanded that CEO Sarah Hirshland resign over what it called a failure to fully commit to protecting women’s categories in sport.
USA Ultimate maintains a rule that it will not restrict participation based on gender identity, regardless of sex assigned at birth — a policy now increasingly out of step with the USOPC’s broader move toward the more restrictive standards adopted elsewhere, including by the NCAA, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s executive order.
Trans-identifying male athletes have taken more than 1,941 gold medals and $493,173 in prize money from women nationally, and have competed in over 10,000 female sporting events — displacing more than 500 women and girls in California alone, according to CWA.
• The Advocates column is a weekly look at the political action players who drive the debate and shape policy outcomes in Washington. Send tips to [email protected]. Click here to receive The Advocates in your inbox each week.
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