Israel does not need American taxpayers to fund its military. Washington should end the annual subsidy and treat Israel as it is: a capable, wealthy partner that can pay for its own defense interests. The United States should shift from annual aid to a transaction-based cooperation, where the government can regulate Israel’s military and defense expenditure in the U.S. case-by-case. Each purchase by Israel would face congressional review, end-use monitoring and human rights assessments. Moving from a $3.8 billion annual package to case-by-case decisions forces policymakers to evaluate the transfer of defense technologies carefully. Israel today is not a fragile state dependent on outside support. It is a high-income economy, as stated by the World Bank, with a sophisticated defense sector and one of the most advanced militaries in the world. Its military spending reached roughly $48 billion in 2025, according to SIPRI, about 6.5% of its GDP. American aid, by contrast, covers only 16% of Israel’s defense budget. Useful? Yes. Necessary? No. There is already a system in place in the U.S. for arms transfers and defense spending: Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales. Together, they move about $115 billion a year in defense exports. Israel can continue to use this system, but on its own dime. It would still be able to purchase F-35s, precision munitions and missile defense systems from American manufacturers. Instead of American taxpayers subsidizing Israel’s expenditures in the U.S., Israel would pay for them itself. This approach preserves the U.S.-Israel security partnership while eliminating the special treatment embedded in the current aid structure. In addition, most of the U.S. military aid from the $3.8 billion to Israel is spent in the United States. Technically, the current arrangement functions as a subsidy for American defense production. Some critics argue that ending the $3.8 billion grant does not actually fix anything. Even if the U.S. stops giving aid, it still approves arms sales, regulates how weapons are used, and shares responsibility for their consequences. Others argue that the annual aid gives the United States leverage over Israeli policy decisions and signals a strong commitment to a key ally. These concerns are serious. But the United States cannot fully detach itself from how its weapons are used under any system. Arms exports remain tightly controlled under U.S. law. No American company can export even a missile component without a license from the State Department, and recipients must obtain written U.S. government authorization before using or transferring that equipment. Legal scholars also note that, under international law, supplier states bear responsibility for war crimes, in certain cases. Converting our current annual grant system into case-by-case transactions would increase scrutiny from the public and strengthen U.S. accountability in the Israel-Gaza war. Phasing out the annual subsidy would recognize Israel’s self-sufficiency while ensuring that a modern alliance should be built on cooperation and accountability, not on handouts. Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole
By M.S.K
It’s not until the end of Shutter Island that the audience is truly disturbed. Those familiar with Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed thriller won’t easily forget the gut-punch of learning the backstory of our unstable protagonist: his wife killed their three children. An eerily similar horror is making waves from a US courtroom—except this time, women are rushing to the killer’s defense. Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children, is the name on everyone’s tongue. Clancy doesn’t contest the facts; her defense doesn’t dispute that it was her own hands. It is not the fact of her actions, but the fact of her guilt that is being battled out in court—and, of course, on social media. The defense attributes the tragedy to postpartum psychosis, arguing Clancy was in a break from reality when it happened. Plenty of onlookers—women included—find that defense hard to swallow. But a vocal subset of platform feeds have been flooded with sympathy for Clancy, framing her as an extension of themselves. “That could’ve been me” and “this is a landmark case for women’s health” circulate in content captions, culminating in yesterday’s demonstration outside the courthouse: strings of women in pink lined up to thank the defense and protest… something. At first glance, Clancy’s shift from murderer to victim in these women’s eyes seems unprecedented. No one dared excuse the acts of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001, earning her place in psychology textbooks. Even her 2006 retrial, which found her not guilty by reason of insanity, wasn’t built on widespread empathy. Although, perhaps that verdict inspired the defense’s decision to pursue the same outcome for Clancy. The psychiatrist who aided Yates’ acquittal has reportedly testified in Clancy’s trial as well. To be fair to the defense, postpartum psychosis is real and rare. It is a documented break from reality, distinct from the garden-variety exhaustion every new parent knows. If Clancy genuinely didn’t understand what she was doing, that’s a meaningfully different case than that of a mother acting on rage or resentment while fully lucid. The law has a category for that, and it exists for good reason. But that clinical question—was she psychotic?—is not the argument playing out in the pink-clad crowd outside the courthouse. Their argument is broader and looser: not that Clancy specifically lost touch with reality, but that any mother pushed far enough deserves the benefit of the doubt. It is not so much that the world has changed as it is that one moral world has broken into many, each with a different code for a different group. The umbrella of “women’s issues” is a space that culture has deemed only women fit to speak about. Modern feminism has progressively taken old symbols of oppression and turned them into empowerment. The “femme fatale” traces back to ancient mythology, through 18th-century European literature, into 19th-century film noir. Historically a warning against the “temptress” and “deadly woman,” she was rebranded by feminist film theory: female scholars argued that these characters, despite their downfalls, were usually the most compelling on screen. Smart, ambitious, and alluring, the femme fatale became a symbol of empowerment disguised as vice—qualities that made women “dangerous” were reframed as strengths, once demonized by a threatened patriarchy. As the archetype was reclaimed from the late ’90s through 2026, female audiences increasingly cheered on fictional characters who put their own needs and desires first. Whether virtue or vice, it was “#goodforher.” Embracing the femme fatale as heroine never rode on an assumption of what is moral, only of what is justified. With that framework, it’s easier to understand how Clancy’s supporters read the words “guilty” or “not guilty.” For them, it’s not a question of whether she did it or whether it was wrong—only whether it was justified. Women who claim to “see themselves in Clancy” treat the case as a failure of the people and institutions around her, not something she should feel guilty about. Framed as a case for women’s health, the trial becomes a relatable scenario where women can apply their own grievances about motherhood, which is one of the few arenas where only women get to pass judgment. The logic is that if she seems at fault, it’s only because we don’t know the whole story; it must be someone else’s failure. In the court of female public opinion, there is little difference between the mother who has intrusive thoughts during momentary exhaustion and the one who acts on them, so both get filed under the same explanation. Just as it’s become popular to see marriage as a constraint, many now view motherhood as an imposition; between pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childcare, even basic biology looks unfair from this vantage point. It is thought that no one has the right to judge a mother’s actions because they’ll never carry the same burden. That’s the grievance the Clancy trial channels: no matter how unimaginable the crime, she must have had a good reason—she must’ve been pushed to her breaking point. When women defend Clancy, they are declaring her actions justified, just as they believe themselves justified in whatever thoughts, feelings, and behaviors they experience. Belief in the “justified woman” is strong enough to overpower a crime that, by any other metric, would be inexcusable. With the “guilty” standard increasingly out of sight, modern feminists raise the stakes for what prioritizing their own needs is worth. Until the winds change, there’s no reason a woman can’t view the femme fatale as her authentic self.
By Mia Downing
Despite being United States citizens, Puerto Ricans are often restricted from importing goods from the mainland. As a tropical island, Puerto Rico is accustomed to hurricanes and flooding during the summer. But after every hurricane season, sending aid there is expensive compared to mainland support in the US. This stems from the 1920 Jones Act, which requires that all cargo transportation between two American ports is done on American-manufactured vessels. But the decline of American shipbuilding within the past century and high costs of maintenance and labor aboard said ships has made trade with Puerto Rico increasingly expensive. Cheaper foreign ships have to delay their arrival to Puerto Rico by stopping at other Caribbean islands first. This delays implementation of relief efforts after major storms. The act only hinders Puerto Rico’s integration into the American economy, and as demands for its statehood rise, so must the fight to modify the Jones Act.
By Edward Kim
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