We have been through a lot, and we are going through a lot. Getting President Trump elected was a great gift, and he has, as expected, done amazing things. But we are still in trouble. Most readers here already know this, but it still bears repeating. The American radical Left is dangerous—literally an existential threat to our existence as a constitutional republic (much of which has already been eroded over decades of effort by our internal enemies).

Leftists know they are in trouble, and like cornered animals, can be expected to become increasingly violent. But we are also in trouble because, as a nation, we still don’t completely get it. We all breathed a sigh of relief following the 2024 election, and many took that as a sign that, at least for the moment, the fight was over. But as you know, the real fight is just beginning.

Manufactured Crisis

Every agenda the radicals inflict on us is part of an overarching strategy to sow chaos, division, and hate, and it’s been working pretty well so far. (I describe this in detail in my latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The War to End America.)

The troubling examples we’ve seen almost daily for years are reaching a fever pitch. Antifa-style groups attack ICE, police, and conservative gatherings. The media often lies about, misrepresents, or neglects to report it. A recent TPUSA meetup in San Francisco nearly turned into an outright war.

Leftists know they are in trouble, and like cornered animals, can be expected to become increasingly violent. But we are also in trouble because, as a nation, we still don’t completely get it. We all breathed a sigh of relief following the 2024 election, and many took that as a sign that, at least for the moment, the fight was over. But as you know, the real fight is just beginning.

Understand this: “Antifa” is only the latest name adopted by a group of paid agitators who’ve been plying their trade for decades. They were the core of “Occupy Wall Street,” Black Lives Matter, and many other “movements.” These absolutely ignorant people fantasize a utopian communist future, but don’t know what greets them if they succeed: the firing squad.

This fact is written in plain English by Sergey Nechayev, the anarchist whose 1869 Revolutionary Catechism became the blueprint for Lenin’s Soviet takeover of Russia and all subsequent communist revolutions. Nechayev even goes so far as to lay out an order of execution for the segments of society marked for extermination.

Immigration

With the rise of Zohran Mamdani and other Islamists in America (e.g., Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar), we constantly hear the “Red/Green Alliance.” This alliance between Islam and the Left is nothing new. I wrote two books that coined the phrase, The Red/Green Axis, both of which predicted much of what is happening as a result of our myriad immigration policies regarding both legal and illegal immigration, asylum, and refugee resettlement.

The Red/Green Axis is not a temporary alliance between two competing forces. It is all communism. It is yet another way to create chaos, division, and conflict in America. Soviet communists have owned the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots since the 1950s. They have allowed the so-called “Islamic Radicals” to unleash death and destruction around the world as a false flag operation to draw our eyes away from the real enemy: the “former” Soviet Union (it hasn’t really changed) and Communist China.

Border Czar Tom Homan has focused on the criminal aliens first, which, of course, is a top priority, but other illegal aliens have enormously negative impacts across all aspects of society. They have been, and in many cases still are, using welfare benefits to which they are not entitled. They create housing shortages everywhere; they bring in numerous diseases, many of which used to be thought eradicated, and new ones, like the deadly Chagas disease. They have overcrowded our public schools, making decent education almost impossible for American kids, even without the radical indoctrination.

There are over 400 languages spoken in public schools in America today. Many of these are unknown dialects for which there are no interpreters. The following chart comes from my 2019 Red/Green Axis 2.0. It is shocking but true. I guarantee you it is worse today.

But that is only one of the many problems. Democrats want to count illegals to augment the jerrymandered districts that favor them. This and the massive illegal alien vote fraud, which is occurring today, are the two greatest threats. Today’s Democrat party has one overarching goal: to create a one-party nation. And make no mistake, it would be a communist nation.

In fact, the open borders agenda has been pursued by the international communist movement since the 1920s and 30s. Read the following, described by Col. Archibald Roosevelt (Teddy’s son), in a 1950s pamphlet. It’s copied directly from International Labor Defense, a Soviet front group, which, in the 1930s, demanded:

[C]omplete right of asylum for all emigrants who have been compelled to leave their own country for political or economic reasons; that they should not be expelled or extradited; they shall be allowed to enter all countries without documents or visas; they shall be given identification papers valid in all countries; unrestricted right to stay in any country; full right to work and to relief in case of unemployment; immediate cancellation of all expulsion and extradition orders; the release of all arrested emigrants, and finally the right to take part in the political and trade union life in the country in which they have found asylum.*

Doesn’t this sound exactly like today’s demands from the open borders crowd, including the Democrat party? The Democrat party has been sympathetic to communism since the 1930s. But today’s Democrats, confronted with declining support from Americans, also see importing voters as necessary to their survival. And they don’t care who it affects. The truth of that can be counted in billions of dollars and thousands of American lives lost at the hands of illegal aliens!

The 2026 election will soon be upon us. Democrats are still committing vote fraud, and this must be stopped to the extent possible in the short time remaining to us. If Republicans lose either of the Congressional chambers, President Trump’s agenda will become much more difficult to achieve. As the true leaders of our nation, We the People need to do everything we can in our own states to lobby our legislators for voting reform. No more mass mail-in voting. No more early voting or same-day registration. Voter ID is essential and can be passed in states even if the congressional effort fails. We should be demanding loudly that redistricting exclude non-citizens. We’ve had enough!

We need to get on this right away, people. Our very lives, as well as those of our children and future generations, are literally at stake.

James Simpson is an economist, businessman, investigative journalist, and author. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The War to End America. His website is www.crisisnow.net. Follow Jim on X, Facebook & Instagram.

A.F. Cronin

Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City, quoted Eugene Debs in his acceptance speech last week. “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”

The Debs quote is, to most people, obscure. It is deliberately so. Most Democrat voters have no idea who Eugene V. Debs was, what he did, or the ideology he espoused—but that ignorance is paving the way for hardcore socialism.

Debs was the Socialist Party of America’s candidate for President of the United States during the early years of the 20th Century. He ran five times: 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. A vocal opponent of the First World War, Debs had publicly called for resistance to the draft. In 1918, Woodrow Wilson’s administration arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned him for sedition. Debs had to run his 1920 campaign from his cell in a federal prison. He didn’t win, but he was hailed as a socialist hero by fellow socialists the world over.

The quote Mamdani used was lifted from Debs’s statement to the court upon his conviction, excerpted in part below:

I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice. I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.

It is interesting to note that Debs used the term social justice—remember, this is 1918. He also used the words “greed” and “exploitation”; words currently (and continuously) used as bludgeons by contemporary leftists.

Unsurprisingly, Debs’s statement is archived at Marxists.org, a site which includes additional links to all of Debs’s writings. It seems that Marxists.org holds Debs’s work in high esteem.

Mamdani is a long-standing member of Democratic Socialists of America, the organization Eugene V. Debs led for many years. The Democratic Socialists of America is “the largest socialist organization in the United States” and, in their words, “a political and activist organization, not a party”.

It should be noted that on October 25th of this year Bernie Sanders was awarded the 60th Eugene V. Debs Award by the Eugene V. Debs Foundation. While Mr. Sanders, is not a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), he has described himself as a democratic socialist for years. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the DSA.  And, unsurprisingly, Rashida Tlaib is as well. In fact Tlaib’s and Mamdani’s smiling faces grace the home page of the Democratic Socialist of America.

According to Wikipedia there are 212 office holders in America who are either members of the Democratic Socialists of America or have been endorsed by DSA. Most of them run as Democrats.

It bears mentioning that Karl Marx espoused socialism as the necessary transitional step between capitalism and communism in both The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. And don’t forget, the formal name of the Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Apparently the central committee didn’t think they’d reached full communist status yet.

Back to Mamdani.

The 34-year-old Mamdani was on the ballot as the candidate for both the Democrat party and the Working Families Party, a political party with the motto “Making our Nation Work for the many, not the few”.

One would assume that since different political parties have different platforms they would field different candidates. But this is not always the case. The phenomenon where parties “share” candidates is called “fusion voting”. And it’s not just Democrats who “fusion vote”. Curtis Sliwa was a candidate for two parties as well: the Republican Party and the Protect Animals Party. Sliwa rescues stray cats. Lots of them. So New York City Republicans had to “share” Sliwa with the city’s cat people, and the Democrat party “shared” Mamdani with the Working Families Party. “Fusion voting” awards votes to the candidate, not the party. This means a candidate’s total vote count is the combination of votes he or she received regardless of the differing parties voters may have supported. For example, Sliwa’s vote total was the sum of the Republican and the Protect Animals Party votes. Mamdani’s total was the sum of Democrat and Working Families Party votes.

Mamdani garnered a mere 50.4% of the overall vote and approximately 15% of his vote came from Working Family Party voters. Long-time Democrat Andrew Cuomo ran as an independent and received 41.6 % of the vote. Curtis Sliwa received a mere 7.1%. The combined total of Cuomo and Sliwa votes would not have bested Mamdani’s 50.4%. However, if Mamdani didn’t get the 15% from the Working Family Party, Cuomo would have won.

By comparing his unimpressive victory — a single mayoral race won with just 50.4% of the vote — with “the dawn of a better day for humanity”, Mamdani exhibits the typical leftist god-complex, and the extraordinary arrogance that comes with it. Like Obama’s self-aggrandizing “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…” Mamdani’s assertion that his victory will reset the human race, and the implication that he is the one to lead humanity to the “better day”, is hyperbolic to say the least.

New York City is, and has been, a Democrat town for a long time. If voters understood what Mamdani’s socialism will mean in reality, I suspect many would have voted for a different candidate. Promises of “free” buses, government run grocery stores, and a “de-commodified” housing market don’t exactly translate to freedom and prosperity for the people—and Mamdani’s fiery acceptance speech reminded us of his true nature with his nod to socialist icon Eugene Debs being an ominous sign. “The dawn of a better day” for New York City will not be what they imagined.

A.F. Cronin is a writer living in Los Angeles. He has written for American Thinker, The Federalist, and other periodicals.

A skewed Trump speech edit, a Gaza film built around a Hamas operative’s son, and repeated factual distortions have plunged the BBC into a credibility crisis. Conservatives are celebrating, Trump is threatening a major lawsuit, and the network faces a steep political cost

There is no need to attribute superpowers to Donald Trump. No American president, not even a narcissist in White House mode, can shake a public broadcaster in another country and continent and trigger the resignation of its director general and head of news.

The BBC misled the public about Trump. It deceived viewers who had always regarded it as a reliable source of news: if it aired on the BBC, it happened, and the facts had already been verified. In the week before last year’s U.S. presidential election, the network’s “Panorama” program broadcast a documentary titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” The film included clips from Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech to supporters and led viewers to believe the president encouraged them to storm the Capitol, said he would march with them “to fight like hell,” and warmly embraced the violence that followed.

But it has now emerged that the filmmakers omitted a critical part of Trump’s remarks, the section in which he urged his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Other parts were edited with a clear agenda. For example, instead of airing “We are going to walk down to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators,” the network broadcast, “We are going to walk down to the Capitol… and I will be with you, and we will fight, we will fight like hell,” stitching together fragments spoken 50 minutes apart.

Trump, predictably, threatened to sue the network for billions, and an earthquake followed inside the BBC. But the Trump episode was only the final straw. In recent years, the network has repeatedly eroded its own reliability, perhaps the most valuable currency in journalism. It happened during the war in Gaza, where the BBC was caught distorting coverage and embedding a clear anti-Israel line. It happened in one-sided coverage of transgender issues, climate policy, immigration, and the rise of the far right in Britain. The problem was not that the BBC took a side and filled its ranks with progressive voices. The problem was that it bent the truth to fit the agenda it had chosen. In other words, it stopped delivering neutral news and began shaping a worldview. A commercial channel might do that. A public broadcaster meant to represent all citizens of the United Kingdom cannot.

To claim the BBC was a victim of the power struggle between progressives and conservatives would miss the point. Conservatives had to do very little in this battle. The scale of bias, accompanied by blatant inaccuracies, shows that the damage was largely self-inflicted.

The agenda mattered more than the truth To many, the BBC has become an anachronistic institution. It still produces excellent content, but it is a dinosaur. The digital revolution hit it hard in two ways. In 2027, the license-fee model that requires British citizens to pay 174.50 pounds a year for public broadcasting is set to expire. In an era of Netflix and Spotify, the arrangement no longer seems sustainable.

The second blow was even more severe. The BBC was not only a news channel. It set the global standard for credibility. Social networks, packed with their own political agendas and eager to challenge the BBC’s line, waited for any slip. Twenty years ago, no one could shake the BBC. Today, anyone with a social media account can try.

Mistakes happen. But such a long series of errors, errors that made clear there was a serious problem in the network’s editorial process, indicates something deliberate. The network continued to act with arrogance, forgetting that it could be scrutinized.

Take “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone,” a documentary about life in Gaza during the conflict, which the BBC promoted heavily until it was revealed that its central narrator, a 13-year-old boy, was the son of a Hamas operative. The BBC had to pull the film. A basic fact-check that would have taken minutes could have prevented the embarrassment. As with the Trump documentary, the agenda mattered more to the network’s leadership than the truth. It takes a remarkable level of arrogance to produce, promote, distribute, and air such content while assuming no one will uncover the distortion in the age of social media. When executives removed the film, they said they had “lost confidence in it.” The damage to Israel, however, was already done, fueling already heated pro-Palestinian and antisemitic sentiment on British streets.

A celebration for conservatives.

The BBC is considered a conservative institution. The torrent of criticism in recent days, which includes accusations from the White House that it is a propaganda channel broadcasting fake news “100 percent of the time,” is a label that sticks. Trump and Israel, only two examples, gave the network many legitimate reasons to criticize them. But reality did not seem to satisfy the BBC. It continued piling on additional accusations. Conservatives now enjoy a double victory. Not only has the network lost its credibility, it has also confirmed a central claim of the political right: that mainstream media lean toward the left.

The timing has also been disastrous. The British right, including its hard-line faction with strict immigration policies, is heading toward a likely victory in the next election. At least half of Britain’s license-fee payers, along with many foreign governments, were waiting for the BBC to stumble, and the network did not miss a single trap. It ignored several internal sexual harassment allegations. Gary Lineker, the former footballer and popular host of the network’s flagship soccer program, compared the Conservative government’s asylum policy to policies of 1930s Germany. He was suspended and later reinstated due to pressure from colleagues, but the BBC did not renew his contract after another incendiary post about Israel. During the Glastonbury Festival this summer, the channel did not cut away when Bob Vylan led the crowd in chants of “Death to the IDF.”

The Trump case was extreme, not only because of the distortion itself but also because of the political terrain on which it occurred. As he has done with major U.S. media outlets, Trump seized on the moment to dismantle the BBC’s credibility and threaten litigation. During a meeting with British right-wing leader Nigel Farage, he heard claims of BBC interference in the British election, responding, according to Farage, “with words that cannot be printed.” But the BBC is not CBS. It is not a private network that can pay billions and move on. It is now trapped in the middle of a political confrontation that is about to reshape it entirely. If Britain wants fair trade agreements with Trump or seeks U.S. help in deterring Russia, it will have to pay a price, and the BBC is likely to be part of that cost.

Zeev Avrahami, Ynet

Another day, another Democrat found to be involved in some sort of fraud. I don’t think there’s a single member of that entire party who speaks the truth or plays by the rules. And the legacy media — ever the loyal lapdogs of the Left — fawns over these people, burying scandals or spinning them as virtues. From multi-million dollar fraud schemes tied to congressional insiders to impersonating lawyers to springing illegal aliens. From doctored court evidence to unconstitutional residency fraud, the evidence piles up like Kamala’s campaign debts. We’re witnessing a pattern of blatant lawbreaking enabled by a complicit media that prioritizes Marxist idolatry over accountability.

Let’s start with the squalid underbelly of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s orbit. One of her associates was busted in a stunning $2.9 million fraud scheme, involving fake claims and embezzlement that robbed taxpayers blind. Calls for Omar’s deportation exploded, given her history of controversial statements and suspicious allegiances. We hear nothing but crickets from the legacy media, who instead amplify Omar’s anti-Israel rants as “bold leadership.” This is protectionism for a squad member whose allies treat public funds like a personal ATM.

Which brings us to Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the self-proclaimed champion of the downtrodden whose “woman of the people” routine detonated like a bad fireworks show. FEC filings reveal her campaign splurged over $25,000 on luxury hotels and limo services — Ritz-Carlton stays, West Hollywood Editions, Vegas resorts — none in her Dallas district or even in Texas. Add $50,000 on security while she preaches defunding the police and calls ICE “slave patrols.” It’s hypocrisy on steroids: a freshman congresswoman living large on donor dollars, jetting to Martha’s Vineyard while her constituents struggle with crime and inflation. Who does she think she is, BLM? Maxine Waters?

Yet the media swoons. A deranged liberal radio host, Stephanie Miller, was filmed kissing Crockett’s sneakers, gushing about worshipping the ground she walks on — and bragging about it on X. The legacy media? Probably too busy fact-checking Trump tweets from 2016.

This groveling spectacle is symptomatic of the Left’s cult-like devotion that shields criminals. The same filings show her rarely in Texas, yet she eyes a Senate run against John Cornyn. She admits that no Democrat can win, but is spending big on polls anyway. The media response: softball interviews where she’s hailed as a “rising star,” her lavish spending dismissed as “necessary travel.” If a Republican did this, it would be front-page impeachment fodder. This is yet another example of Michael Anton’s “Celebration Parallax” which may be stated as: “the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it.”

Moving along to California Representative and Fang Fang fiasco survivor Eric Swalwell, who is now facing disqualification. Official deeds declare his Washington, D.C. home his “principal residence,” with no verifiable California address despite representing the Golden State’s 14th District. The Constitution demands residency in the state you serve — Swalwell mocks it. Public records show no owned or leased home in California; his “hometown” Livermore address has belonged to another family since 2008. This is fraud. Swalwell built his career slamming opponents as “out of touch,” and has literally checked out of his state. The legacy media outlets that hounded Trump over emoluments clauses yawn here, recycling Swalwell’s anti-Trump lawsuits as heroic.

The rot continues. Attorneys for former FBI director James Comey have allegedly doctored transcripts. Kevin Clinesmith isn’t alone! In Senate testimony evidence, they altered words to fabricate a question from Texas senator Ted Cruz that never happened — pure fraud in a court filing. Tampering with official records invites contempt or evidence charges. Comey’s team even cited a movie for defense, hiding identities while claiming innocence. This from a man who lectured America on integrity. Predictably, legacy media outlets like the NY Times framed this as a “dispute” rather than obstruction of justice.

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More felonies have emerged from the Democrats’ obsession with illegal immigration. A staffer for Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth impersonated an immigration attorney to free a four-time-deported Mexican national convicted of DUI. He demanded access to his “client,” secured a signature on official forms, then tried filing unsigned versions — collaborating with a law firm to cover his tracks. DHS condemned this as “political games” endangering agents and detainees. Duckworth, a vocal defunder of border enforcement, remained silent. The media? Fox broke the story, the others buried it amid climate summit fluff.

Finally, under Gavin Newsom’s sanctuary regime, California’s DMV issued 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses to illegals ineligible under federal law — many unable to read English road signs. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revoked them all, exposing deadly risks after crashes killed Americans. Newsome, globetrotting to Brazil for “climate deals,” left highways vulnerable. Nineteen other states enable this lunacy, but California’s scale is astonishing. The legacy media praised Newsom as a “visionary” presidential contender with his failures spun as bold progressivism.

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These incidents — fraud, impersonation, document tampering, residency lies, and luxury abuse are part and parcel of Democrat DNA. They flout laws while demanding obedience from citizens. The media’s role is criminal complicity. They amplify foot-kissing sycophancy, ignore FEC bombshells and whitewash impersonation as “advocacy.” Conservative outlets expose the truth while the legacy media covers it up to protect the regime.

We (conservatives) alert citizens to the crimes. We tell Democrats, “This person stole money from you! These people are funneling deadly narcotics, child sex slaves, and violent cartel members into your neighborhoods! This person committed mortgage fraud! This one sold 20% of our uranium and classified hypersonic missile tech to Russia!” Their response? “Trump is literally Hitler. I’m voting Blue.”

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And they are. New York City residents just voted for an Islamist communist, and Seattle residents just elected a communist, excuse me, two “democratic socialists.” Said new mayor Katie Wilson, “We will not allow grocery chains to close stores at will.” That I’ve got to see.

The sheriff of neighboring Pierce County, Keith Swank, predicted that with the election of Katie Wilson, crime will rise, prosecutions will decrease, and she will fire the current police chief within a year.

Joe Walsh was right. You can’t argue with a sick mind.

America demands accountability: investigations, indictments, resignations, and deportations. Prosecute transcript tamperers, revoke illegal licenses, scrutinize every FEC filing, call out every lie, and have the IRS randomly audit elected representatives, staffers, bureaucrats, and their family members.

Why the delay? Perhaps AG Pam Bondi is afraid of making martyrs out of leftists before midterms. When the Left fabricated evidence and issued scurrilous indictments against Trump, it galvanized conservatives and we rallied behind him. Is she afraid the same thing could happen if she goes after prominent leftists? At this point, what do we have to lose?

We’re facing Sophie’s Choice. If no one is held to account, they won’t stop. If we hold them to account, we could energize their base. I say we put our cards on the table and enforce the law.

Accountability starts with us refusing to shy away.

Image: AT via Magic Studio

Related Topics: Democrats, Congress, Corruption, Newsom

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In an April 2, 2011 message to his associate and fixer Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.” Then, the word VICTIM appears in a black box, followed by “he has never once been mentioned. police chief, etc. im 75% there.”

Never mind that the late financier who didn’t kill himself never seemed to use punctuation or capitals in his personal communication. This message does appear to be damning, if kind of vague. “I have been thinking about that…” Maxwell said, but what, exactly, remains unclear.

The VICTIM in the note is Virginia Giuffre, who earlier this year said Trump had committed no improprieties for her. And The White House, naturally, has issued a blanket denial. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including {Virginia} Giuffre,” said Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement to the press. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

Also in play now is the Master of Whisperers, the journalist Michael Wolff, who in 2015 warned Epstein, before a Presidential campaign debate that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.” “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein responded.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff said. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency.”

Like the rest of you, I finds this very juicy. But he also doesn’t necessarily see these emails as some sort of smoking gun that reveals the President to be a malignant pedo.

They’re a trickle, not a torrent, and are really more revealing of the power dynamics behind Trump’s first election than they are of any shenanigans at Mar-a-Lago or on Epstein Island.

As Wolff told Epstein, “of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

“Political correctness” is now called “woke,” but that’s very prescient. “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” said a Republican on the House Oversight Committee. In last year’s interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, Maxwell said of Trump that she “she never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.” Angel Trump or Devil Trump? Cockburn honestly can’t guess anymore. Only the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein knows for sure.

The House Oversight Committee released some Jeffrey Epstein emails this morning, and, sure enough, Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files. Like a malignant ghost that haunts the President’s dreams, Epstein has risen from the great beyond to point his bony finger at Donald Trump, saying, “it was you all along.” Or has he?

In an April 2, 2011 message to his associate and fixer Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.” Then, the word VICTIM appears in a black box, followed by “he has never once been mentioned. police chief, etc. im 75% there.”

Never mind that the late financier who didn’t kill himself never seemed to use punctuation or capitals in his personal communication. This message does appear to be damning, if kind of vague. “I have been thinking about that…” Maxwell said, but what, exactly, remains unclear.

The VICTIM in the note is Virginia Giuffre, who earlier this year said Trump had committed no improprieties for her. And The White House, naturally, has issued a blanket denial. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including {Virginia} Giuffre,” said Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement to the press. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

Also in play now is the Master of Whisperers, the journalist Michael Wolff, who in 2015 warned Epstein, before a Presidential campaign debate that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.” “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein responded.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff said. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency.”

Like the rest of you, I finds this very juicy. But he also doesn’t necessarily see these emails as some sort of smoking gun that reveals the President to be a malignant pedo.

They’re a trickle, not a torrent, and are really more revealing of the power dynamics behind Trump’s first election than they are of any shenanigans at Mar-a-Lago or on Epstein Island.

As Wolff told Epstein, “of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

“Political correctness” is now called “woke,” but that’s very prescient. “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” said a Republican on the House Oversight Committee. In last year’s interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, Maxwell said of Trump that she “she never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.” Angel Trump or Devil Trump? Cockburn honestly can’t guess anymore. Only the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein knows for sure.

Spectator World

I’m old enough to remember when the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) passed. It was 2010, and I had just joined Twitter the previous fall while I was on maternity leave following the birth of my second son. That means I recall exactly how Obamacare’s passage unfolded.

It was forced on an unwilling American people by the Democrats, who shoved it through Congress without a single Republican vote. Many people, myself included, warned it was a bait-and-switch scheme that wouldn’t lower healthcare costs but would usher in single-payer socialized medicine.

Now that we’re facing another negotiation on Obamacare subsidies, it’s time to remind you that Barack’s signature legislation didn’t fail. Nothing “went wrong” with it. It’s working exactly as designed because its purpose was to crash the private insurance industry and become a political wedge issue.

That’s why, for example, Democrats demanded a year-long extension on the COVID-era subsidies. For those of you without a calendar in front of you, that would have made the subsidies sunset on the eve of the midterm elections. That’s not a coincidence. Democrats absolutely planned to use the subsidies as an election issue. If these subsidies are necessary, and the only thing staving off a “healthcare crisis” — as the Democrats keep telling me — why would they have a sunset date at all?

For political gain. That’s why.

For now, Republicans seem to have denied them that leverage, and it should stay that way.

But I digress.

As I said, Obamacare is working precisely how Democrats wanted it to, and on two fronts. First, the political wedge issue, and second, as the vehicle by which they’ll run us over with socialized medicine.

Avik Roy said, “[Obamacare] overcharged healthy people that needed insurance to help fund the cost of insurance for sick people, and overcharged young people… The end result is, if only sicker and older people buy insurance, the price of insurance for everybody goes through the roof.”

That is accurate. But that was also intentional. Despite the fact that Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, the framers of the legislation knew exactly what they were doing.

Kamala Harris, who was a few million votes away from the Oval Office, said she would abolish private health insurance in favor of a single-payer system. She’s not alone. Other prominent Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Bill de Blasio, are on record as advocating for the elimination of private insurance.

If you want a taste of what government-run healthcare would be like, we’ve already got it thanks to Obamacare. Increased wait times, exploding costs (because nothing is more expensive than when it’s “free”), and bureaucratic control of healthcare decisions that should be between a patient and her doctor. I guess that last provision only applies when the woman wants to kill her unborn child. But it would be much more insidious than that in the era of woke.

Yesterday, I wrote about Do No Harm winning a suit to undo a Biden-era rule that rewarded doctors who implemented “anti-racist” plans for their practices. During my interview with Dr. Goldfarb, we touched briefly on woke changes to things like the kidney transplant list, where racial differences were removed despite the fact that Blacks and Whites have different kidney function. The long story short: these “anti-racist” changes definitely cost White people spots on the transplant list, and probably led to deaths.

Now imagine that policy across the entirety of healthcare. My aunt, who is also White, fell over the weekend and broke her hip. Thankfully, she had surgery on Monday and is on the road to recovery. But what happens in a world of socialized medicine where “anti-racist” policies rule the day? Would she have gotten surgery in a timely manner? Would she have gotten surgery at all? She’s older, after all, and retired.

Republicans need to reframe the debate on Obamacare. It’s not broken. It didn’t “go wrong.” It was designed to make private insurance unaffordable. It was meant to create the exact “healthcare crisis” we’re experiencing now, so that Democrats could swoop in and promise “free” healthcare via socialized medicine.

That’s the message we need to take to voters, and a Republican Congress needs to put forth a bill to repeal Obamacare in full and return free market principles to health insurance. The alternative is costly, both in cash and in lives.

Amy Curtis, Townhall

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston heard oral arguments today whether a provision of the July 4 “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that ended Medicaid reimbursements for one year for Planned Parenthood and other big abortion providers can remain in effect while legal challenges continue.

In September, on an unanimous 3-0 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit reversed the earlier preliminary injunctions by Judge Indira Talwani and allowed the Trump administration to resume blocking Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood while the case proceeded

Planned Parenthood filed the original lawsuit on July 7, three days after the bill was signed by President Trump. The ever-accommodating Judge Talwani, an Obama appointee, issued a Temporary Restraining Order the same day, followed by a preliminary injunction on July 21. She ruled that Planned Parenthood had shown a “substantial likelihood of success.”

However, in its July 14 memorandum in opposition to the temporary restraining order, HHS wrote

Both houses of Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill—the One Big Beautiful Bill— and the President signed that bill into law. Among many other decisions about how to allocate limited federal funds, one provision of the bill restricts the types of entities that may receive federal Medicaid funds. In particular, that provision directs that certain tax-exempt organizations and their affiliates may not receive federal Medicaid funds for a one-year period if they continue to provide elective abortions. In other words, the bill stops federal subsidies for Big Abortion. All three democratically elected components of the Federal Government collaborated to enact that provision consistent with their electoral mandates from the American people as to how they want their hard-earned taxpayer dollars spent. But Plaintiffs—Planned Parenthood Federation of America (“PPFA”) and its members (together, “Planned Parenthood”)—now want this Court to reject that judgment and supplant duly enacted legislation with their own policy preferences. Indeed, they demand emergency injunctive relief forcing the Government to continue to support them with taxpayer funds.

That request is legally groundless and must be firmly rejected.

Later the memorandum made a crucial, fundamental distinction:

Importantly, the statute does not depend on whether any entity advocates for abortion. Planned Parenthood and its members may continue to engage in First Amendment activity; they can only be disqualified from Medicaid if they continue to provide certain abortions on or after October 1, 2025. If Planned Parenthood and its affiliates cease providing those abortions, they could receive Medicaid funds even as they continue to advocate for abortion. And restricting funding for abortion providers does not violate the First Amendment. [Emphasis in the original.]

“In a report released ahead of the hearing, Planned Parenthood said the legislation cost $45 million in September alone as clinics across the country paid for treatment for Medicaid patients out of pocket — a rate that the organization says is unsustainable,” Safiyah Riddle reported for the Associated Press.

Riddle included this standard Planned Parenthood line in her story. Under the subhead “A range of services hit,” she wrote

Planned Parenthood is the country’s largest abortion provider, but abortions only constituted 4% of all medical services in 2024, according to the organization’s annual report. Testing for sexually transmitted infections and contraception services make up about 80%. The remaining 15% of services are cancer screenings, primary care services and behavioral health services.

Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRL’s director of Education & Research, told NRL News Today, “There’s a reason Planned Parenthood will give up federal funding rather than give up abortion. It’s simply too big a part of the organization’s identity and its bottom line.”

A standard “in-clinic” first-trimester surgical abortions go for $600 or more (chemical abortions cost more), meaning the revenue coming from 400,000+ abortions a year easily dwarfs the receipts coming in from 1.5 million packets of birth control or 170,000 PAP tests (cancer screens).

Money from abortion+ plus its identity as an “abortion provider” are mighty powerful incentives.

Dave Andrusko, Life News

If you want to run for office as a Democrat, there is a new catchword that you need to make as your main promise: “Affordability.”

As anybody paying attention knows, the cry of “affordability” was the central theme that carried the Democrats to victory in all the big races this year, most notably those of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York City, Abigail Spanberger for Governor in Virginia, and Mikie Sherrill for Governor in New Jersey. The same theme also carried two Democrats to victory as Public Service Commissioners in Georgia — the first victories by Democrats in statewide elections for state office in Georgia since 2006.

But here is the question: Is the promise of “affordability” by these politicians something that has any prospect of being delivered through their proposed policies? Or are the proposed policies instead more likely to be useless, or even counterproductive, thus making the promise of “affordability” a scam from the outset?

In the campaigns, the theme of “affordability” got applied across multiple areas of household spending, including such areas as housing, healthcare, and transportation. But one spending category was the biggest focus of the campaigns above all others: energy. In a piece at Vox on November 7, Umair Irfan exults at the success of the Democratic candidates’ appeal to affordability as to energy, under the headline “Clean energy could become a huge political winner.” (available outside paywall at MSN here). Excerpts:

This off-year election was a pressure test of Democrats’ broad message on affordability and who voters hold accountable for the rising cost of electricity. . . . In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, ran on a promise to fight skyrocketing energy bills. She even vowed to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates on day one in office. And it worked. . . . In Virginia, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger also made affordable energy a tentpole of her campaign against republican Winsome Earle-Sears. . . . [In Georgia] Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson defeated two incumbent Republicans [for seats on the Public Service Commission]. . . . Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy, an energy analysis firm, [said] “It is just a huge sign that Georgians are fed up with rate hikes. They’re fed up with high bills. . . .”

So what are the policies that are supposed to deliver “affordable” electricity rates? For Sherrill and the Georgia PSC Commission candidates, number one was a freeze (or opposition to increase) of rates. And for both Sherrill and Spanberger, next came big expansion of wind and solar generation. From Sherrill’s website:

By prioritizing the right investments in new clean power resources, we can reduce our carbon footprint, increase energy independence, and help families across the state save money. . . . Prioritize and support low-cost, in-state clean energy investments and innovations to bring down rates. . . . Increase the use of state properties to host solar projects. . . . Assist New Jerseyans in adopting clean energy solutions, like community solar. . . .

Sherrill appears to be clueless that wind and solar generators require vast additional backup, energy storage, and transmission capacity to make an electricity grid work full time, thus making their end costs to consumers a multiple of those for traditional thermal generation. The same blindspot applies for Spanberger. From the Spanberger for Governor website:

Abigail knows that Virginia has the opportunity to be a national leader in clean energy, including by bringing high-paying clean energy jobs to the Commonwealth through investments in offshore wind, rooftop solar, and other renewable energy sources. In Congress, Abigail supported commonsense incentives for increased deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage. As the next Governor of Virginia, Abigail is committed to making sure Virginia can meet its energy needs while growing its economy and keeping costs low for Virginians.

Back here in New York City, electricity costs are not so much on the Mayor’s agenda, but Mamdani preached “affordability” of everything from housing to groceries to buses. How to deliver that? For housing, how about a rent freeze? For groceries and buses, subsidies from the taxpayers.

Why anyone would ever again build or maintain a rental apartment building in New York under a regime of permanent rent freeze is an issue that apparently has never occurred to Mamdani (or the people who voted for him).

To give you an idea of just how far the fantasy cry of “affordability” has penetrated the ranks of current Democrats, take note that one Jack Schlossberg has just declared that he is running for Congress from New York’s 12th Congressional District. Have you heard of Schlossberg? He is JFK’s grandson, via daughter Caroline. The 12th Congressional District includes much of Midtown Manhattan, plus the Upper East and West Sides (currently represented by the execrable Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring). According to an October 2024 piece here at Yahoo Finance, New York 12 is the third wealthiest district in the country (ranked by median household income), trailing only two Silicon Valley districts in California — although NY12 is second in “mean” household income, and also has more people earning $200,000+ (156,102 households out of 393,204) than either of those two pikers in California.

And of course Schlossberg’s number one issue according to his announcement: the “cost of living crisis.” OK, it’s slightly different messaging from “affordability,” but only slightly. Schlossberg attended the Collegiate School in Manhattan for high school, where the current tuition is about $66,000 per year (it probably was in the range of $45,000/yr 15 years ago when Schlossberg attended). He makes a point in his announcement that he took the cross-town bus each day, from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side, to get to school. In other words, he is a true man of the people.

Schlossberg has not yet addressed what policies he intends to implement to address the “cost of living crisis.” But as we know, there are really only two policies in the Democrats’ playbook to deal with such a thing, namely price controls and taxpayer subsidies. I might suggest to him as a start that he impose price controls on exclusive Manhattan private high schools.

You might think that the voters of NY 12 would have to realize that in any effort to control the “cost of living” via government subsidies, the wealthy like them would have to pay far more in taxes than any benefit they might receive in lower prices. Don’t count on it. The more solidly Democratic is any voting group, the more innumerate it proves to be.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Revelations about Arctic Frost show a national security apparatus that’s out of control.

The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation is confirmation that the Left sees conservatives as enemies of the state. If you are a conservative when the Left holds the reins of power, you will be treated as such.

Arctic Frost began in April 2022, with the approval of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In November 2022, the newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith took it over. Smith declared he was focused on the allegations of mishandling classified documents, but Arctic Frost shows he was much more ambitious. He helped turn the investigation into an effort to convict Donald Trump and cripple the Republican Party.

It was revealed last month that by mid-2023 the FBI had tracked the phone calls of at least a dozen Republican senators. Worse still, with the imprimatur of Justices Beryl Howell and James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith issued 197 subpoenas targeting the communications and financial records of nine members of Congress and at least 430 Republican entities and individuals. The organizations targeted are a “Who’s Who” of the American Right, including Turning Point USA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and the Center for Renewing America, where I serve as a senior fellow.

Beyond hitting active politicians, these subpoenas also went after advisors, consulting firms, and non-profits. One subpoena targeted communications with media companies, including CBS, Fox News, and Newsmax. Normally, a telecommunications company should inform its clients and customers about subpoenas. But Howell and Boasberg also ordered non-disclosure orders on the dubious grounds that standard transparency might result in “the destruction of or tampering of evidence”—as if a U.S. Senator could wipe his phone records or a 501(c)(3) erase evidence of its bank accounts.

The scale—and the secrecy—of Arctic Frost is staggering. It was a massive fishing expedition, hunting for any evidence of impropriety from surveilled conservatives that might be grounds for criminal charges. One can see the strategy, typical among zealous prosecutors: the threat of criminal charges might compel a lower- or mid-level figure to turn government witness rather than resist.

But Smith had an even grander plan. By collecting financial records, he was trying to establish financial ties between those subpoenaed and Trump. Had Smith secured a conviction against Trump, he could then have pivoted to prosecuting hundreds of individuals and entities under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. This would have led to asset freezes, seizures, and further investigations. Smith laid out a roadmap for crushing conservative organizations that was supposed to be implemented throughout a prospective Biden second term or a Harris presidency. Fortunately, American voters foiled Smith’s efforts.

A False Equivalence

The meager coverage of Arctic Frost thus far has compared the scandal to the revelations of Watergate. But the comparison doesn’t hold. Arctic Frost involved significantly more surveillance and more direct targeting of political enemies than was exposed during the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973-74.

Setting aside campaign finance matters and political pranks, the most serious crimes the hearings exposed pertained to the Nixon Administration’s involvement with break-ins and domestic wiretapping. In the summer of 1971, the White House formed a unit to investigate leaks. Called the “Plumbers,” this unit broke into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was the psychiatrist of the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. Transferred over to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) at the end of the year, the unit then broke into the Democratic National Convention offices in the Watergate complex. The hearings exposed the burglars’ connection to CRP—and to the White House.

The administration also authorized warrantless wiretaps. From May 1969 to February 1971, in response to the disclosures of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the FBI ran a 21-month wiretap program to catch the leakers. This investigation eventually covered 13 government officials and four journalists. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted the wiretapping authorizations, and Attorney General John Mitchell signed them. As a matter of optics, it was the surveillance of the members of the media that provoked the scandal. Since they were critical of the Nixon Administration, it looked like the administration was targeting its political enemies. As a criminal matter, the issues were less about the actions themselves, as it was at least arguable that they were legal on national security grounds. Instead, it was more about the cover-up. When these wiretaps came up in the hearings, Mitchell and others deceived investigators, opening themselves up to obstruction of justice charges.

Yet there is one aspect revealed during the Watergate hearings that could be compared to Arctic Frost. The hearings exposed extensive domestic spying that preceded the Nixon Administration. The tip of the iceberg was the proposed Huston Plan of June 1970, which became one of the most sensational pieces of evidence against the Nixon Administration. Named for the White House assistant who drafted it, the Huston Plan proposed to formalize intelligence coordination as well as authorize warrantless surveillance and break-ins. Nixon implemented the plan but rescinded it only five days later at the advice of Hoover and Mitchell.

Who were those Americans who might have had their civil liberties affected? It was the radical Left, then in the process of stoking urban riots, inciting violence, and blowing up government buildings. However, the plan was an attempt to formalize ongoing practices; it was not a novel proposal. After Nixon had departed, the Senate concluded in 1976 that “the Huston plan, as we now know, must be viewed as but one episode in a continuous effort by the intelligence agencies to secure the sanction of higher authority for expanded surveillance at home and abroad.”

For years, ignoring the statutes that prohibited domestic spying, the CIA surveilled over three dozen radicals. The military and the Secret Service kept dossiers on many more. The FBI operated COINTELPRO, its surveillance of and plan to infiltrate the radical Left, without Mitchell’s knowledge. And as the Senate discovered, “even though the President revoked his approval of the Huston plan, the intelligence agencies paid no heed to the revocation.” This was all excessive, to say the least.

Watergate helped expose a far larger and longer surveillance operation against left-wing domestic terrorists. Comparing this to Arctic Frost suggests that the shoe is now on the other foot: the state regards right-wing groups as equivalent to domestic terrorists. Once, the national security state was abused to attack the Left—now, it’s abused to attack the Right. This is hardly an encouraging comparison.

Lawfare for Thee, Not for Me

There’s a third reason that the comparison to Watergate doesn’t hold. In the 1970s, abuses generated a reaction. The Huston Plan, for instance, was squashed by the head of the Department of Justice. Controversial surveillance plans were eventually wound down. Wrongdoing was exposed and horrified the public, worsening their growing mistrust of government. Lawmakers passed serious reforms to rein in the intelligence agencies and defend the civil liberties of Americans.

Survey today’s landscape, and it doesn’t look like there will be any similar reaction. If you’re a conservative staffer, activist, contract worker, affiliate, donor, politician, or lawmaker, you’ve learned about the unabashed weaponization of the federal justice system against you without the presence of any crime. What’s even more disturbing is that this investigation went on for 32 months, longer than Mitchell’s wiretaps.

During that time, no senior official squashed the investigation, and no whistleblowers leapt to defend conservatives. There wasn’t a “Deep Throat” leaking wrongdoing, as there once was in Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt. There weren’t any scrupulous career bureaucrats or political appointees in the Justice Department or elsewhere ready to threaten mass resignations over a legally spurious program, as happened to George W. Bush in spring 2004. No telecommunication company contested the subpoenas, as happened in early 2016 when Apple disputed that it had to help the government unlock the iPhone of one of the terrorists involved in the December 2015 San Bernardino shootings. Neither bureaucrats nor corporations are coming to the rescue of the civil liberties of conservatives.

Nor is public opinion. Senator Eric Schmitt has called for “Watergate-style hearings.” But they wouldn’t work. Watergate was a public-relations disaster for the presidency, because it spoke to a Republican and Democratic public that held their government to a higher moral standard of impartial activity. Television unified this audience while also stoking righteous fury over how the government hadn’t lived up to that standard. After Nixon resigned, this fury carried on into 1975, the Church Committee, and the “year of intelligence.”

The hearings were effective only because they reached a public sensitive to infringements of civil liberties and hostile to the weaponization of the state against domestic targets. But 2025 is not 1975. Even if one could unite the American public to watch the same media event, televised hearings on Arctic Frost wouldn’t bring about a major shift in public opinion. In fact, many voters would likely approve of Arctic Frost’s operations.

For one part of the country, lawfare happens—and it’s a good thing. Jack Smith’s lawfare does not embarrass or shame the Left. If anything, he is criticized for insufficiently weaponizing the law.

To date, the largest exposé of his methods to reach the legacy media, published in The Washington Post, criticizes Smith for prosecuting Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida (where the alleged crime occurred) rather than in the District of Columbia. It’s an impressive investigative report, assembling aides and experts to showcase Smith’s mistake. Left unstated is the answer to the naïve question: If the offense was committed in Florida, why was it a mistake not to pursue the case in D.C.? Because that was the only district where Smith could guarantee a favorable judge and jury.

The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself. In this environment, where lawfare is already taken for granted as the optimal strategy to defeat the enemy, exposing the details of Arctic Frost is like publicizing the details of the failed Schlieffen Plan in 1915 and expecting the Germans to be ashamed enough to withdraw. They already know it didn’t work. Exposing the plan won’t change anything. The election of Jay Jones as Virginia’s attorney general is an indication not only of the presence of a fanatic at the head of Virginia’s law enforcement, but also of what a good proportion of the Democratic electorate expects from the state’s most important prosecutor. His task is to bring pain to his enemies.

The 1970s saw the abuses of the national security state generate a forceful public reaction. That turned out to be a rare moment. Instead of a pendulum swing, we have seen a ratchet effect. The national security state has acquired more weapons in the intervening decades, and the resistance to it has become feebler. This has hit conservatives hardest, because many still imagine that our constitutional culture remains largely intact. To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies. From that point of view, American politicians operate with electorally imposed and self-imposed restraints that will impel them to take the due process rights of their opponents seriously or be shamed and lose elections. But these restraints are now ineffectual, and hardly worth mentioning.

Unlike in the 1970s, there will be no cultural resolution to the problem of lawfare. The problem will only be solved by political means: using power to punish wrongdoers, deter future abuses, and deconstruct the weaponized national security state.

When you’re presumed to be an enemy of the state, the only important question is who will fight back on your behalf.

Nathan Pinkoski, American Mind

“Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says he’s ready to meet with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to discuss the city’s future as competing states try to court concerned business owners away from the Big Apple.”

How do you sit down and talk reasonably with someone who says you have no right to exist, that all the money and profits do not belong to you or your customers–that everything belongs to HIM?

Communists believe that all private property is theft. Any business person in New York City is in a position of begging Mamdani to “please, sir, allow me to keep some of my property.” There’s no negotiation with someone who says that he rules you 100 percent morally–and that the legality is only a matter of time.

Mamdani is a literal terrorist and an economic terrorist. He should be treated accordingly. He has no rights, because he is a dictator and a common thug. All who voted for him are accessories to the crimes he’s preparing to commit.

The whole thing is a travesty.

*******

From Fox News: “BADGE OF HONOR? Zohran Mamdani taps his longtime advisor, Elle Bisgaard-Church, as his incoming chief of staff. Bisgaard-Church was dubbed the “chief architect” of Mamdani’s campaign proposal to have social workers respond to certain non-violent 911 calls in New York City.”

I sincerely hope that any resident of NYC who voted for this savage experiences a home invasion or other violent crime, and has the pleasure of an unarmed social worker showing up to save them. Not a tear will be shed by me. You freaks who voted for this insanity while posing as morally virtuous richly deserve what you will get. Rest assured: Your beloved mayor and his henchpersons will be well-protected.

NYC mayor-elect Mamdani promised to replace police with unarmed social workers for many violent situations in New York City.

Richard Ruggiero asks on Facebook:

“Will the mayor be protected by social workers?

This can be mistaken as misguided compassion but that would be a mistake. This is intentional malice. The whites will get the social workers when they call the

police while the supporters of Islam will be armed. Count on it!”

Absolutely.

*******

“Charlie Kirk gets shot and people are celebrating like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You want people to die that you disagree with?’ Like, where are we right now on the scale of one-to-civil war? Where are we? Are we at seven? Because I thought we were at a five. I thought we were like four. Four or five,” he said on the Tuesday’s episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “But after the Charlie Kirk thing, I’m like, ‘Oh, we might be like seven.’ This might be like step seven on the way to a bonafide civil war.”

Joe Rogan cautioned that when people start rejoicing over someone’s death—especially a public killing witnessed by the world and their family—it reflects a disturbing moral decline. He emphasized that if the person’s biggest offense was merely saying things others disagreed with, then celebrating their violent death is deeply troubling.

It’s time to consider the possibility that millions of our fellow Americans are truly bad people.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason