Governments habitually lie. They lie so often that it is peculiar for governments to claim “authority” on anything other than falsehood. Before the Gutenberg press and general literacy, “authorities” announced self-serving lies in the public square. With the arrival of newsprint, “authorities” disseminated State propaganda as daily news. Radio and television revolutionized the mass manipulation of minds. The adoption of the personal computer, the rise of the Internet, the commercialization of pocket computers posing as handheld phones, and the sticky web of an ever-growing social media complex have made it possible for government “authorities” to reach inside every human brain and squish it into compliance. AI-powered machines now manufacture and disseminate lies faster than human-powered governments ever could.

Most people are only now realizing that — even in so-called “free” countries — government-sanctioned propaganda, censorship, and misdirection are pervasive and routine. To the surprise of citizens taught to “trust the authorities,” the unvarnished truth is a bitter pill to swallow: Governments regularly employ psychologically manipulative, and even exploitative, forms of information warfare against their own citizens. Politicians and generals tell lies to mobilize the American public for war. Economists and central bankers tell lies to justify money-printing that robs from the middle class and rewards wealthy elites. Government regulatory bodies tell lies about the safety of food and medicine before taking lucrative jobs inside the global food and pharmaceutical industries. The Chamber of Commerce calls the offshoring of blue-collar jobs and the importation of slave-produced crap “free trade.”

How can the word “authority” maintain any positive meaning when “authorities” are always wrong?  At least since the First World War, scientific “authorities” have promised that human industry and mass commercialization would kill the planet in the “next few years.”  After Trump thumped Hillary like a drum, Intelligence Community “authorities” concocted an elaborate scheme to frame the MAGA outsider as a Russian agent who threatened national security unless removed from office.  When Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and the World Economic Forum sank the globe into mass COVID hysteria, health “authorities” promised that children would die unless they sat behind plexiglass-enclosed desks, their parents got experimental injections every few months, and every stranger wore at least three masks!  

Since the Second World War, trust in “authority” has evaporated.  Why?  Perhaps because “authorities” routinely lie, keep secrets, and cover up crimes.  Roughly three-quarters of Americans think the CIA killed President Kennedy.  A top FBI official transformed a rather mundane Watergate scandal into a successful operation for taking down President Nixon after his landslide re-election victory.  President Bush I pushed the “new world order.”  President Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman.”  President Bush II gave us endless war with few long-term successes.  President Obama told us we could “keep” our doctors before doubling the cost of healthcare instead.  Secretary of State Clinton was never prosecuted for keeping classified documents on an unsecured private server in her home, but President Biden made sure to send an FBI SWAT team to bust down President Trump’s doors.  

Politicians, prosecutors, judges, and news media mouthpieces told us that 2020’s mass riots, arson, robbery, and murder were justified civil rights “protests” against racism.  Those same “authorities” told us that J6 protesters seeking free and fair elections were “insurrectionists” and “terrorists.”  Now those “authorities” tell us that anti-ICE insurrectionists terrorizing citizens and attacking federal agents are “protesting” for civil rights once again.  When “authorities” describe riots as “protests” and protests as “insurrections,” words mean nothing.

Meanwhile, the average member of Congress enters office as a salaried “public servant” and exits office a millionaire!  Inside every institution of “authority,” corruption is king!

A writer named Lucas Leiroz argues that revelations within the Epstein documents prove that “nothing legitimate remains in the Western world.”  Predicting the “moral collapse of the elites,” he thinks the “systematic, organized, and ritualized” nature of their perversions and crimes constitutes nothing less than a civilizational “rupture.”  Why?  “When evidence emerges of extreme violence against children, of practices that go beyond any conventional criminal category, the discussion ceases to be legal and becomes civilizational.”  The reason why people are fascinated with this scandal is that it undermines the legitimacy of so many powerful people in positions of “authority.”  The very elites who have been exposed as monsters “continue to decide elections, wars, economic policies, and the fate of entire societies.”

Leiroz sees the Epstein scandal as the final straw for broad swaths of the public.  “How can one continue to accept the authority of institutions that shielded this level of horror?” he asks.  “How can respect be maintained for laws applied selectively by people who live above them?”  Those are good questions.  As “authorities” have been exposed as liars, the public has lost trust in them.  Now that “authorities” have been exposed as “pedophiles, satanists, and cannibals,” the public is disgusted with them.  When members of society “still retain some sense of limits” and members of the “ruling class” behave as if they were “outside the common human species,” the structures of power forfeit moral legitimacy.

Leiroz says, “After Epstein, nothing can continue as before.”  In the months ahead, we will see whether he is correct.  This much is certainly true: For three-quarters of a century, trust in “authorities” has steadily declined.  Over the last couple decades, those “authorities” have proven to be frauds, grifters, and liars.  Now many of these same “authorities” have been exposed as sick and depraved perverts whose actions are, as Leiroz describes, “vile and essentially evil.”  How are ordinary citizens supposed to ignore “absolute evil,” while so many devils maintain positions of “authority”?

J B. Shurk, American Thinker

Melinda Gates reacted to the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails involving her ex-husband Bill Gates, including horrific allegations Epstein made such that Bill was attempting to dose her with antibiotics to fight an STD without her knowledge, by saying Bill and other Epstein associates “need to answer to those things.”

Bill Gates has openly acknowledged, repeatedly, that he believes the world is overpopulated and unspecified steps should be taken to do something about that. He’s trying to buy up farmland in order to control the food supply, and he advocated forcing medical experiments on the American population manufactured by government-subsidized companies with zero product liability.

Are you seriously surprised by evidence he tried to secretly drug his wife after knowingly exposing her to STDs? Bill Gates is a sadist and a psychopath.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

An Olive Garden cook has died after he dunked his own head into a searing hot deep fryer — as his co-workers frantically tried to thwart his gruesome suicide, authorities said.

The employee, who hasn’t been identified, stripped his clothes off and thrust his face into the fryer at the chain’s restaurant in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, last Friday afternoon, the Smoking Gun reported.

A male victim went head first into the fryers,” dispatchers could be heard saying in grim 911 audio.

“I don’t have a lot of details, lot of people screaming, some kind of a burn victim,” another operator could be heard saying.

The cook was rushed a nearby hospital to be treated for his severe burns, but he later died from his injuries, authorities said.

A female employee suffered minor burns after she and several other workers tried to stop the cook from injuring himself even further.

At least one customer also tried to intervene.

Both Olive Garden and authorities refused to release any details about the ordeal, only describing it as a “suicide attempt.”

The restaurant shut down for several days in the wake of the incident but has since reopened.

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away.

In a letter to GOP leadership, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters.

I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand:

Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

Polling places?

They went out of their way to include polling places right alongside hospitals, courts, and churches. There is only one thing that happens at polling places that would matter to illegal immigrants, and it is not the bake sale.

Democrats have insisted for years that illegal immigrants cannot and do not vote, and that the whole issue is a right-wing myth. If that is true, then why is “polling places” even on their list of protected zones for immigration violators? No one accidentally adds “polling places” to a policy letter being negotiated at the leadership level. This is deliberate. It gives away what they are worried about… and what they are counting on.

“Democrats just admitted they think illegal aliens need to be protected at polling places. Why exactly would illegal aliens be at polling places? We MUST fully fund DHS AND pass the SAVE America Act,” Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) posted on X.

That is the obvious question Democrats do not want to answer. If illegal immigrants are not supposed to be anywhere near the ballot box, then immigration enforcement near polling sites ought to be a non-issue.

Related: Tom Homan Pulls 700 Agents Out of Minnesota. Here’s Why That’s Bad News for Democrats.

This comes as Republicans are pushing election reform through Congress with the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act is a straightforward concept: safeguard federal elections by ensuring only American citizens can cast ballots, and that an ID is required to vote.

Schumer’s response has been to smear the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0” and brand it “racist” and “dead on arrival.” That is the Democrats’ go-to play whenever Democrats feel threatened: slap a “Jim Crow” label on common-sense election rules and scare minorities into thinking Republicans are trying to stop them from voting.

The problem is that even minorities aren’t buying it. As PJ Media previously reported, polling has shown consistent and overwhelming support for Voter ID laws for years. That consensus cuts across both party and race, with huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats, whites, Latinos, and black Americans all agreeing that you should show a photo ID to vote.

Why are Democrats pushing so hard against common sense and trying to help illegal immigrants vote even though they’re not supposed to? Recent census projections show blue states are bleeding population while red states are gaining it, which will shift House seats and electoral votes after the 2030 reapportionment. As people flee high-tax, crime-ridden, Democrat-run states for freer red states, Democrats face shrinking power at the national level. That gives them every incentive to import a new population, shield it from enforcement, and eventually convert them into votes, one way or another.

That’s why Democrats have no qualms fighting so aggressively against overwhelmingly popular election reforms. For them, it’s a matter of survival.

Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN.

Recently, I wrote a piece that received some pushback. I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge.

If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom. It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how good we have things and encourages gratitude for the American entrepreneurs and inventors who made our lives possible. In a universe where most of history was characterized by scarcity, war, slavery, and early death, most Americans today have relatively extraordinary lives.

Everything we have today came about as the result of the hard work of generations of people who left us this legacy. From the Founding Fathers leaving us the Constitution to Grant defeating the South to Rockefeller rationalizing energy to Jobs putting the Internet in our hands, everything we have in the 21st century came from the efforts of countless numbers of long-dead people, as well as (often) our own efforts.

To the degree that one can identify the elements that made the last 250 years so different from any prior period, it was this combination of individual freedom, free markets, private property, and limited government. Those elements laid the foundation for a nation to spread across a continent, become an industrial juggernaut, and become an economic powerhouse able to promote freedom and prosperity to billions of people around the world.

That anger you sometimes see reflected in my writing stems from the government’s efforts over the last 50 years to do just about everything in its power to undermine that success. On almost every front, the government has gotten itself involved in areas where it has no place, no constitutional authority. Moreover, regardless of how ineffective, pernicious, or downright harmful its actions are, nobody ever does anything about it.

1960s: 4.5%

1970s: 3.2%

1980s: 3.1%

1990s: 3.2%

2000s: 1.9%

2010s: 2.4%

2020s: 2.4%

To understand how much of a problem that is, understand that in the 1950s, computers were the size of a house and could do 5,000 calculations per second. Today, a computer fits in the palm of your hand and is literally billions of times faster. Yet our GDP growth is almost half as much. It should be double.

If you want to know why, even though we are so much more efficient and have far better and more tools at our disposal, our GDP is half what it used to be, the answer is the government. Perhaps the only thing that has grown more than computer power over the last half-century is government power.

Today, the government intrudes on practically every single aspect of our lives, from mandating the ability to remotely turn off our cars to requiring those tags on our mattresses to telling us the makeup of our neighborhood. And sadly, while government operatives, both politicians and bureaucrats, are busy promoting the butchering of some children and the trafficking of others, they fail at the basic responsibilities of government, such as maintaining law and order, keeping our borders secure, and not sending money to dead people.

The government’s tentacles are everywhere, like a cancer that knows no bounds and for which there is no cure. Of course, theoretically, there is a cure for all of this: elections.

However, the government has somehow managed to manipulate them so that, regardless of who gets elected in either party, we basically get the same policies. Sure, some things may change around the edges, but for the most part, the Swamp reigns, and nobody does anything about it. The budgets basically remain the same, the programs largely stay the same, and the controlling elites basically rotate between government, NGOs, and corporate boardrooms.

And here’s where my piece talking about Trump betraying his voters comes into play. I could spend my time showcasing the great things he has done, and he has done many, but I focus on the fact that if he doesn’t deal with the gun pointed at the head of the Republic, none of that matters.

For Democrats, cheating is simply their MO. Between importing new illegal voters, manipulating the voting apparatus, and fighting Voter ID, Democrats have basically wiped out GOP representation in New England, even though 30-40% of the population in those areas is Republican. Democrats will destroy the Republic the next time they get power, and if Donald Trump doesn’t start acting like a leader with something to fight for, there won’t be anything left to fight for.

Once back in power, Democrats will kill that American goose. They will manipulate voting rules to turn the country writ large into the dysfunctional cesspools they’ve created in Illinois, Maryland, California, etc. They will expand the problems of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, et. al., into the suburbs and eventually across the country. They will utilize every lever of government power to eviscerate the foundations of freedom that made the country great in the first place.

But it doesn’t have to be. But unfortunately, we’re watching Senate leader John Thune betray Americans on easily the lowest hanging fruit ever in American history, the SAVE Act. You can say that Trump doesn’t run Congress or the Senate, which is true, but he is still the president with the largest soapbox on the planet, on an issue so powerful that even a majority of Democrats support it.

Trump should call on and or call out every GOP Senator who is standing in his way. He should do rallies in their states and encourage citizens to reach out and sway them. He should use every available lever of power to convince the Senate to pass the SAVE Act.

The reality is, the SAVE Act (which isn’t perfect, as it currently doesn’t outlaw the insane policy of letting illegals have Social Security numbers) and its companion deportations are where the rubber hits the road relative to a free Republic. Literally, if we do not put in place guarantees for honest elections now, the country will be as blue as the California House delegation within a decade.

The SAVE Act is not sufficient to guarantee honest elections, but it’s a first step. As for my regular warnings of doom, I wish I could spend my time commenting on the new arch going up in Arlington or the new White House ballroom, but the reality is, those are of no real consequence. If Donald Trump doesn’t focus on guaranteeing secure elections, neither will matter because both will end up as symbols not of a great hero who saved the Republic, but rather of the man who failed to save it when he had the chance.

Vince Coyner, American Thinker

According to the bookies, Sir Keir Starmer is odds-on to leave No 10 this year, and if they are right, history might look back on Feb 4 as the day his departure became inevitable.

With two U-turns in the space of a day, with his political guru Morgan McSweeney standing on a trapdoor, and with Angela Rayner biting at his ankles, Sir Keir’s authority has been shredded.

Even before the Mandelson row exploded underneath him, Sir Keir was the least popular prime minister on record, dismissed by the public as useless and by his own MPs as a deadbeat.

Rumours of a leadership challenge had been dominating Labour politics for months, with only the timidity of his rivals keeping him safe. May’s local elections – despite Sir Keir’s attempt to game the result by cancelling lots of them – were seen as the moment of maximum danger.

All that has changed, though, with the wholly avoidable scandal brought down on Labour by Sir Keir’s highly controversial, and possibly career-ending, decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington in February last year.

Sir Keir was the man who promised to “turn the page” on the chaos and scandals that dogged the Conservatives, but instead he has put his party at the centre of the biggest political betrayal since Profumo. The anxiety felt by Labour MPs over the opinion polls (dominated for a year now by Reform UK) has turned to anger.

Whenever prime ministers are toppled mid-term, there is a moment when the mood turns irreversibly against them, even if they manage to limp on for a while longer.

Gordon Rayner, The Telegraph

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has caused a furor.

In an interview with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, two British political figures turned podcasters, she openly stated she would vote for unification with Romania if there were a referendum.

Unionists on both sides of the River Prut were elated. For more than three decades, they have been pushing for the removal of the border which had separated the two sister countries since 1940, when Romanian-speaking Moldova was annexed by the Soviet Union.

Pro-Russian factions in Chișinău lashed out, decrying Sandu’s “betrayal of national interests,” and calling for her resignation.

With passion running high on both sides, it was no surprise the Moldovan government rushed to reassure the public, insisting the latest statement merely reflected Sandu’s personal choice and not her official position.

But those who have been paying attention, particularly to the energy sector, will have noticed some intriguing developments in recent years.

Moldova’s electricity and gas policies have been aligning closer with Romania’s, and the step is arguably one of the most critical towards the unification of the two countries.

There’s no conspiracy here; it’s simply that the alignment has been driven by necessity.

Much of the impetus has come from Kremlin meddling. Since 2021, Russia has sought to trigger repeated energy crises, expecting to blackmail Moldova’s pro-EU government and derail the country’s aspirations to join the bloc.

Until then, Moldova had depended for all its gas consumption and three-quarters of its electricity demand on Russian-controlled resources.

It’s hardly an exaggeration to say the country’s single biggest vulnerability to Moscow’s blackmail was its extreme reliance on Russian energy resources.

But Russia’s plans to destabilize the small country of 2.5million people have backfired.

By limiting gas supplies to Moldova in winters 2021 and 2022 and then cutting deliveries altogether to Transnistria in winter 2025, the Kremlin lost its grip over the whole country.

Moldova acted fast to diversify away, while Transnistria, a breakaway Russian-speaking province internationally recognized as being part of Moldova, could soon see major structural changes since the Kremlin is no longer able to use free gas supplies to fuel separatism.

Chișinău’s gas diversification plan was the first step towards severing its links to Russia.

Moldova can now buy gas in any neighboring European country, but to bring them home it uses an interconnector with Romania, which entered operation only a few weeks before the first energy crisis of winter 2021.

Since then, Moldova has taken other critical steps to align with Romania.

It passed rules allowing it to shift the operation of its strategic gas transmission infrastructure from a company majority owned by Russia’s Gazprom to the operator of the Romanian-Moldovan gas interconnector. The latter is a daughter company of the Romanian gas grid operator, Transgaz.

Technical experts say the two gas markets should now merge to streamline operations and cut costs.

Moldovan companies have secured licenses to trade in Romania, just as Romanian energy exchanges, suppliers, and producers have been opening subsidiaries in Chișinău.

Romania’s commitment to Moldova is even embedded in its national energy strategy up to 2035.

The document specifically mentions that the integration of its electricity and gas infrastructure with that of Moldova is of “strategic importance.”

It also notes that Romania’s energy security is unequivocally tied to that of Moldova’s and that it “should be in a position to guarantee all of Moldova’s energy needs for an indefinite period of time and under any circumstances.”

The strategy is taking shape.

Within a few weeks, Moldova will also boost its electricity supply security as a much-delayed direct, high-voltage line linking it to southeastern Romania is expected to come into operation.

Moldova had been using lines built in the Soviet era that passed through Transnistria to import electricity from Romania, presenting a major security risk.

Two additional electricity interconnectors with eastern Romania scheduled for operation later this decade will also boost Moldova’s security of supply, as the country will be able to import more electricity from Romania.

Even Transnistria, which depended on free Russian gas deliveries to sustain its separatist structures, has been relying on Russian-funded exports delivered via Romania.

Although Moscow uses Hungary and Dubai-based companies to buy and deliver the gas to Transnistria, the arrangement is difficult to sustain amid international sanctions against Russia.

If circumstances persist, Transnistrian authorities will have to consider structural reform, which would inevitably align it with Moldova and implicitly Romania.

Unification may not enjoy widespread popular support on either side of the River Prut, at least for now (polls suggest a majority oppose such a move, with around 30% in favor).

However, the rapid convergence of the two countries’ energy sectors shows that alignment is already underway, primarily driven by security concerns.

For Bucharest, regional stability is linked to Moldova’s energy security. The events of the last five years showed Russia was ready to use the energy lever to destabilize the country and the wider neighborhood.

For Chisinau, Romania is a guarantor of resilience, which it requires on its path to EU integration.

The countries may tactfully avoid the subject of unification, and it will be argued that this isn’t on the cards for now. But the truth remains that work is underway to ensure that in a sudden crisis, the barriers to union could be overcome.

Aura Sabadus

Ninety-one percent.

That’s the share of young liberal women who oppose deportations of illegal immigrants. In a country where 61% of voters support deportation efforts, one demographic has positioned itself further from the American mainstream than any other group in modern polling.

This hasn’t shown itself in just one issue. It’s a pattern. And understanding it explains a lot about our current political dysfunction.

The inversion here is striking. White young liberal women oppose deportations at 94%. Their non-white counterparts? Eighty-three percent opposed.

The women who look least like the people being deported hold the strongest opposition. The women who share ethnic backgrounds with many deportees are 11 points less absolute in their position.

We’re not measuring empathy. We’re measuring ideology. The positions don’t correlate with proximity to the issue. They correlate inversely with it.

Women 55 and older support deportations 66-27. Men of all ages support them by similar margins. But women under 55 flip to 42-53 opposition. Drill into that cohort and you find young liberal women driving the entire gender gap single-handedly.

A chasm separates them from the general electorate. It goes beyond disagreement to being in a parallel universe.

The Algorithm Did This

Values didn’t change generationally. Your grandmother and your 28-year-old cousin both believe in fairness, family, and compassion. What changed is information architecture.

Forty percent of young liberal women are highly online, 40% are watching national broadcast news, and a third get news from TikTok. They’re triple-dosing on media that reinforces identical narratives from different platforms.

Compare that to the general electorate: only 8% use TikTok as a news source. When one group’s primary information channel differs from everyone else’s by a factor of four, they’re not seeing the same country.

Brent Buchanan, Daily Signal

Senator Saddam claims that Virginia is in the middle of an ‘Islamophobia’ crisis. The second Muslim selected for the state senate, after Ghazala Hashmi, who is now acting as Virginia’s Lt. Governor, the Bangladeshi immigrant, from a country where non-Muslims are being murdered in the streets, has made complaining about ‘Islamophobia’ in his new home his signature issue.

Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim’s first priority has been a bill to define ‘Islamophobia’. The most notable thing about his bill SB 624 ‘Assault and battery; definition of “Islamophobia”, penalty’ is how completely unnecessary it is. Virginia already has multiple layers of hate crimes enhancements for assaults motivated by race, ethnicity and religion. During Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s term, the legislature has already passed SB 7 (Senate Bill 7) and its counterpart enhancing the assault charge for anyone who “intentionally selects the person against whom a simple assault is committed because of his race, religious conviction, gender, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, color, or ethnic or national origin.”

That should cover Islam and Muslims. And yet Sen. Saddam introduced a 3 page bill with 10 clauses in its first section a whole lot of whom do nothing more than add (including Islam) where it isn’t remotely needed or useful. For example “because of his race, religious conviction (including Islam), gender, disability, gender identity” or “because of his race, religious conviction (including Islam)”. Islam appears to be the only religion being singled out this way.

Why provide Islam with this privileged status? Because it makes Islam distinct, which is a step towards making it superior, and making Islam distinct and superior is the religious mission of all believing Muslims.

This isn’t about making sure that attacks on Muslims are prosecuted, but about providing Islam with special privileges.

And it’s about using supposed crimes against Muslims as bait for Islamophobia indoctrination. The Islamophobia ‘switch’ in SB 624 comes after the ‘bait’ about assaults. First, the bill sets out a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ which transforms a term created by Islamists seeking to impose their religion on society into an official legal term.

Notably, the definition in SB624 states that “Islamophobia means malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims.” This distinction is legally significant as ‘prejudice’ towards Islam distinct from prejudice towards Muslims. For example, in the UK burning a Koran has been prosecuted as a form of hate towards Islam. And that opens the door to blasphemy law.

Having malicious prejudice towards Muslims is perfectly sufficient in prosecuting an assault or a case of discrimination. Islam however is a religion and just like any religion or any other belief system, people have the right to be opposed to it as long as they don’t mistreat others.

The use of “Islam or Muslims” embeds the first stage of blasphemy law inside Virginia law.

But that’s the whole reason why ‘Islamophobia’ was manufactured as a political term. Unlike ‘racism’ or ‘antisemitism’, it’s not hatred towards a group, but towards an ideological abstraction. ‘Islamophobia’ legislation isn’t protecting persecuted individuals, but the status of an ideology. And those forms of ‘protection’ invariably turn out to ban ‘blasphemy’ against Islam by censoring cartoons, art (at least one art professor was fired for showing paintings of Mohammed in class) and any public criticism of the Islamic persecution of women, minorities and all non-Muslims.

SB 624 claims that it’s not trying to “regulate or restrict any speech, expression, or belief”, but by including a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that mentions ‘Islam’ and puts it first, it’s laying the groundwork for doing exactly that.

Compare this to HB 2261 under Gov. Youngkin, which Islamist and leftist groups urgently opposed, which defined antisemitism and which did not mention ‘Judaism’, but rather defined it as a “hatred toward Jews and includes rhetorical and physical manifestations of hostility or hatred that may be directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals or their property, the Jewish community, or Jewish institutions and religious facilities.” In all of these cases, antisemitism involved hatred against Jews, synagogues or other facilities, not ‘Judaism’.

Why doesn’t Sen. Saddam’s ‘Islamophobia’ bill use that as a model? Because it’s not about protecting Muslims from violence, but about imposing Islam as a legal concept on Virginia.

The object of SB 624 and every effort to define ‘Islamophobia’ isn’t Muslims, it’s Islam. The pretense that Muslims are facing violence and need a new bill to protect them falls apart because the very definition is aimed at protecting ‘Islam’, the religion, not the individuals.

Virginia’s extensive hate crime codes already amply protect Muslims from anything and everything. The only ‘gap’, from the Islamist perspective, is the status of Islam.

The ‘Islamophobia’ definition of SB 624 gives a distinct and special status to Islam, it defines Islam as an entity that must be protected by the government and the law enforcement agencies whom the bill obligates to use this definition of ‘Islamophobia’ when prosecuting hate crimes. And that paves the way for criminalizing Koran defacement and Mohammed paintings.

It’s telling that Virginia’s highest profile ‘Islamophobia’ case was a lie. And it happened in Fairfax County, which is represented by Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim. Darwin Martinez Torres, an illegal alien MS-13 gang member, killed Nabra Hassanen, a Muslim teenage girl, and rather than blaming Fairfax’s sanctuary policies that enabled Torres to be there roaming the streets, Islamist groups and their radical allies falsely blamed ‘Islamophobia’ and intimidated local authorities, including prosecutors, into propping up their hoax. Police initially correctly stated that it was road rage before being forced to spread the lie that it had been motivated by Islam.

The evidence that it was a ‘hate crime’?

In the words of a Washington Post reporter “hitting a 17-year-old girl with a bat and dumping her body in a pond would be an act born of hate.” Perhaps, but not of Muslims or of Islam.

Nabra Hassanen’s murder was used to promote the myth that there was an ‘Islamophobia’ crisis in Virginia and SB 624 is the next stage in which Islamists profit by creating a distinct legal status for Islam. That is how one lie about ‘Islamophobia’ becomes a state law.

Front Page Magazine

The EEOC’s investigation and subpoena sought information related to these allegations, with some requests going back to 2018. Information sought included criteria used in selecting employees for layoffs; information related to the company’s tracking and use of worker race and ethnicity data, including as a factor in setting executive compensation; and information about 16 programs which allegedly provided race-restricted mentoring, leadership, or career development opportunities. When the company failed to produce all the information sought by the subpoena, the agency filed an enforcement action in federal court.

The EEOC’s investigation and subpoena sought information related to these allegations, with some requests going back to 2018. Information sought included criteria used in selecting employees for layoffs; information related to the company’s tracking and use of worker race and ethnicity data, including as a factor in setting executive compensation; and information about 16 programs which allegedly provided race-restricted mentoring, leadership, or career development opportunities. When the company failed to produce all the information sought by the subpoena, the agency filed an enforcement action in federal court.

Nike is under federal investigation for discriminating against White workers.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is probing Nike for discriminating against Whites with its DEI programs.

“When there are compelling indications, including corporate admissions in extensive public materials, that an employer’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related programs may violate federal prohibitions against race discrimination or other forms of unlawful discrimination, the EEOC will take all necessary steps—including subpoena enforcement actions—to ensure the opportunity to fully and comprehensively investigate,” said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas.

Press release from the EEOC:

“Title VII’s prohibition of race-based employment discrimination is colorblind and requires the EEOC to protect employees of all races from unlawful employment practices. Thanks to President Trump’s commitment to enforcing our nation’s civil rights laws, the EEOC has renewed its focus on evenhanded enforcement of Title VII,” Lucas said.

Nike claimed they are committed to “fair and lawful employment practices.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today that the federal agency filed an action in federal court to compel NIKE, Inc. to produce information related to allegations that the company discriminated against white workers, including as a result of NIKE’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related 2025 Targets and other DEI-related objectives.

According to the EEOC’s court filing, the agency is investigating systemic allegations of DEI-related intentional race discrimination, specifically that NIKE may have engaged in “a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white employees, applicants and training program participants in hiring, promotion, demotion, or separation decisions, including selection for layoffs; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs.”

The EEOC’s investigation and subpoena sought information related to these allegations, with some requests going back to 2018. Information sought included criteria used in selecting employees for layoffs; information related to the company’s tracking and use of worker race and ethnicity data, including as a factor in setting executive compensation; and information about 16 programs which allegedly provided race-restricted mentoring, leadership, or career development opportunities. When the company failed to produce all the information sought by the subpoena, the agency filed an enforcement action in federal court.

According to the EEOC’s court filing, the agency is investigating systemic allegations of DEI-related intentional race discrimination, specifically that NIKE may have engaged in “a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white employees, applicants and training program participants in hiring, promotion, demotion, or separation decisions, including selection for layoffs; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs.”

Cristina Laila, Gateway Pundit