Yeah, well, we told you so before you got into this mess.
…
The Nantucket City Council and Nantucket residents are suffering from buyer’s remorse, like everybody who decided to buy a Yugo based on the marketing that it was a great car at an amazing price.
We told you so. It’s as if liberals see common sense and choose to do the opposite of what it tells them. No amount of sage advice will dissuade them because some “expert” with dollar signs in their eyes can talk them into anything as long as they whisper magic words like “renewable energy.”
If they could go back in time, officials in Nantucket, Massachusetts, wouldn’t sign the legal agreement that helped bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town’s picturesque shoreline.
That was the common sentiment expressed during a Nantucket select board meeting this week about the August 2020 community benefit agreement the town entered into with developers of the Vineyard Wind project, which is currently under construction. “These wind turbines are bigger, brighter, and much more impactful than we ever thought—and not to mention the environmental hazards from failures,” said Dawn Hill, the chairwoman of the select board, which serves as the town’s executive body.
The agreement represented Nantucket’s formal endorsement of the project and satisfied Vineyard Wind’s legal responsibility to consult with the town. Because Nantucket is a federally designated national historic district, regulators and developers must consult with the town on new projects that may threaten its protected status.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” added Greg Werkheiser, an attorney who represents Nantucket. “Every lawyer in the world wishes 5 or 10 years into a negotiated contract that they could take the knowledge they have, fly back in time, and renegotiate—but communities make the choices they have with the information they have at the time.”
WE told you so. They had the information if they cared to look. They saw it and rejected it because they believed they were smarter than everybody else. They are the good people. Virtuous. Want to save Gaia, if not the whales. So they bought into a lie.
Hill, Werkheiser, and the other officials present accused Vineyard Wind of cutting off communications with the town, failing to reduce light pollution emitted by its turbines, slow-walking reports on environmental impacts of the project, failing to disclose construction delays, and failing to work with officials on a plan for emergency scenarios—all of which they said are violations of the 2020 agreement. The Nantucket officials then directed 15 public demands at Vineyard Wind.
The issue is a microcosm of the resistance offshore wind projects have faced in coastal communities along the East Coast and could serve as a warning for communities where developers are considering future projects. But while communities in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York have successfully stymied offshore wind development, Nantucket’s options are more limited—Vineyard Wind is permitted, already under construction, and expected to begin operations by the end of the year.
We told them so. But this is Nantucket, where all the beautiful people know so much more than we do. They are the good people who look down their noses at us, sure in the knowledge that they will do well by doing good. Wind power! It must be great!
Newsflash: it’s not great. And it’s not even as if the ocean is just a nice view getting ruined by the turbines. For many, it is their livelihood, and these clean energy vultures are utterly indifferent to that. Not only do people work on the ocean, but tourism also drives the economy.
Tensions between Nantucket and Vineyard Wind reached a boiling point in July 2024 after a football field-sized blade on one of its wind towers fell apart during construction, sending 50 tons of fiberglass and industrial-grade foam into the ocean, forcing the island’s beaches to close. Project developers waited until debris washed ashore three days following the failure before they informed Nantucket about the incident, sparking fury from officials, businesses, and residents.
In the 12 months since the blade failure, the developers haven’t provided the town with information about changes to the construction timeline or the progress of environmental reviews related to the blade failure. As of this week, Vineyard Wind’s leadership remains in “hiding,” according to Mohr. Alas, Vineyard Wind issued its most recent press release in October, and its only public update this year appears to have come during an earnings call held last week by one of its developers, the Spain-based energy firm Iberdrola.
“They were not uninformed. Local groups were informing them five years ago that they should not do this deal and gave them all the reasons why they now regret it,” said Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute. “The folks in the town didn’t fight, they didn’t look at all the negatives, they just didn’t listen.”
This is a pattern that, by now, we have all seen except the liberals who keep making the same mistakes over and over again. It’s not just “clean energy”-it’s everything. It’s the homeless problem, defund the police, and every damn thing you can imagine. We warn them, but they know better.
And then disaster strikes, and they claim they didn’t have any way to know.
A false ecumenism which avoids condemning modern Christian theological errors – and the accompanying violations of natural and civil law (including international law) which silence engenders – must stop. Since the New Covenant, theologies which justify taking lands without divine mandates, along with the accompanying ethnic cleansing and war crimes, are akin to Christian apostasy (cf. Heb 6:6). False political theologies, false doctrines, and false prophecies work against the New Covenant and true peace. The errors must be condemned clearly in accord with Scripture in the Tradition [Scripture and Tradition are inseparable]. This can be done alongside condemnations of antisemitism and better definitions of it. Recent definitions of antisemitism which include anti-Zionism are false definitions and counterproductive…(especially since ‘theological’ Zionism must be condemned).”
Introduction: There Are Forms of Zionism Contrary to Christian Doctrine
Culturally, America’s founding was overwhelmingly by a majority population of Christians. Catholics paved and navigated the way for Anglicans to colonize America’s East Coast after the Spanish had established routes between Europe and the New World. At the same time further north, French Catholics established settlements in what became Canada. Before the other European settlements, Catholic Spain settled Florida and territory that eventually became the USA. Besides settlements that became California and Texas, Catholic Spain also settled Mexico and Central and South America (along with Catholic Portugal). After Spain permanently settled Florida, the Anglicans established the Thirteen Colonies of what initiated the USA.
The Americas is the result of an overwhelmingly Christian endeavor at the foundation of which formed the modern nations, cultures and laws. Christians from North to South America have an obligation to ensure Christian culture endures in a place of esteem and honor within their nations. This is owed not only for the sake of honoring good heritage but also the truth that Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation for the salvation of the human race. Nevertheless, as an American-born U.S. citizen and Catholic authoring this essay, it will focus on the USA as “America” and will criticize “theological” Zionism (as opposed to early 20th century “political” Zionism). The goal is to reform American politics and stem a growing Christian apostasy. Renewal and reform are a necessity for every individual and nation.
About the last sixty years, U.S. Americans appropriated and developed a Zionist mindset which had always been foreign to Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Catholics and Orthodox outside the Middle East in general were not interested in preventing any gradual and peaceful immigration of Jews back to Palestine for the sake of their heritage (political Zionism) and so were not necessarily anti-Zionist when the movement was well-underway at the start of the 20th century. Christians were especially open to Zionism for secular reasons (a.k.a. “political” Zionism) by the time of the 1930’s and the later Nazi holocaust of Jews. At that time of clear revelation of atrocities (1945) everyone, including Palestinians, wanted safety for Jews from such future crimes. Earlier lack of overt support was not from what some modern Jewish critics attempt to label falsely as antisemitism, or hate based on ethnicity. Middle East opposition was related to massive British-sponsored immigration of Europeans into the region, not antisemitism.
Rather, Catholic and Orthodox Churches maintained apostolic succession and Christ’s mandates to govern and teach the people of God which no other Christian communities could legitimately claim from Scripture and history. They were open to a homeland for Jews (political Zionism])for political reasons, but absolutely not in Palestine for primarily theological reasons (a.k.a. “theological” Zionism) in terms of a divine mandate. As authentic ministers and judges within the New Covenant of Christ the King, which all the law and prophets of ancient Israel had anticipated for the future Israel (cf. Rom 9:6-8), it was the duty of Catholic and Orthodox bishops to show love and mercy and make proper distinctions between “political” and “theological” acceptance. However, since bishops govern as stewards of a kingdom that is not of this world, they did not interfere in the mandates proper to secular governments like Great Britain and later enshrinements of international law at the United Nations (of which the Vatican has observer status).
According to Christ’s mandates as judges and stewards, Catholic and Orthodox bishops rightly interpreted how the promises of God had taken final form (cf. Heb 9:10) in the renewed Israel of God (cf. Gal 6:16) of the “new covenant” (Jer 31:31), the Church. Any kind of Zionism that would pretend ancient Israelites and their descendants “according-to-the-flesh” (Rom 9:3) still had a divine mandate to take forcibly the lands of ancient Israel was known to be false doctrine and contrary to the doctrines of Jesus Christ. Jews could lawfully acquire land in accord with natural and international law in Palestine (political Zionism), but no one should pretend there was a divine mandate or necessity for such acquisitions since the time of Christ and destruction of the Second Temple. For this reason, most Christians by the 1940’s originally went along with what was more a secular or “political” Zionism rather than what later became a “theological” Zionism, claims to a divine mandate and right to Palestinian lands.
Jewish Zionists have no divine mandate to forcibly take land from Palestinians or territories under the control of other countries or peoples. God’s plan in Christ “reformed” (cf. Heb 9:10; Eph 1:10) all mandates. Mandates are the issue at the heart of the wars and conflicts in Palestine and the Middle East where illegal Jewish settlers continue to try and take land from Palestinians and others. In a recent Vatican News article (28 July 2025) about the illegal Jewish settlers trying to run Christian Palestinians off their land in the Palestinian West Bank, German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert commented upon the matter: “Whether the target is a Christian village or a Muslim community, these extremist settlers may claim divine mandate, but in truth they are criminals, strangers to any authentic faith.” (Emphasis mine.)
As Middle East wars and politics became more divisive after 1967 when the state of Israel expanded through wars and occupations, American corporate media monopolized the narrative and led Americans not to question the political Zionism which rapidly was becoming theological Zionism. Christian fundamentalists in America were adopting theological Zionism as a part of their prior false dispensationalist prophetic views (Christian Zionism) related to the Book of Revelation. Many Dispensationalist views did not accept the Church as the new or “reformed” (cf Heb 9:10) Israel. Christian Zionists, especially Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority of the 1980’s, brought theological Zionism to bear in American foreign policy in both major political parties and the growing deep state.
Christian Zionism basically infused theological Zionism into American foreign policy and so the governing elite (Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc…) implicitly adopted in their outlooks the false doctrine of theological Zionism: that Jews still had a divine mandate for sole possession of the lands of Palestine and it overrode natural rights. It’s understood that theological Zionism can have more moderate views than the illegal settlers. Nevertheless, comments of recent cabinet picks of President Trump, especially a Catholic Congresswoman, specifically advocated that Israel had a divine mandate for the land during Senate confirmation hearings.
NO ONE, no single group alone, has a divine mandate any longer for the lands. Early 20th century acceptance of the past’s secular (or “political”) Zionism mistakenly led to growing acceptance of “theological” Zionism by the 1980’s. It has only grown worse when 21st century Senators like Ted Cruz tell Americans we have an obligation to support the state of Israel because basically “the Bible says so.” Herein, America behaves theocratically and needs Papal counsel.
Theological Zionism colonized the American mind and led to endless modern Middle East false crusades as Americans adopted Christian Zionism as a standard political ethos: Christians had to help the Jews, despite an illegal occupation according to international law, because “the Bible says so.” Is “crusades” too strong a term? Have people already forgotten that in 2001 George W. Bush called American response to 9/11 a new “crusade” days after the terror attacks? “This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” A group of Jewish Zionist Israelis (not representative of all Jews) danced in New York City because they knew this attack would drag America more deeply into their wars for more Palestinian lands. The truth is that American acceptance of theological Zionism had already dragged Congress into today’s acceptance of Netanyahu’s politics since the 1990’s and into 2025 with starvation of Gazans. Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress in 2024 just before the ICC issued arrest warrants for war crimes in Gaza. In turn, the U.S. sanctioned ICC members for Netanyahu (and probably their own protection).
In 2001, Bush’s speechwriters knew America’s European and Christian heritage, but Zionism had distorted the heritage. Nevertheless, the Zionist mindset behind Bush’s modern false “crusade” and the neo-conservative desire to remake the Middle East, was destructive to Christian identity and mission. Its true ends, theological Zionism, were injurious to Christian culture in America. It was about making the Middle East and America safe for theological Zionists (misled Christians and crypto-Kahanists), but not necessarily for authentic Christianity and Rabbinic or Talmudic Jews.
By the years 2024 to 2025 of the Christian Era, theological Zionism made American Christians and politicians blind to a genocide in Gaza and ICC concerns under the false banner of primarily fighting Islamic terrorists. Yes, Islamic terrorist ideology must also be resisted always and everywhere, and the state of Israel has a right to defend itself, but arming and funding an Israeli military involved in genocide and/or ethnic cleansing is not Christian heritage and remains contrary to American law. There will be serious need for serious deprogramming of people who advocated for starvation and slaughter of civilians.
For decades, propaganda machines and social media have been militarized and funded by the state of Israel for Zionist goals. The military-industrial complex of a foreign nation specifically targets Americans to stop the questioning of Zionism and so preserve American military support for Israel’s theological Zionist expansionism. It is partly why Congress passed a non-binding resolution in December 2023 which threatened authentic free-speech and falsely labeled anti-Zionism as hate speech and antisemitism. Israel sponsors limiting free speech concerning Zionism under the pretense that it is identical with Judaism.
Americans rightly love our Jewish neighbors and hate real antisemitism, but Americans are now supposed to be afraid to question “Zionism” which can include “theological” Zionism. American Christians must realize Zionism is not the sole representative of Judaism, but an attempt to use Judaism for political ends and what Christians have always known to be a false Messianism. Yes, militant Islam, always a threat within and from Islam itself, is a threat to Christianity, but this does not make Zionism in its “religious” or “theological” form an ally or friend of Christianity. Christians still seek authentic friendship with all Jews and Muslims of goodwill.
Theological Zionism is not just held by a vast number of Jews, but especially by large swaths of Christians in America (primarily fundamentalists who originally spread it, but shockingly many American Catholics who absorbed it). Late 19th century Zionism originally was basically a movement about a homeland for the Jews that romanticized about returning to what was once ancient biblical Israel 3,000 years ago. Who wouldn’t romanticize such a return after various persecutions in Christian and Communist countries and countless pogroms? In its romanticization and zeal, ideological adherents forget to mention ancient Israel was destroyed 2,700 years ago when most of it was overrun by the Assyrians and left only the small remnant of Judea and their land (Judah, one tribe of the original 12 which eventually encompassed Benjamin and a mix of Levites, became known as the Jews).
A hundred years after the Assyrian destruction of Israel 2700 years ago, Judea was basically occupied from that time forward by foreign world empires until Judea was destroyed 2,000 years ago. Judea and the capitol Jerusalem were destroyed exactly forty years after Jewish leaders rejected and condemned Jesus Christ, exactly as Jesus Christ prophesied. Since then, and until the Zionist “return” movement of the late 19th century – which later was officially adopted by the British government in the early 20th century – Jews had been an extremely small population in what had become Palestine for 1900 years. About 1880 A.D., the Jewish population in Palestine (according to Ottoman records) was about 2-5% of the population of the territory (cf. Jonathan Mendel in Ilan Pappe’s 10 Myths About Israel). Zionists originally wished to legally acquire the land from the centuries-old legal inhabitants of Palestine. Many Arabs will explain that what once started as legal became the Nakba, forced and violent displacement due to both political and theological Zionism.
In all blunt actuality, Zionism, a political movement motivated by religious romanticism for an era that hadn’t existed for 3,000 years, rode on the back of anti-Catholic and Freemasonic British sponsorship under the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ensuing British rule over Palestine, basically through a League of Nations mandate. (“Freemasonry” matters because it is inherently relativist and indifferentist when it comes to Christian doctrine and relation of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.) Palestine in the early 1920’s became known as British Mandated Palestine through 1948. This is when Jews began larger and rapid migrations into Palestine and eventually began to expel Palestinians from the Palestinian homelands where Christians were 15% of the population and Muslims were 80% of the population before modern political Zionism. Since that time, the romanticized political movement of Zionism grew into a religious movement or “religious Zionism.” It was due to fundamentalist Chrisitan political “forces” in America joining with fundamentalist Jewish Zionists; all due to false prophecies and false interpretations of God’s covenants (which relied on false “theological” Zionism).
Where Zionism was originally a romanticized ethno-political movement in the late-19th and early-20th century under Theodore Herzl, and initially led by agnostic and Jewish atheists wanting a homeland where Jews would not be persecuted for their ethnic identity and Rabbinic or Talmudic Judaism (practicing Judaism without a Temple and without animal sacrifices), it became more religious and fundamentalist by the 1980’s-90’s. This fundamentalist turn or “religious” Zionism embraced theological Zionism and has led to endless violations of the rights of Palestinian Christians and Muslims. It also must be noted that many Jews in America and throughout the world also oppose these violations of Palestinian rights and they reject violent settlers in their theological views.
After the long-term Likud party leadership of the 21st century, extreme “theological” Zionists entered Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet since 2022 with Itamar Ben Gvir, etc… With these more recent political-theological events in mind, the true Israel of God (the Church of the New Covenant) has an obligation to remind the world of its mandate and condemn any form of theological Zionism by Christians (particularly Americans) and Jews which has led to lawlessness by Israeli Jewish settlers and/or prolonged denial of rights to Palestinians. After all, why would the American State Department remove sanctions on illegal Jewish settlers in 2025 given the extreme conditions in the West Bank of 2024-2025? In union with the Christian Patriarchs of the Palestinian territories and territories of the state of Israel, it is hoped the Pope will officially condemn the errors of theological Zionism. An encyclical is a good tool of magisterial authority to affirm the faith that Jesus established as King of “the Israel of God,” the new Israel (Gal 6:16; cf. LG #9.3).
This essay will expand this argument into three parts: Part I: an explanation on how ancient Israel lost its divine mandate for the land, but the Church, the reformed and new Israel (cf. Heb 9:10; Gal 6:16; Rom 9:4-8; LG #9.3) has the spiritual mandate to teach and clarify God’s promises; Part II: the present situation and long-suffering of Palestinians necessitating intervention; and, lastly, Part III: legal papal interventions available. It wishes to condemn antisemitism and simultaneously protect the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The essay strives to maintain proper distinctions to accomplish this. It needs a charitable reading since the audience is at different levels of background and there are many complexities which it tries to summarize fairly.
Recent revelations from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have undermined the Deep State party line that Seth Rich’s murder was a botched robbery. This assumption hinged on the nearly universal acceptance that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and DCCC servers in 2016. That assumption has collapsed.
In the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, unknown assailants beat and then shot to death the 27-year-old DNC data analyst. This much is not in question. Everything else about Rich’s murder is. The most honest assessment of what happened to Rich came from his mother. On the day after the shooting, Mary Rich, told local TV news that her son struggled with his attackers: “His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything….They took his life for literally no reason. They didn’t finish robbing him, they just took his life.”
In fact, they did not start robbing him. They left without taking his cellphone, his wallet, or his watch. The dying Rich told the police only that his assailants spoke Spanish (as, curiously, did the operatives who broke into the Watergate). Against the backdrop of the very public Hillary email scandal, the inexplicable murder of a Bernie Sanders-supporting DNC data analyst should have been catnip for every red blooded journalist in DC.
It wasn’t. From this point on, Democrats and their media allies aggressively suppressed any suggestion that Rich’s death was something other than a “botched robbery.” As FOX News learned the hard way, to question whether Rich may have been the source of the emails leaked to Julian Assange and Wikileaks was to invite scorn and crippling law suits.
For Democrats, the one silver lining in the April 2019 release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference was the belief that, if nothing else, Team Mueller put the kibosh on the various “conspiracy theories” around Rich’s murder. Said the leftist Daily Beast at the time, “Julian Assange repeatedly blamed Seth Rich, the murdered DNC staffer, for Russia’s leaks. The Mueller report shows that Assange was lying from the start.”
Far from “blaming” Rich, Assange offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Rich’s killers. Team Mueller acknowledged that Assange had strongly suggested Rich was his source but dismissed Assange’s comments, claiming they were “designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing.“ This was nuts. Assange had far less reason to protect the Russians than Mueller did to indict them.
Team Mueller expressed shock that even after the now infamous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was released on January 6, 2017, “Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking.” According to Mueller, Assange reportedly told a U.S. congressman “that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”
It would have helped, of course, if Mueller and his team had spoken with Assange, but his first hand evidence would have spoiled the second hand narrative they established at the top of the report—”The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” This unfounded assumption dictated all conclusions that followed. Assange was “lying” because he challenged those conclusions.
In tracing the “evidence of Russian government operations,” the Mueller report cites as Exhibit A the fact that “in June [2016], the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network.”
The “cyber response team” in question was CrowdStrike, an outfit recommended by Perkins Coie, the same law firm responsible for the Steele dossier. The FBI had been shut out of the review. On January 5, 2017, a “senior law enforcement official” admitted as much, telling CNN, “The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated.” CNN reported this a day before the ICA was released.
The fact that its agents were denied access to the DNC servers may explain why, as Tulsi Gabbard reported, “the FBI and NSA had ‘low confidence’ in attributing the data leaks from these entities to Russia.” In its October 7, 2016 press release on Russian interference the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security chose to suppress this exculpatory bit of information.
Even CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry had doubts about Russia hacking the DNC servers. In closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Community in 2017, he conceded, “There’s not evidence that [the data] were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.”
Leonard Benardo was less concerned about whether Russians hacked the DNC servers than he was about how Hillary Clinton could exploit the rumor that they had. Benardo, senior vice president for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, was planted deep in the Clinton campaign. Of note, he began his work with the Open Society Foundations at the Soros Foundation Moscow.
Clinton’s schemes, laid out in a pair of emails, were unearthed by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) John Durham and shared by Gabbard this week. In a July 25, 2016, email, Bernardo wrote, “The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid…Julie says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
“Julie” refers to Clinton campaign official Julia Smith. In the two days that followed Smith appears to have run her plans by Hillary Clinton. On July 27, 2016, Benardo wrote, “HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russia hampering U.S. elections. This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level.” When questioned by Durham’s staff, Benardo lamely asserted that “to the best of his knowledge, he did not draft the emails.”
None of this proves people close to Hillary Clinton had Seth Rich killed, but it does show that Assange is a more credible source than the conspirators who framed Donald Trump. The Rich murder deserves the attention it was denied from day one. There can be no surer way to pierce the fog in which the legacy media have shrouded this scandal than to find Rich’s killers.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will begin trying to remove Democratic lawmakers from office Monday if they don’t return. Dozens of them left the state in a last-resort attempt to block redrawn U.S. House maps that President Trump wants before the 2026 midterm elections.
Abbott is taking a far more aggressive stance than the one he took in 2021. He swiftly warning Democrats that he will seek to remove them from office if they are not back when the House reconvenes Monday afternoon. Abbott cited a non-binding 2021 legal opinion issued by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, which suggested a court could determine that a legislator had forfeited their office.
He also suggested the lawmakers may have committed felonies by raising money to help pay for fines they’d face.
“This truancy ends now,” Abbott said.
In response, House Democrats issued a four-word statement: “Come and take it.”
Background
Forty Democrats left the state on Sunday and fled to Illinois so they wouldn’t have to deal with the vote on redistricting. Ironically, Illinois is one of the worst gerrymandered states in the nation, which is why it goes left most elections.
The Republicans are trying to add five more seats through redistricting at the suggestion of President Trump. Four of the five new districts are majority Hispanic. This is not a racial move.
Republicans hold 25 of the 38 states. They are attempting to do what Democrats have done in states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and so on.
A vote on the proposed maps had been set for Monday in the Texas House of Representatives, but it cannot proceed if the majority of Democratic members deny a quorum by not showing up. After one group of Democrats landed in Chicago on Sunday, they were welcomed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, but declined to say how long they were prepared to stay out of Texas.
“We will do whatever it takes. What that looks like, we don’t know,” said state Rep. Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus leader.
All the walkout does is delay the vote. In other words, it’s theatrics to show their base they are doing something so courageous that you have to vote for them again.
How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference.
President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured), as President Trump announces a deal to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 14, 2025. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)
August 4, 2025 6:30 AM
‘How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics sends a survey to employers each month to figure out how many people they employ, as part of the jobs report. In the good old days before Covid, that survey had a response rate of about 60 percent. From respondents’ guesses about how many people they employ, the BLS had to guess about how many people are employed in this nation of 340 million souls.
That’s a really hard job. The BLS employs some of the best statisticians in the world, and they happen to be pretty good at it, often getting within a tenth of a percent of the final workforce numbers.
Then, Covid happened, and the establishment survey response rate dropped like a rock. It hasn’t recovered and currently sits at 43 percent. What was already hard at a 60 percent response rate is now even harder.
The problem of falling response rates has been well known for years, even before Covid. “The quality of data from household surveys is in decline,” said a paper published in the fall 2015 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, because “households have become increasingly less likely to answer surveys at all” and “those that respond are less likely to answer certain questions.”
Within government, Donald Trump’s appointee as BLS commissioner, William Beach, has been a leader in calling for modernizing the surveys that statistical agencies rely on. As commissioner from 2019 to 2023, Beach asked Congress for several million dollars in funding — peanuts, in federal budget terms — to redo the survey along the lines of other countries such as the U.K., which now uses an online-first methodology. It never came to be.
Beach organized a letter to Congress and the executive branch signed by numerous statistical experts in February of this year outlining the long-running problems statistical agencies have been facing. Budgets have not kept up with costs that are out of the agencies’ control, and staff who were doing vital work have been cut. Neither Congress nor the administration took action.
Beach has called Trump’s firing of his successor, Erika McEntarfer, “totally groundless,” and he’s correct. The issues with jobs reporting are not about politics or McEntarfer’s competence. In fact, they are exactly the kind of thing that an administration committed to technological modernization and government efficiency should find to be in its wheelhouse. And there’s no reason to think this particular jobs report was any more flawed than any other.
McEntarfer was not standing in the way of this modernization. Trump was mad about the jobs report, so he fired her.
He made this abundantly clear in a Truth Social post less than an hour after the one announcing McEntarfer’s firing, where he called the jobs numbers “rigged” against Republicans. So biased, apparently, that Vice President Vance was referring to them approvingly on social media mere hours beforehand.
There’s no consistent partisan bias at work here, as was demonstrated last year when the same BLS that Trump said was pro-Democrat for issuing downward revisions of earlier jobs reports under Biden issued the weakest jobs report of the year right before the presidential election. The job is hard when done well, and it’s been getting harder to do well.
Trump is now claiming the downward revisions of earlier jobs reports under Trump are a sign of political bias, even though that means it was initially making him look better. He says so because he wants the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, and weakening job performance makes that more likely.
No one should have to take these tantrums seriously, but firing the BLS commissioner is serious. The integrity of United States statistics is important not just for the government, but for the private sector as well. And these reports are relied upon around the world, not just in the U.S. The goal should be to get them right, not make them more favorable to the president.
Trump is shooting the messenger of bad economic news, not unlike when China discontinues inconvenient data series that make the Communist Party look bad. The BLS will continue to do its work, but now under a justified cloud of speculation that it is manipulating data to avoid Trump’s wrath. And the economy itself is what it is, no matter how the statistics are reported.
Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks.
Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses.
Read what our legacy media predicted in March for this summer’s economy, or in January for the future of the border, or what would happen should the U.S. Air Force enter Iranian airspace.
Take the border. “Comprehensive immigration reform” (a euphemism for rolling amnesties and a still-open border) was the establishment’s answer to 10,000 foreign nationals storming the border during peak surges of the Biden administration.
But no president had ever simultaneously 1) pressured Mexico to close its borders and patrol ours, 2) announced a plan to complete a border wall along the entire US-Mexico boundary, 3) stopped catch-and-release, 4) ceased refugee applications after illegally entering the U.S., 5) introduced policies encouraging voluntary self-deportation, and 6) prevented all illegal entries at the border.
The result is that we do not know the full effects of these combined border policies.
So far, one million foreign nationals have lost jobs, and 2 million Americans have gained them since Trump’s inauguration. How much money will be saved in local, state, and federal entitlements if illegal immigrants return home?
How much trauma and costs will be avoided if 500,000 criminal aliens are deported?
How many serious and lethal hit-and-run accidents will be prevented?
To what degree will the idea of citizenship be reenergized once it is not reduced to the equivalency of mere residence?
How many emergency rooms will have more space for U.S. citizens? No one knows, but the consequences could be enormous.
The U.S. has never applied so many tariffs in so many ways upon so many goods from so many countries. As a result, economists have sworn since March that we are headed to a recession, stock collapse, stagflation, and high unemployment.
But do they really know the profit margins of our mercantile importers, who tariff our goods but expect easy entry for their exports to the U.S.?
Can importers pay a 15% tariff, still make a handsome profit, and not raise costs excessively on the U.S. consumer? If trade surpluses do not matter and tariffs hurt those who implement them, why do sophisticated Europeans, adroit Japanese, and smart Chinese prefer surpluses and tariffs to our deficits and zero or low tariffs? Are they on to something?
Do moderate tariffs encourage rather than retard American enterprise, on the theory that it will not be undercut by dumping and exchange manipulation and can also compete with far cheaper energy and transportation costs?
No one really knows these answers because the U.S. has never tried the current policy in quite the present way before. We do know that the radical free trade and asymmetrical tariffs of the last half-century empowered China to world power status with a dangerous military and hollowed out the U.S. industrial interior.
Is the $2 trillion budget deficit, as predicted, set in stone? Will the national debt only grow to unsustainable levels? However, federal agencies have never announced annual cuts of nearly $200 billion—along with a ten percent reduction in the budget deficit.
Never has the government promised to deregulate and fast-track permits for construction, energy development, and manufacturing from 2-3 years to mere months. What will the financial results be?
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggests that $15 trillion in new foreign investments are now promised. If accurate, what will such influxes do to employment? To federal revenues? To the economy in general?
Is it possible that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could be right that $300 billion in federal income will come from new tariffs—if true, that might reduce the deficit by another 15 percent?
What is the effect on the economy of cheaper energy costs when production is slated to rise without draining the strategic petroleum reserve on the eve of elections?
No one has ever questioned universities before so systematically.
We do know that student loan debt has spiraled to $1.7 trillion. Graduation rates have dropped to about 50-60 percent of those who enroll. The average student now takes six—not four—years to graduate. Today’s graduates, by all accounts, leave universities with fewer analytical skills, less language fluency, and reduced general knowledge than in past decades. Faculties have never been more weaponized, with 90-95 percent reportedly holding progressive views.
If universities are taxed on their endowments, will that not force them to reconsider their efforts to maintain their non-profit status?
Will 15 percent limits on overhead charges on federal grants force researchers to watch their budgets and universities to curb their bloated administrative legions?
What is so wrong with curbing the tuition gouging and profiteering off foreign students, and limiting their numbers to ensure access to underserved, deserving Americans?
Will the end of segregated dorms, safe spaces, and “affinity” graduations lead to more integration and assimilation than do the current tribal fixations on race and ethnicity? Historically, does tribalism or assimilation best serve a nation?
Will meritocratic admissions improve student skills, rewarding those who study hard and encouraging those who do not to emulate those who do? Will minorities who are admitted under meritocratic criteria be seen as more or less qualified?
Are far fewer administrators, more emphasis on instruction and less on politics, and more students from the heartland and fewer from communist China or the illiberal Middle East such bad things?
In the last 50 years, affirmative action transmogrified into DEI racial separatism, chauvinism, and a system of reparatory spoils, played and manipulated by grifters, opportunists, and fakers, from Elizabeth Warren-style phonies and Jussie Smollett-like con artists to opportunists like Zohran Mamdani who game the system.
Has any chauvinistic multiracial democracy—like Brazil or India—or any multiethnic or multireligious confederation—such as Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, or Iraq—ever succeeded by prioritizing caste, race, religious sectarianism, or ethnic tribalism?
Can any top-down imposed policy ever be successful when 70 percent of the electorate opposes it?
Can any government that institutionalizes bias and preferences succeed while ignoring class in favor of race—without ever clearly defining which racial criteria justify the entire spoils system, or why?
In our postmodern 21st-century system, no one knows exactly what will happen when race becomes incidental rather than essential. But we do know from history where we were headed under the current aberrant system.
Abroad, in the last 30 years, NATO was voluntarily hollowed out—largely praised in the abstract by European grandees and shorted and ignored in the concrete by Euro budget technocrats. Yet since the days of the Cold War, NATO members had not met their defense expenditure promises.
Now, most NATO members have met those commitments. Frontline NATO states like Sweden, Finland, and Poland are far better armed and prepared than legacy Western members like Belgium, Spain, or Italy. If there follows a rearmed and recommitted NATO, will not the world become a safer place?
We were told for a half-century to steer clear of Iran, the supposed unhinged, lethal bully of the Middle East. Their henchmen blew up barracks and embassies, took and executed hostages, and sowed terror throughout the Middle East with their killer surrogates Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
But Iran had never really fought, much less won a war, since it pleaded with Saddam Hussein for an armistice from the catastrophic Iran-Iraq conflict.
What will be the effect on the Middle East with a currently impotent Iran, an inert Hezbollah, and a subterranean Hamas in hiding? More importantly, what is the current regional role of Iran without a nuclear program, air defenses, a navy, or expeditionary terrorist forces? Again, no one knows.
Finally, we have never seen anything quite so radical as the new Democratic Party, at least not since the McGovern blowout of 1972. In its 24/7, 360-degree fixation on hating Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda, rarely has a party embraced signature policies that are so despised by the American people. As a result, we have no idea what the result will be other than a national implosion at the polls.
Why would any political party embrace open borders, the influx of 12 million illegal aliens, 600 sanctuary cities, biological men dominating women’s sports, dismantling the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries, prosecutors who release rather than indict and convict violent criminals, defunding the police, tribal fixations and racial spoils systems in defiance of the Supreme Court, the terrorists of Hamas over democratic Israel, and overt campus anti-Semitism?
We are in the middle of a counter-revolution, whose fate will likely be decided in 15 months by the midterm elections and the status of the late 2026 economy.
Structural changes across the economy, culture, and politics of the country are underway. Our bicoastal experts and authorities are mostly predicting a multifaceted systems failure—without explaining why or how.
Yet the only constant in their predictions is that when and if they prove wrong, they will not pivot, correct, or apologize, but simply move on to their next flawed prognosis, fortified by their titles and letters after their names—but otherwise little else.
The Supreme Court just handed Trump the nuclear key: the authority to fire entrenched Deep State agents embedded across federal agencies. For the first time in 90 years, the President can dismantle the bureaucratic dictatorship that’s hijacked our Republic.
FOR 90 YEARS, THE PRESIDENCY WAS A PRISON..
Since 1935, unelected operatives hid inside “independent” agencies like the FTC, SEC, and CPSC. These ideological soldiers wrote regulations like laws. Enforced them like tyrants. And they couldn’t be fired—not even by the President.
Until now.
THE COURT SWINGS THE HAMMER – TRUMP TAKES THE SWORD..
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court confirmed President Trump’s power to remove Mary Boyle, Richard Trumka Jr., and Alexander Hoehn-Saric from the CPSC—shattering the legal shield created by the New Deal’s corrupt legacy.
This isn’t just a ruling. It’s a strike against the Deep State’s fortress. It cracks the entire foundation of Humphrey’s Executor—the case that let federal commissioners rule without accountability.
TRUMP CAN NOW:
• Purge federal agencies of leftist loyalists.
• Terminate obstructive commissioners.
• Seize control of energy, labor, commerce, and finance.
• Reclaim the executive power STOLEN from We The People.
The CPSC falls first. But 700 other Deep State seats could collapse next.
THE SILENT COUP IS BEING REVERSED..
For decades, elections didn’t matter. Permanent bureaucrats ran the country. Same agenda, same handlers, different puppet Presidents.
Now, that loop is broken. The regime’s firewall is burning. And they know it.
TRUMP’S WAR POWER IS RESTORED..
In 2016, Trump was surrounded. Saboteurs on every side. He couldn’t remove them. He couldn’t override them. That was the trap.
Now, that trap is gone.
This ruling unleashes him to:
• Clean house.
• Burn shadow governance to the ground.
• Rebuild an executive branch LOYAL TO THE PEOPLE.
This isn’t just a legal technicality. It’s the beginning of a federal exorcism.
THE DEEP STATE IS CORNERED – AND TRUMP HOLDS THE AXE..
No more “independence.” No more untouchables. No more invisible rulers with unearned power.
Hamas leaders are likely to be emboldened to carry on fighting by French and British proposals to recognize a Palestinian state in a break with Trump..
Frustrated by the deadlocked peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and seeing the chances of a two-state solution slipping away, several European countries led by the United Kingdom and France have now promised to recognize an independent Palestinian state to reaffirm their commitment to a permanent settlement.
However, far from encouraging a ceasefire in the conflict that has raged in the Gaza Strip for nearly two years, European efforts will only encourage Hamas to continue fighting, prolonging the conflict that has devastated Gaza, Trump administration officials and experts warn.
“You’re rewarding Hamas if you do that. I don’t think they should be rewarded,” President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One earlier this week while returning from a trip to Scotland.
Trump also previously criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s July 24 vow to officially recognize a Palestinian state while downplaying the impact that European countries would have on the ongoing ceasefire and hostage negotiations, saying it wouldn’t “change anything.”
“The president expressed his displeasure and his disagreement with the leaders of France, the United Kingdom and Canada,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing Thursday. “He feels as though that’s rewarding Hamas at a time where Hamas is the true impediment to a ceasefire and to the release of all of the hostages.”
France and Britain, erstwhile global powers that have declined in importance under the American security umbrella, nevertheless hold some weight in the Middle East, a region previously colonized by the two countries following the First World War. Both countries have long advocated for a two-state solution, a proposal that would see an independent Israel and Palestine coexist alongside one another as homelands for their respective peoples.
But the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which is a designated terrorist group in the United States, has brutalized the notion that a peaceful coexistence is within immediate reach. Despite attempts by the United States to mediate a hostage rescue and ceasefire, negotiations between the sides have stalled, with no end to the conflict in sight.
Both the French and the British argue that moving to formally recognize a State of Palestine in the coming months – teaming up with Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states – is important for charting a path forward for a post-conflict Gaza and West Bank that preserves the dream of a two-state solution.
“[The] prospect of two states, whose rights are recognized and respected, is in mortal danger,” said French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot at a United Nations conference on the Palestinian issue July 28.
“It is threatened by the barbaric attack of 7 October,” it is “Threatened by the unprecedented savagery and cruelty that Hamas terrorists unleashed,” and “Threatened by the shameful fate of the hostages who are still being held,” continued Barrot, referring to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel.
But, it is also “threatened by the indefinite prolongation of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, launched in turn, which have long since ceased to have any military or political justification,” Barrot added, placing blame on Israel for mass displacement of Gazan civilians, destroyed places of worship, schools, hospitals and poor distribution of humanitarian aid.
The two-state solution “is about to give way to perpetual confrontation,” he also said. “That is something that France simply cannot resign itself to.”
The following day, United Kingdom Prime Minister Kier Starmer echoed the French minister, warning that a permanent peace settlement between the two sides is “under threat” by the ongoing conflict.
Starmer vowed that the United Kingdom would recognize an independent Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September if the Israelis and Hamas do not make meaningful progress towards a ceasefire that includes Hamas releasing hostages, Israel increasing access to humanitarian aid, and Israel agreeing to commit to “a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two-State Solution.”
But, President Trump and his diplomatic officials have pushed back on this Europe-led effort to recognize a Palestinian state, characterizing it as unproductive at best and a gift to Hamas at worst. Ultimately, they view the European effort as more likely to prolong the conflict rather than bring about a peaceful outcome.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the decision to recognize a Palestinian state later this year if no ceasefire is reached only encourages Hamas to obstruct any negotiations in the meantime.
“If Hamas refuses to agree to a ceasefire, it guarantees a Palestinian state will be recognized by all these countries in September,” Rubio said in an interview on Fox News Radio on Thursday. “So they’re not going to agree to a ceasefire. I mean, it’s so clumsy.”
By threatening to recognize a Palestinian state to spur peace negotiations, France and Britain are placing pressure on the wrong party. According to the Trump administration, Hamas is the main party stalling negotiations, while Israel has shown a willingness to make concessions to achieve a ceasefire.
David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who focuses his research on Israel and Palestine, told Just the News that “Hamas will only compromise when it feels intense pressure and when it thinks that continued fighting would present an existential danger to the group” because the group is primarily motivated by destruction of the Israeli state.
“Almost immediately after European support for recognizing a Palestinian state started dominating headlines, Hamas began changing agreed-upon ceasefire terms and introducing new demands,” May said. “When Europe places all the demands on Israel and doesn’t condition them on requirements of Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group just has to sit back and let European pressure do the work for it.”
The day after French President Macron vowed to recognize a Palestinian state, ceasefire and hostage negotiations with Hamas broke down over what the United States said was Hamas’s unwillingness to negotiate. The United States and Israel announced they were pulling out of the talks with Hamas because the American president said the group “didn’t want to make a deal.”
“I think they want to die. And it’s very bad. And it got to be to a point where you’re going to have to finish the job,” President Trump told reporters. Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff also blamed Hamas for the breakdown.
It is unclear whether the terror group was made aware of the French president’s announcement before it submitted the latest ceasefire proposal, which was unacceptable to the Israeli and U.S. negotiators.
Nevertheless, the European support for a Palestinian state appears to have emboldened the group. Hamas later praised the French and British promises of Palestinian recognition, even though both countries said that it would be unacceptable for the terror group to remain in control of the Gaza Strip.
“Any effort made at the international level to support our Palestinian people and their legitimate rights is appreciated and welcomed,” Hamas said in a statement. The group also demanded the “unconditional recognition” of a Palestinian state, the New York Times reported.
May said that the European intervention would end up having the “opposite effect” from what they intended.
“Rather than empowering moderate Palestinians, as the Europeans hope would happen, it would have the opposite effect,” May said. “Not only is there no credible moderate Palestinian leadership, this action as a result of a war Hamas started would prove to the Palestinians that they can only achieve independence through violence, and Hamas will be crowned as the deliverer of Palestinian statehood.”
The U.S. Senate confirmed former Fox News star and longtime Trump ally Jeanine “Judge Jeanine” Pirro as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
It can be recalled that President Trump appointed Pirro to the position following Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC)’s derailment of Ed Martin’s Senate confirmation in May.
Tillis, who voted to confirm Biden’s radical pick for Attorney General Merrick Garland, told reporters that he opposes the nomination of Ed Martin for DC US Attorney for political reasons.
He said he would have supported Martin for any district except the District of Columbia.
President Trump described her as “one of the Top District Attorneys in the History of the State of New York.”
Trump: Jeanine Pirro, I have no doubt, will be an exceptional US Attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the truly most important positions in our country of any position, where she will restore public safety in our nation’s capital, break up vicious street gangs and criminal networks, and ensure equal justice under the law. You’ll see very, very big improvements in the DC area, that I can promise you.
On Saturday evening, the U.S. Senate confirmed Jeanine Pirro as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia with a razor‑thin 50–45 vote.
More from CBS:
The Senate on Saturday approved the nomination of Jeanine Pirro, an ardent loyalist of President Trump and a Fox News fixture, confirming the cable news personality to a top prosecutor post in Washington, D.C.
Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, was confirmed in a 50-45 vote. She has been in the job as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia on an acting basis since May. Before then, she co-hosted “The Five” on Fox News on weekday evenings, where she frequently interviewed Mr. Trump.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is a powerful position with a huge staff, budget and portfolio. Her confirmation came days after the Senate approved the nomination of Emil Bove, Mr. Trump’s former defense lawyer, to serve on a U.S. appeals court.
Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate will adjourn until Sept. 2 once they finish with the round of votes scheduled for Saturday evening.
“I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourns to then convene for pro forma session only,” Thune said.
Senators have 12 votes remaining following Pirro’s confirmation, which is why Thune asked for senators to stay in the chamber to expedite votes. There was no objection.
Pirro’s elevation comes amid intense uproar from Senate Democrats and the far-left legal establishment.
They had vociferously attacked her as an election‑denier, citing her role in amplifying the “Big Lie,” and filed smears accusing her of being an unelected partisan operative in the nation’s capital.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin even wrote Senate leadership calling her “a partisan instrument of the Donald Trump administration,” urging outright rejection of her nomination.
“I write with grave concern about President Trump’s nomination of Jeanine Pirro to lead the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Over the past decade, Ms. Pirro has consistently demonstrated that her loyalty lies with Donald Trump the person, not with the Constitution or the rule of law.
Her blind loyalty to Trump, her embarrassing support for the ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was rigged in the face of all evidence to the contrary and 60 federal and state court decisions rejecting such claims, her unswerving defense of convicted January 6th rioters, and her incendiary rhetoric urging President Trump to seek retribution against his alleged enemies all make clear that she lacks the intellectual honesty, personal temperament, integrity and fundamental constitutional fidelity required to lead this important office.”
A PILF review found nearly 50,000 registrants on the Empire State’s rolls are registered in at least one other state.
New York is known for a lot of things: The Big Apple, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo wings. The Empire State also lays claim to some of the worst voter rolls in the country, according to a new report from an election-integrity watchdog.
According to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, nearly 50,000 registrants on New York’s voter list are registered in at least one other state. About half of those — 24,873 registrants — are also registered in Florida. Another 6,247 have duplicate registrations in North Carolina, and another 5,724 are also on New Jersey’s voting rolls.
PILF’s review stated 6,788 cases of duplicate or triplicate registrations were found at the same residential addresses because of name variations, typographical errors, or missing Social Security data. The mess includes 3,845 registrants with placeholder or likely false birth dates going back to the turn of the 20th century.
A sample of 15 records found six registrants who had died dating back to 1998, and four registrants who could not be matched to any Social Security or credit bureau data, putting in doubt the authenticity of the records.
“New York is a disaster,” J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Federalist in an interview. “They have got millions of voters in New York who don’t have complete voter files, don’t have full names, don’t have driver’s license numbers, things required under federal law.”
‘Slipping Through the Cracks’
A lawsuit filed last month by Mount Vernon City Council candidate Bill Schwartz alleges the New York City suburb of some 80,000 residents saw its voter rolls surge by 30 percent — or nearly 10,000 voters — in the course of a year, and the numbers heavily favor Democrats, the New York Post reported. The complaint asserts the city’s voter rolls include registrants born as early as 1901, more than suggesting there are dead people in Mount Vernon’s voter file. Schwartz charges the list includes registrants who have not voted in over a decade.
“The requested relief arises from documented irregularities and credible allegations of election fraud in the June 24, 2025 Democratic Primary, including the unexplained addition of over 9,600 new voter IDs, purging of enrolled voters without notice, and mismatches in voter ID and registration data,” the lawsuit states.
Schwartz lost a party primary election in June, the Post reported. Mount Vernon is a Democratic Party stronghold in Westchester County.
“When the voter rolls are that sloppy and no one at the Board of Elections is answering questions, you start to wonder what else is slipping through the cracks — or being pushed through them,” Schwartz told the Post. “I’m asking the court to step in and make sure the November election and future elections are conducted fairly, transparently and by the book.”
‘We’ve Got to be Vigilant’
As The Federalist reported earlier this week, voter rolls are sloppy all over. The Public Interest Legal Foundation has tracked more than 19,000 registrants on Pennsylvania’s voter rolls with second registrations in other states. PILF found north of 32,000 suspect voter records in New Jersey. In Maine, the foundation flagged 18,453 apparently deceased registrants in the state’s voter files.
PILF successfully sued the state for refusing to release voter registration records as required under the National Voter Registration Act. In internal communications uncovered during the lawsuit, the watchdog said it found Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ office “flagged PILF and other organizations for government staff to discredit and attack on social media.”
“Other emails show coordination with left-wing advocacy groups to portray PILF and even other sitting Secretaries of State as purveyors of disinformation in the lead-up to congressional hearings,” asserts a PILF press release.
Dirty voter rolls in states across the country is an alarming concern as partisans prepare for next year’s midterm elections. Adams said the concern is particularly worrisome in key battleground states.
“It’s going to make a difference in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Nevada,” he said, adding that “Nevada is worst of all.”
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, told NPR just days before November’s election what Democrat elections officials have long said: the system is safe and secure. Trust us.
“I hope, notwithstanding that recent news, that people look at numbers … and they understand that the system really is one of integrity,” Simon told the left-leaning news outlet. He was responding to a glitch in Minnesota’s new automatic voter registration system that added nearly 1,000 noncitizens to the voter rolls. Simon said elections officials quickly caught the “mistake” and removed the ineligible voters from the database.
PILF has sent letters to several state elections officials seeking meetings to further discuss sloppy voter rolls. Adams said failure to clean the voter lists of ineligible registrants presents a significant threat to election security.
“We’ve got to be vigilant. We’ve go to make sure everything is being done even-handed.”
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 