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Timeline of Events Surrounding J6 D.C. National Guard Deployment Shows Politically Motivated Decisions


As Kamala Harris and Democrats continue to use January 6 as a campaign issue, it is important to recall those responsible for preventing the National Guard from protecting the Capitol.

Thanks to the surgeon-like precision of my researcher Haley McLean, this timeline (we believe) represents the most exhaustive one to date showing the requests and denials related to the deployment of the D.C. National Guard before and on January 6, 2021. Events have been curated from a number of resources including congressional testimony, internal agency investigations, media coverage, videos, and book excerpts.

We preface the timeline with critical context and information about the lead-up to January 6 involving key political operatives and known foes of President Trump.

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Summer 2020

Jamie Fleet, then-Democratic staffer for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Committee on House Administration (chaired, at the time, by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who was later appointed to Pelosi’s January 6 Select Committee) had a team of counselors working in anticipation of coming debates and objections from states—including Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia—about the certification of the electoral college vote. Knowing that objections would likely be raised on January 6, Fleet’s team began contingency planning to prepare for the possibility that the proceedings would “not [be] traditional.”

June 2020

  • Following the June 1 photo op at Lafayette Square during the BLM riots in Washington, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley contemplated resigning. Sitting in his Pentagon office, Milley wrote several drafts of a letter of resignation. Milley sought advice from a wide circle of confidants, including Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs under the Obama administration; retired Army General James Dubik; members of Congress; former officials with the George W. Bush and Obama administrations; and Robert Gates, former secretary of Defense and CIA chief. Most agreed with Gates’s advice: “Make them fire you. Don’t resign.”
    • After Lafayette Square, Gates told both Gen. Milley and then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that, “given Trump’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior, they needed to stay in the Pentagon as long as they could.” 
    • By June 10, 2020 Gen. Milley had decided not to resign. “Fuck that shit,” he reportedly told his staff. “I’ll just fight him.” Milley assured his confidants that he would never openly defy the president—a move he considered illegal—but he was “determined to plant flags.” He told his staff, “If they want to court-martial me or put me in prison, have at it, but I will fight from the inside.” Milley saw himself as “tasked” with safeguarding “against Trump and his people” from potentially misusing the military, something he confided in a “trusted confidant” to ensure he remained true to this plan. “I have four tasks from now until the twentieth of January,” he affirmed, “and I’m going to accomplish my mission.”
    • Milley “sought to get the message to Democrats that he would not go along with any further efforts by the president to deploy the machinery of war for domestic political ends. He called both Pelosi and Schumer.” 
  • Gen. Milley stood up a crisis management team that was “dedicated to monitoring domestic unrest.” He outlined his and his staff’s efforts in four phases: “So I said—and this is from June—so I said: Phase one is now through the election, and phase two is the election out through the certification, which was known, it was a known date, the 6th. So from the election to the certification. Phase three, I said, was certification to inauguration. And phase four was inauguration plus 100 days.”
    • Every morning at Gen. Milley’s direction, he and his staff began tracking civil disturbances in the United States, focusing on events and incidents involving groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Milley explained, “when I say ‘tracking’ I had the Joint Staff report, set up a system of reporting in the morning at our normal 7:30 meeting” and “the reports from every morning and it’s June, July, August, September, October, all the way through.” 
    • Milley and his team “had LNOs [Liaison Officers] with the FBI, in the FBI building … I think we called it domestic unrest as a general thing,” and “we just worked with the FBI and local police, and we made sure that we kept track of it. And we stood up a team to make sure that we, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I, had situational awareness just like we have overseas.” 
    • Milley had his Joint Staff historian “conduct an in-depth research on the use of the Insurrection Act, what it’s all about, going all the way back to 1807 or whatever year it started, all the historical examples, laid out every single one of them in detail. The historian would walk me through it.”

Fall 2020 through December 2020

  • Gen. Milley’s crisis management team continued tracking domestic activity as civil unrest from the summer of 2020 began dying down and leading up to January 6, including November and December MAGA rallies. 
  • December 29, 2020—A meeting between Jamie Fleet’s team and the Biden-Harris team addressed potential scenarios where they flag that Vice President Pence “may go sideways.” Senator Josh Hawley’s statement that he will object to the certification process is referenced. 
  • Late December, 2020—As more than 140 Republicans in the House, roughly two-thirds of the GOP members, were preparing to contest the election results on January 6, and with Senator Josh Hawley becoming the first to announce his plan to vote against certifying the Electoral College results and force a debate, “Milley was not alone in his anxiety about the coming days. Other senior leaders in the administration and in Congress were concerned about whether Trump might try to use the powers of the FBI, the CIA, and especially the military to try to stay in office. Starting on December 31, some called Milley seeking comfort. ‘Everybody’s worried about coups, attempted coups, overseas stuff in Iran,’ one congressman told Milley.” 
  • December 31, 2020—D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) Director Christopher Rodriguez and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser officially requested D.C. National Guard support on January 6. The request was sent to Major General William Walker, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, seeking support for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department with 30 designated traffic posts and six crowd management teams at specified Metro stations.

January 2, 2021

January 3, 2021

  • 9:24 a.m.—United States Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund made his first request for D.C. National Guard to House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving: Irving told Sund he doesn’t “like the optics of that” and directed Sund to consult with Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger. Afterwards, Irving immediately called Stenger to advise him of Sund’s request, insisting they come up with another plan. Irving told Stenger that he will “never get this by Pelosi.” 
  • 11:53 a.m.—Sund brought the D.C. National Guard request to Stenger. Stenger asked Sund if he could unofficially inquire with Walker about what assistance the National Guard could provide if they were needed on January 6. 
  • Around Noon—Sund met U.S. Capitol Police head of Protective Services Bureau Sean Gallagher at USCP headquarters. Gallagher advised Sund that he had received a call from Carol Corbin, program director at the Department of Defense, who wanted to know if they would be requesting the National Guard. After having his request denied by Irving and Stenger, Sund asked Gallagher to tell Corbin, “Thank you, but at this time we will not be requesting the National Guard.” 
  • Later in the day—Sund contacted both Irving and Stenger and told them about the call from Corbin and the inquiry from the Defense Department. Sund said that based on their instruction to him, he asked Gallagher to inform Corbin that the USCP would not be requesting the National Guard and reiterated that he was still planning to call Walker that evening to advise him of the outcome. 
  • 5:30 p.m.—Meeting with President Trump at the White House about Iran: Attendees include Milley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Acting Secretary of Defense Miller. In his interview with the January 6 Select Committee, Milley said he believed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Defense Department Chief of Staff Kash Patel, and White House General Counsel Pat Cipollone also attended the meeting.
    • During the meeting, President Trump said, “There’s going to be a large amount of protesters here on the 6th, make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event.” He continued: “I don’t care if you use Guard, or Soldiers, active duty Soldiers, do whatever you have to do. Just make sure it’s safe.” 
  • 6:14 p.m.—Sund called Walker to ask what assistance the National Guard could provide if they were needed on January 6. Sund told Walker that he did not have an approved Declaration of Emergency from the Capitol Police Board to make the request and that he was specifically asked to inquire unofficially so that he could “lean forward” on the request.

January 4, 2021

  • Capitol Police confirmed there was no requirement for Defense Department support in a phone call with Secretary McCarthy. 
  • Secretary Miller, in consultation with General Milley, Sec. McCarthy, and Defense Department general counsel, reviewed the Defense Department plan to provide support to civil authorities if asked, and approved activation of 340 members of the D.C. National Guard to support Mayor Bowser’s request. Support provided in response to Mayor Bowser’s request includes: 90 personnel (180 total/2 shorts) for traffic control points, 24 personnel (48 total/2 shorts) for Metro Station support, 20 personnel for Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team, and 52 personnel for Internal Command and Control. 
  • Sec. Miller issued a memo to Sec. McCarthy that authorized the deployment of “the DCNG Quick Reaction Force (QRF) only as a last resort and in response to a request from an appropriate civil authority.”

January 5, 2021

  • Sec. McCarthy issued a January 5 memo to Walker placing unprecedented restrictions that stripped Walker’s authority to deploy D.C. National Guard Quick Reaction Force without explicit personal approval from McCarthy.
    • Gen. Milley was actively involved in advising Sec. McCarthy on the Jan. 5 memo, “line by line going through this, lining it out, editing, and stuff like that, resulting in this memo.” 
  • Mayor Bowser issued a letter to Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Sec. Miller, and Sec. McCarthy confirming that there were no additional D.C. National Guard support requirements. 
  • Before 10:00 a.m.—Sund advised Irving of his conversation with Walker, telling him that Walker had assured him the National Guard would be prepared to repurpose 125 troops and send them once Walker notified the Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy. Capitol Police would need to send someone over to the armory to swear them in. Irving “seemed satisfied” and thanked Sund for following up with Walker.
  • 10:00 a.m. briefing—Jamie Fleet, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, House Sergeant at Arms Irving, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Sund, and Aaron Lashure were present. Fleet asked Sund about the status of the National Guard. “Sund said that the Guard could be activated with an emergency declaration from the board, but they are here. They are a phone call away, and if we need them, they are ready to go.” 
  • Shortly before Noon—Sund advised Stenger about his Sunday evening conversation with Walker. 
  • 6:36 p.m.—Speaker Pelosi’s Chief of Staff Terry McCullough and Jamie Fleet “had a conversation with Mr. Irving [House Sergeant at Arms] later that day on the 5th, where Mr. Irving generally provided a short summary of the conversation, the 10 a.m. conversation, for Ms. McCullough’s benefit. And then we spent a few minutes talking about the possibility that there that—that Members during the proceeding, might—there might be disruption among Members.”

January 6, 2021

  • Morning of January 6—House Sergeant at Arms Irving and his staff met with Democratic staff without Republican staff present. 
  • 8:19 a.m.—Jamie Fleet called House Continuity Officer Tom Kreitzer. Fleet asked Kreitzer how long it would take to set up an alternate Chamber if needed. The reason behind Fleet’s inquiry stemmed from “just a feeling in the neighborhood.” 
  • 8:30 a.m.—Sec. Miller and Gen. Milley reviewed a Defense Department plan to support law enforcement agencies and requested an exercise regarding Defense Department contingency response options. 
  • 11:30 a.m.—Sec. Miller participated in table-top exercise regarding Defense Department contingency response options. 
  • 11:57 a.m.—President Trump began his speech at the Ellipse.
  • 12:30 p.m.—Pelosi’s Chief of Staff McCullough called House Sergeant at Arms Irving. 
  • 12:33 p.m.—House Sergeant at Arms Irving called McCullough. 
  • 12:40 p.m.—An alleged pipe bomb is discovered in an alley between the Capitol Hill Club, a GOP hangout, and the Republican National Headquarters blocks from the Capitol.
  • 12:53 p.m.—First breach of exterior police lines occurred on the west side of the Capitol.
  • 12:58 p.m.—Sund called House Sergeant at Arms Irving, telling him, “We are getting overrun by protesters on the West Front! I need approval to request the National Guard immediately!” Irving replied, “Let me run it up the chain,” and “I’ll call you back.” 
  • 1:00 p.m.—Joint session of Congress convened. Vice President Mike Pence released his letter indicating he would not send back certificates from contested states.
  • Shortly after 1:00 p.m.—Sund called Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger. Call went to voicemail. 
  • 1:05 p.m.—Sec. Miller received open-source reports of demonstrator movements toward the U.S. Capitol. D.C. Metro police arrived at the Capitol.
  • 1:06 p.m.—Stenger returned Sund’s call. Sund told him that he needed the National Guard immediately. Stenger asked Sund if he asked Irving. Sund responded, “Yes, Paul said he was running it up the chain.” Stenger said, “Okay. Let me know when Paul gets back to you.” 
  • 1:07 p.m.—A plainclothes Capitol police officer under the supervision of Sean Gallagher discovered an alleged pipe bomb outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the vice president-elect, is inside the building.
  • 1:10 p.m.—Trump ended his speech at the Ellipse. Despite last minute plans to go to the Capitol, his Secret Service detail informed the president it wasn’t safe and returned him to the White House.
  • 1:21 p.m.—Stenger called Sund again. Sund told him that they were having trouble holding the line and needed the National Guard. Stenger told Sund he’d get back to him and hung up. 
  • 1:26 p.m.—U.S. Capitol Police ordered the evacuation of the Capitol complex. 
  • 1:28 p.m.—Sund called Irving to ask for an update on the Guard. “Still waiting,” Irving replied. 
  • 1:32 p.m.—Jamie Fleet missed a call from Irving. 
  • 1:33 p.m.—Irving texted Fleet saying, “Tried to call with an update. Call anytime.”  Fleet returned Irving’s call. 
  • 1:34 p.m.
  • 1:39 p.m.—Stenger called Sund for an update. Sund advised him that he is still waiting on approval from Irving regarding the National Guard. 
  • 1:40 p.m.
    • The Architect of the Capitol reported to Army senior leaders that an estimated crowd of 15,000–20,000 people are “moving in the direction of the National Capitol.” 
    • Irving approached McCullough and other staff members in the Speaker’s lobby behind the House Chamber to ask about permission to seek support from the D.C. National Guard. 
  • 1:45 p.m.—Sund called Irving again. Irving told Sund he’s still waiting on approval for the Guard. 
  • 1:49 p.m.
  • 1:50 p.m.—Irving held a meeting of leadership staff in Stenger’s office to discuss the question of bringing in the D.C. National Guard. House leadership staff, along with some from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office, were in attendance. They were informed at the time that the Guard had not yet been called. 
  • 2:01 p.m.—Sund called Irving again. Irving told Sund to give him just a couple more minutes.
  • 2:08 p.m.—Sund called Irving again and was informed that the Capitol Police Board formally approved the request for D.C. National Guard. 
  • 2:10 p.m.—Sund called Major General Walker and informed him of the Capitol Police Board’s authorization to request D.C. National Guard assistance. 
  • 2:12 p.m.—First breach inside of the Capitol.
  • 2:13 p.m.—The Architect of the Capitol reported to Army senior leaders that crowds were continuing to gather at the Capitol, which is “reportedly locked down due to multiple attempts to cross police barriers and police injuries.”
    • Senator Grassley gaveled the Senate into recess. Grassley’s security team entered the Senate Chamber and evacuated Grassley off the floor, exiting from the north door of the chamber. Other leaders were escorted out the same way. Vice President Mike Pence was escorted from the Senate Chamber by U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Capitol Police. 
  • 2:14 p.m.—Fleet called Irving.
    • It is reported that rioters have breached the second floor of the Capitol. Capitol Division officers were directed to respond to the Senate Chamber, where they began to barricade the doors. 
    • U.S. Capitol Police Command Center issued an alert through the mass notification system, warning of an “inside threat.” 
  • 2:17 p.m.—The Task Force Guardian Commander told Quick Reaction Force (QFR) Officer in Charge to get QRF “geared up and on the bus for when Sec. McCarthy approves a change in mission.” 
  • 2:19 p.m.
    • Walker emailed Sec. McCarthy and advised him of the Sund request for immediate assistance. Walker received no email or phone response. 
    • D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Director Christopher Rodriguez initiated a conference call with Walker to help with Sund’s request for D.C. National Guard assistance. 
  • 2:20 p.m.—As Pelosi evacuated the building, she asked an unidentified staffer, “Are they calling the National Guard?” The staffer responded, “Yes, ma’am, yes they are.” Pelosi turned to Terry McCullough to ask if she had reached Sen. Mitch McConnell. “And will they call the National Guard?” McCullough answered, “That’s correct.” She continued to complain about the lack of guardsmen as she walked through the underground tunnel to her awaiting SUV. “They’re calling the National Guard now? Should have been there to start off with.”
  • 2:22 p.m.—Sec. McCarthy arranged a phone call with the D.C. Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Rodriguez, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department leadership. McCarthy was “not aware that the building was breached until we were on that phone call. And it was—that’s where, you know, if—the call starts, and I get up and I leave. I literally say, find out the requirements, I’m going to get the authority, and I left my office to go down to the Secretary of Defense’s office” 
  • 2:25 p.m.—Sund learned that the Defense Department was trying to get him on a conference call and then received a text message from Rodriguez. The text provided a telephone number and an access code for the conference call. A second text followed: “This is Chris Rodriguez.” Sund called the number and was placed on hold; he waited several minutes while receiving a second text with the same call information from Walker. Sund hung up and tried calling back several times, getting the same result.
    • House Chamber Officers, a unit within the U.S. Capitol Police Capitol Division, initiated evacuation of the remaining representatives from the House Chamber. 
  • 2:26 p.m.—House Speaker Pelosi’s motorcade came within a few hundred feet of the pipe bomb located at the Democratic National Committee when her security detail drove her through a security perimeter and away from the Capitol. Other congressional leaders were on their way to Fort McNair to shelter in place.
  • 2:30 p.m. 
  • 2:30 p.m. Conference Call
    • Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Rodriguez established a conference call with D.C. and military leaders to seek Secretary of the Army’s authorization for immediate deployment of D.C. National Guard. Army Sec. McCarthy was not on the call. 
    • Participants in the 2:30 p.m. conference call included Mayor Bowser, Sund, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee, Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, and “all of us” (meaning the Defense Department’s April 2024 witnesses), but “McCarthy never spoke on that call” and “We were told [McCarthy] was unavailable. I called his executive officers to ask to speak to him, and we were told he was unavailable.” (Col. Earl Matthews April 2024 Congressional Testimony)
    • “[Maj. Gen. Walker] tried to call Secretary McCarthy three times between 2:30 and 5pm.” McCarthy’s phone went straight to voicemail. Walker did not hear back from McCarthy the entire day. (Brig. Gen. Aaron Dean March 26, 2024 testimony.)
  • 2:34 p.m.—Sund texted Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Rodriguez, “I am on the call. Only person.” Rodriguez called Sund back and patches him into the conference call, which is already in progress. Several people are on the line, including Maj. Gen. Walker, Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, and other members of the D.C. National Guard and Pentagon military staff. Also on the call are various D.C. government officials, including Mayor Bowser, Chief Contee, and Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Rodriguez. Sund requested D.C. National Guard assistance. Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt didn’t like the optics and advised his recommendation would be “not to support the request.” Piatt closed the subject by saying that he would run the request up the chain of command at the Pentagon. 
  • 2:40 p.m. (roughly)—En route in an SUV to Fort McNair, Pelosi told McCullough, “I feel responsible. We have responsibility, Terry. Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with? And I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for war.” Pelosi again raised the deployment of the National Guard. “We’re going to stay here all day, for the rest of our lives, until the National Guard decides to come and get rid of these people?”
  • 2:41 p.m.—Stenger called Irving. 
  • 2:43 p.m.—Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd shot Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt in the neck outside the Speaker’s Lobby; Sund left the conference call due to shots fired in the Capitol so he could pass along the information to congressional leadership. Immediately after Sund left the conference call, General Milley demanded to get the attorney general on the phone so he could “get every cop in D.C. down there to the Capitol this minute, all seven to eight thousand of them.” 
  • 2:45 p.m.—The conference call in Army Sec. McCarthy’s office with his staff and D.C. leaders ended on receipt of a report of gunfire inside the Capitol. 
  • 2:51 p.m.—Irving called Stenger. 
  • 2:55 p.m.—The D.C. National Guard Quick Response Force departed Joint Base Andrews with a police escort to the D.C. Armory, according to the Quick Response Force officer in command. The Task Force Guardian Commander arrived at the U.S. Capitol Police Command Post in the Capitol. 
  • 2:57 p.m.—Fleet called Irving. 
  • 3:00 p.m.
    • Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke with Army Sec. McCarthy from Fort McNair. “We need a full National Guard component now.”
    • Defense Sec. Miller determined all available forces of the D.C. National Guard are required to reinforce Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police positions to support efforts to reestablish security of the Capitol complex. 
    • Army Sec. McCarthy directed D.C. National Guard to prepare available Guardsmen to move from the armory to the Capitol complex, while seeking formal approval from Sec. Miller for deployment. D.C. National Guard prepared to move 150 personnel to support U.S. Capitol Police, pending Sec. Miller’s approval. 
  • 3:04 p.m.—Sec. Miller provided verbal approval to Army Sec. McCarthy for the immediate mobilization, activation, and deployment of the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol, including the deployment of a Quick Response Force. 
  • 3:05 p.m.
    • Secure Video Teleconference initiated between D.C. National Guard and Army Sec. McCarthy’s senior leadership. McCarthy is not on the call.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy provided an update to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer regarding his 3:04 p.m. conversation with Defense Sec. Miller. 
  • 3:07 p.m.—Irving called Fleet.
  • 3:08 p.m.—Fleet texted Irving: “So command center is saying guard on the way?” Irving responded, “Yes, they indicate the National Guard is on the way.” Irving replied, “They are en route. I’m told some leadership from the NG have shown up at the USCP Command Post but not troops yet.” 
  • Around 3:10 p.m.—House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer along with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer called Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. Hoyer “was pleading” for Hogan to send the National Guard, but Hogan said he had not received authorization.
    • According to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), “Steny Hoyer spoke to the Governor of Maryland, who reported that he had National Guard personnel at the D.C.-Maryland border but he had been prohibited to send them in by the Pentagon.” 
  • 3:15 p.m.—The D.C. National Guard Quick Reaction Force arrived at the D.C. National Guard Armory, according to the Quick Reaction Force officer in command. 
  • 3:19 p.m.—Army Sec. McCarthy called Schumer and Pelosi again, explaining that Defense Sec. Miller had indeed approved immediate D.C. National Guard mobilization. 
  • 3:22 p.m.—Speaker Pelosi called Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, telling him, “Governor, I don’t know if you had been approached about the Virginia National Guard. Mr. Hoyer was speaking to Governor Hogan. But I still think you probably need the ‘okay’ of the Federal Government in order to come into another jurisdiction.” 
  • 3:26 p.m.
  • 3:30 p.m.—Bowser told Pelosi and Schumer she was getting “mixed messages” about deployment of the guard. “I thought there was some resistance from the secretary of the Army,” Bowser said.
  • Around 3:45 p.m. (“about an hour after the 2:22 call” which ended at 2:45 p.m.)—Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Rodriguez departed Emergency Operations Center for Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters. 
  • 3:48 p.m.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy departed the Pentagon for Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters. 
    • McCarthy made a stop at FBI headquarters before heading to Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters to meet with Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee to develop an operational plan. 
  • 4:00 p.m. (roughly)—Mitch McConnell told Defense Sec. Miller, “we are in one hell of a hurry, you understand?” related to deployment of the National Guard. Schumer told Miller, who is on speaker on someone’s cell phone, “We need them there now, whatever you got.”
  • 4:05 p.m.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy arrived at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters and met with Mayor Bowser and Chief Contee. McCarthy received a situational brief and developed a plan for the D.C. National Guard to help the U.S. Capitol Police at the Capitol. 
    • HSEMA Director Rodriguez arrived at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters shortly after Army Sec. McCarthy. “Secretary McCarthy, I believe, was there by the time I got there, at MPD headquarters.”
  • 4:07 p.m.—Sund emailed a written request to Maj. Gen. Walker for immediate D.C. National Guard support. 
  • 4:08 p.m.—The Architect of the Capitol reported a 40-person Quick Response Force is on the way from Joint Base Andrews to the Armory, “with 184 more on standby” as of 3:23 p.m.
  • 4:13 p.m.—According to the Defense Department Executive Secretary, Defense Sec. Miller approved a U.S. Capitol Police request for Pentagon Force Protection Agency support. 
  • 4:18 p.m.—Defense Sec. Miller, Gen. Milley, Army Sec. McCarthy, and Chief of the National Guard Bureau discussed availability of National Guard forces from other states in the region. Sec. Miller gave voice approval for out-of-state National Guard forces to muster and be prepared to deploy to D.C. 
  • 4:22 p.m.—Sund called Maj. Gen. Walker again, requesting immediate assistance. Walker emphasized he had not received deployment approval from Army Sec. McCarthy. 
  • 4:30 p.m.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy called Sec. Miller to brief him on the operational plan. Neither D.C. National Guard nor U.S. Capitol Police were involved in the development of this operational plan. 
    • Sec. Miller concurred with Army Sec. McCarthy’s plan for D.C. National Guard personnel to meet with the Metropolitan Police Department and conduct Capitol perimeter security and clearance operations as part of a joint U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, Metropolitan Police Department, and D.C. National Guard operation. 
  • 4:32 p.m.—Sec. Miller provided verbal authorization to re-mission D.C. National Guard to conduct perimeter and clearance operations in support of U.S. Capitol Police. Army Sec. McCarthy was to provide public notification of support. 
  • 4:35 p.m.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy said he called Maj. Gen. Walker and informed him that Miller approved the D.C. National Guard re-mission request to support the U.S. Capitol Police. But this call never happened, according to Maj. Gen. Walker and Defense Department witnesses from an April 2024 House Oversight Subcommittee hearing. 
    • Army Sec. McCarthy then admitted he did not call Maj. Gen. Walker because “the Mayor said she wanted to go on TV to communicate to the public, and they had asked me to go with,” and “I wanted to get my thoughts collected.” McCarthy was “at a table taking notes” and “had to get ready” for the televised press conference.
  • 4:40 p.m.—Army Sec. McCarthy had a phone call with Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. Governor promised to send Maryland National Guard troops to D.C., who are expected to arrive on January 7, 2021. 
  • 4:47 p.m.
  • 5:00 p.m.
  • 5:08 p.m.
    • Maj. Gen. Walker received an order via secure video teleconference to deploy D.C. National Guard from Army Sec. McCarthy’s Chief of Staff, Gen. James McConville, in passing. First D.C. National Guard bus departed D.C. Armory. 
    • Maj. Gen. Walker ordered the D.C. National Guard Quick Response Force, now enhanced with additional personnel, to move to the Capitol. 
    • Col. Earl Matthews testified that he was sitting right next to Maj. Gen. Walker in the conference room during the video teleconference when Gen. McConville conveyed the order, and that he was told that the order came not from Army Sec. McCarthy, but from Defense Sec. Miller, that they had the authorization to go. “That’s what I was told at the time.” The order was relayed via the ongoing video teleconference. “The conference was ongoing, it was running, and General McConville, Chief of Staff of the Army, happened to be on the conference talking to us, and he mentioned that we had the authorization to go.”
  • 5:15 p.m.
  • 5:20 p.m.—D.C. National Guard arrived at the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters to be sworn in by U.S. Capitol Police. 
  • 5:29 p.m.—D.C. National Guard personnel arrived at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, according to the Task Force Guardian Commander and Quick Reaction Force officer in command. 
  • 5:30 p.m.—Maj. Gen. Walker arrived at the Capitol. 
  • 5:40 p.m.—The U.S. Capitol Police swore in D.C. National Guard personnel as “Special Police” at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters. 
  • 5:45 p.m.—Sec. Miller signed formal authorization for out-of-state National Guard to muster and gave voice approval for deployment in support of U.S. Capitol Police. 
  • 5:55 p.m.—D.C. National Guardsmen arrived at U.S. Capitol. 
  • 5:58 p.m.—Pence, who was with Sund, told Pelosi, Schumer, and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that the House and Senate would be able to reconvene “in about an hour.”
  • 6:00 p.m.
    • D.C. National Guard personnel joined the line of law enforcement personnel facing the crowd on the west side of the Capitol.
    • Army Sec. McCarthy briefed Sec. Miller, Gen. Milley, the White House Counsel, the National Security Advisor, and officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Interior, Department of Justice, and FBI by telephone that 150 D.C. National Guard personnel were at the Capitol and another 150 were on the way.
    • Brig. Gen. Matt Smith, Deputy Operations Director, G-3/5/7, Headquarters, Department of the Army, received a report from the Architect of the Capitol that 1,000 police officers were on Capitol grounds and that the building was clear of rioters as of 6:04 p.m. 
  • 6:14 p.m.—U.S. Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department, and D.C. National Guard successfully established a perimeter on the west side of the U.S. Capitol. 
  • 7:36 p.m.—Sec. Miller provided vocal approval to lease fences in support of the U.S. Capitol Police for security of the Capitol building. 
  • 8:00 p.m.—U.S. Capitol Police declared the Capitol building secure. The Senate reconvened; a few Republican senators who had supporter an audit of the election withdrew their support and instead pledged to certify Biden/Harris victory.
  • 9:02 p.m.—The House reconvened.

January 7, 2021:

  • 3:42 a.m.—Pence officially certified Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

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Merrick Garland’s Last-Minute Push to Corrupt the 2024 Election


While throwing a kitchen-sink J6 case against Trump in Washington, Merrick Garland is sitting on what is expected to be a bombshell DOJ report confirming extensive use of FBI informants in January 6.

Consider the following contrasting scenarios:

Attorney General Merrick Garland is advancing a dead-letter indictment against Donald Trump in Washington related to the events of January 6 with a kitchen-sink 165-page “immunity” motion filled with retread accusations about the former president’s conduct before and on that day. Special Counsel Jack Smith is expected to file another document this week in a desperate attempt to advance the January 6 narrative, an issue only of interest to the bloodthirsty base of the Democratic Party.

  • Attorney General Merrick Garland is sitting on a bombshell report expected to reveal the number of FBI confidential human sources, known as informants, involved in January 6. The findings of a years-long internal investigation conducted by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz are contained in a draft report recently submitted to Garland for review; Horowitz told Congress last month he does not expect the report to be released before Election Day.

The dichotomy, of course, represents the latest example of the weaponization of the Justice Department at the same time Garland laughably insists no such thing is happening. While the brazenly political prosecution of Trump continues in the courtroom of Obama-appointee Judge Tanya Chutkan to produce damaging headlines as Americans begin voting for president, Garland refuses to allow the American people to see the biggest missing piece in the J6 puzzle: how many FBI informants participated in the Capitol protest?

Horowitz, for his part, appears to be part of the delay. He told the House Weaponization committee on September 25 that he placed a “pause” on his internal inquiry, which he initiated one week after the Capitol protest, to avoid interfering with a separate, unspecified criminal investigation into January 6.

Some speculated Horowitz was referring to the ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters—but that didn’t add up since the prosecution continues to this day with new arrests announced each week. A recent filing by Trump’s lawyers in the J6-related case confirmed Horowitz’s office participated in the initial stages of the DOJ’s sprawling investigation into Trump and his associates. Further, roughly a dozen agents with the DOJ IG executed an armed raid of the home of Jeffrey Clark, former assistant associate attorney general under Trump, in June 2022. (Smith dropped Clark as a co-conspirator in the special counsel’s watered down superseding J6 indictment following the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.)

Garland appointed Smith in November 2022, which presumably is when Horowitz restarted the stalled inquiry into January 6. If so, Horowitz and his large team of investigators have had nearly two years in addition to whatever work was conducted prior to the DOJ’s probe of Team Trump to finalize the long-awaited report. (For context, Horowitz took 20 months to investigate and issue his findings on “Crossfire Hurricane,” the DOJ’s unlawful surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign.)

Instead, Horowitz slow-walked the review to ensure the final product would remain under wraps until after the 2024 election; Horowitz also can’t promise the report will be released before Inauguration Day.

A Risk to J6 Narrative and FBI Director Chris Wray

Confirming the use of FBI informants not only destroys the official J6 narrative—an issue central to Kamala Harris’ campaign, which just produced another J6-themed campaign video—but also potentially exposes FBI Director Christopher Wray to perjury charges.

When asked in March 2021 whether he wished the FBI had “infiltrated” so-called militias such as the Proud Boys, Wray intentionally misled the Senate Judiciary Committee about the involvement of FBI informants in those groups before and on January 6. “Any time there’s an attack, especially one this horrific that strikes right at the heart of our system of government…you can be darn tootin’ (laughs) that we are focused very hard on how we can get better sources, better information, better analysis so we can make sure that something like January 6 never (pause for dramatic purposes) happens again,” Wray told Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)

Except Wray did have informants in the Proud Boys—and that isn’t a fantasy fabricated by “conspiracy theorists” who believe the government played a key role in provoking the crowd that day. During the 2023 trial of leaders of the Proud Boys, the DOJ admitted (stipulated) that informants indeed “infiltrated” the group. “Between on or around November 3, 2020 and January 6, 202, the FBI maintained at least eight CHSs…who provided reporting that included information on, or regarding, among other matters, the Proud Boys.”

So, why didn’t Wray tell the truth about FBI informants in the Proud Boys and other organizations including the Oath Keepers? Why didn’t Wray explain that the sources did provide intelligence to the bureau and nothing suggested a violent attack was in the works?

Wray’s dodginess on the matter has since morphed into indignation and defiance. During two testy exchanges with Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), Wray refused to respond to questions about the possibility that FBI informants “dressed like Trump supporters” were stationed inside the building prior to the first interior breach at 2:12 p.m. that day. But rather than answer—or offer any confirmation in court documents and media reports—Wray resorted to his well-worn defense of the bureau. “If you are asking whether the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and/or agents, the answer is emphatically no,” Wray told Higgins last year.

But that is only part of the question, and Wray knows it. He also is fully cognizant that the FBI’s evaporating credibility will be permanently torched in the wake of disclosures about the extensive use of informants in what Wray has branded an act of domestic terror.

Now What?

Which brings us back to Garland and Horowitz—and Republicans in Congress.

It’s too late for Republicans to do much more than publicly demand on a daily basis that Garland release the report even though he testified during a June 2024 hearing that the ultimate decision would be in Horowitz’s hands. Accordingly, Republicans also should put Horowitz on the hot seat.

In an October 2 letter to the DOJ, several GOP members of the House Weaponization committee including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) warned Garland that he would be held accountable if “you or any of your subordinates, associates, deputies, or agents…act to interfere with the release of the report.”

A paper trail undoubtedly exists between Garland and Horowitz; correspondence likely exists between both offices and the special counsel—and perhaps extends all the way to the Biden White House and the Harris campaign. If Republicans want to stop this nearly decade-old practice of the DOJ corrupting national elections against members of their own party, GOP leaders must make good on this latest promise.

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How the US Government Turned on the People


The catastrophic mismanagement of Hurricane Helene relief is a showing sign to the American people that Washington is not only dysfunctional, but worse, it doesn’t even seem to be trying to serve the people.

Instead, the people serve it. Like livestock.

So how did we get here?

The Long March of Bureaucracy

As with the economy, the seeds of our political crisis began a hundred years ago in the Progressive era.

The Progressives big year for taking over the economy was 1913, with income tax and the Federal Reserve Acts.

But the political takeover was earlier — according to historian Murray Rothbard, it began precisely 30 years earlier with something called the Pendleton Act of 1883.

The Act made bureaucrats professionals who are independent of politicians. This was allegedly to fight corruption, but note that a bureaucracy that’s independent of politicians is also independent of voters.

After all, politicians are the only part of the government who answers to voters. So if bureaucrats don’t answer to them, then who do they answer to?

Simple: they answer to nobody. The government bureaucracy becomes a self-serving occupying army. By design.

Bureaucrats and Angels

Progressives did this because they’ve convinced themselves that government workers are omniscient angels — that the act of collecting a government paycheck is a kind of purifying bath that washes away the greed and malice of the unwashed masses over whom the government lords over as if the people are parasites.

This may sound goofy, but talk to a Progressive.

Of course, after Covid, anybody who thinks bureaucrats are omniscient angels needs a lobotomy.

The Union of Bureaucrats and Socialists

Once installed with Pendleton, this independent bureaucracy was, of course, captured by the left — socialists, because they both wanted the same thing: increased government control.

They began in the Progressive Era with widespread regulations that were billed as ‘reining in’ Big Business, but were of course, written by Big Business, marketed by their paid socialist activists, then implemented by bureaucrats whose funding came from politicians on the payroll — well, the donor lists — of Big Business.

And so was born our Corporatist system — of course, there’s another word for it that begins with F and ends in -ism, but then I’m not trying to get censored.

Socialism’s “Inevitability”

This capture is why it feels the world is grinding ever more socialist: the bureaucracy partners with socialists to a common end: government control over the people.

They then use government money — your money — to propagate the takeover through academia, media and corporations who are punished if they don’t toe the line. Elon Musk’s regulatory harassment being just one example.

It can feel intimidating: Covid showed us there is essentially no institution in the country that has not been infiltrated by this toxic combination of government money and intimidation.

The cartels call it plata o plombo. Silver or lead. And the socialist Deep State uses both.

Crisis and the Deep State

Over the past century, every crisis grew this Deep State: world wars, Great Depression. Even made-up crises like global warming and, of course, Covid.

Covid was their dream come true: total control.

The problem, of course, is that once a wild animal tastes human blood you can never trust it again.

That’s exactly what happened in a moment that I believe is very close to today: The wartime socialism of World War I.

The men who pushed World War I — men like Herbert Hoover — imposed Soviet-style economic and social control during the war.

Once the war ended, they were very reluctant to hand that power back, and they spent the rest of their careers trying to get it again.

Unfortunately, the stock market crash of 1929 was the excuse they needed. They used it to seize the commanding heights of the economy — the administrative state, and, 100 years later, they still run it.

So that all takes us to today: a totalitarian Deep State that progressively seizes economic, social, and political power. Enslaving us with debt, mandates, taxes, and surveillance.

The administrative state can be defeated, but not by fighting the hydra head by head. That only works with single head snakes and make no mistake about it, our government has no single head. Rather, you go to the source: the independent bureaucracy.

To end the totalitarian deep state, politicians must have the ability to fire and hire anybody they like. Because the people must have that power, and until we abolish governments, politicians are their only voice.

The only alternative is progressive enslavement by bureaucratic commissars until the people rise up and fix it by other means that few will enjoy.

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Suburban Decay Is Coming To YOUR Town


urban-decay-overgrowth-on-rooftop-rusty

The suburbs, once considered safe havens from urban chaos, are rapidly becoming ground zero for a new wave of danger. The growing presence of violent criminal gangs, many of whom are migrants flooding into the country as part of a government plot to punish suburban communities, is turning these once-peaceful areas into lawless zones. It’s not just anecdotal anymore—it’s happening right in front of our eyes.

One clear example of this suburban decay is the situation at Moreno Valley Mall in California. This mall, like many others across the country, has been overrun by unruly teens causing chaos. And this is not an isolated incident. Malls in places like New Jersey and Pittsburgh are enacting curfews, banning teenagers from being inside after certain hours unless accompanied by an adult, and creating “waiting zones” for teens needing rides after curfew. These measures are a direct response to a spree of looting and violence that began during the so-called “summer of love” in 2020—and has only escalated since.

The result? Shopping malls, once symbols of suburban prosperity, are now unsafe. Stores like CVS and Target are locking up basic goods, and violent confrontations in malls have become a regular occurrence. And this isn’t just a problem in the cities anymore. It’s spreading to the suburbs, where liberal district attorneys refuse to prosecute criminals, emboldening bad actors to strike with little fear of consequences.

The influx of migrants into suburban areas is accelerating this decline. These individuals, often without proper vetting or legal status, are being funneled into these communities, causing a dramatic increase in crime. This isn’t a random consequence—it’s part of a deliberate government plan to punish the suburbs for their political leanings. Many of these areas, traditionally conservative and resistant to progressive policies, are being flooded with people who have no ties to the community and no respect for its laws.

This shift is part of a broader strategy to destabilize the suburbs and break down their resistance to government overreach. The Biden-Harris administration, along with far-left radicals in local governments, seems intent on punishing suburban families by placing violent criminal invaders right on their doorsteps. It’s not enough for them to watch inner cities crumble—they want the same chaos to engulf the suburbs, too.

The lamentations of media personalities like Angela Poe Russell, who mourn the loss of “safe” places for teens to hang out, only underscore how dangerous things have become. Russell reflects nostalgically on the time she spent at malls in her youth—working her first job, meeting her first boyfriend, and making memories. But here’s the cold, hard truth: the key word she uses is “safe.” And malls, like the communities they serve, are no longer safe.

The reality is that the same forces driving up crime in inner cities—government-sanctioned lawlessness, soft-on-crime policies, and unchecked migration—are now infiltrating the suburbs. The same liberal DAs who refuse to prosecute criminals in urban areas are ensuring that the criminals feel emboldened to move into suburban areas, knowing they won’t face serious repercussions there either. And with every new wave of migrants being transported into suburban communities, the threat only grows.

Suburban families must face a hard truth: the government is not interested in protecting them. In fact, they seem intent on putting you in harm’s way. The influx of violent criminals, the collapse of local law enforcement, and the increase in property crimes are not random developments. They are part of a coordinated effort to punish the suburbs for resisting the progressive agenda.

So what can you do? First and foremost, be aware that your community is changing—and not for the better. Prepare your home and your family for the increasing likelihood of violence. Lock your doors, invest in home security, and stay informed about what’s happening in your area. Don’t expect the police or the government to save you. They’ve made it clear that they have other priorities.

The suburbs are no longer a refuge from the dangers of the world. The threat is here, and it’s growing. It’s time to wake up, be vigilant, and understand that the days of peaceful, suburban living are rapidly fading away.

What are you doing to prepare your family for suburban decay? 

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The Factual Context for Climate and Energy Policy


Virtually all climate policy discussions assume that climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But any realistic policy must balance the hazards, risks, and benefits of a changing climate against the world’s growing demand for reliable, affordable, and clean energy. To strike that balance, climate policymakers will consider society’s values and priorities, its tolerance for risk, equities among generations and geographies, and the efficacy, costs, and collateral impacts of any policy. This paper reviews some of the scientific, techno-economic, and societal facts and circumstances that should inform those policy decisions and draws some straightforward conclusions from them.

CLIMATE IMPACTS

Projections of the impacts of future climate changes rely on assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions fed into large computer models of the ocean and atmosphere. Although those models can give a hazy picture of what lies before us at the global scale, their deficiencies on smaller scales are legion. For example, two senior climate researchers firmly within the scientific mainstream have said this:

For many key applications that require regional climate model output or for assessing large-scale changes from small-scale processes, we believe that the current generation of models is not fit for purpose.1

That’s particularly important because adaptation measures depend upon regional model projections. One of the same senior researchers noted the following:

It is difficult, and in many places impossible, to scientifically advise societal efforts to adapt in the face of unavoidable warming. Our knowledge gaps are frightful because they make it impossible to assess the extent to which a given degree of warming poses existential threats.2

Users of the model output similarly caution about being overly credulous:

The use of these [climate] models to guide local, practical adaptation actions is unwarranted. Climate models are unable to represent future conditions at the degree of spatial, temporal, and probabilistic precision with which projections are often provided, which gives a false impression of confidence to users of climate change information.3

Even if we can’t rely on unvalidated climate models, we can get some sense of how the world has fared under a changing climate by looking back to 1900. Since that time, the globe warmed 1.3°C, about as much as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts will occur in the next century under moderate future emissions. But even as the globe warmed and the population quintupled, humanity prospered as never before. For example, global average lifespan went from thirty-two years to seventy-two years, economic activity per capita grew by a factor of seven, and the death rate from extreme weather events plummeted by a factor of fifty! Any assertion that a similar warming over the next century will be catastrophic is implausible and finds little support in either IPCC science assessments or the underlying scientific literature and data.

Although climate varies a lot on its own, many still allege that we’ve broken the climate in the past few decades. Yet table 12.12 of the most recent IPCC report (AR6 WG1) shows it’s hard to find long-term global trends in most types of extreme weather events, including storms, droughts, and floods. And economic loss rates have declined slightly over the past thirty years, averaging about 0.2 percent of global GDP.4 A wealthier world is a more resilient world.

Perhaps future climates will be a lot worse. But the United Nations (UN) projects substantial economic growth, even for an emissions-heavy future. The IPCC’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Report said the following in chapter 10:

For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.5

Subsequent research has confirmed that warming is expected to be a minor hinderance to growth—a few degrees of warming by the end of the century would make the growing economy a few percent smaller than it might have been.6 For example, if the US economy were to grow at an average annual rate of 2 percent, it would be four times larger seventy years from now. A climate impact of, say, 4 percent would reduce the growth from 400 percent to 384 percent, a change much smaller than our ability to project that quantity. Of course, there are uncertainties in these projections, GDP is not the only
measure of well-being, and the rich will fare better than the poor. But the term ‘existential crisis’ is hardly justified.7

Another form of “climate impact” is the disruption caused by large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. William Nordhaus’s work showed that there is an optimal pace to reduce emissions: moving too quickly causes turmoil and deploys immature technologies. His 2018 Nobel lecture stated that an economically optimal decarbonization could let the global temperature rise in 2100 exceed 6°C (quadruple the Paris Accord guardrail of 1.5°C!). Of course, that’s based on assumptions that can be, and have been, challenged, but Nordhaus’s main takeaway is “don’t panic”—take the time to reduce
emissions gracefully.8

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS

To paraphrase the best climate science can tell us, something very bad might happen—but we do not know exactly what, or precisely when, or just how bad it is going to be. Developed countries fret about that “climate threat” and therefore urge prompt, large-scale action to reduce global emissions. But that vague, uncertain, and distant threat is hardly compelling for most of the world, which has many more certain, immediate, and soluble problems.

The 1.5 billion people in the developed world enjoy abundant and affordable energy. But the globe’s other 6.5 billion don’t have enough energy. The inequalities are astounding. Americans consume thirty times more energy per capita than Nigerians. And 3 billion of the world’s 8 billion people use less electricity every year than does the average US refrigerator. Energy poverty also means cooking with wood and dung, and smoke in the kitchen kills some 2 million people each year.

Global energy demand is predicted to increase 50 percent by midcentury as most of the world develops. Fossil fuels are the most reliable and convenient way for developing nations to get that energy, as they long have been for everyone; coal, oil, and natural gas providing about 80 percent of the word’s energy today. And so global emissions will persist in coming decades, even as the developed world’s emissions decline slowly. Just to stabilize, let alone reduce, humanity’s warming influences at an allegedly safe level, emissions must vanish in the latter half of this century.

Reliable and affordable energy is the overwhelming priority for developing nations. So, when they’re told that the science compels us, their clear response is What do you mean by “us”? We hear the Indian prime minister protest that the path for development is being closed to developing nations, while Niger’s former president says Africa is being punished by Western decisions and will fight to exploit the fossil fuels it has.9

There are moral issues when the developed world seeks to deny developing nations the energy they need, restraining economic progress by mandating costly and ineffective energy systems, particularly if the developed countries are not going to pay a “green premium” for low-emission technology from their already stretched budgets.

A very different immorality arises from continued exaggerations like science compels, which induce eco-anxiety. Some 60 percent of young people globally are very worried about climate change, and many are reluctant to have children.10

•••

The facts and figures about climate and energy that I have laid out show that the world will not get to net zero emissions by midcentury and that net zero by 2100 would be a heroic achievement. But they also show that the world isn’t facing climate catastrophe. If advocates continue to exaggerate the importance and urgency of reducing emissions at the expense of more immediate and tangible societal needs, what will the public think as the world continues to fall short of its emissions goals yet continues to prosper?

TECHNO-ECONOMIC REALITIES

Energy systems are recalcitrant for good reasons. These systems involve massive investments in assets that last decades, their parts need to work together (for example, cars, fuel, and the fueling infrastructure must all be compatible), and there are many stakeholders whose interests don’t often align. It also takes time to refine the hardware and operating procedures that ensure high reliability. So, energy systems are best changed slowly and steadily over decades—more like orthodontics than the tooth extraction
implied by large and rapid reductions.

Reducing emissions from energy systems will involve electrifying most transportation and heat while transitioning to a zero-emissions electrical grid. Although electric vehicles and industrial heat pose their own challenges, this paper focuses on the linchpin of the strategy, decarbonizing the grid.

The electrical grid must reliably deliver electricity. The wind turbines and solar panels so much in vogue are indeed today’s cheapest ways of producing electricity. Unfortunately, they are unreliable: solar panels don’t produce at night, and the wind comes and goes hourly. So there has to be a reliable backup system for when the renewables fail—technologies such as natural gas with carbon capture or nuclear power or some form of storage (like giant batteries).

Reliable backup isn’t too expensive in day-to-day operations. But there are infrequent occasions, up to two weeks long, when neither wind nor solar will generate much. Those times are so important the Germans coined a word for them: dunkelflaute—a dark stillness. Dunkelflauten are documented in all locales with significant deployment of renewables, including the UK, Germany, Texas, and California.

To ride through those long dunkelflauten, the backup grid must be at least as capable as the wind and solar alone, and hence at least as expensive. In other words, the most expensive part of a renewables-heavy grid is reliability, and it becomes more and more expensive as the reliability requirement becomes more stringent.

The cost of reliability can be estimated by models that subject different grids (i.e., mixes of storage, gas, nuclear, wind and solar generation) to historical hour-by-hour weather and demand data. One such study of the US grid demanding >99.99 percent reliability (roughly today’s federal standard) showed that natural gas with or without carbon capture would be the cheapest, and that grids with only wind and solar generation and various forms of storage would be at least two or three times more costly.11

So, it is incorrect, and entirely misleading, to assert that a renewables-heavy grid will be cheap—unless you’re okay with poor reliability. And it’s reasonable to ask, If the backup system needs to be so capable, why have renewables at all? In short, wind and solar can never be more than an ornament to more reliable technologies.

Solar and wind generation have other drawbacks. They need a lot more land because sunlight and wind are much less concentrated than fossil or nuclear energy.12 To produce the same electricity, wind takes four times as much land as gas, seven times as much as coal, and thirty times as much as nuclear. And you need to cover that land with enormous structures. To produce the same amount of electricity, wind takes ten times as much concrete and steel as nuclear.13

Renewable energy technologies also use a lot more high-value materials, such as copper, molybdenum, and dysprosium, because they need to be very efficient.14 An electric car uses almost seven times as much high-value materials as a conventional car, while onshore wind generation uses almost nine times as much as natural gas.

Unfortunately, those high-value materials and their processing are concentrated in inconvenient countries. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 75 percent of the world’s cobalt, while China is a major player in extracting rare earths and graphite and in processing an array of critical minerals.

And although China uses less than 40 percent of the world’s solar panels, it makes 75 percent of all panels, 97 percent of the wafers, 85 percent of the cells, and 79 percent of the polysilicon.15 Chinese manufacturing costs are lower due to cheap (coal-fired) electricity, loose environmental standards, and forced labor.16 The US government has imposed sanctions on some Chinese material for solar panels, which has driven up costs.17 And the Inflation Reduction Act begins an effort to onshore or “friend shore”
the supply chains for critical minerals.18

But some of the drawbacks of fossil fuels that disturb many people would still be there in a high-renewables world—there will still be international trade to lower commodities costs. And there will still be pollution from extracting and processing the enormous quantities of materials that renewables require. However, since critical minerals are input to the manufacture of energy equipment, disruption of one of those supply chains would not have the immediate impact that disruption of a fossil fuel would entail.

In addition, renewables may not remain the cheapest form of generation. If wind, solar, electric vehicles (EVs), and the like are deployed at the envisioned pace, mineral supplies will have a hard time keeping up. For example, by the middle of the next decade, copper demand is expected to double, but the supply will be 20–25 percent short because new mines will have lower quality ore and take sixteen years to start up.19

SUMMARY

A dispassionate look at trends in demographics, development, and energy technology shows that global net zero by 2050 is a fantasy and that it’s quite unlikely even by 2100. But also, the consequences of missing that goal will hardly be catastrophic. That doesn’t mean the world, or we in the United States, shouldn’t do anything. But it does undermine claims of urgency. Here’s what I think we should do.

Sustain and improve climate science. Our knowledge of the climate system is not what it should be. Paleoclimate studies tell us how and why climate has changed in the past; current observations with improved coverage, precision, and continuity tell us what the climate system is doing today; and models give a sense of what might happen in the future. There is a particular need for greater statistical rigor in the analyses and for more focused modeling efforts to reduce uncertainties.

Improve communications to the public. We need to cancel the alleged climate crisis even as we acknowledge that human influences on the climate are growing and that we should be working to reduce them. The public must have an accurate view of both climate and energy that gets beyond sound bites like We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. 20 Such alarmism is counterproductive, since many people are savvy enough to dismiss unsupported scare stories.

Acknowledge that energy reliability and affordability take precedence over emissions reductions. A good start was President Joe Biden’s recent admission that oil and gas will be necessary in the United States for at least a decade. (Actually, it will be far longer than that.) Europe’s current energy crisis is self-inflected: fossil fuel investments and domestic production were abandoned in favor of unreliable import partners and unreliable wind and solar generation. It was easy to see that this would lead to trouble, but mitigation was deemed more important than reliability and affordability.

Pursue thoughtful decarbonization. Governments should embark on programs that aim to reduce emissions by productively coordinating technology development, private sector activity, regulation, and behavior change. It will also be important to estimate costs, timescales, and any actual impacts on the climate (i.e., will it make a difference?). An essential element is research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of emissions-lite technologies to reduce the so-called green premium. Small fission reactors, grid storage and management, batteries, noncarbon chemical fuels, and carbon capture and storage should be high on the list of today’s most promising early-stage technologies.

But programs that go beyond RD&D to meaningful deployment should not scattershot mandates and incentives currently popular. Energy is delivered by complex systems that touch—to borrow from a recent movie title—“everything, everywhere, all the time.” Those systems are recalcitrant for fundamental reasons, so they are best changed slowly. Precipitous climate action is far more disruptive than any plausible impact of climate change. Recent events in Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands show how overly severe emissions regulations can destabilize the political landscape.

Acknowledge developing world energy needs. Most of the world today is energy starved, and fossil fuels are currently the most convenient and reliable way of meeting that demand. Without costly backup systems, weather-dependent wind and solar generation cannot provide appropriate energy access for the people of developing countries. Most advocates of rapid global decarbonization never say what they would do to meet the developing world’s energy needs. And for those who do say, It has yet been answered that respects technical, economic, demographic, and political realities.

Place a greater focus on alternative strategies for dealing with a changing climate. The most important is adaptation. It’s autonomous; adaptation is what humans do, it is effective, it is proportional, and it is local and hence achievable. If nothing else, governments should work to facilitate adaptation.

•••

Policymakers need to realize that large and rapid reductions in emissions are overkill—they risk far more damage to humanity than any conceivable impact from climate change itself. But there is a sensible path forward that will moderate human influences on the climate while responding to the growing demand for reliable and affordable energy. The policy challenge is to identify that path and begin to follow it.

NOTES

  1. Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens, “The Scientific Challenge of Understanding and Estimating Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences 116, no. 49 (December 2, 2019): 24390–95,
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906691116.
  2. Bjorn Stevens, “What We Don’t Know About Climate Change and Why It Matters,” 8th Annual Michio Yanai Distinguished Lecture, May 5, 2022, https://atmos.ucla.edu/yanai-lectures/8th-annual -michio-yanai-distinguished-lecture/.
  3. Hannah Nissan, Lisa Goddard, Erin Coughlan de Perez, John Furlow, Walter Baethgen, Madeleine C. Thomson, and Simon J. Mason, “On the Use and Misuse of Climate Change Projections in International Development,” WIREs Climate Change 10, no. 3 (May/June 2019), https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.579.
  4. Roger Pielke Jr., “Global Disaster Losses: 1990–2023,” Honest Broker, January 12, 2024, https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/global-disaster-losses1990-2023.
  5. Douglas J. Arent, Richard S.J. Tol, Eberhard Faust, Joseph P. Hella, Surender Kumar, Kenneth M. Strzepek, Ferenc L. Tóth, and Denghua Yan, “Key Economic Sectors and Services,” in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Christopher B. Field et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2014), 659–708, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/.
  6. Richard S.J. Tol, “A Meta-Analysis of the Total Economic Impact of Climate Change,” Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper (TI 2022-056/VIII), August 25, 2022, https://papers.tinbergen.nl/22056.pdf.
  7. One might still fret about severe but unlikely climate events such as the slowing of the Atlantic circulation or the outgassing of the permafrost, although these have also been judged to have a few percent impact on the economy. Simon Dietz, James Rising, Thomas Stoerk, and Gernot Wagner,
    “Economic Impacts of Tipping Points in the Climate System,” PNAS 118, no. 34 (August 16, 2021),
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103081118.
  8. William D. Nordhaus, “Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics,” Nobel Prize lecture, December 8, 2018, Stockholm University, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2018/nordhaus/lecture/.
  9. Sunil Prabhu, “‘Colonial Mindset’: PM Slams Pressures On India Over Climate Pledges,” NDTV, November 27, 2021, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/pm-modi-in-the-name-of-environment-various-pressures-created-on-india-all-this-is-result-of-colonial-mentality-2626202; “Africa Being ‘Punished’ by Fossil Fuel Investment Ban—Niger,” Al Jazeera, June 15, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/15/africa-punished-by-investment-clamp-on-fossils-says-niger.
  10. Harriet Barber, “‘Eco-anxiety’: The Fear of Environmental Doom and How to Overcome It,” Telegraph, October 31, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/eco-anxiety-fear-environmental-doom-overcome/.
  11. Jacqueline A. Dowling, Katherine Z. Rinaldi, Tyler H. Ruggles, Steven J. Davis, Mengyao Yuan, Fan Tong, Nathan S. Lewis, and Ken Caldeira, “Role of Long-Duration Energy Storage in Variable Renewable Electricity Systems,” Joule 4, no. 9 (September 16, 2020): 1907–28, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435120303251.
  12. “Energy, Water, and Land Use,” Third National Climate Assessment, US Global Change Research Program, 2014, https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/sectors/energy-water-and-land; see figure 10.6, “Projected Land-Use Intensity in 2030.”
  13. IEA, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” IEA 50, May 2021, https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions.
  14. IEA, “Role of Critical Minerals.”
  15. International Energy Agency, “Special Report on Solar PV Global Supply Chains,” July 2022, https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/4eedd256-b3db-4bc6-b5aa-2711ddfc1f90/Special Report on SolarPVGlobalSupplyChains.pdf.
  16. U S Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, https://ofac.treasury.gov/ .
  17. Thomas Kaplan, Chris Buckley, and Brad Plumer, “U.S. Bans Imports of Some Chinese Solar Materials Tied to Forced Labor,” New York Times, June 24, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/business/economy/china-forced-labor-solar.html.
  18. James Timbie, John Deutch, James O. Ellis Jr., David Fedor, Rodney Ewing, Rajeev Ram, and Sulgiye Park, “Progress on Critical Materials Resilience,” Hoover Institution, July 25, 2023, https://www.hoover.org/research/progress-critical-materials-resilience.
  19. S&P Global, “The Future of Copper: Will the Looming Supply Gap Short-Circuit the Energy Transition?,” https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/mi/Info/0722/futureofcopper.html.
  20. Brad Dress, “UN Chief: ‘We Are on a Highway to Climate Hell with Our Foot on the Accelerator,” The Hill, November 7, 2022, https://thehill.com/homenews/3723070-un-chief-we-are-on-a-highway-to-climate-hell-with-our-foot-on-the-accelerator/.

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As Unrest In Communist China Grows, So Does Its Aggression On The World Stage


At this point, China’s declining economic situation is well documented. The damage is too large to cover up with propaganda, and the Chinese people know it. Even the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) 75th anniversary was austere. Negative economic factors have been building for years.

China was already having problems in 2018 and 2019 with the Trump administration’s imposition of steep tariffs on Chinese goods. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the CCP’s extreme “zero-COVID” three-year lockdown period made China’s economic downturn much worse.

China Is Being Tested

As we approach the last quarter of 2024, the CCP is being tested by unprecedented domestic economic conditions. As a result, civil unrest is 18 percent higher than last year. The slowdown has many facets, of course. We’ll name just a few in this space.

One big factor is the real estate sector, which is about 30 percent of GDP. It continues to crater, and at the time of this writing, there is no recovery in sight. Home prices and sales continue to decline. What’s more, Chinese consumers are buying less, with consumer spending making up just 38 percent of GDP. By contrast, that figure is 60–70 percent in developed countries.

Sloth and Disillusion

Not unexpectedly, unemployment among China’s youth (ages 16–24) had been at least 21 percent and likely higher when the CCP stopped publishing unemployment figures in June 2023. Then, in December of that year, the CCP released new statistics from a new method of measuring youth unemployment, which did not include students. That new approach dropped that figure down to 14.9 percent, but that’s still almost three times higher than China’s national rate of 5.1 percent.

High jobless rates for young people hinder future growth potential and have added to the “lie flat” trend amongst many in China’s new generation, who have little hope of or ambition to obtain the lifestyle that their parents enjoyed.

Sloth and disillusion are hardly the stuff that strong economies are made of. The risks and dangers of disaffected youth movements are not unknown in China. The ghost of Tiananmen still haunts Chinese authorities, even though the surveillance and control that the CCP has over its people is now light years ahead of the Tiananmen Square era of 1989.

Embedded Political and Industrial Policies

Still, there are embedded economic realities that can’t easily be changed. Party doctrine dictates that China’s top economic advantage is found in its low levels of domestic consumption and high savings rate. These two factors mean domestic capital flows directly into the state-controlled banking system, which it can then allocate to specific industries. This gives the Party tremendous control over industrial policy and private capital.

For instance, China’s economic and development structures are geared toward high levels of industrial output. That may seem fine, but because China’s political organization and industrial arrangements within the Party are focused on large production capacity and not innovation or differentiation, the outcomes are massive overproduction that is often well beyond global demand and unprofitable factories.

Constant oversupplies, from electric vehicle batteries to electronics, result in Chinese manufacturers dumping massive amounts of cheap products into foreign markets, triggering trade friction such as tariffs and other retaliation, which also make conditions worse in China.

In short, China’s distorted industrial policies tied to a graft-loyalty political system have made it incapable of changing without disrupting the CCP structure and the loyalties that come with it.

No Stopping the Downward Spiral

For these reasons and others, over the past several years, China has found itself in a downward spiral of deflation, falling domestic consumption, and declining confidence in the CCP. What’s more, there are few real options that won’t threaten the CCP’s grip over the country. It must be made clear, however, that with its surveillance capabilities, the Party can handle a loss of confidence in the eyes of the people, but it can’t survive a loss of power. The two are not one and the same.

What the CCP will do is continue to support some critical areas of the economy, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and military enhancements, while letting other sectors flail without little or no bailouts. Some sectors will eventually return, but not in the near future. This is clear to many within and outside of China, as billions of dollars in investment and capital continue to exit China.

Wolf Warrior Diplomacy Is Alive and Well

This brings us to China’s so-called wolf warrior diplomacy approach toward other nations, which it adopted in 2019 on the cusp of the COVID-19 outbreak and global criticism of Beijing’s disastrous handling of the pandemic. China was already under economic duress due to the rising trade war with the United States. Some observers attribute this approach to personal ambition among China’s diplomatic personnel and/or an attempt to improve the perceived investment environment in China.

Neither makes any sense when it’s understood that Xi Jinping is not allowing diplomats to make their own rules and policies, and pre-wolf warrior investment levels were high. Why would the CCP authorities imagine that increasing aggression on the global stage would make more countries want to invest there? They don’t.

A more realistic rationale for China’s rising aggression on the world stage is that Beijing feels the need to control the narrative at home and intimidate the rest of the world. The spillover between a declining economy and rising unrest is clear. At home, the CCP needs to blame the West and other foreigners for its blatant economic failures not only for exculpatory purposes but also to whip up nationalism and justify further aggressions as economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

Some observers have concluded that Beijing’s days of wolf warrior diplomacy are now over. Current events, however, defy such a conclusion. These include the Chinese regime’s provocative incursions with military planes and boats into or near territorial waters or air space of the United States, Taiwan, and the Philippines, border battles with India, as well as a desire to expand control of the South China Sea. On the global stage, as the return to bullets over diplomacy rises, Beijing sees an opportunity to influence and/or intimidate other nations.

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SDG Ground Zero?


First, some background and context:

By now, most of you reading, are familiar with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If not, the Goals are in a set of 17 different topics which spearhead every part of our lives, governments & economies. The over-reaching goal is complete compliance of every member-state country to adhere to these ‘set in stone’ goals. 

(SDG 1-No poverty; SDG 2- Zero hunger, SDG 3-Good Health & Well-being, SDG 4-Quality Education, SDG 5-Gender Equality, SDG 6-Clean Water/Sanitation, SDG 7-Affordable/Clean Energy, SDG 8-Decent Work/Economic Growth, SDG 9-Industry/Innovation/Infrastructure, SDG 10- Reduced Inequalities, SDG 11- Sustainable Cities/Communities, SDG 12- Responsible Consumption/Production, SDG 13- Climate Action, SDG 14- Life Below Water, SDG 15- Life on Land, SDG 16, Peace/Justice/Strong Institutions, SDG 17- Partnerships for the Goals)

This begs the question, however, about the power these SDGs have over or above the US Constitution, as well as any other member-state’s national governing framework. Does the US Constitution remain America’s supreme framework in the coming days, weeks & years?

Our US Constitution was severely weakened with the creation of the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and the subsequent passage (by Congress) of laws to fully implement USMCA mandates. We the People did not ask for, nor vote for this Agreement or to be bound by it under federal law.

However, USMCA did set up regionalism which adheres more to the United Nations than to the US Constitution. The USMCA, much like the SDGs, split everything which impacts our lives, government & economies into commission governed by appointed individuals, not elected ones.

USMCA was/is a key component to adhering to the SDGs, not American values, attitudes or beliefs.

The USMCA is much like the European Union’s regionalism.

What does this mean? People living within the region (not necessarily in your country) decide what your country will do, or not do.  The UN cannot fully survive in its plans for total control without regionalism throughout our world! (*Note, if you’ve ever studied a FEMA map of the USA, the regions are carbon copies of those from the United Nations. Similar maps of the world show the compliance by grouping nations/countries into regions.)

This past month, September 2024, the United Nations hosted its “Summit of the Future” in New York City. In brief detail the Summit was to further cement not only the SDGs in our lives, but to expand the UN’s power (via a new charter). In doing this, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights gained even more power.

Among the ‘rights’ assigned in that Universal Declaration, every aspect of how we live, what we do, how we do it, etc. are defined. These assigned rights seek to put government as our god and not respect our God-given rights (which no government or international entity can remove). These God-given rights are inherent, as they should be.

Government, in its truest form should protect those inherent rights, not remove or seek to somehow improve them. For example, freedom is among our God-given rights. There’s no improvement possible by any government which can assign or guarantee freedom. Why not?

Freedom should be at 100 percent, all the time, for each of us. It’s mathematically impossible to improve it to any percent over 100. Governments CAN and do, seek to reduce our freedoms of 100 percent.

Why This Matters:

So, imagine the shock, horror and gasping that occurs when you discover that the SDGs seek to use the Holy Bible to oversee your worship? If you don’t read the Holy Bible, that’s okay, the UN has thought of that and included EVERY religion in its quest to totally control us! If you’re not a believer of any religion, you, too, are being assimilated among these religions, as an ‘outreach project’ to encompass agnostics and atheists. (*Note: in the US, the Church of Satan is also among the government recognized religions.)

Enter SDG Zero!

According to the blog article from ‘listeninginspires’, 1 SDG 0 (Sustainable Development Goal Zero) is the ‘foundation and ULTIMATE goal of Agenda 2030’. What does this really mean?

It means a private conversation between 2 globalists has been taken out of context and applied to every human being! Much like the private exchange of a letter by Thomas Jefferson where “separation of church and state” has been falsely credited to the U.S. Constitution!

By taking this one comment, “There is an unwritten 18th Sustainable Development Goal. It is about love and joy, and it infuses all the others.”, the United Nations has just encroached on every member-state nation (United States included) an ‘activor’ called ‘joy’.

If you look at the textbook definition of ‘joy’ you will not see ‘activor’. If you look up the Holy Bible’s references to ‘joy’ you can learn that being in a state of joy is a gift, not an emotion to be manipulated to fit a government’s plan OR an unelected global governing group! However, if you continue to read the blog article you’ll see that ‘joy’ is being used as a way to create a false narrative for change. After all, if you don’t do what you do with love and joy in your heart, what ARE you doing to further the SDGs and Agenda 2030?!

One of the last points in the blog article is simply blasphemous. “SDG Zero is the ‘alpha and omega’ of Agenda 2030”!

The U.N.’s Satanic Roots:

Since education research is my main focus, back in 2014, I wrote an article 2 on the luciferian roots of the United Nations. If you have not learned about this before, take the time to access the article. You’ll learn that while God is mentioned, it’s in a new world order way where creation becomes the god the UN uses to manipulate the SDGs. (For more on that my article 3 from 2020 will have much more for you.)

A Religious Backdoor:

Have you ever heard of the Lausanne Covenant? It was an agreement made decades ago to unite the world’s major religions in being the hands and feet of Christ. Rev. Billy Graham was one of the main spearheading leaders. Since then, the churches still abiding by the Covenant have aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals with the justification it’s “What Jesus would do.” The entire effort is led by the Lausanne Movement (The Movement is governed by a Congress, where a plethora of public-private partnerships, especially in the faith based capacity are included)

“If you aren’t catching the connection, it’s this: because the UN has the A21/2030 in place and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) are entrenched in our schools, communities, and churches; the gaia/satanic portions are attached, but as GOOD and helpful ways to live!

Woven into every bit of this is ‘social justice’. Sadly, the 3rd point of the Lausanne Covenant is ‘holistic living’ which uses social justice as a platform!” 4

If you need further proof that the Lausanne Covenant is still focused on Christ, please visit their ‘action’ page “Following Jesus Globally”. 5 Be sure to scroll down and see the SDGs in living color. (Note: No mention of SDG Zero will be evident.)

Action Steps:

It’s been my goal to show you just how stealthily the United Nations has compromised one of our most sacred parts of our being: our faith and worship. To them, it’s a mockery that must be homogenized into walking away from our faith and worship of God and express our faith and worship of their leadership as they supposedly have our best interests at heart. NOTHING could be further from the truth about the SDGS or Agenda 2030! So, what can you do?

1) Follow the trail from the UN to the White House (regardless of which mainstream party is in power). Currently, as with every Administration, is a nationwide effort to purposefully BLEND church and state (it’s called ‘faith based partnerships’). These partnerships are sold to us, the taxpayer as community improvement or neighborhood services. 6 While the effort is to counter hate, buried in the fourth pillar of the plan is ‘collective action’. In SDG language, ‘collective’ means you are expected and demanded to comply.

2) Learn more about the URI 7 (United Religions Initiative) it’s an arm of the United Nations.

Their goal? Creating globally minded peacekeepers. Of all their target areas, every one of them is rooted in the UN’s SDGs, not the Word of God. (Be sure to look for the URI’s 26 page pdf called “Faith Action on the United Nations SDGs”. In it you’ll find that Christian, Buddist, pagan, atheist or other religious backgrounds are all included.)

Bottom line: The UN is determined that no one will escape their global grasp of control. Going after your faith and belief system should be off the table, COMPLETELY!

Sources:

  1. https://www.listening-inspires.world/post/sdg-0-the-sdg-of-love-and-joy
  2. https://www.commoncorediva.com/2014/09/24/would-you-believe-it-evil-hath-no-place-in-education/
  3. https://www.commoncorediva.com/aiovg_videos/war-against-the-core-satanism-earth-worship-un-indoctrination-coming-into-public-schools/
  4. https://www.commoncorediva.com/2020/08/11/ready-for-radical-upheaval/
  5. https://lausanne.org/global-analysis/following-jesus-globally
  6. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/25/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-releases-first-ever-u-s-national-strategy-to-counter-antisemitism/
  7. https://www.uri.org/

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AI, Society, and Democracy: Maybe Just Relax.


The argument argues that law and regulation have never diagnosed and prevented social, political, and economic ills of new technology. AI is no different. AI regulation poses a greater threat to democracy than AI, as governments are anxious to use regulation to censor information. Free competition in civil society, media, and academia will address any ill effects of AI as it has for previous technological revolutions, not preemptive regulation.

“AI poses a threat to democracy and society. It must be extensively regulated.”
Or words to that effect, are a common sentiment. They must be kidding. 

Have the chattering classes—us—speculating about the impact of new technology on economics, society, and politics, ever correctly envisioned the outcome? Over the centuries of innovation, from moveable type to Twitter (now X), from the steam engine to the airliner, from the farm to the factory to the office tower, from agriculture to manufacturing to services, from leeches and bleeding to cancer cures and birth control, from abacus to calculator to word processor to mainframe to internet to social media, nobody has ever foreseen the outcome, and especially the social and political consequences of new technology. Even with the benefit of long hindsight, do we have any historical consensus on how these and other past technological innovations affected the profound changes in society and government that we have seen in the last few centuries? Did the industrial revolution advance or hinder democracy?

Sure, in each case one can go back and find a few Cassandras who made a correct prediction—but then they got the next one wrong. Before anyone regulates anything, we need a scientifically valid and broad-based consensus. 

Have people ever correctly forecast social and political changes, from any set of causes? Representative democracy and liberal society have, in their slow progress, waxed and waned, to put it mildly. Did our predecessors in 1910 see 70 years of communist dictatorship about to envelop Russia? Did they understand in 1925 the catastrophe waiting for Germany? 

Society is transforming rapidly. Birth rates are plummeting around the globe. The U.S. political system seems to be coming apart at the seams with unprecedented polarization, a busting of norms, and the decline of our institutions. Does anyone really know why?

“The history of millenarian apocalyptic speculation is littered with worries that each new development would destroy society and lead to tyranny, and with calls for massive coercive reaction. Most of it was spectacularly wrong.”

The history of millenarian apocalyptic speculation is littered with worries that each new development would destroy society and lead to tyranny, and with calls for massive coercive reaction. Most of it was spectacularly wrong. Thomas Malthus predicted, plausibly, that the technological innovations of the late 1700s would lead to widespread starvation. He was spectacularly wrong. Marx thought industrialization would necessarily lead to immiseration of the proletariat and communism. He was spectacularly wrong. Automobiles did not destroy American morals. Comic books and TV did not rot young minds.

Our more neurotic age began in the 1970s, with the widespread view that overpopulation and dwindling natural resources would lead to an economic and political hellscape, views put forth, for example, in the Club of Rome report and movies like Soylent Green. (2) They were spectacularly wrong. China acted on the “population bomb” with the sort of coercion our worriers cheer for, to its current great regret. Our new worry is global population collapse. Resource prices are lower than ever, the U.S. is an energy exporter, and people worry that the “climate crisis” from too much fossil fuel will end Western civilization, not “peak oil.” Yet demographics and natural resources are orders of magnitude more predictable than whatever AI will be and what dangers it poses to democracy and society. 

“Millenarian” stems from those who worried that the world would end in the year 1000, and people had better get serious about repentance for our sins. They were wrong then, but much of the impulse to worry about the apocalypse, then to call for massive changes, usually with “us” taking charge, is alive today. 

Yes, new technologies often have turbulent effects, dangers, and social or political implications. But that’s not the question. Is there a single example of a society that saw a new developing technology, understood ahead of time its economic effects, to say nothing of social and political effects, “regulated” its use constructively, prevented those ill effects from breaking out, but did not lose the benefits of the new technology? 

There are plenty of counterexamples—societies that, in excessive fear of such effects of new technologies, banned or delayed them, at great cost. The Chinese Treasure fleet is a classic story. In the 1400s, China had a new technology: fleets of ships, far larger than anything Europeans would have for centuries, traveling as far as Africa. Then, the emperors, foreseeing social and political change, “threats to their power from merchants,” (what we might call steps toward democracy) “banned oceangoing voyages in 1430.” (3) The Europeans moved in.

Genetic modification was feared to produce “frankenfoods,” or uncontrollable biological problems. As a result of vague fears, Europe has essentially banned genetically modified foods, despite no scientific evidence of harm. GMO bans, including vitamin A-enhanced rice, which has saved the eyesight of millions, are tragically spreading to poorer countries. Most of Europe went on to ban hydraulic fracking. U.S. energy policy regulators didn’t have similar power to stop it, though they would have if they could. The U.S. led the world in carbon reduction, and Europe bought gas from Russia instead. Nuclear power was regulated to death in the 1970s over fears of small radiation exposures, greatly worsening today’s climate problem. The fear remains, and Germany has now turned off its nuclear power plants as well. In 2001, the Bush administration banned research on new embryonic stem cell lines. Who knows what we might have learned. 

Climate change is, to many, the current threat to civilization, society, and democracy (the latter from worry about “climate justice” and waves of “climate refugee” immigrants). However much you believe the social and political impacts—much less certain than the meteorological ones—one thing is for sure: Trillion dollar subsidies for electric cars, made in the U.S., with U.S. materials, U.S. union labor, and page after page of restrictive rules, along with 100% tariffs against much cheaper Chinese electric cars, will not save the planet—especially once you realize that every drop of oil saved by a new electric car is freed up to be used by someone else, and at astronomical cost. Whether you’re Bjorn Lomborg or Greta Thunberg on climate change, the regulatory state is failing. 

We also suffer from narrow-focus bias. Once we ask “what are the dangers of AI?” a pleasant debate ensues. If we ask instead “what are the dangers to our economy, society, and democracy?” surely a conventional or nuclear major-power war, civil unrest, the unraveling of U.S. political institutions and norms, a high death-rate pandemic, crashing populations, environmental collapse, or just the consequences of an end to growth will light up the scoreboard ahead of vague dangers of AI. We have almost certainly just experienced the first global pandemic due to a human-engineered virus. It turns out that gain-of-function research was the one needing regulating. Manipulated viruses, not GMO corn, were the biological danger. 

I do not deny potential dangers of AI. The point is that the advocated tool, the machinery of the regulatory state, guided by people like us, has never been able to see social, economic, and political dangers of technical change, or to do anything constructive about them ahead of time, and is surely just as unable to do so now. The size of the problem does not justify deploying completely ineffective tools. 

Preemptive regulation is even less likely to work. AI is said to be an existential threat, fancier versions of “the robots will take over,” needing preemptive “safety” regulation before we even know what AI can do, and before dangers reveal themselves. 

Most regulation takes place as we gain experience with a technology and its side effects. Many new technologies, from industrial looms to automobiles to airplanes to nuclear power, have had dangerous side effects. They were addressed as they came out, and judging costs vs. benefits. There has always been time to learn, to improve, to mitigate, to correct, and where necessary to regulate, once a concrete understanding of the problems has emerged. Would a preemptive “safety” regulator looking at airplanes in 1910 have been able to produce that long experience-based improvement, writing the rule book governing the Boeing 737, without killing air travel in the process? AI will follow the same path. 

I do not claim that all regulation is bad. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the early 1970s were quite successful. But consider all the ways in which they are so different from AI regulation. The dangers of air pollution were known. The nature of the “market failure,” classic externalities, was well understood. The technologies available for abatement were well understood. The problem was local. The results were measurable. None of those conditions is remotely true for regulating AI, its “safety,” its economic impacts, or its impacts on society or democratic politics. Environmental regulation is also an example of successful ex post rather than preemptive regulation. Industrial society developed, we discovered safety and environmental problems, and the political system fixed those problems, at tolerable cost, without losing the great benefits. If our regulators had considered Watt’s steam engine or Benz’s automobile (about where we are with AI) to pass “effect on society and democracy” rules, we would still be riding horses and hand-plowing fields.

“If our regulators had considered Watt’s steam engine or Benz’s automobile (about where we are with AI) to pass “effect on society and democracy” rules, we would still be riding horses and hand-plowing fields.”

Who will regulate? 

Calls for regulation usually come in the passive voice (“AI must be regulated”), leaving open the question of just who is going to do this regulating. 

We are all taught in first-year economics classes a litany of “market failures” remediable by far-sighted, dispassionate, and perfectly informed “regulators.” That normative analysis is not logically incorrect. But it abjectly fails to explain the regulation we have now, or how our regulatory bodies behave, what they are capable of, and when they fail. The question for regulating AI is not what an author, appointing him or herself benevolent dictator for a day, would wish to see done. The question is what our legal, regulatory, or executive apparatus can even vaguely hope to deliver, buttressed by analysis of its successes and failures in the past. What can our regulatory institutions do? How have they performed in the past? 

Scholars who study regulation abandoned the Econ 101 view a half-century ago. That pleasant normative view has almost no power to explain the laws and regulations that we observe. Public choice economics and history tell instead a story of limited information, unintended consequences, and capture. Planners never have the kind of information that prices convey. (4) Studying actual regulation in industries such as telephones, radios, airlines, and railroads, scholars such as Buchanan and Stigler found capture a much more explanatory narrative: industries use regulation to get protection from competition, and to stifle newcomers and innovators. (5) They offer political support and a revolving door in return. When telephones, airlines, radio and TV, and trucks were deregulated in the 1970s, we found that all the stories about consumer and social harm, safety, or “market failures” were wrong, but regulatory stifling of innovation and competition was very real. Already, Big Tech is using AI safety fear to try again to squash open source and startups, and defend profits accruing to their multibillion dollar investments in easily copiable software ideas. (6) Seventy-five years of copyright law to protect Mickey Mouse is not explainable by Econ 101 market failure. 

Even successful regulation, such as the first wave of environmental regulation, is now routinely perverted for other ends. People bring environmental lawsuits to endlessly delay projects they dislike for other reasons. 

The basic competence of regulatory agencies is now in doubt. On the heels of the massive failure of financial regulation in 2008 and again in 2021, (7) the obscene failures of public health in 2020–2022, do we really think this institutional machinery can artfully guide the development of one of the most uncertain and consequential technologies of the last century?

And all of my examples asked regulators only to address economic issues, or easily measured environmental issues. Is there any historical case in which the social and political implications of any technology were successfully guided by regulation?

“Studying actual regulation in industries such as telephones, radios, airlines, and railroads, scholars such as Buchanan and Stigler found capture a much more explanatory narrative: industries use regulation to get protection from competition, and to stifle newcomers and innovators.”

It is AI regulation, not AI, that threatens democracy. 

Large Language Models (LLMs) are currently the most visible face of AI. They are fundamentally a new technology for communication, for making one human being’s ideas discoverable and available to another. As such, they are the next step in a long line from clay tablets, papyrus, vellum, paper, libraries, moveable type, printing machines, pamphlets, newspapers, paperback books, radio, television, telephone, internet, search engines, social networks, and more. Each development occasioned worry that the new technology would spread “misinformation” and undermine society and government, and needed to be “regulated.”

The worriers often had a point. Gutenberg’s moveable type arguably led to the Protestant Reformation. Luther was the social influencer of his age, writing pamphlet after pamphlet of what the Catholic Church certainly regarded as “misinformation.” The church “regulated” with widespread censorship where it could. Would more censorship, or “regulating” the development of printing, have been good? The political and social consequences of the Reformation were profound, not least a century of disastrous warfare. But nobody at the time saw what they would be. They were more concerned with salvation. And moveable type also made the scientific journal and the Enlightenment possible, spreading a lot of good information along with “misinformation.” The printing press arguably was a crucial ingredient for democracy, by allowing the spread of those then-heretical ideas. The founding generation of the U.S. had libraries full of classical and enlightenment books that they would not have had without printing. 

More recently, newspapers, movies, radio, and TV have been influential in the spread of social and political ideas, both good and bad. Starting in the 1930s, the U.S. had extensive regulation, amounting to censorship, of radio, movies, and TV. Content was regulated, licenses given under stringent rules. Would further empowering U.S. censors to worry about “social stability” have been helpful or harmful in the slow liberalization of American society? Was any of this successful in promoting democracy, or just in silencing the many oppressed voices of the era? They surely would have tried to stifle, not promote, the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, as the FBI did. 

Freer communication by and large is central to the spread of representative democracy and prosperity. And the contents of that communication are frequently wrong or disturbing, and usually profoundly offensive to the elites who run the regulatory state. It’s fun to play dictator for a day when writing academic articles about what “should be regulated.” But think about what happens when, inevitably, someone else is in charge. 

“Regulating” communication means censorship. Censorship is inherently political, and almost always serves to undermine social change and freedom. Our aspiring AI regulators are fresh off the scandals revealed in Murthy v. Missouri, in which the government used the threat of regulatory harassment to censor Facebook and X. (8) Much of the “misinformation,” especially regarding COVID-19 policy, turned out to be right. It was precisely the kind of out-of-the-box thinking, reconsidering of the scientific evidence, speaking truth to power, that we want in a vibrant democracy and a functioning public health apparatus, though it challenged verities propounded by those in power and, in their minds, threatened social stability and democracy itself. Do we really think that more regulation of “misinformation” would have sped sensible COVID-19 policies? Yes, uncensored communication can also be used by bad actors to spread bad ideas, but individual access to information, whether from shortwave radio, samizdat publications, text messages, Facebook, Instagram, and now AI, has always been a tool benefiting freedom. 

Yes, AI can lie and produce “deepfakes.” The brief era when a photograph or video provided by itself evidence that something happened, since photographs and videos were difficult to doctor, is over. Society and democracy will survive.

“Regulation is, by definition, an act of the state, and thus used by those who control the state to limit what ideas people can hear. Aristocratic paternalism of ideas is the antithesis of democracy.”

AI can certainly be tuned to favor one or the other political view. Look only at Google’s Gemini misadventure. (9) Try to get any of the currently available LLMs to report controversial views on hot-button issues, even medical advice. Do we really want a government agency imposing a single tuning, in a democracy in which the party you don’t support eventually might win an election? The answer is, as it always has been, competition. Knowing that AI can lie produces a demand for competition and certification. AI can detect misinformation, too. People want true information, and will demand technology that can certify if something is real. If an algorithm is feeding people misinformation, as TikTok is accused of feeding people Chinese censorship, (10) count on its competitors, if allowed to do so, to scream that from the rafters and attract people to a better product. 

Regulation naturally bends to political ends. The Biden Executive Order on AI insists that “all workers need a seat at the table, including through collective bargaining,” and “AI development should be built on the views of workers, labor unions, educators, and employers.” (11) Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ted Cruz and Phil Gramm report: “Mr. Biden’s separate AI Bill of Rights claims to advance ‘racial equity and support for underserved communities.’ AI must also be used to ‘improve environmental and social outcomes,’ to ‘mitigate climate change risk,’ and to facilitate ‘building an equitable clean energy economy.’” (12) All worthy goals, perhaps, but one must admit those are somewhat partisan goals not narrowly tailored to scientifically understood AI risks. And if you like these, imagine what the likely Trump executive order on AI will look like. 

Regulation is, by definition, an act of the state, and thus used by those who control the state to limit what ideas people can hear. Aristocratic paternalism of ideas is the antithesis of democracy.

Economics

What about jobs? It is said that once AI comes along, we’ll all be out of work. And exactly this was said of just about every innovation for the last millennium. Technology does disrupt. Mechanized looms in the 1800s did lower wages for skilled weavers, while it provided a reprieve from the misery of farmwork for unskilled workers. The answer is a broad safety net that cushions all misfortunes, without unduly dulling incentives. Special regulations to help people displaced by AI, or China, or other newsworthy causes is counterproductive. 

But after three centuries of labor-saving innovation, the unemployment rate is 4%. (13) In 1900, a third of Americans worked on farms. Then the tractor was invented. People went on to better jobs at higher wages. The automobile did not lead to massive unemployment of horse-drivers. In the 1970s and 1980s, women entered the workforce in large numbers. Just then, the word processor and Xerox machine slashed demand for secretaries. Female employment did not crash. ATM machines increased bank employment. Tellers were displaced, but bank branches became cheaper to operate, so banks opened more of them. AI is not qualitatively different in this regard. 

One activity will be severely disrupted: Essays like this one. ChatGPT-5, please write 4,000 words on AI regulation, society, and democracy, in the voice of the Grumpy Economist…(I was tempted!). But the same economic principle applies: Reduction in cost will lead to a massive expansion in supply. Revenues can even go up if people want to read it, i.e., if demand is elastic enough. (14) And perhaps authors like me can spend more time on deeper contributions. 

The big story of AI will be how it makes workers more productive. Imagine you’re an undertrained educator or nurse practitioner in a village in India or Africa. With an AI companion, you can perform at a much higher level. AI tools will likely raise the wages and productivity of less-skilled workers, by more easily spreading around the knowledge and analytical abilities of the best ones. 

AI is one of the most promising technical innovations of recent decades. Since social media of the early 2000s, Silicon Valley has been trying to figure out what’s next. It wasn’t crypto. Now we know. AI promises to unlock tremendous advances. Consider only machine learning plus genetics and ponder the consequent huge advances coming in health. But nobody really knows yet what it can do, or how to apply it. It was a century from Franklin’s kite to the electric light bulb, and another century to the microprocessor and the electric car. 

A broad controversy has erupted in economics: whether frontier growth is over or dramatically slowing down because we have run out of ideas. (15) AI is a great hope this is not true. Historically, ideas became harder to find in existing technologies. And then, as it seemed growth would peter out, something new came along. Steam engines plateaued after a century. Then diesel, electric, and airplanes came along. As birthrates continue to decline, the issue is not too few jobs, but too few people. Artificial “people” may be coming along just in time!

“It’s fun to play dictator for a day when writing academic articles about what “should be regulated.” But think about what happens when, inevitably, someone else is in charge.”

Conclusion 

As a concrete example of the kind of thinking I argue against, Daron Acemoglu writes, 

We must remember that existing social and economic relations are exceedingly complex. When they are disrupted, all kinds of unforeseen consequences can follow… 

We urgently need to pay greater attention to how the next wave of disruptive innovation could affect our social, democratic, and civic institutions. Getting the most out of creative destruction requires a proper balance between pro-innovation public policies and democratic input. If we leave it to tech entrepreneurs to safeguard our institutions, we risk more destruction than we bargained for. (16) 

The first paragraph is correct. But the logical implication is the converse—if relations are “complex” and consequences “unforeseen,” the machinery of our political and regulatory state is incapable of doing anything about it. The second paragraph epitomizes the fuzzy thinking of passive voice. Who is this “we”? How much more “attention” can AI get than the mass of speculation in which we (this time I mean literally we) are engaged? Who does this “getting”? Who is to determine “proper balance”? Balancing “pro-innovation public policies and democratic input” is Orwellianly autocratic. Our task was to save democracy, not to “balance” democracy against “public policies.” Is not the effect of most “public policy” precisely to slow down innovation in order to preserve the status quo? “We” not “leave[ing] it to tech entrepreneurs” means a radical appropriation of property rights and rule of law.

What’s the alternative? Of course AI is not perfectly safe. Of course it will lead to radical changes, most for the better but not all. Of course it will affect society and our political system, in complex, disruptive, and unforeseen ways. How will we adapt? How will we strengthen democracy, if we get around to wanting to strengthen democracy rather than the current project of tearing it apart? 

The answer is straightforward: As we always have. Competition. The government must enforce rule of law, not the tyranny of the regulator. Trust democracy, not paternalistic aristocracy—rule by independent, unaccountable, self-styled technocrats, insulated from the democratic political process. Remain a government of rights, not of permissions. Trust and strengthen our institutions, including all of civil society, media, and academia, not just federal regulatory agencies, to detect and remedy problems as they occur. Relax. It’s going to be great.

Footnotes

(1) Angela Aristidou, Eugene Volokh, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

(2) Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens, Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972), https://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf; Soylent Green, directed by Richard Fleischer (1973; Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

(3) Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2013), https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691153544/the-great-escape.

(4) See Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35 (September 1945): 519–30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1809376.

(5) See George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2, no. 1 (Spring 1971): 3–21, https://doi.org/10.2307/3003160.

(6) See Martin Casado and Katherine Boyle, “AI Talks Leave ‘Little Tech’ Out,” Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-talks-leave-little-tech-outhomeland-security-adversaries-open-source-board-46e3232d.

(7) See John H. Cochrane and Amit Seru, “Ending Bailouts, at Last,” Journal of Law, Economics and Policy 19, no. 2 (2024): 169–193, https://www.johncochrane.com/research-all/end-bailouts.

(8) Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. _____ (2024).

(9) Megan McArdle, “Female Popes? Google’s Amusing AI Bias Underscores a Serious Problem,” Washington Post, February 27, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/27/google-gemini-bias-race-politics/.

(10) Zachary Evans, “Social Media App TikTok Censors anti-China Content,” National Review, September 25, 2019, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/social-mediaapp-tiktok-censors-anti-china-content.

(11) Exec. Order No. 14110, 88 Fed. Reg. 75191 (October 30, 2023), https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/10/30/executive-order-on-the-safesecure-and-trustworthy-development-and-use-of-artificial-intelligence/.

(12) Ted Cruz and Phil Gramm, “Biden Wants to Put AI on a Leash,” Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-wants-to-put-artificial-intelligence-on-a-leash-progressive-regulation-45275102.

(13) “Unemployment Rate [UNRATE], May 2024” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, July 5, 2024, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE.

(14) For more on this point, see John Cochrane, “Supply, Demand, AI and Humans,” TheGrumpy Economist (blog), April 26, 2024, https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/supply-demand-ai-and-humans.

(15) See the excellent, and troubling, analysis in Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) and Nick Bloom, John Van Reenen, Charles Jones, and Michael Webb, “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?,” American Economic Review, 110, no. 4 (April 2020): 1104–1144, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180338

(16) Daren Acemoglu, “Are We Ready for AI Creative Destruction?,” Project Syndicate, April 9, 2024, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ai-age-needs-morenuanced-view-of-creative-destruction-disruptive-innovation-by-daron-acemog

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You’re Not Crazy: Study Proves Legal Gun Owners Are the Sane Ones. ‘Gun Crime’ is the Fault of Psychopaths.


Women Shooter at Ready Range Ladies Lady Gun Holder IMG NRA-ILA
You’re Not Crazy: Study Proves Legal Gun Owners Are the Sane Ones, ‘Gun Crime’ is the Fault of Psychopaths File Photo IMG NRA-ILA

If you only get your news from the biased mainstream media, you might think that gun owners, especially those who carry concealed, are one step away from being labeled a “crazy gun nut.”

It’s practically guaranteed that after every new concealed carry law is passed, there’s no shortage of headlines warning us that the sky is about to fall, violence will run rampant, and “law-abiding gun owners” will soon be indistinguishable from dangerous criminals.

But what if I told you the truth is far less dramatic? According to a recent study, it’s not legal gun owners we should be worried about—it’s the psychopaths.

That’s right, a new study titled Psychopathy, Gun Carrying, and Firearm Violence by Sophie L. Kjærvik and Nicholas D. Thomson turns the tables on this narrative. Contrary to what mainstream media would have you believe, the study found that psychopaths—not your average law-abiding citizen—are far more likely to be involved in gun violence and illegal gun carrying.

The “Crazy Gun Nut” Stereotype

Before we dive into the facts, let’s talk about how mainstream media loves to sensationalize anything related to guns. According to a McLaughlin survey, “71.9 percent of Americans are concerned that the national media and news organizations such as ABC, CBS, and NBC are biased when it comes to reporting about gun violence and Second Amendment issues.” And honestly, who could blame them?

From labeling semi-automatic rifles as “assault weapons” to making wild predictions about the chaos concealed carry laws will unleash, the media has a long history of misleading the public about gun ownership. But as AmmoLand News has pointed out before, Careful CNN, Your Bias is Showing. The media doesn’t really care about accuracy as long as they can connect gun sales to rising violence—even when the truth is far more nuanced.

Psychopathy, Not Legal Gun Owners, Drives Gun Violence

Now, let’s get to the meat of the study that flies in the face of all the mainstream media’s fearmongering. Kjærvik and Thomson found that “firearm violence was positively related to the affective and antisocial facets of psychopathy.” In plain English, people with emotional coldness and a disregard for social norms are far more likely to commit acts of gun violence. But here’s the kicker—none of those psychopathic traits were linked to legal gun ownership.

In fact, “gun carrying with a concealed permit was not related to any of the facets” of psychopathy. Legal gun carriers, the ones who follow the law and obtain permits, are not driven by the same impulses as those who commit violent crimes with guns. In other words, legal gun owners are, as the title suggests, not crazy.

This study slams the door on the idea that expanding concealed carry laws will somehow lead to widespread violence. The researchers found that “only the antisocial facet statistically predicted gun carrying without a concealed permit” (KJÆRVIK AND THOMSON Page 6), and not a single psychopathy trait was associated with those who carry guns legally.

The ones causing the chaos are those who break the law—not law-abiding gun owners.

The Media’s Obsession with Fear-Mongering

Yet, despite the clear evidence that psychopaths are the driving force behind unlawful gun use, the mainstream media continues to conflate all gun ownership with gun violence. As highlighted in AmmoLand News’ article New Media Group Has Formed to Push the Anti-Gun Narrative, there are now entire organizations dedicated to framing guns as a systemic problem, ignoring the fact that responsible gun owners exist.

Groups like the Association of Gun Violence Reporters (AGVR) are out to “shift public perception about firearms,” framing the conversation in a way that makes legal gun ownership seem dangerous. This is the kind of narrative the media latches onto, painting every gun owner as a ticking time bomb while conveniently leaving out research that contradicts their bias.

Concealed Carry Laws: The Reality vs. The Hype

Every time new concealed carry laws are passed, the media goes into full-blown “the sky is falling” mode. But what does the study say about those who legally carry guns? Absolutely nothing alarming. Legal gun owners who carry with a permit are not prone to violence or psychopathy.

This is in stark contrast to the portrayal in the media, which—as AmmoLand News pointed out in Where Stupid Meets Phobia: A Finger-Gun Update—loves to blow things out of proportion. Finger guns, pastry guns, and even kids playing cops and robbers are treated as threats, while real threats, like people with antisocial tendencies who carry guns illegally, go largely unnoticed.

The Real Problem: Psychopathy & Illegal Gun Use

Psychopathy Gun Carrying, and Firearm Violence by Sophie L Kjrvik and Nicholas D Thomson
Psychopathy Gun Carrying, and Firearm Violence by Sophie L Kjrvik and Nicholas D Thomson

The real issue here is that the media’s obsession with fear-mongering is clouding the facts. The study found that “firearm violence was positively related to the antisocial and affective facets” (KJÆRVIK AND THOMSON Page 1) of psychopathy. Those with these traits are more likely to engage in illegal gun behavior and violence.

American Gun owners who obtain permits and follow the law? They’re not part of the problem.

But don’t expect to hear that on the evening news. Instead, you’ll get stories that link rising gun sales to violence, ignoring the fact that gun purchases have surged because people are worried about protecting themselves from crime—a crime committed by the very psychopaths the media doesn’t talk about.

The Irony of It All

In the end, this study proves what many gun owners already knew: legal gun carriers aren’t the problem. It’s ironic, really, that the media spends so much time vilifying law-abiding citizens when the real focus should be on identifying and addressing the mental health issues that drive unlawful gun violence. But, as the McLaughlin Poll reveals, a vast majority of Americans have already caught on to the media’s bias.

So, next time you hear someone rant about “crazy gun nuts,” just remember: the real threat isn’t concealed carry permit holders—it’s the psychopaths committing crimes while the media continues to push its tired, inaccurate narratives.

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