The January 6th witch hunt is about to boomerang back on Democrats in spectacular fashion.
A leading conservative investigative journalist just outlined a path for justice that would leave Obama and Biden scrambling.
And Julie Kelly dropped a nuclear bombshell about what Trump’s DOJ should do to Obama and Biden.
Kelly proposes turning Biden’s own legal weapons against him
Conservative investigative journalist Julie Kelly delivered a stunning analysis during her appearance on “The Benny Show” that could reshape how Americans think about accountability for the weaponization of government.
Kelly revealed she’s developing a comprehensive legal framework showing how President Trump’s Justice Department could pursue seditious conspiracy charges against Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
“I’ve actually been working on a seditious conspiracy article and how the DOJ might be able to apply,” Kelly explained to host Benny Johnson.¹
This represents the ultimate poetic justice – using the exact same legal theories that Biden’s DOJ deployed against January 6th defendants.
The irony is breathtaking.
Kelly pointed out that seditious conspiracy historically targeted serious threats like foreign terrorists. She noted this statute was used against perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – actual terrorists who killed Americans.
But Biden’s Justice Department transformed this serious charge into a political weapon.
The double standard that could backfire spectacularly
Here’s where Kelly’s analysis gets devastating for Democrats.
Biden’s prosecutors convinced juries to convict January 6th defendants on seditious conspiracy charges even when those defendants “were not even in Washington, D.C., some of whom didn’t even go inside the Capitol.”²
Kelly noted that among all these defendants, “only one had some sort of weapon. I think, you know, a pocketknife or something only.”³
Think about that for a moment.
If prosecutors can secure seditious conspiracy convictions against Americans who weren’t even present at the Capitol, what does that mean for government officials who actually wielded federal agencies as weapons?
Host Benny Johnson crystallized this perfectly: “Did they have the power to overthrow the U.S. government? And of course, of course, that’s laughably no. Yet these people did have the power to overthrow the government. They use the most powerful intelligence community resources known to man, and they weaponized them against Donald Trump.”⁴
The legal precedent is now established, thanks to Biden’s own prosecutors.
When the full weight of government becomes the weapon
Kelly’s most compelling argument centers on the definition of “force” in seditious conspiracy cases.
During January 6th trials, Biden’s prosecutors argued that physical violence wasn’t required for conviction.
“They said physical force wasn’t necessary, that any sort of force that they planned to use force. Well, it doesn’t have to be physical force,” Kelly observed.⁵
Now apply that legal standard to what actually happened to Trump.
Kelly laid out the devastating case: “When you have the full force of the intelligence community, the White House, the Oval Office, the DOJ, the FBI, CIA, every single major, powerful, unaccountable government agency coming down on your head,” she said, “How can you say that’s not by force? That’s way worse than someone opening a door with Capitol Police standing right there going into a government building on a Wednesday afternoon.”⁶
This cuts right to the heart of the matter.
If walking through an open door with police present constitutes seditious conspiracy, what does coordinating multiple federal agencies against a political opponent represent?
Kelly suggested the conspiracy spans administrations, running from Obama’s White House through Biden’s regime, all designed to sabotage Trump’s Presidency and delegitimize any potential return to power.
Justice delayed but not denied
Kelly revealed another bombshell – she believes Special Counsel Jack Smith was preparing seditious conspiracy charges against Trump if he had lost the 2024 election.
The weaponization was going to continue indefinitely.
But Trump’s landslide victory changed everything.
Now Kelly argues that January 6th defendants “would love to see seditious conspiracy thrown back” at the officials who destroyed their lives.
And why shouldn’t they get that satisfaction?
These Americans had their lives destroyed by a legal system that applied one standard to them and a completely different standard to the political elite who actually possessed the power to damage American democracy.
Kelly concluded with a direct challenge to Trump’s DOJ: “I do think that that should be one of the statutes on the table for the Trump DOJ to consider.”⁷
The legal framework exists.
The precedents have been established by Biden’s own prosecutors.
The evidence of government weaponization is overwhelming.
The only question remaining is whether Trump’s Justice Department will have the courage to apply equal justice under law.
For too long, Washington, D.C. has operated under a two-tiered system where political elites escape consequences while ordinary Americans face the full weight of prosecutorial power.
Julie Kelly’s analysis shows that the tools for accountability already exist – Biden’s DOJ helpfully created them.
The American people voted for justice and accountability in November.
In a significant development within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) has dismissed two senior officials following the unauthorized approval of Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Spikevax) for high-risk children aged 6 months to 11 years. The decision, made while RFK Jr. was on vacation, has sparked debate about internal oversight, vaccine policy reforms, and potential conflicts of interest. This report examines the timeline, key players, public reactions, and broader implications, drawing on recent news reports and social media discussions.
Background on the Vaccine Approval
On July 10, 2025, the FDA granted full approval for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in vulnerable children, a move that contrasted with RFK Jr.’s ongoing efforts to restrict mRNA vaccine recommendations for healthy youth and pregnant women.
RFK Jr., a vocal critic of certain vaccine practices, had previously removed COVID-19 vaccines from routine schedules for healthy children in May 2025 and dismissed the entire CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June 2025. According to sources close to the matter, including vaccine researcher Dr. Robert Malone, the approval was expedited by HHS Chief of Staff Heather Flick Melanson and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Hannah Anderson without consulting RFK Jr. or his deputy.
This occurred during RFK Jr.’s absence on a working vacation, leading to accusations of bureaucratic overreach and possible influence from pharmaceutical lobbies. The move initially fueled public speculation that RFK Jr. had softened his stance, prompting backlash from supporters who viewed it as a betrayal of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
The Firings and Immediate Aftermath
Upon returning, RFK Jr. acted swiftly, firing Melanson and Anderson on July 16, 2025, as part of a larger HHS leadership restructuring. Reports indicate the dismissals were directly linked to the unauthorized approval, with one deputy allegedly reacting dramatically by crashing into RFK Jr.’s vehicle in a fit of privileged rage.
RFK Jr. has also reportedly referred the officials for criminal investigation, citing potential misconduct. This action aligns with RFK Jr.’s pattern of overhauling public health institutions, including replacing fired ACIP members with allies and vaccine skeptics. About time! It’s past time to address perceived corruption in regulatory processes.
Public and Media Reactions
The incident has generated widespread discussion on social media and in the press. Supporters praised the firings as a step toward accountability, with calls for further investigations into pharmaceutical ties. Detractors, including public health groups, have expressed concerns over the politicization of health decisions and potential disruptions to vaccine policy.
Implications for Health Policy
This event starkly exposes the relentless undermining of RFK Jr.’s leadership at HHS, where he is besieged by aggressive legal assaults on his bold reforms, such as a federal judge’s outright blockade of critical workforce reductions. Pharmaceutical powerhouses like BIO are waging an all-out lobbying war against him, funneling millions in a blatant bid to derail his agenda and preserve the status quo. Though the approval narrowly survives, it glaringly illuminates the formidable barriers to enforcing genuine transparency and reform amid a bitterly fractured regulatory arena. As RFK Jr. battles on to overhaul vaccine oversight, entrenched stakeholders from every corner clamor for “caution,” ostensibly to safeguard innovation, safety, and public trust—but in reality, often to thwart meaningful change. This saga is far from over, poised for intensified scrutiny, deeper probes, and seismic policy upheavals.
The Return of Merit: Why the Civil Service Exam Must Be Reinstated
The health of a republic depends not merely on the virtue of its leaders but on the competence of its administrators. A functioning government requires that those entrusted with the machinery of state be capable, informed, and accountable. That, in essence, was the animating ideal behind the federal civil service exam: to protect the American people from the twin perils of incompetence and corruption by ensuring a government staffed by merit. Yet over the past half-century, this ideal has been eroded, then discarded, not because it failed but because it succeeded too well in measuring ability, much to the discomfort of the politically fashionable.
The modern federal workforce was born out of the Pendleton Act of 1883, a legislative rebuke to the grotesque excesses of the patronage system. No longer would positions in the federal government be handed out like party favors to the politically loyal or the well-connected. A professional class would rise, chosen not by whom they knew but by what they knew. And for nearly a century, that principle held. The civil service exam functioned as a leveling mechanism, a barrier against cronyism and a gateway for the able.
But by the 1970s, a new orthodoxy emerged, one less interested in capability than in demography. The Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE), itself a refined instrument for identifying administrative talent, fell under attack for producing racially disparate outcomes. The case of Luevano v. Campbell marked a turning point. The plaintiffs did not allege that the exam was unfair in design or malicious in purpose. Rather, they contended that because different racial groups performed differently, the test must, ipso facto, be discriminatory. It was an argument of correlation over causation, but it carried the day.
The Carter administration, confronted with this challenge, might have defended the constitutional imperative for equal treatment, the statutory demand for merit-based hiring, and the moral obligation to hire the best-qualified. Instead, it capitulated. PACE was abandoned. Objective testing, the gold standard of fair evaluation, was replaced with subjective assessments: resumes, interviews, and “diversity-enhancing” hiring programs. Where once the federal government had demanded proof of ability, it now sought proxies. The result was a quiet revolution in hiring—a regression masked in the language of progress.
This abandonment of testing was not isolated. In 2010, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13562 (still in effect today), further distancing federal hiring from meritocratic principles. The rationale was revealing: written essays and similar assessments were said to disadvantage applicants from underrepresented backgrounds, particularly those whose written communication skills were not deemed sufficient. But to concede that writing proficiency is a disqualifier is not to justify removing the barrier, it is to highlight a deficiency that the job itself may require. In any reasonable domain, poor writing is a cause for concern, not a credential to be protected.
Critics of standardized testing often assert that exams are an insufficient predictor of job performance. This is a red herring. No test is perfect, but the proper question is comparative: Are structured, objective assessments superior to opaque, informal, and potentially biased evaluations? The answer, again and again, has been yes. A 2002 study by Schmidt and Hunter, published in Psychological Bulletin, reviewed 85 years of research and concluded that general cognitive ability tests are among the best predictors of job performance, outperforming unstructured interviews and resume reviews. In a government that administers everything from cyber defense to public health policy, the ability to reason, write, and analyze should be baseline qualifications, not optional enhancements.
Moreover, the move away from standardized testing has not made the hiring process more fair. It has simply made it more obscure. Informal interviews and resume screenings are fertile ground for implicit bias, favoritism, and credentialism. At least an exam can be audited. A panel interview cannot. At least a written test applies the same standard to everyone. A “holistic” hiring process applies no standard at all.
Some will argue that the disparities in test outcomes are too large to ignore, that such differences in performance indicate systemic barriers. Perhaps. But if the goal is equality of opportunity, then the proper remedy lies upstream, in education, in preparation, in mentorship. Lowering the bar of entry is not compassion, it is condescension. It assumes that certain groups cannot meet standards and therefore must be exempted from them. That is not equity. It is a quiet form of surrender.
Defenders of the status quo claim that modern hiring tools are more flexible, more “person-centered,” more conducive to creating a diverse workforce. But a diverse bureaucracy is not a competent one unless diversity aligns with ability. The federal government is not a social engineering project. It is a system of authority, enforcement, regulation, and service. It must be staffed by those who can perform these functions with precision and integrity. To suggest otherwise is to mistake the civil service for a campus diversity office.
Furthermore, the legal justification for abandoning standardized exams is tenuous. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment practices that have a disparate impact unless the employer can show the practice is job-related and consistent with business necessity. The courts have recognized that general ability tests can satisfy this requirement. In Washington v. Davis (1976), the Supreme Court ruled that a police entrance exam that disproportionately excluded black applicants did not violate the Constitution, as there was no discriminatory intent and the exam measured relevant job skills. The Luevano settlement, by contrast, was a political compromise, not a constitutional necessity.
President Trump, if he wishes to drain the bureaucratic swamp in more than metaphor, must begin with reforming how the swamp is staffed. The restoration of the civil service exam would do more than elevate standards. It would restore trust. Americans rightly suspect that their government is staffed not by the best and brightest but by the best connected, the most ideologically aligned, or the most demographically favored. An exam does not care what you look like, whom you voted for, or where you went to school. It cares only whether you can do the job.
This logic must apply not only to future hires but to current employees. The federal workforce is vast, powerful, and deeply entrenched. If we are serious about accountability, then every current federal employee should be required to pass a reformed civil service exam appropriate to their position. The goal is not to purge but to affirm. Those who are competent will have nothing to fear. Those who are not nor should not be on the public payroll.
It is time to end the experiment in subjective hiring. It has failed. It has produced neither a more competent government nor a more just one. It has diluted standards under the guise of equity and eroded public faith in institutions once deemed apolitical. We must reverse course. We must affirm once again that public service is not a birthright or a diversity quota. It is a trust, to be earned, not granted.
On October 4, 2021, the Attorney General of the United States issued a directive that would rattle the very foundation of American civil society. Parents, concerned about their children’s education, found themselves recast not as civic participants but as potential threats to national security. According to a memo issued by AG Merrick Garland, the Justice Department would coordinate with the FBI and US Attorneys to address a supposed spike in threats against school board officials. But the underlying claim was a fiction. And now, thanks to newly released internal DOJ documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL), we can say conclusively what many suspected at the time: the Biden administration orchestrated this memo as part of a political operation, driven not by law or evidence, but by ideology and electoral calculus.
Let us begin with a question. Why did the Department of Justice, whose jurisdiction is meant to guard against actual federal crimes, insert itself into a public conversation dominated by non-criminal speech? The answer, as the documents now confirm, is that it did so at the prompting of the White House, which viewed parents not as constituents to be heard, but as dissidents to be managed.
The initial spark came from a September 29, 2021 letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden. In this letter, the NSBA urged the administration to treat protests at school board meetings as akin to “domestic terrorism,” citing the Patriot Act as a model for possible federal intervention. The invocation of such a statute was absurd on its face. Protesting mask mandates or objecting to Critical Race Theory, however forcefully, does not rise to the level of terrorism. But what is more damning is what followed: a flurry of communications within the DOJ, indicating that officials were under pressure to respond.
On October 1, just two days after the NSBA letter, Tamarra Matthews-Johnson of the Attorney General’s office flagged the matter for Kevin Chambers at the Deputy Attorney General’s office, stating that the White House “has been in touch” about how DOJ might assist. At 8:17 a.m. the next morning, Sparkle Sooknanan, then of the Associate Attorney General’s office and now a federal judge, demanded an urgent review from the Civil Rights Division: were there any statutes, any authorities, that could justify a DOJ response? The request was extraordinary. It was a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. They had the political goal, and now needed a legal rationale to support it.
What followed was a quiet rebellion from within. Career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division, legal professionals whose job is to interpret law rather than bend it, pushed back. One stated explicitly that the behavior cited by NSBA “likely fall[s] outside of our jurisdiction.” Another said, unequivocally, “there is nothing specific” that could be applied. The attempt to find federal jurisdiction was, in the understated phrasing of another DOJ attorney, “ramping up an awful lot of federal manpower for what is currently a non-federal conduct.”
In other words, the law said no. But politics said yes. So politics won.
By the morning of October 4, a draft memo was already circulating. Language referring to election interference was quietly stripped out, after concerns that it would appear overtly partisan. But the core premise of the memo, that DOJ would mobilize against parents based on a manufactured crisis, remained untouched. The final version went out that day to the FBI, US Attorneys, and law enforcement nationwide.
To understand the magnitude of this decision, one must consider the federal apparatus being invoked. We are not speaking of a local school district or even a state attorney general’s office. We are speaking of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the National Security Division. These are the institutions tasked with defending the United States from foreign threats, organized crime, and acts of terrorism. Now they were being mobilized against citizens speaking at school board meetings.
Some defenders of the memo have insisted that it was a neutral effort to ensure safety. But the internal documents tell a different story. Not only did the DOJ lack jurisdiction, but it also lacked data. One Civil Rights attorney reviewed the NSBA’s own sources and concluded that “the vast, vast majority of behavior cited cannot be reached by federal law” and that most of it “is protected by the First Amendment.”
At this point, any good faith rationale should have evaporated. The legal authority did not exist. The facts did not support intervention. And the lawyers responsible for enforcing civil rights said as much. But Garland’s DOJ, driven by political appointees, forged ahead.
Why? To chill dissent. To create a pretext for federal monitoring. And, most damningly, to tilt the political field in favor of Democrats ahead of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election.
The timing is revealing. At the very moment when education was emerging as a major campaign issue in Virginia, the Biden administration intervened with a chilling federal directive aimed squarely at the parents who were driving that conversation. The effect, if not the intent, was to intimidate them into silence.
This was not merely a bureaucratic misstep. It was, as AFL President Gene Hamilton put it, an effort “to deprive parents of two fundamental rights—the right to speak, and the right to direct the upbringing of their children.” And it was done under color of law, through an administration that promised to restore norms while quietly undermining them.
What is perhaps most distressing is the downstream effect. The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, blindsided by the memo, was left scrambling to define what exactly it was being asked to do. Internal messages reveal confusion and concern, not just about the lack of legal basis, but about the very premise. Was this really what the federal government was now for?
A free society depends on more than the formal guarantees of its Constitution. It depends on the restraint of those in power. It depends on a culture of governance that distinguishes between disagreement and danger, between protest and threat. When that distinction is lost, freedom becomes a mere parchment barrier.
The Garland memo was not an isolated event. It was a signal. It told Americans that certain views, particularly those out of step with the educational elite, would not be tolerated without consequence. It told career DOJ attorneys that their legal advice could be overruled by political expedience. And it told the White House that federal power could be used to police ideology under the guise of law enforcement.
We must reject this approach categorically. Not because we are indifferent to the safety of public officials, but because we know that civil liberties are not things to be managed or balanced, but principles to be upheld. The right to speak at a school board meeting, however impassioned, is not a loophole in national security law. It is the beating heart of American self-government.
The documents released by AFL do more than expose a scandal. They illustrate the dangers of weaponized bureaucracy. They reveal a Justice Department more interested in political theater than legal fidelity. And they confirm, beyond dispute, that the October 4 memo was not about law enforcement. It was about silencing dissent.
In his inaugural address, President Biden claimed he would “restore the soul of America.” But there is nothing soulful about suppressing speech, circumventing legal advice, and intimidating parents for participating in democracy. That is not restoration. It is repression, dressed in bureaucratic prose.
The Biden administration must be held accountable for its actions. Congress should investigate not merely the memo itself, but the full extent of White House involvement, the decision-making process within DOJ, and the broader pattern of targeting political dissent. And the American people must remain vigilant, lest today’s memo become tomorrow’s precedent.
One of the major focuses of my consulting business was education. I was a senior consultant to two of the largest and most troubled school systems in America during a brief period of reform—Chicago and Detroit. I was on the strategic team for two major strikes. Other clients included Friedman School Choice Foundation and the Chicago’s Teacher Academy. I was also a board member of Chicago’s School for the Performing Arts. As a parent, I was deeply involved in school policy issues at the local level.
I have long considered the failures in the public school systems as among the greatest immoralities in public policy. Failing schools—especially those serving minorities in the segregated communities of America’s major Democrat-run cities—have destroyed the career potential and dreams of millions of young Black and Hispanic students – and sadly destroyed too many lives. It has also deprived America of the benefit of what those millions of students could have contributed to society. Reliance on generational welfare poverty and oppression is directly related to school quality.
I have also long believed the long-term decline in public education outcomes—and the resistance to meaningful reforms—has been due to the politics and policies of the school unions. They are not educational institutions, but rather politically partisan membership clubs. The primary function of the unions is to have as many dues-paying members as possible and to use that money for personal enrichment and political power.
To better understand why we should eliminate school unions, let us look at some facts.
Teachers’ unions were once formed to protect educators from unfair labor practices and to advocate for better working conditions. But over the decades, the two largest unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—have evolved into powerful political machines. Their influence now extends far beyond the classroom. They are major funders of the Democratic Party and wield massive influence through their huge pension programs. Rather than working to improve classroom outcomes, the NEA and AFT actually undermine positive reforms—directly or by ambivalence.
Despite their failures, union officials are well compensated. NEA President Becky Pringle has a compensation package of $480,000 per year—8.5 times the median teacher salary. Randi Weingarten of the AFT earns $565,000 per year—9 times the median teacher salary. These figures do not include a number of indirect nonmonetary benefits. Also, the lucrative pensions enjoyed by union officials are often paid by taxpayers—not union funds.
Politicization of the NEA and AFT
The NEA and AFT have become deeply entangled in partisan politics. In recent years, both unions have taken aggressive stances on national issues that have little to do with education. Their political activity is overwhelmingly one-sided. In the 2024 election cycle, 98.96 percent of NEA contributions went to Democrats, while 99.9 percent of AFT contributions did the same. This lopsided spending suggests that the unions are not representing the diverse political views of their members or the public but are advancing a partisan agenda that primarily serves the political and financial interests of union leaders and the local political establishment.
Ties to Democratic Political Machines
The NEA and AFT have long-standing ties to Democrat political machines in major cities. Their influence in urban politics has helped elect progressive candidates who, in turn, support union-friendly policies. In cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, unions have become kingmakers, funneling millions into campaigns and lobbying efforts. In return, the political leaders work on behalf of union interests.
For generations, these same cities have suffered from chronic educational failure. Inner-city schools remain overcrowded, and plagued by low graduation rates. Despite their political clout, the unions have done little to address institutional racism and segregation in urban districts. Instead of fighting for reform, they often resist accountability measures and protect underperforming educators. (I have seen that many times in contract negotiations.)
The NEA
NEA’s Pringle has openly embraced an adversarial partisan political role. At the 2025 NEA convention, she declared that educators were “ready to engage with school boards, town halls, state legislatures, and even Congress” to advocate for their union’s politically partisan interests. Ponder that. Pringle’s vision of the union’s role is to fight against Congress, state legislatures, and even local school boards – those the people elect.
The NEA 2025 convention revealed just how far the union has drifted from its educational mooring. Delegates passed a resolution pledging to “defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism”—and to use the term “fascism” in NEA materials to describe his policies.
The NEA has also taken an official stand in opposition to the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—preferring to allow dangerous criminals to remain in American communities. Criminals who often prey on children. They have accused ICE of targeting student leaders.
The resolution was not only politically charged but also riddled with errors. The word “fascism” was ironically misspelled twice as “facism,” prompting widespread and well-deserved ridicule. Critics argued that the union, which claims to represent educators, could not even spell the ideology it was condemning.
The NEA’s ties to the radical wing of the Democratic Party were seen in another controversial move. The union recently voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights organization known for combating antisemitism. The union accused the ADL of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and claimed that the group was pushing a “radical, antisemitic agenda” on students. The resolution bans the use of ADL literature and speakers in school events. The ADL responded forcefully, calling the NEA’s actions “profoundly disturbing” and warning that the decision would further isolate Jewish educators.
They even changed the language from “deportation” to “kidnapping.”
The AFT
AFT President Randi Weingarten has similarly used her platform to push for progressive causes, from climate activism to gender ideology. She has become so politically toxic that some Democrat leaders have called for the Party to break ties with her. She was forced to resign her position on the Democratic National Committee. A position on the DNC? How partisan can you get?
Ben Austin, a former campaign aide for Kamala Harris and founding director of Education Civil Rights Now, published an op-ed urging Democrats to “break up with Weingarten.” He pointed to her following Biden’s school closure policies—which essentially “erased two decades of learning progress” and alienated working-class voters. Austin blames her for “gaslighting Democrats” into opposing school choice and described her partisan leadership as “tragic for American children.”
More Money, Poorer Results
Despite their massive increases in school funding, the NEA and AFT have failed to deliver meaningful improvements in public education. Since the rise of unionization in the 1960s and 1970s, educational performance has stagnated or declined. According to research, unionized districts tend to spend more on salaries and benefits but fail to outperform non-unionized school systems.
Studies show that low-achieving and high-achieving students perform worse in unionized districts. While the cost of education continues to rise, the return on investment—in terms of student performance—stagnates in better districts and declines in low-income minority communities.
Children Last
One of the mantras of educators is “Children First.” In fact, in labor negotiations the children’s needs come last—if considered at all. Both in my experience negotiating union contracts and from extensive research, I can safely attest that I have never found school unions proposing or supporting any contract provisions that benefited the classroom or the students that did not benefit the union — either increasing the number of teachers (dues-paying members) in systems with excessive deadwood; shortening teacher work schedules in hours or days; or increasing teacher pay and benefits at the expense of what I call “the children’s budget.”
In several cases—thanks to support from the local political establishment—unions won pay and benefit concessions that absorbed more than 100 percent of all new money coming into the school district. This necessitated cuts in “the children’s budget” that impacted directly on the classroom—cuts in school maintenance, supplies, and even elimination of some traditional subjects, such as music and art.
Unions vigorously protect bad teachers — essentially preventing dismissal of those failing to provide quality education in the classroom and other negative personnel issues. As a means of protecting their failures, unions work against standard testing of students and also teacher testing.
Unions are also the primary force against school choice, programs that would enable parents to remove their children from failing and dangerous schools and get them into schools where they can receive quality education. Union policies warehouse students in failing minority schools—denying them an education that can lead to college or productive careers. This is especially true of schools in segregated minority communities. School choice would not end the public school system, since it largely impacts schools that fail to meet the primary mission: to educate children.
Fighting Back
The good news is that there is a growing political constituency for effective education reforms. School choice is part of it—and the Trump administration has advanced that cause in his Big Beautiful Bill. Parent Associations are taking more interest and more control over educational quality. Congressman Mark Harris (R-NC) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have introduced the National Education Association Repeal Act, which would revoke the NEA’s federal charter.
A Broken System
The original purpose of teachers’ unions was to protect educators and improve schools. But today, the NEA and AFT function more like partisan advocacy groups driven by self-interest than a professional education organization. Their actions, whether it’s labeling political opponents as fascists, severing ties with civil rights groups, or funneling millions into one-sided campaigns—have undermined their credibility and effectiveness.
Public education is too important to hold hostage by political agendas. If unions cannot return to their core mission of supporting teachers AND students, then it is time to consider eliminating them altogether. The future of our schools—and our children—are too important to be allowed to fail in the future as they have failed in the past.
While most attention is being paid to the Trump administration’s efforts to secure U.S. borders and deport the millions of illegal aliens that have been allowed to roam our streets, there is an equally intense battle raging. This less seen war is over the degree to which the United States will continue to be the patsies of the global elite and their schemes to drive the entire world into a one world government.
Anyone who does not believe that such a war is happening or that there is a tiny cabal of people dedicated to the idea of one central power over the entire planet has not been paying attention or, worse, doesn’t want to see. Over the past 80 years a large infrastructure has been built that slowly has been grinding down the entire concept of national sovereignty. This multi-faceted structure is beginning to fall apart. There are many fissures and cracks that now offer national patriots — regardless of the country from which they reside — to begin the necessary work of dismantling these structures and returning real power to the people and national governments where it belongs.
One such structure that is showing signs of falling apart is the World Trade Organization (WTO). Recently two Professors with deep ties to the WTO and the entire globalist scheme wrote a petulant article that was reprinted by Yves Smith in Naked Capitalism advocating that the United States leave the WTO. The article, Why the US and the WTO Should Part Ways by Professors Petros Mavroidis and Henrik Horn, is a primal scream of the global elite in their self-recognized death throws.
President Donald Trump should take them up on their suggestion, the United States should simply leave the WTO and operate on a nation-to-nation basis — termed bilateral — and forget about the lunacy of global agreements (termed multi-lateral) that never seem to serve the interests of the American people.
A little history is in order.
As World War II was winding down, those in positions of authority sought to build systems that would bind the nations of the world into a system that led eventually to world government and control of all nations and peoples. While always presented in the most flowery and benevolent terms, the core was a total rejection of the principles of popular government, representation and decentralization of power to ensure the people retain the real power to government themselves. The globalists hate these concepts. They believe that the people are not capable of governing themselves, that only an elite group has the ability to exercise power.
That was the essence of those structures. Among the institutions deployed to build the World Government were the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and a host of lesser entities all designed to pull the policies and actions of free, independent governments into the web of control. One entity that did not get formed was a central controlling authority over trade.
As far back as 1944 — before the war was won — the gang of insiders were working on the outlines of their dreams. The head of the British delegation, John Maynard Keynes, advocated for something to be called the International Trade Organization. It was to have dictated all aspects of international trade, taking away much of the authority from national governments. The intent was that the ITO would fit into the web with the IMF and the UN to form an iron ring around governments, forcing them to comply with the demands and rules of the so-called “international community.”
Luckily for the United States and much of the world, the U.S. Congress refused to ratify the power grab. Finally, in 1950, President Harry Truman acknowledged that the ITO took far too much power and authority away for the elected government of the United States as he pulled the treaty and notified the world that the U.S. would not be part.
But those who scheme to take away the rights of the People for self-government always have a back-up plan. And in the case of global control over trade they had a second plan ready to go. That was called GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Far less intrusive and based on continuing negotiations, GATT was far less authoritarian than ITO and was seen as an acceptable way to move forward with the concept of “free trade” and international resolution of disputes.
Over time, however, GATT evolved into the 1995 establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Less than the nightmare envisioned by Keynes, the WTO still attempts to exercise authority over the decision of national governments on trade policy. But as with the other structures of the global enterprise, it has failed and become more of a joke than an asset.
President Trump and his team have documented hundreds of tariffs, taxes and scams that cost America jobs, market access and a level playing field. By moving to establish tariffs that tax the foreign countries for their predatory actions, the President is keeping his word on the America First Agenda. He is following the advice of President Ronald Reagan who said, “We are always willing to be trade partners, but never trade patsies.” Everything President Trump has proposed runs counter to the WTO and its nick-picking rules and regulations. And that is what resulted in the article suggesting the U.S. and WTO “part ways.”
The globalist Professors have three main reasons why they think the U.S. should leave the WTO. First, as pointed out, the very idea of two nations setting an agreement for themselves without the rest of the “world” butting in is the exact opposite of the reason for the WTO to exist. So, when the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of Vietnam agreed to trade relations recently, that violates the entire principle on which the internationalist cabal exist.
Second, the United State has not paid its “dues” since 2022. This has left the WTO near bankrupt and finding it difficult to continue operations. Good. Why should the U.S. pay for a body of international bureaucrats to hinder and restrict US economic policy?
And finally, the U.S. has exercised its authority by crippling the dispute settlement system by blocking appointments of new appellate body judges. This “dispute settlement system” is referred to as “the crown jewel” of the body. We have done this because of the biased and one-sided “judgements” of the foreign, anti-American functionaries.
So, it is fair to ask, why should the U.S. leave? We ignore the WTO whenever we want, undercut their very reason for existence at every turn, refuse to funnel more money to them and have essentially destroyed their power to issue judgements. The reason is simple. When the U.S. refused to ratify the League of Nations after World War I, the globalists never got off the ground, the entire thing failed and fell away. Now is the time to remember that lesson. Walk away from these entities. Without U.S. money and credibility, none of them — not the United Nations, none of the internationalist entities — will survive.
The America First movement is asserting American sovereignty in countless ways. The interests of American companies and workers must always come first. Any government that yields the authority given it by the consent of the American People is a traitorous shadow. The quislings that run them should go down in history next to Benedict Arnold. So, we need to thank Professors Henrik Horn and Petros Mavroidis for their timely suggestion. Yes, we should leave the WTO and then take bets on how long it lasts without the United States.
In 1991, Mohamed Akram, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, drafted what seemed to many at the time an arcane internal strategy document. Titled An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, the memorandum was not a prediction, nor a mere expression of hopes, but a plan. Its words were plain and precise: to undertake a “civilizational jihad” aimed at eliminating Western civilization from within. In short, a campaign to reshape the United States in accordance with Islamist ideals, not through bombs or bullets, but through institutions, coalitions, and long-term ideological subversion.
The document was discovered in 2004 during an FBI raid on the home of Ismail Elbarasse, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian Committee and a former board member of the Holy Land Foundation. That foundation was later convicted of funneling millions to Hamas. The memorandum, entered as evidence in the largest terrorism financing trial in US history, should have been a siren. Instead, it was filed away, dismissed by many commentators as the paranoid blueprint of an overzealous ideologue. They were wrong.
Some may object: conspiracies are a dime a dozen. Anyone can draft a document. But what makes this memorandum exceptional is not only its clarity and specificity, but its remarkable congruence with developments in American civic life over the past three decades. Akram named names. He listed organizations, most still active today, and gave precise instructions on how to steer American political and cultural institutions toward the Brotherhood’s ends. This was not a fantasy. It was a plan of operation. And now, more than thirty years later, the United States is living through its implementation.
Let us begin with the objective itself. The memorandum spells it out without euphemism: “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.” This was not a call to dialogue. It was not a call to integrate. It was a declaration of ideological conquest. But unlike the brutal immediacy of al-Qaeda or ISIS, the Brotherhood’s vision is subtle. Their preferred weapons are not explosives, but ideas. Their preferred terrain is not the battlefield, but the university, the courtroom, and the NGO boardroom.
The most consequential battlefield has proven to be academia. A generation of scholars, grants, endowments, and academic chairs have seeded American universities with ideas sympathetic to Islamist critiques of the West. The clearest example is Dr. Jonathan Brown a convert to Islam and the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University. In June 2025, Dr. Brown made headlines for suggesting, on X, that Iran should launch a symbolic missile strike on a US military base. He framed this not as fantasy but as strategic balance. Even more astonishingly, Brown retains a position training American diplomats.
This is not guilt by association. It is a pattern. Dr. Brown has praised Islamist movements and has been linked, both ideologically and institutionally, to the Brotherhood. His father, also a convert to Islam, was deported from the US in 2015 for supporting terrorist causes. That alone would merit scrutiny. But the larger context reveals more: Brown is not an outlier. He is emblematic of a trend in which Western universities offer sanctuary, prestige, and even state influence to figures deeply aligned with ideological opponents of the American regime.
Why is this allowed? The answer is both structural and ideological. Structurally, the Brotherhood has worked for decades to legitimize itself through front organizations. CAIR, ISNA, MSA, and NAIT, all named in the memorandum, have entrenched themselves within civic life. They have leveraged the language of civil rights, cultural pluralism, and social justice to deflect scrutiny. But this is not the pluralism of the American Founders. It is a calculated mimicry, a rhetorical Trojan horse. CAIR, in particular, has grown powerful enough to influence corporate training sessions, FBI outreach, and even school curricula. The same group that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism financing case now advises American institutions on Islamophobia.
The ideological fuel for this strategy is the concept of “soft jihad.” The Brotherhood’s genius was recognizing that ideological capture could be more enduring than terrorism. To borrow from Antonio Gramsci, cultural hegemony precedes political revolution. The Brotherhood has pursued its hegemony not by overt domination but by normalizing its worldview. Consider the linguistic sleight-of-hand: criticism of Islamist ideology is branded as racism. Security concerns are dismissed as Islamophobia. Calls for assimilation are recast as xenophobia. The cumulative effect is not merely the silencing of dissent, but the transformation of public morality. It is not merely that Americans are being told not to criticize radical Islam. They are being trained to believe that doing so is immoral.
Take the campus protests in 2024 and 2025. Demonstrations ostensibly in support of Palestinian rights quickly metastasized into calls for the abolition of Israel, attacks on Western values, and explicit praise for Hamas. At Columbia, UCLA, and Harvard, protesters chanted slogans directly lifted from Brotherhood propaganda. The phrase “From the river to the sea” is not a geographic aspiration. It is a genocidal demand. It aligns precisely with Hamas’s stated goal: the eradication of the Jewish state. Yet these protests were often protected, even praised, by university administrators. In some cases, professors joined the chants. In others, students who dissented were harassed or disciplined.
Again, the question is: how did this happen? The answer is that the Brotherhood never aimed to win by numbers. It aimed to win by leverage. Infiltrating a university’s DEI board (regardless of what they’re calling it today) is more strategic than converting a neighborhood. Capturing a seminary is more effective than radicalizing a mosque. Influence within media and academia shapes future diplomats, journalists, and lawmakers. Consider again Dr. Jonathan Brown, who holds a prestigious post at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, the institution tasked with training America’s next generation of diplomats. He is not merely offering courses in comparative religion or Islamic history. He is shaping worldviews, teaching the values and ideological frameworks that mirror those advanced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Over time, this kind of influence bends not just the institutions but the nation’s moral compass.
Some might say this is mere moral panic. They will ask for proof. But the proof is the very document itself, affirmed by the Department of Justice, entered into evidence in federal court, and consistent in substance with the outcomes we now witness. The memorandum was not only a statement of intent. It was an instruction manual. And like a well-executed recipe, it has produced its intended result.
What is needed now is not hysteria, but clarity. Clarity that Islamist ideology is not identical to Islam, that freedom of religion is not a license for subversion, and that tolerance cannot be the suicide pact of a civilization. The United States has every right, and indeed a duty, to guard its institutions from ideological capture. That does not mean banning belief. It means understanding belief systems that explicitly reject the Constitution, that see liberty as vice and pluralism as sin, cannot be treated as neutral participants in the civic order. They are not here to join the republic. They are here to replace it.
Akram and his colleagues were honest about their intentions. That is more than can be said for their apologists in the West. To them, the memorandum is either fiction or an irrelevant historical artifact. But the architects of civilization must contend with realities, not hopes. The Brotherhood’s strategy was not shouted from a pulpit. It was whispered in boardrooms, university seminars, and foundation grant meetings. It is slow. It is patient. But it is effective.
The question is whether Americans, and particularly their leaders, will have the courage to name the problem. The stakes are not abstract. They are institutional integrity, national security, and civilizational continuity. For the Brotherhood, victory does not require tanks. It requires silence. It requires our unwillingness to speak plainly, to draw lines, to identify hostile ideologies as such.
And so we return to the memorandum. It warned us. It showed its hand. And now it is executing its strategy, step by step, as outlined over thirty years ago. Those who choose to ignore this do not merely risk being proven wrong. They risk surrendering a civilization in slow motion.
On June 17, 2025, the U.S. Senate passed the so-called GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) in a 68-30 bipartisan vote. Stablecoins, digital assets designed to maintain a stable value relative to a fixed asset like the U.S. dollar, have emerged as a pivotal component of the burgeoning digital economy, offering the promise of faster, cheaper, and more accessible financial transactions.
The seemingly broad bipartisan support, often touted by proponents as a sign of its necessity, masks deeper concerns from critics who argue that the bill’s provisions disproportionately benefit established financial giants, many of whom have heavily lobbied Congress on crypto legislation. This coalition of interests raises fundamental questions about whose protection the bill truly prioritizes.
U.S. Senate, 111th Congress, Senate Photo Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Closer Look at the Bill’s Restrictive Provisions
The GENIUS Act’s core mechanism for control lies in its severe restrictions on stablecoin issuance. The bill limits the ability to issue stablecoins to only three types of entities: subsidiaries of insured depository institutions, federally qualified nonbank payment stablecoin issuers, or state-qualified payment stablecoin issuers.
This narrow definition of “permitted issuers” creates an almost insurmountable barrier to entry for smaller, innovative DeFi projects, and startups. The stringent licensing requirements, high capital reserves, and ongoing compliance costs associated with becoming an “insured depository institution subsidiary” or a “federally qualified nonbank issuer” are prohibitively expensive and bureaucratically complex for new entrants.
Instead of fostering a competitive ecosystem, the Act effectively creates a cartel, consolidating control over the future of digital payments within the existing financial infrastructure — the very institutions that crypto was designed, in part, to decentralize.
This framework effectively hands the reins of the stablecoin future to established players like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and other large commercial banks, many of whom have publicly expressed interest in issuing their own stablecoins. The result is not innovation from the ground up, but rather a top-down control by entities comfortable with the status quo.
In the name of “consumer safety,” the bill also bans interest payments on stablecoin holdings. Historically, stablecoins have offered users the potential to earn yield through various DeFi protocols, such as lending platforms or liquidity pools. This ability to generate passive income has been a significant draw for many, especially in an era of near-zero interest rates in traditional banking.
By banning interest payments, the GENIUS Act eliminates a key incentive for stablecoin adoption, undermining a core benefit that digital currencies offer over traditional fiat. Consequently, Americans who might otherwise earn yield through digital currencies are instead pushed back into the traditional banking system, where interest rates on standard savings accounts are notoriously low.
This prohibition, framed as “consumer protection” to prevent “run risks” seen in past crypto failures, is more accurately described as protectionism for legacy financial institutions. By eliminating the competitive advantage of yield-bearing stablecoins, the Act forces consumers back into conventional banking products, where their capital remains within the walled gardens of large banks, earning minimal returns for them while the banks profit from relending those funds.
Additionally, the Act requires all stablecoins to be backed one-to-one with U.S. dollars or similar liquid assets. While seemingly prudent to ensure stability, this rule, by strictly limiting the types of backing assets and prohibiting fractional reserves, effectively limits capital efficiency and reduces monetary velocity — the rate at which money is exchanged in an economy.
This impairs the ability of stablecoins to support dynamic lending markets and foster small business growth within the digital ecosystem. In traditional finance, banks operate on a fractional reserve system, allowing them to lend out a portion of their deposits, thereby increasing the money supply and facilitating economic activity.
While the crypto space has seen failures from under-collateralized stablecoins, a complete ban on any form of capital efficiency means stablecoins cannot be re-hypothecated or used in a way that generates new economic value through lending, which is a cornerstone of a healthy financial system.
The irony is stark: while stablecoins are mandated to hold 100% reserves, traditional banks operate on a fractional reserve system, lending out the vast majority of their deposits. This double standard suggests that the true aim is not merely stability, but control, preventing stablecoins from ever truly competing with the established financial order.
This rigid 1:1 backing, while ensuring safety, also ensures stagnation, effectively freezing innovation and thus propping up a financial status quo that has demonstrably failed many through inflationary policies and limited access to capital.
Supporters, including prominent figures like Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), champion the GENIUS Act as a necessary framework to bring regulatory clarity to the nascent stablecoin market.
Senator Lummis, a co-sponsor and known advocate for digital assets within a regulated framework, insisted on X, the Act “preserves the dual banking system, protects consumers, [and] secures our financial future.” Senator Gillibrand echoed similar sentiments, asserting that the bill would “protect consumers from the risks seen in recent crypto market volatility” while safeguarding “the dominance of the U.S. dollar” in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
They often point to past failures, such as the collapse of algorithmic stablecoins or unregulated crypto exchanges like FTX, as justification for these stringent measures, arguing that strict guardrails are essential to prevent systemic risk and illicit financial activity.
However, for a growing chorus of critics, these claims are nothing more than elaborate window dressing. Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a vocal opponent of what he perceives as corporate cronyism, didn’t mince words.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Known for his libertarian leanings and skepticism towards increased government intervention, Senator Paul argued the legislation would add needless federal regulations. Senator Hawley’s concerns focus on the potential for the bill to empower tech giants at the expense of ordinary citizens and existing financial institutions.
The Missouri legislator argued that the Act, as written, could allow tech giants to create digital currencies that would compete with the dollar and incentivize these companies to collect even more user financial data. Hawley even went so far as to call the bill “a huge giveaway to Big Tech.” He also expressed concerns that the bill’s safeguards against the risks of letting tech companies issue their own digital currencies had been weakened.
Other criticisms stem from the bill’s foundational design: by limiting issuance to heavily regulated and often large financial entities, and by stifling the very mechanisms (like yield) that make stablecoins attractive alternatives, the Act creates an uneven playing field designed to favor existing banking infrastructure rather than fostering genuine innovation from independent developers or smaller fintech companies.
Robust opposition also comes from Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of Research at Coin Center, a leading nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to the policy issues facing cryptocurrency and decentralized computing technologies.
Van Valkenburgh, a respected voice in the crypto policy space, offered a stinging critique of a amendment granting the president and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) expansive authority to ban Americans from using certain blockchain technologies, including open-source smart contracts, without due process.
His argument focuses on ensuring that legislation does not infringe upon the rights of developers and users of decentralized technologies and highlights that the ban on yield doesn’t safeguard consumers from risk so much as it removes a compelling reason for consumers to opt for stablecoins over traditional bank accounts, thereby protecting the revenue streams and market dominance of established financial institutions.
This is, quite simply, regulatory capture in its purest form. Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.
In this case, legacy financial institutions, through aggressive lobbying and influence — with reports indicating banking associations and major financial conglomerates have spent millions in recent years lobbying Congress on digital asset legislation — appear to have directly shaped legislation that serves their interests by limiting competition and solidifying their market position, rather than truly fostering a healthy, open financial ecosystem.
They are not merely playing the game; they are quite literally writing the rules for a game they want to win without any meaningful competition.
Surveillance Disguised as Security
Beyond its profound economic implications, the GENIUS Act raises significant red flags concerning civil liberties and individual financial privacy. The Act mandates strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements for all stablecoin issuers.
In practice, this means that every user interacting with a regulated stablecoin would be subject to extensive identity verification — providing names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and potentially even biometric data — and continuous transaction monitoring by regulated entities.
While proponents argue such measures are essential to combat illicit finance and terrorism, critics contend they pave the way for unprecedented federal surveillance.
Given documented instances where government agencies have leveraged financial institutions to deplatform individuals or organizations based on political or social views — often under vague pretexts — granting Washington a direct pipeline into every digital wallet should be an immediate non-starter for any advocate of civil liberties.
For example, critics point to actions taken during the Canadian trucker protests, where authorities ordered financial institutions to freeze accounts of protestors without due process. Similarly, there have been reports of certain politically active groups in the U.S. having their banking services terminated without clear justification.
Under the expansive pretext of “national security,” the GENIUS Act grants the federal government broad, unchecked authority to track, freeze, or even seize stablecoin assets, effectively transforming financial freedom from a fundamental right into a revocable privilege dependent on government approval.
The bill explicitly mandates that stablecoin issuers “maintain the technical ability to freeze and burn wallets to ensure compliance with lawful orders” and “coordinate with law enforcement as a condition of participating in U.S. secondary markets.”
This means that the technology itself will be designed with a kill switch, allowing federal agencies to unilaterally halt transactions or confiscate funds in digital wallets, bypassing traditional judicial processes or requiring minimal legal hurdles.
This capability transforms stablecoins from a tool for economic empowerment into a potential instrument of state control, undermining the very ethos of decentralized, permissionless finance.Should House Republicans demand major changes to the GENIUS Act — including ending the surveillance powers and restoring interest payments — even if it means tanking the bill entirely? *
Yes — kill it if it doesn’t protect liberty
Maybe — fix the worst parts, but don’t start over
No — pass it now to bring crypto under control
Special Carve-Outs and Hypocrisy
One of the most alarming and ethically questionable details unearthed in the bill is a specific exemption that reportedly shields certain government officials and their families from prohibitions on personally profiting from stablecoin ventures.
This glaring conflict of interest has ignited fierce criticism, particularly in light of recent public disclosures, for example, that President Donald Trump has personally profited from stablecoin-related investments. Reports from major news outlets have highlighted that entities tied to President Trump have engaged in ventures involving stablecoins, raising questions about the timing and nature of such exemptions within legislation that heavily regulates the very market he might benefit from.
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) reportedly criticized the outcome, accusing Republicans of rubberstamping “Trump-style crypto corruption” and stating that GOP lawmakers refused to hold a vote on an ethics clause that would have closed this loophole.
This apparent double standard fundamentally undermines the entire premise of the bill as a “consumer protection” measure. If the very lawmakers crafting the regulations can carve out exceptions for themselves or their associates to profit, it suggests the legislation is less about public interest and more about maintaining a system where the politically connected can leverage new markets while restricting access and innovation for the general public.
Even Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a vocal critic of the broader cryptocurrency industry often dubbed “no friend of crypto” due to her consistent warnings about its potential for illicit finance and systemic risk, has found reason to criticize the GENIUS Act.
While her concerns typically center on expanding regulatory authority and consumer safeguards, she notably argued that the bill, as written would leaves the door wide open for another FTX-style collapse by massively expands the marketplace for stablecoins while failing to address the basic national security risks posed by them.
She also pointed to “glaring loopholes that would allow Tether, a notorious foreign stablecoin issuer, access to U.S. markets.” Her critique, predictably, aligns with a desire for even more stringent oversight rather than a defense of innovation, yet it highlights the bill’s perceived shortcomings even from within the regulatory camp, suggesting it fails to achieve its stated goals even for some of its theoretical allies.
This illustrates a peculiar alliance of opposition: free-market conservatives who decry government overreach and stifle innovation find common ground with progressive regulators like Warren, albeit for vastly different reasons.
For conservatives, the bill is an assault on financial freedom and an example of corporate capture. For Warren, it’s not restrictive enough to prevent perceived dangers, highlighting a shared concern about the bill’s fundamental design, despite differing philosophies on regulation itself.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Where Things Stand
The GENIUS Act has successfully passed the Senate and now moves to the House of Representatives, where it is currently under consideration by the House Financial Services Committee.
Prospects for its passage appear strong, largely due to its bipartisan Senate support and the significant backing it has received from powerful banking and certain fintech interests who stand to gain from the established regulatory framework.
However, the House Financial Services Committee has been working on its own stablecoin legislation, the “STABLE Act,” which, while conceptually similar, contains some key differences regarding foreign stablecoin issuers, the requirements for transitioning from state to federal oversight, and specific phase-in timelines.
This means the two chambers will likely need to reconcile their versions, potentially in a conference committee, before a final bill can be sent to the president’s desk.
Official White House Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
However, not all within Congress are ready to rubber-stamp the Senate’s version. A vocal group of House conservatives, including members of the House Freedom Caucus, is actively pushing for significant amendments.
Their proposed changes include a repeal of the controversial interest ban, a mandate for far greater transparency in reserve audits (beyond the current disclosure requirements), and crucially, efforts to strip out the expansive “national security” provisions that they argue constitute excessive government overreach into private financial affairs.
These amendments represent a last-ditch effort to salvage some semblance of financial freedom and competitive market dynamics within the bill. Repealing the interest ban would restore a key incentive for stablecoin use, while enhanced transparency in audits could build genuine consumer trust rather than relying on centralized control.
Stripping out the national security overreach is seen by these conservatives as vital to protecting civil liberties and preventing the potential for a “social credit system” where financial access is tied to government compliance.
Whether the House will serve as a check or a rubber stamp remains to be seen.
Conclusion
The GENIUS Act, far from being a “genius” solution, stands exposed as a sophisticated Trojan Horse. It is a calculated, strategic maneuver by entrenched financial powers and their well-placed allies in Washington to co-opt a truly transformative technology — decentralized digital currencies — and forcibly bring it under their centralized control.
Cloaked in the language of “consumer protection” and “financial stability,” this legislation systematically restricts economic freedom, stifles genuine competition from innovative startups, and dangerously empowers unelected bureaucrats with unprecedented control over individual financial activity.
For anyone who values economic liberty, technological innovation, and protection against governmental overreach, this legislation demands strong opposition. Financial freedom is not merely an economic concept; it is foundational to individual liberty itself.
The GENIUS Act, by design and by consequence, represents a profound attack on both, threatening to turn a promising digital future into a regulated, surveilled extension of a failing financial past.
Citizens concerned about this pivotal legislation should contact their representatives in the House, urging them to critically examine the bill’s true implications, support amendments that protect innovation and privacy, and resist the push to consolidate financial power in the hands of a few.
It is often said that silence speaks louder than words. But in politics, particularly in the realm of national security and institutional deception, silence can scream. This week, the Department of Justice issued a two-page memo attempting to close the book on the Epstein affair. It claimed, with bureaucratic finality, that there is no client list, no credible blackmail operation, and no intelligence connection to Jeffrey Epstein. In response, three people who once led the charge against deep state duplicity, who built their reputations torching the intelligence community’s darkest corners, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino, stood by and said, essentially, nothing.
DOJ/FBI Memo Regarding Jeffrey Epstein
This abrupt and telling quiet should give us pause.
To understand the full weight of their silence, we must revisit who these individuals are and the stakes of what they now decline to confront. Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General, earned acclaim for prosecuting high-profile criminals and exposing systemic corruption. Patel, an architect of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the Russia hoax, is one of the most legally precise and fearless national security officials of the past decade. Bongino, who served in the Secret Service and later as a conservative commentator, has made a career of unmasking the inconsistencies of the intelligence apparatus, none more frequently than Epstein.
In January 2024, Bongino played a clip on his podcast in which a journalist stated he was “100% convinced that Epstein was killed because he made his whole living blackmailing people.” Bongino added, “I’ve heard the same claims from another reporter and they are super important.” Patel has similarly echoed doubts about Epstein’s death and the intelligence community’s role in covering up his network. Bondi, during the election cycle and beyond, pledged that the Epstein saga was not over. Each built public trust on the promise that they would get to the bottom of it.
Now, they all plead ignorance. Or worse, they call for no further action.
When asked at a cabinet meeting whether Epstein was connected to US intelligence, Bondi responded she didn’t know and would “look into it.” Bongino has fallen silent on the topic he once described as the tip of an intelligence iceberg. Patel, in statements since assuming office, has offered little to nothing on the subject.
Given who these people are, that silence is not neutral. It is epistemically loaded. What explains it?
There are two plausible answers. First, they now know, beyond the veil of classification, that Epstein was in fact an asset of the US intelligence community. Not a rogue financier, not merely a criminal pervert, but a controlled contractor in a sprawling, state-sanctioned blackmail apparatus designed to secure kompromat on foreign and domestic elites. If this is true, then acknowledging it would expose ongoing operations, compromise alliances with other intelligence services such as MI6 and Mossad, and detonate diplomatic landmines too dangerous to handle.
The second possibility is more sinister. Perhaps they are not simply withholding in service of state interests. Perhaps they, too, are now targets of the very coercive mechanisms they once pledged to dismantle. Perhaps they are being threatened, pressured, blackmailed, directly or indirectly, overtly or subtly. Epstein’s apparatus, after all, was designed to survive him. The very system that protected him for decades still exists. And it is entirely capable of protecting itself.
The CIA is not merely a collector of secrets; it is a curator of silence.
That brings us back to the core of the matter: Epstein was not a lone predator. He was not merely a billionaire with an inexplicable passion for teenage masseuses. His operations were not accidental, nor could they have persisted without protection at the highest levels of intelligence and government.
Consider his early trajectory. In the late 1970s, Epstein was hired at the Dalton School by Donald Barr, an ex-OSS officer and the father of future Attorney General Bill Barr. This is not coincidence. Epstein didn’t even possess a college degree. His placement at an elite school known for educating the children of the Manhattan elite set the stage for everything to come. He gained access to power, and more importantly, to the children of power.
From there, Epstein transitioned into finance with a swift rise at Bear Stearns, where he managed sensitive accounts and was involved in insider trading schemes tied to prominent families. He exited the firm just ahead of an SEC investigation, unscathed, protected. In the 1980s, he partnered with Steven Hoffenberg in a massive Ponzi scheme at Towers Financial. Hoffenberg went to prison. Epstein did not.
In a court filing in 2019, Hoffenberg stated under oath that Epstein was the “architect” of the fraud. The US government never charged him. Again, protected.
In the 1990s, Epstein became deeply enmeshed with Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of L Brands and co-founder of the secretive Mega Group. Epstein was given full control of Wexner’s fortune, deeded Wexner’s New York mansion, and placed into direct financial and operational contact with Israeli intelligence. His closest confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, an Israeli asset who helped disseminate surveillance software to foreign governments was clearly put in Epstein’s orbit by MI6.
These are not happenstances. This is recruitment and operational integration.
Epstein moved weapons, money, and people. He brokered deals in the Middle East with known intelligence-linked arms traffickers. He used Southern Air Transport, a CIA shell company from the Iran-Contra era. He obtained a fake passport with a Saudi address. He spent time in intelligence-connected banking hubs like the Cayman Islands and Geneva. He was never arrested for these activities. He was protected, always.
His homes were wired with cameras. His girls were groomed to recruit more. His visitors were famous, influential, and often compromised. He catalogued everything. Digital kompromat for the post-Cold War age. Hundreds of hard drives and thousands of DVDs containing unknown volumes of potentially incriminating material were discovered in his properties, but inexplicably, the FBI left them behind and allowed Epstein’s people to remove them. When the agency later returned to retrieve them, they were gone, only to be returned by Epstein’s own lawyers. By then, who knows what had been copied, edited, erased, or weaponized.
So when the DOJ now asserts, with a straight face, that there is no “credible evidence” of a client list, we must understand what that phrase really means. It means nothing admissible, nothing declassified, nothing that would require official action. It does not mean the list does not exist. It means the regime will not recognize it.
To question this is not to indulge conspiracy. It is to recognize pattern. This is the same DOJ that refused to examine Hunter Biden’s foreign influence operations, the same FBI that sat on the Clinton email server scandal, the same intelligence community that lied about FISA abuse.
And so we must return to the question that animates this article: Why are Bondi, Patel, and Bongino protecting the very institution they once sought to expose?
If it is for national security, then fine. But tell us. Say that. Do not insult our intelligence with implausible denials and bureaucratic dodge. If they are under threat, then say that, too. Even obliquely.
Because the current silence is not just a betrayal of past statements. It is a betrayal of the people they once served. The American public entrusted them with the truth. They are now behaving like agents of the same concealment machine they once sought to dismantle. Don’t forget, I’ve been asking everyone to give them time to do their jobs.
One solution remains: appoint a special prosecutor. Not one tethered to the Justice Department. Not one embedded within the intelligence bureaucracy. An outsider, with full subpoena and prosecutorial power, to uncover the truth and bring justice to Epstein’s victims, to indict the protectors and profiteers of the system, and to restore credibility to institutions that have forfeited it.
Let the chips fall where they may. If the intelligence community finds that threatening, perhaps it should reconsider the wisdom of trafficking in children and kompromat.
The facts are stubborn. Epstein worked with and for intelligence. He was protected to the end. And if Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino will not say it, someone must.
In the early hours of July 4th, 2025, flash floods tore through Kerr County, Texas, overwhelming communities and claiming more than a hundred lives. As families were swept from homes and children clung to rooftops, the state called for help. Rescue boats were scarce. Time was short. And Austin’s elite Swift Water Special Operations Teams, some of the best-trained in the country, sat idle. Why? Because Fire Chief Joel Baker said no.
The justification was bureaucratic. Austin had, at one point, been owed approximately $800,000 in reimbursement for past deployments. But even Baker admitted the state was paying its bills and that no overdue balance existed. The real reason, it seems, was politics. And beneath that politics lies something even more disturbing: a bureaucracy that values optics over outcomes, identity over merit, and ideology over life.
Let us begin plainly. Chief Joel Baker was not hired because he was the best firefighter. He was hired because Austin, reeling from a fire department engulfed in scandal, needed a symbol. In the year prior to his 2018 appointment, the Austin Fire Department was under state, local, and federal investigation for alleged violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, including claims of both racial and sexual discrimination and harassment. Multiple lawsuits and sharp criticism from across the political spectrum made one thing clear: the city needed an identity hire to stem the bleeding. Baker, a black man with leadership experience, fit the profile. Since taking the post in December 2018, Baker has made it his mission to recruit based on race, sex, and sexual identity. He has said so proudly and publicly. Programs like “Pass the Torch,” which deliberately prioritize nonwhite, nonmale, and nonheterosexual applicants, are the centerpiece of his administration. The result? A fire department that is more diverse, but less competent.
The traditional qualifications for a firefighter, strength, stamina, intelligence, rapid decision-making under pressure, have not changed. But the standards have. In response to the predictable failure of his preferred demographics to meet existing thresholds, Baker simply changed the thresholds. He launched investigations into why minority applicants were underperforming. The answer was as predictable as the question: the tests were too hard. So Baker made them easier. Lowered the IQ bar. Softened physical expectations. All to ensure that more boxes could be checked on quarterly DEI reports.
The irony is brutal. The very teams Chief Baker refused to deploy, the Swift Water rescue units, are disproportionately composed of white men. They represent the last meritocratic redoubt within the Austin Fire Department. Many have years of experience and have saved hundreds of lives. But Baker did not build them. He has not promoted them. In fact, he has worked to marginalize them in favor of his DEI vision.
So when Governor Abbott issued the request for pre-deployment on July 2nd and 3rd, before the floodwaters peaked, Baker balked. Not because he feared for the safety of his crews, who train for this very scenario. Not because the request was unclear. And certainly not because of funding: Texas law mandates that the state reimburse such deployments. Baker knew this. But instead of action, he delivered delay. Instead of deploying a full contingent of trained teams, he sent a trickle. Three rescue swimmers at first. Eight more the next day. Another six after that. Lives were lost in those hours. And those lives are not coming back.
On July 7, the Austin Firefighters Association initiated a vote of no confidence in Chief Baker. Their accusation was blunt: his delay cost lives. They are right. But the story is larger than one man’s failure. It is about the machinery that elevated him in the first place, a bureaucracy more concerned with appearances than outcomes. DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, sounds benign. In practice, it has become a license to discriminate against the competent and elevate the compliant.
Consider the broader pattern. In 2021, local media reported that nearly 75% of cadet interest cards came from “diversity targets,” a term that flattens human individuality into demographic quotas. African American interest increased 10%, Hispanic interest 21%, while traditional candidate pools shrank. Recruitment staff, under Baker’s orders, reoriented outreach toward these demographics, often to the exclusion of others. Qualified white male applicants were not merely overlooked; they were openly discouraged. Promotion boards began emphasizing identity over service record. The message to veteran firefighters was clear: your excellence is less important than your ethnicity.
And yet, when tragedy struck, it was those same sidelined men who were needed. Not the freshly hired recruits trained under softened standards. Not the symbolic hires who make for good press releases. But the swimmers, the climbers, the old hands who had trained for the worst and were ready to act. They were needed on July 4th. They were ready on July 4th. But they were told to wait.
The Austin Fire Department’s decline under Chief Baker is a microcosm of a national affliction. Public safety is no longer immune from ideology. Increasingly, departments across the US are being stacked from the top down with those whose chief qualification is fitting the narrative. It is not just about hiring. It is about purpose. When the goal of an agency becomes moral virtue as defined by progressive bureaucracy, instead of operational excellence, catastrophe follows.
Some will object that this criticism is unfair, that it ignores historical inequities or systemic bias. But fairness is not the standard in a flood. Competence is. When the waters rise and people scream from rooftops, they do not ask whether their rescuer ticks the right diversity box. They ask whether help is coming. Under Joel Baker, it did not come in time.
The truth is unkind but necessary. DEI ideology, when applied to public safety, kills. Not metaphorically. Not rhetorically. But physically, in water and mud and silence. When Austin refused to send its full water rescue force, it was not an accounting error. It was not a miscommunication. It was a bureaucratic decision rooted in contempt, contempt for the state government, contempt for those who did not fit the diversity mold, and contempt for the very idea that merit should matter more than metrics.
There is a place for diversity in public institutions. But that place must be downstream of excellence. Identity is not a substitute for skill. And when it becomes one, disaster is inevitable. In Kerr County, that disaster was measured in corpses. In Austin, it may soon be measured in resignations.
It has become a familiar routine. A leak, a whisper, a headline: “Iran could build a bomb in five years.” Then the predictable symphony follows, Democrats feign alarm, the media conjures doom, and the public is offered a neatly packaged dose of FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But this latest installment, suggesting that a post-strike Iran could reconstitute a nuclear weapons program from scratch and possess a bomb within five years, is not alarming because it is implausible. It is alarming because it is entirely reasonable, and yet is still being weaponized as if it were a revelation.
Here is the truth: we struck Iran’s enrichment facilities, and we destroyed them. The centrifuge halls are gone. The command nodes, the processing plants, the material stocks, all rendered rubble. What remains is ambition, not infrastructure. Yet Democrats now claim that because Iran can reconstitute its program and build a bomb in five years, the strike must have failed. That conclusion is not just illogical, it is dishonest.
Let us begin with the facts. Constructing a uranium enrichment facility is not easy, but it is also not the Manhattan Project. It is an industrial task, not a scientific miracle. The construction of modern enrichment plants, such as Urenco USA and France’s Georges Besse II, took between three and five years. Iran’s own Natanz facility, which was first revealed in 2002 but had been under construction for years, was partially operational by 2003. Fordow, which the West only learned of in 2009, was already close to operational. Thus, from a cold start, Iran could build a hidden enrichment site in three to five years. This estimate is neither speculative nor controversial, it is grounded in public record.
Enrichment itself is faster. To produce one nuclear weapon, Iran would need roughly 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or HEU. That requires about 4,000 Separative Work Units (SWU). With 4,000 IR-1 centrifuges operating at 1 SWU per year, enrichment to weapons-grade would take approximately one year. With 2,000 centrifuges, the timeline stretches to two years.
If this sounds simple, it is because it is. Uranium enrichment is not alchemy. The science is known, the machines are understood, and the material requirements are finite. Any sufficiently advanced industrial state with nuclear scientists and a few hundred million dollars could do it. Indeed, Pakistan did it in the 1980s. North Korea did it in the early 2000s. Iran already has. The knowledge cannot be unlearned.
The cost? Roughly 250 million dollars. That figure includes underground facility construction (50-100 million), centrifuge production (around 100 million), technical expertise (somewhat less, given Iran’s extant knowledge base), and operations. In a world where US government agencies lose that much in annual accounting errors, the idea that a state sponsor of terror cannot marshal such resources over five years is laughable.
So let us clarify: Iran can build a bomb in five years not because our strike failed, but because five years is the standard timeline for anyone with money, expertise, and motive. To suggest this timeline proves futility is to mistake gravity for failure, the fact that a rock falls when dropped does not mean the act of lifting it was in vain.
This brings us to the real problem. The supposed bombshell, that Iran could rebuild its program and produce a nuclear weapon in five years, is now being presented by Democrats as evidence that our recent strike must have failed. But the conclusion does not follow from the premise. If anything, the fact that Iran could take five years to reconstitute its program affirms the success of the strike. We destroyed their facilities. They are starting from scratch. And five years to rebuild is not a sign of failure, it is the very definition of a strategic setback.
In other words, the five-year timeline is not a deterrent to action. It is a window of opportunity. If anything, it buys time, time that should be used to monitor, disrupt, and if necessary, strike again. There is nothing sacred or irreversible about a five-year head start.
This inversion of logic, treating the reasonable as unthinkable, is a recurring pattern in progressive foreign policy circles. It reflects a deeper flaw: the refusal to treat Iran as an adversary operating with agency, strategy, and goals. The FUD machine presents Iran as a ghost, capable of appearing anywhere, invisible to satellites, immune to sabotage. But Iran is not a spirit. It is a state. It has roads, budgets, scientists, and constraints. Its facilities leave traces. Its activities can be monitored. Its secrecy is limited by physics.
Consider the clandestine nature of construction. Critics claim that a hidden enrichment site might delay discovery and therefore delay interdiction. But the evidence says otherwise. Natanz was detected early enough to limit its progress. Fordow, despite being built underground, was discovered in time. In both cases, Western intelligence, aided by defectors, sensors, and satellite imagery, penetrated Iran’s veil of secrecy. The idea that a new site could be built from scratch, fully outfitted, enriched, and armed with zero detection over five years is not only improbable, it is incompatible with historical precedent.
There is also the question of intent. Iran is not merely developing nuclear technology for fun. Its interest in nuclear weapons is strategic. A nuclear-armed Iran would alter the regional balance of power. It would enable greater aggression by Hezbollah and other proxies. It would make Israel’s security calculus more desperate. It would imperil American forces and interests.
Therefore, allowing Iran a five-year glide path to the bomb is not prudence. It is negligence. Worse, it is disingenuous. The Biden-era strategy of appeasement was not borne of ignorance about Iran’s capabilities. It was an ideological commitment to diplomacy as moral posture, rather than strategic tool. This same illusion now resurfaces under the guise of concern: we must not strike, lest we trigger a rebuild. But Iran is always rebuilding. That is what adversaries do.
To be sure, building a covert enrichment site is not trivial. It requires excavation, materials transport, energy sources, and security. But none of these hurdles are insurmountable. They are merely challenges to be delayed, not impossibilities to be dismissed. And delay is enough. Every year of delay is another year of non-proliferation. Every disrupted timeline is a gain. That is why a strike that sets Iran back five years is not a failure. It is a success.
If this seems cold, recall the alternative. The path of least resistance, in which we do not strike, Iran does not stop, and the region careens toward a nuclear Middle East, is not peace. It is entropy.
The media’s presentation of the five-year scenario as a horror story misunderstands the nature of proliferation. The nightmare is not that it can happen in five years. The nightmare is that we pretend it cannot.
To summarize: it is not just plausible that Iran could build a bomb in five years. It is expected. The science permits it. The history supports it. The money is there. The knowledge is there. And so long as the West believes this is too quick to be possible, Iran is gifted one more illusion to exploit.
We must not allow the language of fear to displace the clarity of reason. Five years is not a myth. It is a metric. One that should inform our policy, not paralyze it.
fox files 
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