Like a long-overdue invoice finally landing on the doorstep, the consequences for months of anti-ICE chaos are about to hit where it hurts most: the wallet. While Democrat mayors have spent weeks grandstanding against federal immigration enforcement, playing to their progressive base with fiery rhetoric about “resistance,” a different kind of reckoning has been quietly brewing in Washington.
The riots that erupted across Los Angeles and spread to other major cities weren’t just spontaneous outbursts of anger—they were calculated political theater. And let me tell you, watching these mayors orchestrate resistance while their cities burned was something to behold. As ICE operations successfully rounded up violent criminals including child molesters, murderers, and drug dealers, Democrat-controlled cities responded not with gratitude for removing dangerous predators from their streets, but with organized resistance.
Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson called ICE raids “terrorism” and claimed Trump’s America looks like “the Confederacy won.” California Governor Gavin Newsom continues his defiant posturing, refusing meaningful cooperation with federal authorities.
But here’s what these political grandstanders apparently forgot: their cities don’t operate in a vacuum. Federal dollars flow through every major infrastructure project, every highway repair, every bridge renovation. And those dollars come with strings attached—strings that are about to be pulled tight.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just delivered the news that should have every city budget director reaching for the antacids:
From Breitbart: The USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding.
This isn’t an empty threat or political posturing. Duffy has already demonstrated his willingness to use federal funding as leverage, previously warning that states giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants or maintaining DEI policies would lose transportation dollars. The difference now is the scale and urgency—major cities that have become synonymous with anti-ICE resistance are staring down the barrel of massive funding cuts.
Let me get this straight: cities that allowed rioters to destroy their own infrastructure while protecting criminals from deportation now want federal taxpayers to foot the repair bill? Los Angeles, which watched protesters wave Mexican flags while chanting about ICE, expects American citizens from Kansas and Alabama to pay for fixing their self-inflicted damage. It’s a level of audacity that would be impressive if it weren’t so infuriating.
The contrast between mayors tells the real story here. New York’s Eric Adams, despite his Democrat credentials, has instructed the NYPD not to interfere with ICE operations, telling reporters that protesters blocking federal authorities “is not going to happen in the city.” Meanwhile, Johnson and Newsom double down on their resistance theater, apparently believing their political posturing is worth more than the billions in federal transportation funding their constituents depend on.
What I find most satisfying about this approach is its elegant simplicity. No dramatic confrontations, no constitutional crises—just the quiet enforcement of a basic principle that conservatives have always understood: if you want the benefits of the system, you have to follow the rules of the system. Actions, as they say, have consequences. And for America’s most defiant cities, those consequences are about to become very real and very expensive indeed.
The collapse of viewpoint diversity on Bluesky is neither a fluke nor a recent regression. It is, rather, the predictable consequence of importing the cultural logic of elite academia, progressive journalism, and activist politics into a digital commons. What has emerged is not a neutral platform but a curated ideological enclave, a gated garden of enforced agreement. Far from modeling a healthy democratic discourse, Bluesky illustrates what happens when the infrastructure of debate is subordinated to the politics of purity.
Consider the origin story. Bluesky launched as a decentralization project initiated under Jack Dorsey, its purpose ostensibly noble: to build a more open, federated alternative to Twitter. But the timing of its mass adoption tells the real story. Following Elon Musk‘s acquisition of Twitter in late 2022, and the subsequent rollback of opaque censorship mechanisms that had disproportionately silenced conservatives, there was a liberal exodus. The appeal of Bluesky was never just technical. It was ideological. It became the place to be not because it offered better features or user interface, but because it offered a perceived reprieve from heterodoxy.
The stampede began in earnest after Trump’s reelection in November 2024. For many progressives, his return to power signaled not merely a political loss, but an existential crisis. Twitter, now X, had ceased to be the enforcement arm of consensus. What followed was a migration from a newly pluralistic platform to one where progressive assumptions remained unchallenged. Bluesky’s user base exploded from around 10 million in fall 2024 to over 35 million by spring 2025, most of whom, according to Pew and Business Insider, self-identified as left-of-center.
This demographic uniformity seeded the platform’s rapid ideological calcification. The environment quickly began to mimic the echo chambers of elite universities and major newsrooms. These institutions, as numerous studies show, already suffer from significant ideological skew. For instance, a 2023 Harvard survey found that more than 77 percent of its faculty identified as liberal, with just 2 percent identifying as conservative. FIRE’s 2024 national faculty survey revealed that 71 percent of professors believed a liberal colleague would “fit in” well in their department, while only 20 percent thought the same of a conservative one. Within such ecosystems, dissent becomes not only discouraged but pathologized.
Bluesky followed this trajectory with unsettling speed. Moderation policies and cultural norms effectively deputized users to enforce orthodoxy. Moderates were hounded, centrists were ignored, conservatives were banned. According to Newsweek and Politico, even users who aligned with 90 percent of the prevailing progressive views found themselves castigated for voicing a solitary note of dissent. What ensued was not dialogue but ideological inquisition.
Mark Cuban‘s disillusionment captures the dynamic in miniature. The billionaire investor joined Bluesky in November 2024 with the hopeful salutation, “Hello Less Hateful World.” By June 2025, he had reversed course. In a series of withering posts, Cuban described the atmosphere as toxic, dominated by users who weaponized moral language to silence disagreement. “Even if you agree with 95%,” he lamented, “if there is one point you question, they will call you a fascist.”
His criticism was not mere anecdote. It echoed a growing body of observations suggesting that Bluesky had become a “progressive bubble,” as the Washington Post phrased it, in which dissent invited mobbing and orthodoxy earned applause. That Cuban had financially backed a Bluesky-related application made his reversal all the more telling. Investment did not buy insulation from the inquisition.
Even on apolitical fronts, the consequences of this atmosphere were stifling. A Wharton professor researching artificial intelligence publicly announced his retreat from the platform after finding that any deviation from prevailing opinion, even on purely technical issues, elicited disproportionate backlash. The logic of purity had metastasized beyond politics, suffocating any form of nuanced discourse.
The irony is that while Bluesky was degenerating into a speech cartel, X was recovering. Despite breathless predictions of collapse, Elon Musk’s platform saw both advertiser return and user stability. As of early 2025, X boasted roughly 600 million monthly active users, with around 250 million logging in daily. According to Reuters and Finance Yahoo, ad revenue was projected to grow 17.5 percent in the US and 16.5 percent globally this year, reversing the post-boycott slump. The platform, now dominated by a rough parity of liberals and conservatives, had not devolved into chaos. It had become messy, yes, but it was free. And freedom, though often cacophonous, is what sustains democratic legitimacy.
Bluesky is what happens when speech is subordinated to civility. Or rather, when civility is used as a cudgel to enforce ideological conformity. The results mirror what we’ve seen in other progressive-dominated institutions. At The New York Times, dissenting editors like Bari Weiss resigned under pressure from internal cliques that policed language and punished transgression. At MSNBC, overt progressive bias has long eclipsed any pretense of ideological balance. Bluesky, built from the same cultural DNA, could not escape the same fate.
In fact, it amplifies it. For while a university campus is limited by geography and accreditation, and a media outlet by reputation and ratings, a social network like Bluesky can evolve into a micro-totalitarian regime in real time. There are no checks, no institutional constraints, no internal ombudsman. The result is the swift descent into purity spirals. Each user competes to be more righteous than the last. Each deviation, no matter how slight, is met with exaggerated condemnation.
To be clear, the problem is not that Bluesky is full of liberals. The problem is that it institutionalizes liberalism as an orthodoxy and punishes deviation, particularly deviation from within its own ranks. The right is not merely excluded, it is dehumanized, rendered so beyond the pale that any conservative presence is swiftly purged without ceremony. Yet the irony is that the most brutal penalties are reserved not for the outsider, but for the insufficiently orthodox insider. This is the slippery slope of ideological purity: disagreement from the right is unthinkable, while dissent from the left is treated as betrayal. In a healthy liberal democracy, disagreement is a feature, not a flaw. But Bluesky’s culture treats disagreement, even among liberals themselves, as an existential threat. That is the mark not of an open society but of an ideological sect.
One might argue that users self-select into platforms and that like-minded communities are inevitable. But this misses the deeper point. What Bluesky reveals is not merely digital tribalism, but a creeping authoritarianism within the cultural left. When faced with pluralism, this faction prefers segregation. When exposed to disagreement, it demands removal. This same instinct has crept into institutional politics, where Democrats have increasingly abandoned democratic norms in the name of saving democracy itself. They changed party rules to retroactively invalidate David Hogg’s election as Vice Chair of the DNC after realizing he might challenge the status quo. They denied Democratic delegates any choice by mandating a vote for Kamala Harris alone, with no write-ins or alternatives permitted. And they cheered on state-level efforts to keep Donald Trump off the ballot entirely, not through electoral means but by weaponizing bureaucratic technicalities. Bluesky, in this light, is not an outlier but a symptom. It does not want to compete in the marketplace of ideas; it wants to monopolize it.
This explains why, paradoxically, Bluesky’s rapid growth has not translated into cultural relevance. Despite an initial ballooning user base, its influence wanes because its ecosystem is self-limiting. The platform has begun shedding active users, and those who remain are posting with diminishing frequency. What is there left to talk about? You either agree or you are kicked out. There is no room for disagreement, so there is no reason for discussion. Echo chambers do not produce innovation. They produce repetition. And repetition, even when loud, cannot compete with the chaotic energy of a truly open forum.
Bluesky is the canary in the coal mine, signaling what digital speech looks like under progressive orthodoxy: aesthetically sleek, rhetorically inclusive, and intellectually inert. It functions not as a public square, but as a chapel of ideological conformity, complete with rituals of cancellation and catechisms of belief. Its growth is not a testament to its health, but to the deep yearning among many on the left to avoid disagreement at any cost.
The recent lawsuit filed by X Corp against New York‘s Stop Hiding Hate Act is not merely a corporate tantrum over regulatory friction. It is, rather, a constitutional litmus test: Can the state compel a private media platform to speak? And more precisely, can it compel that speech in a format and on topics it deems urgent, namely, hate speech, misinformation, extremism, and other politically volatile categories, without violating the First Amendment?
The answer, both doctrinally and philosophically, is no. Not if we take our constitutional commitments seriously. Not if we believe in a press that is free not merely to report, but to decline to report. Not if we recall that a regime which mandates orthodoxy is functionally indistinguishable from one that punishes dissent. To compel speech is to conscript conscience, and in the digital agora of social media, the stakes for freedom of editorial judgment could hardly be higher.
The First Amendment, robustly construed, protects not only the right to speak, but the right not to speak. That protection is no less vital for corporate speakers than for individuals. In West Virginia v. Barnette, the Court affirmed this principle unambiguously: The state cannot compel an individual to salute the flag or recite its creed. Why? Because the very act of compulsion transforms opinion into obedience, conscience into compliance. What applies to schoolchildren surely applies to modern publishers.
New York’s Stop Hiding Hate Act runs afoul of this principle by requiring large social media platforms to disclose their content moderation policies and practices, specifically regarding “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and similar categories. The state’s rationale is couched in noble rhetoric: transparency, accountability, democracy. But the effect, and indeed the intent, is to conscript editorial judgment. It commands platforms to articulate their policies in state-approved terms, to issue periodic reports on state-specified topics, and to do so under the threat of $15,000-per-day penalties.
That is compelled speech, and compelled speech on matters of contested opinion. What counts as “misinformation” today may be conventional wisdom tomorrow. What is labeled “hate speech” often reflects the moral intuitions of cultural elites rather than objective legal categories. To force a platform like X to define, report on, and implicitly denounce such categories is to force a particular viewpoint, to transform a speaker into a conduit for the state’s ideological agenda.
The Supreme Court has been consistently wary of such state overreach. In Miami Herald v. Tornillo, the Court struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers to give equal space to political candidates they criticized. Even though the law aimed at fairness, the Court recognized it for what it was: a form of compelled speech that intruded on editorial discretion. The choice of what to publish, and what to withhold, is part of what makes a speaker free.
The same logic animates more recent decisions. In National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra, the Court invalidated California’s attempt to force pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortion services. The law was struck down not because the information was false, but because it compelled speakers to convey messages they found objectionable.
New York’s law suffers from the same defect. It does not merely ask platforms to be clear about their terms of service. It demands that they speak in a particular voice, about particular topics, in a state-sanctioned format. That is not regulation of conduct; it is regulation of speech. And it is presumptively unconstitutional.
The Ninth Circuit reached precisely this conclusion in X Corp v. Bonta, a case challenging California’s nearly identical transparency law, AB 587. That court found the law unconstitutional on its face, noting that the compelled disclosures were non-commercial speech on deeply controversial topics, triggering strict scrutiny. The state failed that scrutiny because there were less intrusive means to achieve its goals, and because the law’s real aim appeared to be ideological enforcement, not mere transparency.
The Stop Hiding Hate Act is, if anything, worse. Where California’s law was relatively restrained, New York’s law comes armed with sharper teeth: higher penalties, broader categories, and a clear animus against X Corp’s editorial philosophy. Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James have publicly criticized Elon Musk‘s management of X, decrying what they see as an irresponsible tolerance for hate and extremism. But if that is the state’s concern, its remedy must be speech of its own, not coercion of others.
Viewpoint neutrality is a bedrock requirement of any law that touches expression. In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, the Court struck down a hate speech ordinance because it punished speech based on viewpoint. The government may not pick sides in the marketplace of ideas, nor may it burden one side of a debate because it finds its views distasteful. Yet that is precisely what the Stop Hiding Hate Act does. By mandating reporting only on negative categories of speech, hate, extremism, misinformation, it sends a clear message: Platforms must account for their failure to suppress ideas the state disfavors.
This is not a hypothetical concern. Judicial analysis of New York’s earlier Hateful Conduct Law found the same flaw. In Volokh v. James, Judge Andrew Carter enjoined enforcement of that law, finding that it compelled speech and chilled protected expression. The parallels to the current statute are striking, and the constitutional defects just as fatal.
Defenders of the law argue that social media companies are different. They are not publishers, they say, but infrastructure. Carriers. Utilities. That argument fails both as a matter of law and logic. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that platforms exercise editorial discretion, and are thus speakers. In Reno v. ACLU, the Court treated the internet as a medium deserving of full First Amendment protection. And in NetChoice v. Moody, the Eleventh Circuit recognized that content moderation decisions are expressive acts, entitled to constitutional safeguards.
Moreover, the compelled disclosures in question are not neutral. They do not merely report numerical data or objective facts. They require platforms to explain how they define “hate,” how they identify “misinformation,” and what policies they have to remove or mitigate such content. These are ideological questions, not technical ones. To answer them is to express a worldview.
The editorial freedom of platforms is also essential to the integrity of the digital public square. Just as newspapers decide which op-eds to publish and which letters to discard, platforms decide which voices to elevate and which to suppress. Their choices shape public discourse, for better or worse. But those choices must remain theirs. If the government can dictate how they define controversial categories of speech, it can eventually dictate whom they must ban, what they must delete, and what they must feature.
And what of Section 230? Though not directly at issue in this case, the spirit of that provision underscores a broader point: Congress has long understood that platforms need leeway to moderate content without fear of liability. New York’s law, while framed as a disclosure regime, indirectly penalizes moderation choices by turning them into targets for state scrutiny. That functionally contradicts the federal policy of encouraging free and diverse platforms.
This is not to say that platforms bear no responsibility. X Corp, like any publisher, is accountable to its users, its advertisers, and the public. But that accountability must be exercised through the voluntary mechanisms of the market, not the coercive arm of the state. The state can speak, advocate, and condemn. It can encourage platforms to do better. But it cannot force them to explain their decisions in its own preferred terms.
We must also attend to the dangers of precedent. Today, New York compels speech about hate and disinformation. Tomorrow, a different state may compel speech about patriotism, election integrity, or gender ideology. Once we allow government to mandate ideological reporting, the slope becomes not only slippery but unavoidable. The protection of editorial discretion, even for unpopular or eccentric platforms, is the bulwark against state orthodoxy.
In sum, the Stop Hiding Hate Act violates the First Amendment by compelling speech, intruding on editorial discretion, and discriminating based on viewpoint. It is neither narrowly tailored nor supported by a compelling interest that cannot be pursued through less invasive means. The law’s defects are legal, philosophical, and practical.
X Corp’s challenge to the Act, then, is not merely defensible, it is necessary. If we value the principle that the government cannot dictate what private speakers say, or how they say it, we must defend it when it is tested. That principle, like speech itself, must be protected not only in easy cases, but especially in hard ones.
The Federal Reserve‘s data repository, FRED, presents one of the most quietly subversive truths in modern economics. Across administrations, tax regimes, and political ideologies, federal tax receipts have hovered around an average of 17.5% of GDP. This single metric, consistent across time and policy, should provoke a complete reconsideration of fiscal strategy. If no matter how high or low tax rates go, the government captures roughly 17.5% of the economy, then the only sane objective is to grow the economy. This is not ideology, it is arithmetic.
And yet, the progressive left persists in chasing higher tax rates, even as history and hard data render the strategy self-defeating. Why? Because for the modern progressive, revenue is not the end. It is the excuse. The aim is not to feed the treasury, but to reshape society. That makes tax policy less a tool of statecraft than a weapon of social reengineering.
This is not speculation, it is doctrine. Consider the words of Denis Healey, the British Labour Chancellor, who once promised to tax the rich “until the pips squeak.” The goal was not productivity or revenue, it was punishment. Redistribution as retribution. What mattered was not how much government could collect but how much it could confiscate from those it resented. The modern American progressive inherits this moral absolutism: high taxes are right, low taxes are wrong, and results be damned.
Yet the results do matter, especially when judged by the very standard progressives claim to uphold: the public good. Empirical evidence from FRED undermines their moralizing. The US government, regardless of tax rate, collects about 17.5% of GDP. If rates go up and GDP slows, the government collects less. If rates go down and GDP grows, it collects more. In real terms, the size of the pie matters more than the size of the slice.
This is the heart of supply-side logic. It is also the lesson ignored by static modeling agencies like the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO consistently underestimates the growth impact of tax and regulatory reforms. When Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed, the CBO predicted modest effects. Instead, GDP growth surged to 2.9% in 2018, well above forecast. Capital investment jumped, business confidence soared, and tax receipts increased. It wasn’t magic. It was motion.
The same fallacy mars the CBO’s score of Trump’s latest initiative, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Projecting a paltry 1.7% long-term growth rate, the CBO forecasts a $3.8 trillion increase in debt. But a growth rate of just 2.2% cuts that shortfall by more than a trillion. A 2.7% growth rate nearly wipes it out. Add in the revenue from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, conservatively estimated at $2.3 to $3.3 trillion over a decade, and the fiscal picture flips from deficit to surplus. The math is not fuzzy, it is just inconvenient for the central planners.
Why does the CBO get it wrong? Because its models assume a static world, where tax cuts are giveaways and regulation is costless. This is Keynesian nostalgia dressed in academic robes. It denies incentives, discounts dynamism, and assumes the private sector merely reacts rather than innovates. That intellectual blindness is no accident. Most CBO directors have never built a business or managed payroll; instead, they are drawn from the ivy-covered halls of Harvard and Princeton, trained in theory but untethered from enterprise. Trump’s economic team does not share these illusions. Neither should the American people.
The Trump agenda focuses on unleashing growth: simplifying permitting for nuclear energy and pipelines, accelerating drug approvals, expanding domestic mining and drilling, and building AI infrastructure without bureaucratic drag. Each policy removes a bottleneck, and in doing so, expands the tax base. Yet the CBO ignores all of this. It includes no measure for the acceleration of permitting, no accounting for regulatory relief across entire industries, no projection of the increased oil and gas exploration, production, or refining, and no scoring for the trillions in foreign direct investment secured by Trump. Why not? Because it cannot model the real-world effects of policies it ideologically opposes. If FRED is right, and it is, then unleashing GDP is the only serious strategy. Everything else is political theater.
This is where the progressive project reveals its true priorities. It is not simply wrong about tax policy. It is hostile to economic growth. Because growth reduces dependency, and dependency is their currency of power. A larger GDP gives people more autonomy. That undermines the case for state intervention. Progressives, despite their rhetoric, do not trust people to live freely and prosper. They trust themselves to allocate resources, distribute privileges, and engineer outcomes. Higher taxes are the toll they place on that liberty.
Redistribution is also their electoral strategy. By taxing a demonized few, they buy votes from a politicized many. Student loan forgiveness, rent subsidies, welfare expansions, these are not programs, they are payoffs. That the math does not work is irrelevant. What matters is that the bill arrives after the election.
Even worse, high taxes empower the permanent bureaucracy. A complex tax code justifies an army of IRS agents, compliance officers, and lobbyists. These are not mechanisms for revenue, they are instruments of control. Simpler, lower taxes threaten their sinecures. They resist simplification not out of fiscal concern, but institutional self-preservation. Meanwhile, only a minority of Americans actually pay federal income taxes at all, further concentrating the burden on a shrinking pool of producers. This creates an upside-down incentive structure, where most citizens vote for benefits paid by others, while the tax code grows ever more opaque to sustain the illusion of fairness.
This leads to an uncomfortable truth. The tax code is not designed to raise money efficiently. It is designed to raise influence. Every deduction, exemption, and bracket is a node of political leverage. Progressives exploit this to reward allies and punish dissenters. Conservatives should dismantle it with the same clarity and resolve that Trump brings to regulation.
Growth, then, is not just an economic imperative. It is a moral one. A growing economy elevates the working class, funds national defense, and underwrites the social safety net. It does all this without coercion. It also reaffirms the central conservative principle that liberty, not redistribution, is the path to prosperity.
Trump’s approach, often derided as simplistic, is in fact the most sophisticated policy vision in Washington. It recognizes the limitations of static models, the distortions of bureaucratic incentives, and the moral hazards of dependency. It wagers, correctly, that the American people are not liabilities to be managed but assets to be unleashed.
The 17.5% rule is not just a quirk of FRED’s database. It is a mirror reflecting the futility of progressive fiscal policy. If the government only ever captures a fixed share of GDP, then policies must aim at increasing GDP. This is the only strategy consistent with both sound economics and limited government. Anything else is vanity or vendetta.
In 2016, when Donald J. Trump did the unthinkable and defeated Hillary Clinton, it was not merely a disruption of the expected political cycle. It was an ontological rupture in the worldview of the globalist establishment. That elite, forged in the gleaming chambers of Davos, Brussels, and Foggy Bottom, had spent decades constructing an ideological palace upon the belief that the arc of history had bent, permanently, toward supranationalism. Trump bulldozed the edifice.
To the stewards of the so-called “Rules-Based International Order,” Trump’s rise was not just electoral misfortune, it was apostasy. His sins were theological: he questioned NATO’s utility, dismissed climate crusades, mocked international treaties, and, most unforgivable, declared that he would put America first. That phrase, so simple yet so devastating to the mandarins of multilateralism, signaled something deeper: the resurrection of sovereignty. It could not be allowed to stand.
By 2021, the counterattack had taken shape. Legal warfare, once the exclusive domain of banana republics, was rebranded and refined as a tool of elite preservation. The strategy: if the ballot box produces the wrong result, change the judge. If the people err, prosecute their champion. Trump was hit with a fusillade of indictments, not because he is unusually corrupt, but because he is unusually disruptive. The pattern has metastasized. From Paris to Bucharest, Caracas to Dublin, nationalist leaders are being purged not by plebiscite but by process.
Marine Le Pen, once again the front-runner in the French presidential race, was neatly removed from contention through a judicial maneuver so timed and tidy one might mistake it for satire. On March 27, 2025, she was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term and barred from public office for five years, effectively ending her 2027 candidacy. The charge? Alleged misuse of European Parliament funds, a case launched in 2016, revived without fanfare just as her polling numbers peaked. Over a dozen members of her National Rally party were likewise ensnared. The message was unmistakable: challenge Brussels, and you will be removed. Not debated. Not defeated. Removed.
The United States, now again under Trump’s leadership, has taken unprecedented steps to confront this new form of transnational political suppression. In May 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized an investigatory mission to France to examine the legal proceedings against Le Pen. The US team, which includes career diplomats and legal observers, will assess whether international norms regarding democratic participation and judicial impartiality were violated. According to one senior State Department official, “If the US is to champion democracy, we cannot turn a blind eye when it is strangled by procedure rather than preserved by principle.”
Nor is France alone. In the United Kingdom, where political prosecutions increasingly cloak themselves in “hate speech” jurisprudence, Trump has dispatched a parallel team to review the jailing of Lucy Connolly, a populist firebrand arrested for what British authorities describe as incitement against migrants. Her defenders argue that her speech, however inflammatory, was plainly political. She was not tried by jury but condemned by a panel whose allegiance to the ruling party is, at best, suspect. American officials have requested transcripts, court documents, and access to Connolly’s legal team. The message, again, is clear: the Trump administration intends to confront, not accommodate, global lawfare.
In Eastern Europe, the illusion of democratic procedure has been similarly weaponized. Romania’s presidential election in November 2024 was upended when nationalist outsider Călin Georgescu, who won the first round, was suddenly declared ineligible. The cause? Accusations of Russian interference, though no credible evidence was ever produced. Within days, he was arrested for “communicating false information” and “promoting fascism,” charges as conveniently vague as they are politically lethal. His removal nullified the voters’ verdict.
One need not endorse Georgescu’s views to grasp the threat. When the people’s will is retroactively invalidated through judicial intervention, democracy becomes a simulation, not a reality. Once again, Trump has responded. The State Department has contacted Romanian authorities requesting a detailed account of the court’s findings and the legal basis for the annulment. While critics call the intervention unprecedented, defenders argue that America’s moral leadership depends upon its willingness to challenge injustice, even when it wears a robe.
This new approach marks a decisive philosophical shift. Previous administrations, from Bush to Biden, paid homage to the international order even as it rotted from within. Trump, by contrast, treats sovereignty not as a relic but as a right. His foreign policy assumes that democracy means self-determination, not elite curation. The investigation into Le Pen’s case is not mere theater; it is the first salvo in a counteroffensive against the weaponization of law.
The trend is global and unmistakable. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro is ensnared in a judicial spiderweb designed to prevent his political resurrection. Ireland has prepared charges against Conor McGregor under nebulous “hate speech” provisions. In Pakistan, Imran Khan sits in prison, his party decapitated before elections could be held. In Turkey, Istanbul’s mayor has been jailed for alleged ties to terrorism, charges his supporters regard as fiction. In each case, the pattern is the same. Nationalists rise, globalists recoil, courts intervene.
And still the architects of this jurisprudential coup insist they are defending democracy. But as any student of logic will note, defending democracy by voiding elections is a contradiction. If democracy is to mean anything, it must include the right to elect those whom the elite loathe. Otherwise, it is mere spectacle.
Trump’s willingness to use the diplomatic tools of the US government to expose this farce is both bold and necessary. If France or the UK can banish their opposition with the stroke of a judge’s pen, then the lesson is simple: legality is not justice. The law, once a shield for the people, has become a cudgel for the ruling class.
In sending observers to France, Romania, and the UK, the Trump administration is doing more than gathering evidence. It is issuing a warning: the age of passive accommodation is over. The US will no longer grant automatic legitimacy to foreign prosecutions that function as political purges.
For the globalist order, this is an existential threat. Their power lies not in persuasion, but in process. They wield courts as swords and bureaucracies as shields. Trump’s crime was to question their divinity. His re-election gives him the power to expose their secular heresies.
But this fight extends beyond Trump. It concerns the survival of political choice itself. If voters cannot choose their leaders without fear that judges will unchoose them, then democracy has already died. What remains is oligarchy, dressed up in robes and gavels.
So yes, the investigations into Le Pen and Connolly are controversial. Good. They should be. Nothing less than the integrity of self-governance is at stake. The ballot box must not become an anteroom to the dock.
Washington did not freeze at Valley Forge, nor did Lincoln bleed the Union at Gettysburg, so that two and a half centuries later, federal judges could rewrite American foreign policy from a bench in Boston. Yet here we are: unelected district court judges issuing orders with global repercussions, shackling the executive branch, endangering diplomacy, and destabilizing entire regions.
The case of D.V.D. v. DHS, now immortalized in Secretary of State Marco Rubio‘s sworn declaration, is the most vivid and alarming example yet. A single judge, Brian E. Murphy, appointed by President Joe Biden, has upended delicate international arrangements, disrupted military coordination in a counter-terrorism hotspot, and jeopardized humanitarian efforts across the Horn of Africa, all with a flourish of his gavel.
This is not justice, it is judicial imperialism. And if it is not stopped, it will unravel the fabric of constitutional government.
Let us begin with the basics. The Constitution vests foreign policy authority in the executive branch. Article II is unambiguous. The President “shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers,” and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, “make Treaties.” In practice, the president, through the Secretary of State, negotiates with foreign powers, calibrates the tone and tenor of our international presence, and oversees the strategic deployment of both soft power and military muscle.
The judiciary, by contrast, was never intended to function as a foreign policy apparatus. The Federalist Papers make this clear. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78, the judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse.” Its power “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” Yet what we see today is the inverse: a judiciary with the will of a legislature and the force of an executive.
Consider the chaos Judge Murphy has sown. Secretary Rubio’s declaration outlines how the judge’s May 20 injunction halted the removal of eight foreign nationals, including convicted felons, who were en route to South Sudan, rerouting them into Djibouti instead. This was not a harmless detour. It required US diplomats to scramble and re-explain our shifting commitments to a key regional partner. It delayed counter-terrorism operations headquartered at the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa. It chilled humanitarian coordination efforts in famine-stricken zones. It even postponed a major energy deal in Libya, costing American enterprise and reducing our leverage in a country already teetering on civil war.
What gives one man sitting in a courthouse on the East Coast the authority to rewrite US policy in Tripoli, Juba, and Djibouti? What constitutional principle justifies such reach?
None. But the vehicle of this judicial arrogance is the nationwide injunction, a tool so radical, so constitutionally suspect, and so corrosive to governance that even liberal legal scholars have begun to question its proliferation. Justice Clarence Thomas, prescient as ever, warned in Trump v. Hawaii (2018) that nationwide injunctions “have a tendency to encourage forum shopping, politicize the judiciary, and deprive other courts of the ability to weigh in on legal questions.”
Indeed, if one sympathetic judge can block an executive action across all 50 states, then the presidency is no longer unitary, it is hostage. Foreign leaders are not engaging with the United States government, but with whichever district judge last issued a ruling. Our diplomacy becomes erratic, our word less reliable, our authority diluted.
This distortion of power is not theoretical. It is real, and it is recurring. Remember when a district court blocked President Trump’s ban on travel from terrorism-prone countries in 2017? That nationwide injunction, issued by Judge James Robart in Washington, not only overruled the president’s national security judgment but also forced foreign governments to reevaluate their cooperation with US intelligence, uncertain if the courts or the White House were truly in charge.
The incentive structure is equally perverse. Activist groups now scour the country for friendly judges, ideological allies with a record of lawfare activism, then file lawsuits not to win narrow relief for plaintiffs, but to engineer sweeping political victories that Congress never authorized and voters never endorsed. These are not lawsuits, they are stealth coups.
One need not be a strict textualist to grasp the danger here. Imagine if a single judge could halt a military deployment, override a treaty, or block a Secretary of State from evacuating embassy personnel. We are sliding into precisely that paradigm. The judiciary, far from checking the executive, is usurping its powers outright. The result is paralysis, confusion, and an erosion of the separation of powers upon which our constitutional order depends.
The problem is compounded when the judiciary aligns itself with globalist NGOs and open-borders ideologues. In D.V.D., the class members whose deportations were halted include not just migrants with questionable asylum claims but convicted criminals. By granting them judicial sanctuary, the court effectively overrides the State Department’s security assessments, replacing sovereign discretion with ideological dogma. Is the court prepared to vet these individuals itself? Is Judge Murphy better informed on regional conflicts in the Horn of Africa than the National Security Council? Or is this just another example of a liberal judge indulging his priors at the expense of the republic?
The stakes are high. With the return of President Trump to office and the reshaping of America’s global posture, the courts must not become a backdoor veto. We are witnessing a transition away from the apologetic diplomacy of the Obama-Biden years toward a policy of strength, reciprocity, and unapologetic national interest. That pivot cannot be sabotaged by judges still committed to the prior regime.
What is to be done? First, the Supreme Court must act on the opportunity already before it. The Court has heard oral arguments in a pending case involving birthright citizenship that includes critical questions about the legitimacy and scope of nationwide injunctions. All that remains is a decision. The Court should use this case to strike down the practice as inconsistent with Article III limitations on judicial power. Such rulings should be confined to the parties before the court, not the entire country. Injunctions should bind defendants only to the extent necessary to provide relief to plaintiffs, not to reshape executive policy for 330 million Americans.
Second, Congress should act. A statute should clarify that nationwide injunctions exceed the judicial power under the Constitution. This would restore balance, eliminate forum shopping, and return the courts to their proper role: arbiters of disputes, not architects of foreign policy.
Finally, the executive must resist. The State Department and DHS should not preemptively concede to every nationwide injunction as a fait accompli. Where there is ambiguity or statutory discretion, the administration should assert its prerogatives. The president is elected. The judge is not. Accountability matters.
History offers little comfort to those who allow unelected tribunals to dictate the terms of sovereignty. Empires have collapsed under the weight of judicial excess. Rome, after all, did not fall to barbarians alone, but to internal legal sclerosis and a metastasized bureaucracy. If we do not rein in our courts, we will cede our republic to the whims of the courts and socialist courts at that.
It seems that some people/organization leaders have either not awakened to the truth or want to try to keep the funds coming in in a fight against the non-extent fear of Global Warming. It would be (it is) easy to dig deep – back to the early days of Earth Day and find out where the upside-down science came from. Why have the purveyors of” Man-made global warming is destroying the earth, so we must rid the earth of most humans and Oh, take control of every aspect of life on earth as well, pushed this nonsense?
It all began because some people wanted to control the entire world. They found each other and began planning how to achieve world-dominance.
Cecil Rhodes, in his Confession of Faith, is credited with the idea of recapturing the United States for the British Empire. This idea was to lead to the United Nations and all the necessary steps to erase nationalism and establish a one-world order. And many steps there were, as you can imagine – from setting up eleemosynary (in name only) organizations/foundations 1 that would form the basic tools of public/private/partnerships associated with the United Nations to reinvent governments around the world – especially the constitutional American one.
In order to scare the pants off us – enough to be willing to do almost anything to rid the world of excess CO2 (which actually keeps us alive) – the powers-that-be on both sides of the political aisle – have fed us lies as facts, lies that tell us if we don’t reduce the earth’s population by over 95%, quit eating meat, quit using fossil fuels. There’s a huge list of forbidden activities if we want to save Mother Earth and her non-human inhabitants. 2
Oh, yes, there really are climate scientists who wholeheartedly disagree with the supposed findings that spurred the Global Biodiversity Assessment. The original study of Global Warming didn’t show that we were facing a dire future. A letter signed by over 50 leading members of the American Meteorological Society warned about the policies promoted by environmental pressure groups. “The policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuel and requires immediate action. We do not agree.” 3
From day one, honest scientists have been telling us “Global warming” was a hoax. And ever since, we get intermittent articles reminding us. For example, in 2007, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works put out a news release stating harsh sound facts:
“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.
I think what we are seeing is an intense drive to bring back the lies the globalist elite and their toadies have promulgated for far too many decades. We have a window here that we must take advantage of a window that is open to sound science, reason, logic, and rule of law. Almost all of the tenets we believe in, based our values, attitudes, and beliefs on have been under attack by Socialist one-worlders who have been free to brainwash, program, and indoctrinate across the spectrum of venues from the schools to the churches to the mainstream media — even our courts and governments.
Now it truly is time to write and speak the truth of global warming. It is time for reason and logic to prevail over it all.
Sources:
The foundation’s power is the power of money.
Ski runs, grazing of livestock, disturbance of the soil surface, fencing of pastures or paddocks, agriculture, modern farm production systems, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, building materials, industrial activities, human-made caves of brick and mortar or concrete and steel, paved and tarred roads, highways, railroads, floor and wall tires, aquaculture, technology improvements, farmlands, rangelands, hunting, sewers, drain systems, pipelines, fisheries, golf courses, scuba diving, synthetic drugs, List from the Global Biodiversity Assessment Report by the United Nations
A line of people stretched for blocks at a bus stop at Cibeles Square in downtown Madrid as subway and trains went totally out of service Monday. Power went out across all of Spain and Portugal and parts of France and Belgium, cutting cellphone and internet networks, halting trains and trapping people in elevators. (Thomas Coex – AFP / Getty Images)
In between the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of the Italian Renaissance, Western Europe economically stagnated and culturally declined in what are commonly called the Dark Ages.
This period, which lasted several centuries, has become known as the Dark Ages primarily because societal advancements and human progress generally ceased as sound science, facts, and the truth were disregarded by elites who sought power and control.
Sadly, Western Europe is treading down this road again.
A few days ago, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France and Belgium literally went dark for hours after a massive power disruption led to a system-wide grid collapse.
More than 50 million people were left without electricity. Traffic signals did not work, causing chaos on the roadways. Subway systems couldn’t function, leaving people stranded wherever they were. Stores and businesses closed, as payments were limited to cash only. Mobile phone service was spotty, rendering smartphones almost useless and making rapid communication impossible. Even some hospitals and medical facilities, which generally have backup generators, were left without power.
In other words, modern life nearly ground to a total halt for tens of millions of people in some of the most advanced nations and cities in the world.
The reason this dreadful event occurred is that Western European elites have rejected sound science, common sense, and the truth in favor of climate alarmism.
It is no great surprise that Western Europe is the undisputed world champion when it comes to pushing the so-called green agenda. From the Paris Accords to the UN’s heavy-handed role in supporting the climate alarmism narrative over the past several years, Western Europe is ground zero when it comes to climate-change zealotry.
Therefore, it should also come as no surprise that the cause of Europe’s biggest power outage in modern history occurred in Spain, which is a darling of the green movement because it generates more than half of its power from wind and solar.
Specifically, two solar power plants in southwest Spain experienced a sudden and steep reduction in power generation, triggering a systemic collapse of grid infrastructure that occurred almost instantly.
Put simply, it is absurd to assume that a modern nation like Spain can power itself primarily via renewable energy.
As everyone knows, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. This obvious fact means that renewable energy sources have an Achilles heel in that they are intermittent by nature.
It is also true that there is not nearly enough battery storage capacity to keep extra power on hand when these sources are not providing reliable power.
Despite these clear shortcomings, European elites have insisted that renewable energy must be adopted as soon as possible. From net-zero madness to ESG scores, Europe has been at the vanguard of eliminating affordable and reliable energy in favor of unaffordable and unreliable so-called green energy.
What makes this whole climate alarmism narrative even more nonsensical is the fact that so-called green energy is not environmentally friendly. Scores of reports and studies show that huge solar panel fields and gargantuan wind turbines produce a host of environmental problems, such as habitat destruction, wildlife loss, etc. After these massive structures meet their shelf life, which is typically only a decade or so, they are also impossible to recycle.
I am more than confident that the very elites who have been pushing the green movement for the past many years are completely aware of these matters, however, they have chosen to forge ahead, undaunted by these pesky facts.
This leads me to believe that they do not intend nor desire to “save the planet.” It also makes me much surer that they are not interested in improving the lives of hardworking, middle-class Europeans. If that were the case, they would have abandoned the green energy nonsense long ago.
With that being said, I can’t help but wonder if their actual intent is to increase their power and control.
Europe, unlike the United States, has a very long history of wealthy elites wielding outsized power and control in a system rigged against the masses. In many instances, these elites have conspired to create zero-sum systems in which they win, and the rest lose.
Make no mistake, Western European elites are committed to forcing their climate alarmist agenda upon the masses, whether they like it or not.
As such, we must underscore the sheer stupidity of their ridiculous, yet sinister, plan to replace reliable, affordable, and abundant energy with unreliable, unaffordable, and environmentally destructive power sources that are wholly dependent on sunny and windy conditions.
As President Donald Trump ramps up his economic battle with China, a powerful new strategy is gaining attention: delisting Chinese companies from American stock exchanges. While some conservatives are wary of pushing too far, this tactic may be the ultimate weapon to rebalance the global playing field—and it’s one the U.S. can wield unilaterally.
The backdrop is already tense. Trump’s tariff crackdown has triggered a tit-for-tat exchange with the Chinese Communist Party, which is notoriously sensitive about losing face internationally. While tariffs dominate headlines, another pressure point is emerging behind the scenes—Chinese companies accessing billions in American capital without playing by the same rules.
According to a recent report from Just the News, many Chinese firms listed on U.S. exchanges routinely dodge compliance with basic securities laws and audit transparency. They benefit from the prestige and liquidity of American financial markets, but avoid the scrutiny that American companies face under U.S. regulations.
Delisting those companies would do more than just send a message. It could seriously disrupt Beijing’s ability to raise capital and fund its sprawling global ambitions.
Legal expert and longtime China analyst Gordon Chang emphasized the uneven playing field created by a 2013 agreement signed during the Obama administration. That memorandum of understanding between U.S. regulators and Chinese authorities gave Chinese firms an unprecedented pass—allowing them to access American investors without subjecting their auditors to onsite inspections.
“This 2013 memorandum was unjustified,” Chang said. “In other words, giving China access to our markets under terms which are more favorable than companies from any other country.”
Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, U.S.-listed companies are required to comply with strict auditing standards and oversight by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). But Chinese companies were essentially given a carveout—one that could now be costing American investors both money and national security.
It’s a loophole the Trump administration is finally ready to slam shut.
While tariffs have sparked headlines and retaliation, delisting offers a different kind of leverage. It doesn’t rely on bilateral agreements or global consensus. It simply means enforcing U.S. law and holding foreign firms to the same standards as American ones.
This approach also puts the ball in China’s court. Beijing must decide: will it allow transparency and oversight, or will it sacrifice access to the world’s most lucrative capital markets?
Many Chinese firms are heavily dependent on U.S. markets—not just for funding, but also for credibility. Being listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq sends a global signal that a company is legitimate and stable. Removing that endorsement could be a devastating reputational blow, particularly for tech firms and state-owned enterprises.
It’s not just about financial fairness. At a time when China is openly challenging U.S. influence and attempting to spread authoritarian norms across the globe, funding those ambitions through American wallets is indefensible.
Critics will warn about market volatility and diplomatic fallout, but the reality is this: for too long, China has been allowed to game the system. Delisting their companies might finally force some accountability.
President Trump has already signaled he supports tougher restrictions. In a recent statement, he blasted the Obama-era decision to allow China such easy access and hinted that stronger action is coming.
As the trade war escalates and China tries to counter Trump’s tariffs with propaganda and cheap goods, cutting off their financial lifeline could be the boldest move yet.
This is about more than economics. It’s about national strength, investor protection, and refusing to let hostile regimes exploit the American system.
The next front in the U.S.-China standoff may not be at the border—but on Wall Street.
Imagine a vast ledger, chronicling the transactions of a mighty republic, now riddled with deliberate gaps and omissions, gaps no auditor may probe, no citizen may question. This is no fanciful dystopia, but the present reality, quietly authorized by what is known as Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56 (SFFAS 56). While initially crafted, perhaps, with honorable intentions to shield ‘classified’ operations from hostile eyes, SFFAS 56 now threatens the very transparency and public accountability that sustain a free government. Federal agencies are allowed to use SFFAS 56 to hide spending they desire to be ‘classified’ from the American people, Congress, and even the President of the United States.
What is SFFAS 56? At its core, it is an administrative rule issued by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) in 2018, not a statute passed by Congress. It allows any federal agency to modify its financial statements in order to obscure sensitive national security information. This authority extends beyond the obvious domains of intelligence or defense, touching every department that produces General Purpose Federal Financial Reports, from USAID to the Department of Energy. In theory, this safeguard exists to prevent enemies from exploiting financial disclosures to learn state secrets. In practice, it creates a black hole into which billions of taxpayer dollars vanish without a trace.
To understand the peril, one must first grasp the astonishing breadth of the rule. Under SFFAS 56, agencies may alter financial reports by removing, aggregating or fabricating information, provided these adjustments do not “materially” affect the reported net results. Further, agencies can exclude entire sub-entities from reports or consolidate them elsewhere, masking not merely amounts but organizational structures themselves. Crucially, neither the public nor Congress is afforded any right to know when these modifications occur, how often they happen or the underlying reasons. A general, but nonspecific, disclaimer suffices, buried in the back pages of thick agency reports: “Accounting standards allow certain presentations and disclosures to be modified to prevent the disclosure of classified information.”
Even Congress itself can be kept in the dark unless an agency, by its own volition, deigns to disclose the concealment. Thus, SFFAS 56 effectively removes the legislature’s constitutional power of the purse from critical oversight. It conjures a legal purgatory where funds can be appropriated for one purpose, redirected for another and hidden altogether from elected representatives. The theoretical protections against abuse, internal controls, audits, classified oversight, are weak reeds indeed when the very financial data needed to detect mischief has been sanitized.
Proponents of SFFAS 56 argue that, without such protections, enemies could piece together vital intelligence from innocent-looking financial entries. Yet the ingenuity of our foes cannot justify the abandonment of self-government. If secrecy is to be justified, it must be rare, tightly controlled and explicitly authorized by the people’s elected representatives. Instead, SFFAS 56 inverts the burden: concealment becomes the default, accountability the exception. One might as well argue that because a handful of bank robbers lurk at large, all citizens must henceforth veil their account balances from scrutiny.
History offers sobering lessons when governments assume powers of secret spending. The clandestine financing of “black ops” during the Cold War, sometimes used for noble ends, sometimes for ignoble, occurred under conditions of limited and direct congressional oversight. Even then, abuses proliferated. The Iran-Contra affair revealed how easily noble motives could give way to clandestine mischief when oversight was thwarted. Now, SFFAS 56 institutionalizes a structure far broader and more opaque than anything Colonel Oliver North could have dreamed.
Under SFFAS 56, the Department of Defense could award lucrative contracts to politically connected firms and conceal both the recipient and the amount from public view. USAID could fund controversial NGOs both here and abroad without alerting Congress or the public. Worse still, agencies could funnel money to the family members of political figures or even, under a perverse interpretation, fund hostile entities abroad, all behind the iron curtain of “classified activities.”
Consider a hypothetical yet disturbingly plausible example. Suppose USAID wished to grant a billion dollars to the Clinton Foundation or the Open Society Foundation, ostensibly to support development projects in unstable regions. Concerned that public knowledge of such a grant might spark political controversy and, by some stretch, be construed as harmful to national security, the head of USAID could invoke SFFAS 56 to hide the transaction. No notification to the president would be required. Congress would remain unaware. The public, journalists and watchdog groups would find themselves stonewalled. Even if the agency head believed sincerely that the money would be wisely spent for a legitimate purpose, no one outside his immediate circle could help him ensure that actually happened. Oversight by the press, vigilant members of Congress or curious citizens would be thoroughly stymied.
Some may protest that the President retains control of the executive branch, and thus can police such abuses internally. But the president’s power is not omniscient. Unless agency heads choose to disclose their use of SFFAS 56, even the president may remain unaware of the specific expenditures being hidden. In effect, FASAB, a mere advisory board, has created a tool so potent that it outstrips the constitutional balance of powers itself.
The irony is sharp. Conservatives, rightly skeptical of administrative overreach, have long warned against the quiet accretion of unaccountable power by regulatory boards. Yet here lies one of the gravest examples: a board that issues “standards” more consequential than many laws, without democratic debate or meaningful constraint.
President Trump must act decisively. First, he should formally direct every agency head to audit the use of SFFAS 56 within their departments since 2018. For every instance, they must privately report to the president the recipient, the amount, the date and the justification for concealment. Such a review need not, and should not, compromise national security, but the chief executive must know whether public funds have been lawfully spent.
Second, the President should demand that the leaders of FASAB, particularly the current chair, George B. Scott, and Executive Director Monica R. Valentine, rescind or at least reform SFFAS 56. If they refuse, legislation must follow. Congress, spurred by the White House, must reassert its constitutional authority and mandate that no funds shall be expended without public disclosure unless specifically authorized by statute and subjected to classified presidential and congressional oversight.
It strains credulity that an executive board not directly answerable to voters or even the president should wield the power to dissolve financial transparency across the entire federal government. Even among classified programs, there are means of maintaining oversight without sacrificing security. Classified briefings, secure audits, special oversight committees, all these mechanisms exist and function in sensitive areas of defense and intelligence. What SFFAS 56 does is more radical: it banishes oversight by design.
In Federalist 51, Madison observed that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” A corollary is clear: if governments were composed entirely of angels, perhaps SFFAS 56 would pose no danger. But human beings, tempted by self-interest, ambition and error, cannot be trusted with unchecked authority. Transparency and oversight are the sinews of a free republic. Without them, the Constitution is a parchment barrier.
Critics may claim that rolling back SFFAS 56 will impair national security. This is a false dilemma. It is possible to protect legitimate secrets while maintaining financial accountability. It is not necessary, indeed, it is dangerous, to dismantle the public’s right to know how its money is spent in the name of security.
SFFAS 56, well-intentioned or not, is an invitation to abuse. It is a standing temptation to the unscrupulous. It is a blindfold upon the eyes of the republic. It must be reformed, and if reform proves impossible, it must be repealed.
The ledger of a free people must be open and not riddled with secret ink. President Trump must insist that the light of public scrutiny shines once more upon the accounts of the United States. The integrity of the American experiment depends on it.
There’s a growing unease spreading across the heartland, a sense that the values holding our nation together are fraying at the edges. You’ve felt it too, right? That quiet disturbance beneath the surface of daily life, suggesting the foundations we once took for granted might be cracking. It whispers of challenges not just from distant shores, but from within our own communities, festering quietly.
This isn’t mere political disagreement; it feels deeper, more fundamental. It’s that unsettling feeling that bedrock principles – faith, family, respect for authority, the very fabric of Western civilization – are being steadily chipped away by forces that seem to prefer darkness to light, chaos to order. Makes you wonder where this is all headed, doesn’t it? What happens when the guardrails ensuring basic decency start to buckle under the strain?
We see the symptoms pop up, often dismissed by the mainstream as just isolated incidents, nothing to worry about. But thoughtful conservatives understand that sometimes these acts of depravity signal a more profound cultural sickness, a rot spreading unseen until it breaks through in the most shocking ways imaginable. Are we really paying attention or just hoping it goes away?
And then, bam, you get news like this out of Waukesha, Wisconsin, confirming those very fears. In a crime that chills the soul, investigators allege that a 17-year-old high school student, Nikita Casap, brutally murdered his own parents, Tatiana Casap and Donald Mayer, in their home back in February. The details paint a picture of calculated violence against the very people who gave him life and raised him. Just when you think the depths have been plumbed…
But the horror didn’t stop there. Indeed, it intensified dramatically when the FBI revealed the why behind the parricide. Court documents indicate this wasn’t just some tragic, albeit horrific, domestic dispute. Nope. Investigators state the teen killed his parents to gain the “financial means and autonomy” necessary for a far more sinister plot: the assassination of President Donald Trump.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Unmasking the Hate
So, what kind of poison could drive a kid to this? According to the FBI, the teenager was swimming in a venomous cocktail of extremist ideologies. He was allegedly part of a “satanic cult” harboring “strong anti-Judaism anti-Christian and anti-western ideologies.” Further investigation has uncovered links to a neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles, praise for Adolf Hitler, and deeply antisemitic writings. Get this: Satanists and Nazis, apparently now swapping notes? You couldn’t script this stuff up, but it seems they found common ground in hating everything foundational and good to America and Judeo-Christian values.
The teen’s own manifesto, found by investigators, laid bare the chillingly blunt objective. It wasn’t just about some personal vendetta against President Trump; it was about deliberately destabilizing the nation itself. The goal was explicit: pure anarchy. His own words tell the chilling, if predictable, story:
“As to why, specifically Trump, most believe it’s pretty obvious. By getting rid of the president and perhaps the vice president, that would have guaranteed bringing in chaos.”
Supposedly points for honesty it would appear.
A Deeper Conspiracy?
Now, was this twisted plot conceived entirely in a teenager’s head? The court documents allege Casap aimed not just to kill the President but ultimately sought to overthrow the U.S. government. And naturally, there are whispers of outside contact. Investigators found evidence suggesting he was communicating with individuals in Russia about his plans and even plotting an escape to Ukraine. It certainly raises disturbing questions about who else might be involved, pulling strings or fanning flames.
Make no mistake, this wasn’t just some basement fantasy. Authorities stated the teen had purchased a drone and explosives for a potential attack – taking concrete steps. Casap’s later arrest in Kansas while driving his murdered stepfather’s car containing a handgun, stolen valuables, a pried-open safe, and $14,000 in cash, practically screaming premeditation and flight. He now faces a raft of felony counts, including first-degree intentional homicide, and potential federal charges for the assassination plot. Casap is being held on a $1 million bond. It should be no bond.
This entire horrifying episode serves as a brutal, flashing red light. It’s a reminder of the serious internal threats we face. The ideologies fueling such hatred – whether they call themselves Satanists, Nazis, or wave some other anti-American banner – feast on cultural decay and the rejection of traditional morality. They target not just individuals like President Trump, but the very stability, fabric and soul of our nation.
The fight against this darkness requires more than just hoping law enforcement catches them all. This isn’t just some news story; it demands a reaffirmation from us of the values that actually built this country: faith, strong families, respect for life, and unwavering patriotism. Are we just going to shrug this off or will we remain vigilant, recognize the signs of this rot, and stand firm in defending the principles that stand in stark opposition to the chaos these extremists crave?
As the U.S. and China escalate their tariff rates in an all-out trade war, two congressional committees held a joint hearing Wednesday on the problem of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on American investment and possible solutions.
The Chinese Communist Party is embedded in Chinese business to the extent that the assets of any American who has tried to do business in China, invests in the stock market, international index funds or mutual funds, or who has a 401K or pension invested in international index funds is at risk, according to TV personality and businessman Kevin O’Leary. O’Leary was called as an expert witness at the hearing.
The hearing was hosted by a House select committee that focuses on “strategic competition” between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party and the Senate Special Committee on Aging, as the party’s involvement in the Chinese economy and financial scams stands to disproportionately impact older Americans, according to committee members.
“The [Chinese] government has chosen to be America’s enemy. Unfortunately, that’s not a problem that only our military intelligence community has to worry about,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, chairman of the aging committee. “ If you have your retirement invested in anything that is controlled by or under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party, you are at risk of losing every dollar, and this could happen overnight.”
The senator went on to say that “there is no real private industry in China,” a point that was emphasized multiple times throughout the hearing by both committee members and the called witnesses.
O’Leary, an investor on the business reality TV show Shark Tank and the U.K.’s Dragon’s Den, said that China allows something called a “golden share,” which essentially de-privatizes private businesses. Any entity that purchases a golden share in a Chinese business – a small share, typically 1% – acquires disproportionate control of that company. A golden share can secure its owner a position on the company’s board or a certain level of authority over company decisions. The Chinese government buys these shares in companies it wants to influence, so that the Chinese Communist Party is deeply involved in companies that may appear private “on paper,” according to O’Leary.
In addition, the Chinese government doesn’t “play by the rules” of the World Trade Organization, even though it has been a member since 2001, according to O’Leary. This poses a real risk to Americans’ savings, according to Rep. John Moolenaar, R-MI.
“The CCP’s opaque regulatory regime, its disregard for the rule of law and its willingness to use financial tools for political gain present ongoing and significant dangers to American savings,” Moolenaar said.
O’Leary said that the Chinese Communist Party implements policies that disadvantage other countries in the Chinese economy but uses other countries’ legal systems against them to gain the upper hand in economic competition.
The party has passed “various laws in the realm of cyber security, espionage, intelligence and beyond and other mechanisms to control its corporations, industries and business partnerships, all to the detriment of U.S. investors,” O’Leary said.
The Chinese government doesn’t allow other countries to own shares of Chinese companies, for instance, while the U.S. “has given China preferential treatment for over a decade through its own special memorandum of understanding that governs accounting standards and oversight,” according to O’Leary.
“If we can’t own stocks in their country, they should not be allowed to own stocks in the U.S. Unless businesses can operate in China with the same freedoms that Chinese businesses have here, we should not let their businesses operate in the U.S.,” O’Leary said.
“Make no mistake, I want to do business in China, as do millions of other investors and companies, but we want a reciprocal ecosystem in place that is transparent,” he continued, saying the U.S. should leave China’s marketplace until its government implements significant reforms.
President and CEO of the American Securities Association Chris Iacovella said that even though China seemingly transitioned from a state-run to a free market economy decades ago, that’s not really what happened. Instead, China has “penetrated [American] capital markets” to build wealth and power. As a partial remedy, Iacovella said Congress should enact a ban against Chinese companies that engage in unlawful behavior from American markets.
“We have companies on the commerce list, on the DOD list, on the human rights list. These companies should not have access to our capital markets. They should not have access to anybody to be able to do business in this country,” Iacovella said.
A third expert witness called by the committee members was Brady Finta, founder of the National Elder Fraud Justice Coordination Center.
“I believe the scale of fraud against America’s elders has grown to epidemic proportions, and it’s time that we as a country treat it as such,” Finta told the committee members.
Finta worked to combat elder fraud in a previous position with the FBI but said the scale of the problem was so great, he and his team were able to address less than 1% of scams reported to them, even though only a fraction of people report the crimes committed against them.
Some committee members believed the CCP was either directly involved with international crime rings that perpetuate such scams, or at minimum, doesn’t actively deter them.
Finta suggested now is the time for a “whole of society response.” Separately, neither local, state nor federal law enforcement has the bandwidth to sustain a response that matches the magnitude of the problem. But if they joined together in elder justice task forces across the country and even partnered with the private sector, which has access to much of the data that is exploited, they could wage a much stronger fight, according to Finta.
“[Where] local and state resources can be used to support larger federal and international investigations, the effect of that is much greater than the individual investigations by local law enforcement,” Finta said.
fox files 
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