fox files

January 22nd marked the 51st anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling about abortion. In a statement from the White House, President Biden marked the occasion as something he wants the American people to feel more celebratory about, even after the Supreme Court finally shut it down in 2022 via the Dobbs decision.

“Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor—free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right. As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans…In states across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to go to court to seek permission for the medical attention they need, and made to travel hundreds of miles for health care.”

His mission to trash the conservative platform didn’t just end with this statement. Instead, he kept droning on about claiming that women were being deprived of their “rights.”

“Even as Americans—from Ohio to Kentucky to Michigan to Kansas to California—have resoundingly rejected attempts to limit reproductive freedom, Republican elected officials continue to push for a national ban and devastating new restrictions across the country. On this day and every day, Vice President Harris and I are fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom against Republicans officials’ dangerous, extreme, and out-of-touch agenda. We stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose, and continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe in federal law once and for all.”

What he conveniently overlooks is that there is no Constitutional amendment or ruling that grants women the right to an abortion. There is nothing on the books requiring doctors to perform them or that even deems them a medical necessity, minus a few “one-in-a-trillion” types of cases.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has attacked the topic of abortion with two smoking barrels since he took office. From executive orders to the gift of giving non-elected officials a platform to spew their opinions on the issue as if they were medical facts, he has been the most pro-choice President to date. Along with VP Harris, the duo has waged a war on the pro-life movement from all sides. In their opinions and liberal “fact” gathering efforts, abortions are something all women should be able to have as easily as getting a bottle of NyQuil for a cold.

What these Godless heathens fail to see is that not only is abortion a mortal sin, but it is also, on its basis, an illegal action. As almost all residents of the US can agree, killing someone is illegal and should not be tolerated. While liberals love to jump on the debate about when life begins, it is simple; life begins at conception. These tiny cells would not be reproducing and spreading at such an astronomical rate if there was no life. Women wouldn’t be feeling the sensations and changes inside their bodies without life.

The women who go through abortions, have something in common with people who had parents who allowed them to transition genders as a teen, deep regret for their decisions. By keeping abortion away from being a “right” we ensure it is only occurring as a medical necessity. Not simply being used as birth control, or a way to avoid responsibility for their actions or lack of action to prevent this from occurring.

In many pockets of America, this has become a hotly contested issue, with many taking the easy wrong of being pro-choice. While it certainly is easy to say “It’s like owning a gun, if you don’t want one, don’t buy one,” it’s not so easy when these decisions impact you directly. As a man, if these abortion “rights” exist, then we are fundamentally stripped of our right to have something to say about this decision. If we are paying when they are keeping the child, then we need to have the ability to say something about keeping those children alive dammit!

In the latest disturbing incident from the state of Massachusetts, the dangerous convergence of the Biden administration’s lax border policies and local sanctuary laws has once again endangered the safety of the American public. This alarming case involves a Haitian national who entered the United States illegally in late 2022 through the Brownsville, Texas, port of entry. Rather than facing deportation, this migrant received a mere notice to appear (NTA) before an immigration judge – a scenario that has become all too familiar in recent years.

Several months later, the 31-year-old individual was arrested by Boston Police on charges of rape and indecent assault and battery against a developmentally disabled person. Boston, proudly labeled a sanctuary city, shields illegal immigrants from deportation by prohibiting cooperation with federal authorities, even in cases involving violent criminals. Shockingly, this policy is replicated in seven other cities across Massachusetts.

In this particular instance, the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division within Boston’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office attempted to detain the illegal immigrant for deportation. However, local authorities callously refused to cooperate, leading the Dorchester District Court to release the accused Haitian rapist with a monitoring device pending trial for his heinous sexual assault charges.

ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons expressed his dismay, stating, “Disturbingly and despite our filing an immigration detainer, this individual was released back into the community by the criminal court.” He stressed that a key part of the ERO’s job is to apprehend persons who are unlawfully present and that the organization is dedicated to protecting the community from those who threaten public safety.

Despite this setback, federal authorities diligently launched an investigation upon learning of the Haitian migrant’s criminal arrest and unlawful immigration status through various sources. When the county court callously refused to honor the immigration detainer, ERO took matters into their own hands, apprehending the suspect in Dorchester earlier this month. As a result of the work of ICE, the accused will remain in federal detention until an immigration judge hears his case. Once the state criminal prosecution is closed, ICE will seek his deportation from the United States.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident but rather part of a national crisis fueled by local governments protecting even the most violent illegal immigrant offenders. Rather than assisting federal authorities in deporting illegal aliens, local and county law enforcement agencies are releasing them, even though they have serious convictions such as child sex offenses, rape, and murder, due to the 287(g) collaboration’s refusal to honor ICE detainers.

This issue has become so pervasive that ICE had to resort to a billboard campaign a few years ago, seeking the public’s assistance in capturing alien felons released by various sanctuary law enforcement agencies in a single state. Judicial Watch has extensively reported on this crisis, detailing shocking instances where elected law enforcement officials released child sex offenders, central counties discharged numerous violent convicts, and an entire state – North Carolina – released nearly 500 illegal immigrant criminals within a year.

The issue of sanctuary cities presents a grave concern as a result of the intersection between the Biden administration’s lenient border policies and local jurisdictions prioritizing the protection of illegal immigrants over the safety of American citizens.

This troubling scenario allows for the release of potentially dangerous individuals, such as the recent case in Massachusetts involving a Haitian national accused of rape and assault. Similar to seven other Massachusetts cities, the sanctuary rules make it harder for federal officials, particularly the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) component of ICE, to hold and deport undocumented immigrants.

By ignoring immigration detainers in the name of helping illegal immigrants, we put communities at risk of re-releasing violent offenders who have already caused harm by slipping through the gaps. This widespread issue demands urgent attention and reform to strike a balance between compassion and safeguarding the well-being of American citizens.

To combat this dangerous trend, ICE has had to employ creative strategies, such as publicizing the release of offenders complete with mug shots, as was the case in two notorious Maryland counties, Montgomery and Prince George’s. The offenders were incarcerated for heinous crimes, including sexual offenses against children, rape, and murder. Such instances underscore the urgent need to address the systemic flaws in our immigration and law enforcement policies, putting the safety of Americans first.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s purge of those not fully aligned with his ever-evolving party line has led to unexplained and sudden changes in senior military personnel, including the removal of the Defense Minister and the expulsion of nine high-ranking People’s Liberation Army officers (PLA) from the national legislature, as well as dropping three top defense-industry executives from their government advisory roles.

Among those thus removed are two generals who previously commanded China’s strategic missile force, a former Air Force Chief, and an admiral who led naval forces in the South China Sea, where China is increasingly at odds with the United States and other nations in this contentious region.

Beijing has not disclosed its reasons for their removal nor released information on any investigations into their conduct. Analysts who study China’s military, however, believe it is likely that the ongoing shakeup is part of Xi’s effort to combat corruption related to arms procurement and to stem potential disloyalty within the PLA and state-owned enterprises associated with defense production.

Xi faces a virtually insurmountable problem in rooting out corruption. Communism exhibits systemic inadequacies and fosters a culture of impunity in which corruption can flourish, often unchecked. These inherent failures of socialism are intensified by a lack of personal accountability, a fruit of an atheistic society.

The negative public perception of informants, used by the State to enforce communism, hinders the support for whistleblowers, which is more common in the Free World. Thus, instances of corruption are seldom reported to officials with the authority to prosecute them.

Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute specializing in Chinese security affairs, has noted that China’s military arms development and procurement agency has long been considered a breeding ground for corruption. However, until recently, few senior officials involved in such work were targeted in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.

The present purge reflects Xi’s secure power base within the PLA, enabling him to undertake such a massive campaign without fear of backlash. At the same time, however, it evidences the inherent weakness of a dictator who must impose his will without regard for the law.

While the impact of such radical restructuring on the PLA’s operational readiness remains unclear, analysts suggest that the corruption probes could lead to increased scrutiny of personnel appointments and procurement processes, which will likely slow Xi’s efforts to modernize the military.

Beijing claims initial success in upgrading the PLA through complex drills, including combined aerial and naval maneuvers. While acknowledging shortcomings requiring attention, the overall combat capabilities of the PLA are unlikely to have been compromised significantly in the short run.

By addressing arms procurement and the strategic missile force, Xi hopes to ensure long-term military effectiveness. Chinese high command has taken note of the abysmal performance of Russian weapons systems in its Ukraine conflict, much of which is attributed to systemic corruption.

The PLA could focus greater attention on party loyalty within its ranks and increase political education for military personnel. Indeed, under Xi, the party has intensified ideological indoctrination, indicating that Xi’s purge may not be as much about private gains at the State’s expense as it is about adherence to the party line.

Such focus may come at the expense of operational training and combat readiness. Experts on Chinese policy argue that Xi has used continual purges to consolidate his authority and enforce commitment to his policies. This reliance on coercion underscores a significant weakness of communism. As hardly anyone believes in communist doctrine, compliance must be motivated by fear rather than commitment to noble ideals to combat corruption.

Since assuming power in late 2012, Xi has employed corruption probes to control the military establishment and implement an ambitious modernization program to transform the Chinese military from a Soviet-style force into a modern 21st-century military. In the initial years of Xi’s regime, several senior generals were purged to pave the way for officers considered more professional and doctrinally reliable.

While they retain their military and party ranks, they are expected to be removed entirely from leadership positions. Military analysts also believe investigations will likely be launched at lower levels and other departments.

Nonetheless, the PLA has maintained a high operational pace. Aerial sorties and naval drills have been conducted along China’s borders and beyond. In recent months, a Chinese aircraft carrier task group conducted combat training in the Pacific Ocean, and PLA forces took part in joint exercises with foreign counterparts.

The PLA’s Southern Theater Command recently announced the dispatch of naval and air forces on routine patrols in the South China Sea. China continues to harass countries with the deployment of balloons that have been flown over the United States and Taiwan as part of Beijing’s “gray-zone” tactics to intimidate without the direct use of force.

It is unlikely that Beijing will challenge Washington’s status as the dominant world military power or unilaterally alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in the foreseeable future. James Char, a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, believes that the PLA will likely continue to engage in military operations that remain below the threshold of war, using harassment and intimidation to test the mettle of the West.

Xi recognizes that China’s military is suffering from an outdated Soviet-style structure similar to Russia’s, which has been incapable of conquering a border country a quarter its size. This is not the performance one would anticipate from a world military power. While Xi’s dream of creating a first-world military remains to be realized, it would be foolhardy to continue to sleep as Communist China advances in its quest to vanquish the remnants of Christian Civilization in the West.

	“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. This article was written because many people have indicated that the country they live in (France) does not allow them to see certain free-speech sites, such as Rumble. Governments do NOT have the authority to restrict their citizens, so I want to show you how to evade unethical censorship from governments. Please share this with others. The United States was created based on the core principle that the rights of man come from God, not from the state. In other words, the government does not have the authority to take away our rights. We the People own this country and our politicians are our servants, not our masters. But while this truth is recognized in the United States, it is not limited to the United States. Truth is truth. All people, regardless of where they live, receive their rights from God, not from the State (if you don’t believe in God, then you have declare yourself as having inherent rights). Governments are run by power-seeking people, often psychopaths. This has always been true and it always will be true. The largest threat to people, their property and peace itself is not what we call the common criminal. It is the government. Of all of our inherent, natural and God-given rights, the most vital is the freedom of speech. Why is freedom of speech so vital? Because if freedom of speech exists, truth wins. No lie can withstand the disinfecting light of truth. This is why the World Economic Forum, the UN and governments around the world are trying desperately to crush freedom of speech. The system of enslavement that they are trying to create is based on lies, and as long as we are able to speak freely and share the truth, then their lies will fail. We absolutely must not let them crush freedom of speech. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous letter from Birmingham Jail: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.“ We must fight any action to crush freedom of speech. It is our duty to do so. This is why many refuse to put any videos on YouTube. YouTube (Google) is actively colluding with the government to censor people, which is wrong. You do not want to support these actions in any way, and thus should refuse to give Google a single dollar in advertising revenue from videos that you would post. Many now do so on Rumble, which is a free speech platform. But people in France and other European countries ban Rumble in those countries which is yet another reminder that the threat of tyranny is closer than we think. You do not need to simply accept this. Watch Rumble anyway. But, you may ask how you can watch videos on Rumble in banned countries and those that block Rumble? The answer: with a VPN. protonvpn.com (completely free, freedom built and designed)

AI is a reality of our world now. And it will be as significant a change as the industrial revolution, electricity and the internet.

It’s important that we understand the power of AI, how it will be used for good and bad, and most importantly, how it is being used right now to influence your children and teens.

This posting is for the express purpose of your sharing it far and wide with your friends, your State senators, your governor and everyone else that will listen and even those that may not.

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Before November 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) existed only in the realm of science fiction for the average person. But with the introduction of ChatGPT, humanity finally witnessed the reality that is AI.

And it shocked us.

For the first time, we witnessed the workings of “intelligent” software. Software that could have a real conversation. Software that could write stories and even create startling images from just a few written words.

And as people began to use it, the software learned. The more it was used, the better it became.

Whereas in early 2023 you may have been able to tell the difference between an AI chatbot and a real person, towards the end of 2023 it became increasingly difficult to tell one from the other. 

We also saw an amazing improvement of text-to-image creation. In early 2023, images were often grotesque distortions of people, but by the end of 2023 anyone could use AI to create a stunning image of whatever they wanted—simply by typing in a few words.

Programmers have been awed by AI’s ability to write computer code. In fact, there are now many AI-powered websites that write computer code and assist computer programmers.

This ability of AI to learn on its own without the direction of a software programmer is startling.

It brings us to ask these questions: If AI is self-learning, what does the future hold? Will it be a boon for mankind? A powerful tool used on behalf of humanity? Or a dreadful weapon for tyranny? A sophisticated machine for scammers and hackers?

Or will AI ultimately destroy the human race?

Elon Musk believes that AI is a threat to humanity. He is worried that a future, more advanced version of AI will wipe out all humans on the planet. He puts it this way:

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

On the other side of the coin is Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, which created one of the earliest web browsers, and a leading figure in Silicon Valley. He says: 

“The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people freaking out. Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.

So, what’s the right way to think about AI?

Let’s first look at what AI is not.

When most science fiction lovers think of AI, they think of the Commander Data character from Star Trek. Commander Data was a sincere, innocent, intelligent android who desired to become more human-like. But for all his existential ponderings of “what makes someone a living being,” Data was a manufactured human. He was more than just AI. He was AGI—short for artificial general intelligence.

AGI is akin to human cognition. By contrast, AI is not at AGI levels, and many think it will never get there.

For that matter, the researchers who develop AI never had the goal of creating a Commander Data-like manufactured human, or AGI. Rather, Big Tech and governments have been pumping money into AI for the purpose of processing the incredible amounts of data that their surveillance tools collect about us—and then using that data against us.

To understand, let’s look at the business models of Google, Facebook, and most other Big Tech companies. These companies have adopted the surveillance capitalism business model. Every product Google makes, including its Chrome browser, Chromebook computers, Gmail, the Google search engine and the Android phone operating system, are made for one purpose: to spy on us. They are, in fact, Trojan horses.

They gather tremendous amounts of data and store it in a database. They then use this data to feed us ads that generate money for them. Google is, in fact, an extremely sophisticated advertising company. Facebook uses the same business model.

Beyond advertising, though, both Facebook and Google have figured out that they have the ability to shape people’s opinions and perspective on the world.

Dr. Robert Epstein, an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist, has studied the power that Google and Facebook possess to both change and mold public opinion.

According to Dr. Epstein: 

“To understand how the new forms of mind control work, we need to start by looking at the search engine – one in particular: the biggest and best of them all, namely Google. [. . .] Google has become the main gateway to virtually all knowledge. [. . .] Google decides which of the billions of web pages it is going to include in our search results, and it also decides how to rank them. How it decides these things is a deep, dark secret – one of the best-kept secrets in the world, like the formula for Coca-Cola.

In 2012, Dr. Epstein started performing tests to see how Google could change people’s opinions in political races by simply changing the order of search results so that people would see links to web pages that made a particular candidate look better than his or her opponent.

Even early on, the results were astounding.

Epstein said of that research:

“On average, we were able to shift the proportion of people favouring any given candidate by more than 20 per cent overall and more than 60 per cent in some demographic groups. Even more disturbing, 99.5 per cent of our participants showed no awareness that they were viewing biased search rankings – in other words, that they were being manipulated.

In August 2015, Epstein published his findings in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In his report, he declared that “Google now has the power to flip upwards of 25 per cent of the national elections in the world with no one knowing this is occurring.”

Facebook does the same thing and has the same ability to influence elections.

Epstein observed:

“In 2010, Facebook sent ‘go out and vote’ reminders to more than 60 million of its users. The reminders caused about 340,000 people to vote who otherwise would not have. [. . .] Are there laws prohibiting Facebook from sending out ads selectively to certain users? Absolutely not; in fact, targeted advertising is how Facebook makes its money. Is Facebook currently manipulating elections in this way? No one knows. . . .”

Another famous study—this one conducted by Facebook on itself in 2012—showed that Facebook manipulated the newsfeed of almost 700,000 people for one week and found that in so doing it could manipulate people’s emotional states. None of the 700,000 people had any idea that they were being manipulated.

Google and Facebook invest heavily in their people-manipulating projects. They hire psychiatrists and social scientists to create an engaging experience for customers. They also hire statisticians and the best coders in the world. 

And, of course, they pay billions to other companies to gather data on people.

For instance, Google pays Apple an astounding $20 billion per year to make Google the default search engine in the Safari browser. How can Google afford to shell out that kind of money? It’s a simple mathematical equation: Google knows it will turn a profit simply by collecting people’s data and using that data to manipulate them.

Google does the same thing with its other products. We might ask: Why do 65% of computer users around the world use Google’s Chrome browser? Because Google pays computer-makers and phone manufacturers to preinstall Chrome and make it the default browser. Google has done the research and learned that most people won’t change their computer’s default browser.

Moreover, Google purchases sources of data from other companies. Did you ever wonder why Walgreens asks for your phone number every time you check out? The answer is that after the drugstore gets a clear picture of your buying habits, it turns around and sells your data to Google and other tech giants. Using its customers as products, Walgreens, like Google, has worked out a smashingly lucrative deal for itself. 

The grocery store Kroger, too, makes an incredible amount of money from your customer data. It sells your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, purchase history, location, financial information, health-related information, age, marital status, gender, ethnicity, biometric data (facial recognition) and even your behavior to Google and others.

As a result, Google knows everything about you. So do Facebook and TikTok and countless other Big Tech companies.

The tech companies soon ran into a problem, though. They were gathering so much data on each of us that they needed a better way to process it and develop predictive mechanisms to “understand” what motivates you.

This is where AI comes in.

AI is a fantastically sophisticated software program that allows Big Tech to collect every single piece of data about you and use that data to predict your actions, emotions, and hot buttons. AI has gotten so good at these predictions that even the smartest programmers don’t understand how it is able to know you so well.

But AI is not just about understanding what makes each of us tick, AI’s superpower lies in its ability to manipulate us. AI knows our hot buttons, what we care about, what we don’t care about, what makes us sad, what makes us furious, and what makes us happy.

Add to this AI’s infinite capacity to learn and the infinite patience that any machine possesses, and it becomes clear that AI can become a terrifying weapon of mind controll. Whereas propaganda was once the manipulation of large groups of people, propaganda influenced by AI is a laser-focused brainwashing instrument.

This phenomenon would be extremely disturbing if it were just Big Tech we’re talking about, but it’s worse than that. Big Tech is now colluding with Big Brother, which exponentially increases the threat AI poses.

This is not science fiction. Everything mentioned here is being done with today’s technology.

So, what we really want to know is: How are Big Tech and Big Brother using their combined power—and are they abusing it?

Since corporations are not required to be transparent about what they do, and governments act without transparency, there is no way to provide proof of exactly how these entities are joining forces against us and abusing their power. But it’s safe to say that because this software was designed with the goal of gaining power, Big Tech and Big Brother are certainly abusing it.

I became aware of AI’s influence because of something that happened to my son.

A number of years ago, my son was going through a dark time in his life. He was depressed and angry, and he sometimes considered suicide. One day he was working as a chef in a restaurant, and he was particularly upset. He listened to the song “Rotten Apple” on repeat all day long at work.

At the end of the day, he got off work and looked at TikTok. On his newsfeed he saw a very strange meme. It was an angry drawing of a chef, and the meme said, “When you are a line cook and you listen to Rotten Apple 24 hours a day and you want to kill yourself.”

<Insert meme right here LOL>

Under the meme it said that this post had been viewed hundreds of times and that it was liked by many people. But I don’t believe this. I believe it was a meme created in real time by TikTok’s AI that was specifically designed to push my son over the edge.

Let’s examine what transpired and explore it more deeply by asking a few questions.

1. Is it possible that AI could have created this meme on the fly?
2. Could AI have known my son’s emotional state and his hot buttons?
3. Could AI then take this data and use it to influence my son to hurt himself?
4. Could AI do the same to groups of people and possibly influence an entire population?
5. Why would they target my son (and teens in general)?

First, is it possible that AI could have created this meme on the fly?

Yes. This meme is actually child’s play for an AI. Nowadays, people are creating hyper-realistic drawings and even videos from just a few words of text. The software is available to the general public, which means it’s obviously years behind what is available to Big Tech behind the scenes.

Second, could AI have known my son’s emotional state and his hot buttons?

Yes. Again, this is child’s play. The very reason social media exists is to collect real-time data on everything you, including your emotions, and from it learn what influences you and changes your mind and behaviors.

Third, could AI then take this data and use it to influence my son to hurt himself?

Yes. The business model of Big Tech is to take your data and then influence you with it. Indeed, there is no reason to collect your information unless it can then be used against you. This is why Google, Facebook, and TikTok are the most powerful companies in the world today.

Fourth, could AI do the same to groups of people and possibly influence an entire population?

Yes. If it can be done to one user, it can be done to all users. Just as Google Maps can direct each of us from one location to another, AI allows the programmers to tell the AI to direct each of us to a specified belief or emotional state. In other words, the user can be guided from where he is now to where the AI wants him to be.

Fifth, why would they target my son (and teens in general)?

TikTok is a Chinese company. China openly states that it wants to become the only superpower in the world. Thus, the Chinese have a very real desire to defeat the USA.

Remember what the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu said: 

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. [. . .] Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”

Here’s how China could pursue its goal of domination. President Xi, the dictator of China, could call Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, to his office. (Chinese companies are required to obey the government.) President Xi could announce to Shou Chew that he wants to destabilize the USA and that TikTok should take actions to accomplish this.

CEO Shou Chew gives a directive to his programmers to train TikTok’s AI to bring American teens to despair. The AI then learns about each teen and subtly adjusts that teen’s newsfeed to bring him down a dark rabbit hole of hopelessness.

Is what I’ve described happening now? I think so. When the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes did a segment on TikTok, it interviewed Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris, who explained that the Chinese version of TikTok is drastically different from the American version. He described the former as “the spinach version” and the latter as “the opium version.” Whereas Chinese children are shown positive videos that offer them encouraging, inspirational videos, American children are hit with videos about drug abuse, gender confusion, radicalization, and depression.

How powerful is this brainwashing? I believe the power of this kind of mind control is almost absolute, and I will give two examples that prove it.

Example #1. Question: What is one thing that every human has known since the beginning of time?

Answer: A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and never the twain shall meet. There is nothing as obvious, biologically scientific, or even instinctual than this fact. Yet, within the past few years, huge numbers of people have been brainwashed into a state of confusion about this subject to the point where they will aggressively fight anyone who thinks clearly and sanely about the issue.

Example #2. Question: What is a feminist?

Answer: For generations, feminists have promoted the advancement of females so that their rights under the law are acknowledged to be equal to the rights of males. But today feminists do the exact opposite. Instead of fighting for women’s rights, they fight for MEN’s rights.

And not only that, but the men’s rights they are fighting for infringe on women—specifically, on women’s sports, on women’s locker rooms, on women’s bathrooms, and on women’s prisons. In fact, the same feminists who once argued for equal rights for women now have vitriol for women who dare stand up for women’s rights.

Most importantly, many of the so-called feminists don’t seem to realize they’ve completely flipped-flopped on their position within the past few years.

Both these examples are indications of what must be very powerful brain washing.

To be clear, TikTok is far from the only culprit. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms use the same technology to bring their users (especially teens) into an emotional abyss.

But why would Facebook be a party to this sick trend?

A recent high-level Facebook data scientist-turned-whistleblower, Frances Haugen, said she finally left the company when her regular pleas of concern fell on deaf ears. She observed that Facebook repeatedly chose its bottom line over the well-being of users. And she described how Facebook’s own studies show that people use the platform more when they are angry or depressed than when everything’s going smoothly.

According to an NPR article about Haugen: 

“She said Facebook harms children, sows division and undermines democracy in pursuit of breakneck growth and astronomical profits. 

Haugen told Congress that Facebook consistently chose to maximize its growth rather than implement safeguards on its platforms, just as it hid from the public and government officials internal research that illuminated the harms of Facebook products.

‘The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people,’ Haugen testified.

But I believe the problem is more massive than Facebook’s greed. It’s also the “woke” mind virus, which is the same destructive mindset that’s behind the ruin of many of America’s once-great cities. The leading Big Tech companies, which are headquartered in these very same trashed West Coast cities (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, to name a few) have exported their crazy ideas all around the world via social media.

And there’s another driving force. We are facing an unprecedented move towards tyranny in the “free” Western countries, including the US. Higher-ups in our own government, in our intelligence agencies and military ranks and academia and financial system—many of whom are aligned with the World Economic Forum (WEF)—are just as bent on destroying Americans and America as the Chinese government is.

Let’s get back to the question, “Is AI a dangerous weapon of tyranny or a boon for humanity?”

My reply: It depends on whether this incredibly powerful tool is controlled by good people or by the psychopaths who run the world.

We need to be clear about this point. For, although AI is intelligent, it is not alive. AI does not have a conscience. It has no real intellect. It doesn’t know what it is doing, and will take actions without any understanding of good or bad. Nor can it experience remorse. Even though AI can accomplish a tremendous number of complex tasks, it is merely doing what it has been programmed to do.

Right now, global power is held by the psychopaths who create and control it.

This includes Sam Altman. Elon Musk and Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI—the maker of ChatGPT—as a nonprofit. Elon’s stated goal was to create an open-source AI that could not be controlled by any individual or company. But in 2019 Sam Altman kicked out Musk, changed OpenAI to a for-profit, and received a large investment from Microsoft. He then closed the source code. Such deceptive maneuvers show the true character of Sam Altman.

Similarly, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google have proven time and again that they will do anything to expand their power while hurting others—a clear sign of psychopaths.

As for psychopaths in government, there must be plenty of them in China, an incredibly powerful nation whose dictators seem determined to gain power on the world stage and take us down—one person at a time, if need be.

But I think there are an equal number of psychopaths in the US government. Our leaders constantly breach the US Constitution and infringe on our freedoms for the sole purpose of increasing their own power. Certainly, the heads of the CIA and the NSA and the FBI are psychopaths, for they are using this latest technology to hoard power for themselves, to the detriment of their own countrymen.

So, yes, while AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for all peoples of all nations, the reality is that it is currently in the hands of the psychopaths, who are already using it against us. To control and manipulate us. To change our beliefs. To radicalize us. To make us depressed and angry. To cause division and chaos. To influence elections around the globe. And they’re able to do all of this damage without our knowledge or consent.

Furthermore, AI will be a key component in the new social credit system that the UN and WEF and national governments around the world are creating. With AI, they will be able to watch every move we make. Worse, depending on how in line or out of line our thinking and behavior is, the AI will dish out immediate rewards or punishments designed to train each of us to obey.

What can we do individually and collectively? 

FIRST, we must become aware—and help others become aware—of the power of AI and how it is being used against us. For starters, share this issue of The Liberty Zeppelin with others.

SECOND, stop using TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Minimize your use of Google-owned YouTube and other social media platforms. Instead, use freedom of speech-minded companies such as Substack, Rumble and Twitter.

THIRD, stop giving the tech companies and government your data by learning how to remain private online. This requires knowledge, a change of habits and privacy-oriented phones, computers and phones. It absolutely is possible to secure your privacy.

FOURTH, States should pass laws that obligate companies to disclose when someone is talking to an AI as opposed to a human being, or when content is created by AI, with severe penalties for violations and strong protections for whistleblowers. Also, States need to force social media companies, to prove that they aren’t engaged in manipulating people, especially as it pertains to elections. The penalties for these actions would have to be fantastically severe to actually change Google and Facebook’s actions.

As a final note, AI is a fantastically powerful tool that we should not shy away from. Just as nuclear power can be used for creation or destruction, AI can be used to empower or enslave. If we surrender this technology to the bad people of the world, they will gain so much power over us that our fate will be sealed.

The good people of the world need to continue to develop AI for the benefit of all. AI has tremendous potential to help us create solutions, to identify scams and hacks before we fall victim to them, to protect our privacy and to fight back against the people who desire to oppress us.

I urge developers to keep their source code open, to minimize the amount of data collection on users, and to uphold the highest standards of ethics. Yes, the world is changing rapidly.

Embrace it but with one eye open at all times!

Claudine Gay may have resigned in disgrace as president of Harvard University, but she is in no way chastened by the experience, and in fact took to the pages of the New York Times to portray herself as (what else?) the victim.

The result illustrates the extraordinary lack of self-awareness that all our elites share, but which is especially striking coming from Claudine Gay.

For instance, if you can believe it, the former Harvard president writes, “College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.”

This from someone who presided over an institution whose intellectual life is one of stultifying intellectual conformity and who politicized hiring, admissions, and even which portraits were to hang inside campus buildings.

She says people who “relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument.”

Oh, really? So when your defenders said the campaign against you was based on “white supremacy,” you considered that a “reasoned argument”?

And then of course it’s time for the boo-hoo-I’m-a-black-woman-and-that-scares-people speech:

“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution.”

And it is not lost on the rest of us, Claudine, that had you belonged to a different race you wouldn’t have been president of Harvard in the first place. The reign of terror whereby people feared stating the obvious like this is rapidly coming to an end.

Then this whopper:

As you return to “scholarship,” Claudine? You mean the grand total of 11 articles over two decades, all of them about race and gender, topics by which so many mediocrities make their careers? How about the 50+ examples of plagiarism, which don’t even merit a mention in your apologia?

And who exactly is seeking to “undermine” the university? Could it be people who hire only those who are ideological clones of themselves, people who reject academically outstanding students so that far weaker ones can take their places, and people who consistently want to throw out objective tests?

The best part of all, though, is her “warning” that the campaign against her was part of a larger strategy to “unravel public faith in pillars of American society…. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility.”

You’re darn right, Claudine. The rightful citizens of this country fully intend to do just that, because they shouldn’t have trusted these institutions to begin with — especially “public health agencies,” which have been doing the work of undermining themselves for us since 2020.

It’s about time the peoples of the U.S. take back their country.

To say the Biden administration speaks with a forked tongue on the Second Amendment is an understatement. But translating the ultimate message is easy: They want your guns, and they will say or do whatever is necessary to get them.

In October, Kamala Harris—the nominal head of the White House’s recently launched Office of Gun Violence Prevention—issued a statement in response to the attack in Lewiston, Maine. It was a classic example of doublespeak and dishonesty.

Harris said, “Let us … continue to speak truth about the moment we are in.” Then she said, “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in our nation.” NRA-ILA has debunked this claim on multiple occasions. It has also been exposed by even mainstream fact checkers as requiring manipulation of data and definitions to be even partially “true.”

But this administration has never let truth get in the way of an opportunity to push for gun control, which Harris did when she went on to say, “It is a false choice to suggest we must choose between either upholding the Second Amendment or passing reasonable gun safety laws to save lives.” She then gave several examples of what she considered “reasonable gun safety laws,” including “universal” background checks, “red flag” firearm confiscation laws, “high-capacity” magazine bans and bans on semi-automatic long guns.

First, these laws do not uphold the Second Amendment. While none of them have been scrutinized by the U.S. Supreme Court, various iterations of at least three out of the four have been ruled unconstitutional under that provision by various lower courts. There is certainly no consensus that they are constitutionally permissible.

Nor has it been convincingly established that any of them save lives. A long-running and well-funded effort by the RAND Corporation to review the effects of gun control on violent crime and homicide has determined that the evidence of the four laws’ efficacy is generally “inconclusive,” with only “limited” evidence to support limiting magazine capacity.

But even if one could conceive of a world in which some version of the policies could pass constitutional muster and have some marginal effect on public safety, that is not the world imagined by the Biden administration. Instead, they seek the most-extreme version of these laws yet attempted, a legal regime that would be totally at odds with the text, history, and tradition of the U.S. Constitution.

Harris quickly made clear that this administration’s version of “reasonable” gun control includes banning and confiscating Americans’ lawfully acquired firearms. In remarks at a state luncheon whose guests included Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Harris used the occasion to again push for extreme gun control by endorsing the gun-control regime of her guest from Australia: “And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.”

We have discussed the Australian experience with gun control many times, as it is a regime that has been promoted as a template for America by such gun-control stalwarts as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Yet that template means making armed self-defense (which the U.S. Supreme Court has declared the “core” of the Second Amendment) illegal and instituting a “needs-based” firearm licensing system (also invalidated by U.S. Supreme Court precedent). These principals were enforced in Australia through retroactively banning and compelling the surrender of lawfully obtained guns, including handguns and several types of long guns.

There is certainly nothing “reasonable” about recharacterizing peaceable citizens as criminals based merely on possession of guns and magazines lawfully obtained and never misused, nor about threatening them with imprisonment if they don’t turn that property over to the government.

Many firearm owners will also be familiar with the ugly advertising used by Australian states to compel their citizens to comply with the confiscation regime. The advertisements told gun owners they had limited time to comply “without penalty” and even depicted prison scenes with information on how to surrender the banned firearms. The message was clear: surrender your arms or face the consequences.

This regime is incompatible not only with America’s history and tradition of arms, but our entire ideal of due process under the law. When the Biden administration endorses Australia’s gun laws, what they are endorsing is a regime arising from a country that has no constitutional protection for the right to keep and bear arms and that treats armed self-defense as a crime.

However they try to couch it, that message and that goal should be rejected by the American people. Thankfully, firearm owners will be given the opportunity to reject the administration’s push for Australia-style gun control when they head to the polls this November.

On Dec. 13, President Joe Biden’s (D) newly established White House Office on Gun Violence Prevention hosted nearly 100 Democrat lawmakers from 39 states to encourage them to pass more-restrictive firearms laws.

“The agenda is not comprehensive, but highlights actions that states can take to achieve meaningful progress in the next year,” claims an eight-page brochure titled the “Safer States Agenda.”

“In the months ahead, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention will work with states to make sure they have the resources needed to advance this life-saving agenda,” says the brochure.

Chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, participants got to witness, firsthand, one of Harris’ favorite and most-often told lies: “We’re up against some who would suggest a false choice. That is that you are either favoring the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I’ll speak for myself: I am absolutely in favor of the Second Amendment. And I’m also in favor of an assault-weapons ban.”

Not surprisingly, the first recommendation in the brochure is to “Establish a State Office of Gun Violence Prevention.”

“A state Office of Gun Violence Prevention—equipped with clear mandate and experienced personnel—can coordinate resources and accelerate implementation,” the brochure states. “State offices should have sufficient authority to: (a) coordinate across state agencies and with local and federal governments; (b) build gun violence data collection and analysis capacity; (c) develop and implement comprehensive strategies for addressing various types of gun violence; and (d) develop and implement a state plan to prevent targeted violence and effectively respond to incidents of mass shootings and surges in other forms of gun violence.”

Along with suggestions, like investing in alleged solutions to prevent and respond to “gun violence,” the state plan includes several recommendations that would directly infringe on gun owners’ rights.

Under the heading of “Reinforce Responsible Gun Ownership,” the administration’s recommendations overreach rather than reinforce. Those recommendations include passing so-called “safe storage” laws, penalizing those who don’t immediately report a lost or stolen firearm, and pushing for so-called “red-flag” laws that allow a judge to order the confiscation of firearms without due process.

Of course, the administration used the brochure to push “enhanced” background checks for those 18 to 20 years old who want to purchase a firearm. “Universal” background checks were also on the list, even though every licensed gun dealer in the United States—whether in a shop, online, or at a gun show—is required to run a federal background check for any firearm sold.

“States across the country have enacted universal background check legislation to close this loophole and extend the background check requirement to private sales,” the brochure states. “More states should follow suit.”

Additionally, under the header “Hold the Gun Industry Accountable,” Biden called for a ban on many, if not most, common semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns, along with outlawing standard-capacity firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

“In addition to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, states should ban the possession of un-serialized firearms, often referred to as ‘ghost guns,’” the brochure states.

Lastly, the administration sought to enlist the help of anti-gun state lawmakers in its continued attempt to weaken or repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).  

“The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a federal law that provides gun manufacturers and gun dealers with more protection from legal liability than tobacco companies and alcohol companies,” the brochure states. “This law denies many victims of gun violence their day in court, and prevents the public from holding bad actors accountable for their potentially dangerous design, marketing and sales practices.”

Of course, Biden is fond of repeating this lie again and again and has been doing so long before he became president. This oatmeal for brains in the WH has lied his entire career and no doubt his entire life. His assertion that the law gives “blanket immunity” to gun manufacturers has been proven false time and again, with even The Washington Post fact checkers saying the claim is not true.

In fact, the law was passed to prevent frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers for the criminal use of legally produced, safe, and lawfully sold products. Manufacturers can be sued for negligence if they make products that are deemed unsafe and not protected from civil litigation if they violate existing laws.

Interestingly, even the Biden administration knows that to be true. Biden’s own attorney general, Merrick Garland, testified under oath before Congress that the PLCAA is constitutionally sound, despite the rhetoric coming from the White House and the gun-ban lobby.

“That’s the position the Justice Department takes,” Garland said in response to a question about the PLCAA. “Whether we like the statute or not, we defend the constitutionality of Congress’s work.”

It would be nice if I were able to report that the people who run our sprawling federal government are taking seriously their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but, unfortunately, I can write no such thing. Once upon a time, American presidents established offices to defend Americans’ constitutional rights. Nowadays, they do the opposite. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security attempted to set up a “Disinformation Governance Board” that was tasked with monitoring Americans’ speech. After massive pushback, the initiative failed. But, alas, the idea did not. In September of this year, President Biden announced that he would be setting up “the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.” Again, the call is coming from inside the house.

In its press release describing the new department, the White House made sure to use all the right buzzwords and euphemisms, referring to “gun violence prevention,” to “commonsense actions” and to its supposed desire to “keep communities safe.” But, as ever, the proof is in the details, and the details make it clear that Joe Biden’s new office is interested in nothing more sophisticated than leveraging the same network of interest groups that promoted his anti-gun candidacy to push for the same set of unconstitutional gun-control measures as the president has called for elsewhere.

Among the figures who have been tapped to head up the board are Vice President Kamala Harris, who has suggested that the president of the United States can unilaterally confiscate firearms; Rob Wilcox, an activist with Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control group, Everytown; and Greg Jackson, an activist with the “public health”-driven gun-control group, Community Justice Action Fund.

And among the measures that they have been tasked with pushing for are “banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” (read: prohibiting the most commonly owned rifles in America and making standard-issue magazines illegal); “requiring background checks for all gun sales” (read: creating a federal gun-registry and micromanaging all firearms transfers, including those within the same state and between relatives); and “eliminating gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability” (read: lying about the existing law and trying to achieve, via frivolous lawsuits, what cannot be achieved via the political process).

Meet the new gun-control push; same as the old gun-control push.

Familiar though it may seem, Americans ought to be concerned by this development. First, the fact that the president is choosing to spend his limited political capital in this area is illustrative of his continued zeal. Biden has a disastrously low approval rating, is underwater on almost every important issue and is presiding over crises in the economy, at the southern border and in global affairs. That his focus remains on pushing gun control ought to tell us something important about his priorities.

Worse still, Biden is hinting at exactly how he wishes to use his new group in the future. Having boasted that he has “taken more executive action” restricting the Second Amendment “than any president in history,” Biden confirmed that he will “continue to urge Congress” to pass his agenda, but that “in the absence of that sorely needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my administration will continue to do everything it can.” Given this president’s total disregard for the limits on his constitutional authority, these words ought to alarm anyone who cares about the integrity of the law.

Despite its official-sounding title, it must be remembered that Biden’s “office” is not an agency that has been approved and staffed by Congress, but a bunch of political partisans sitting around a desk. It must be treated as such. And, once its plan has been defeated, the next president must consign it to history. 

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, the lower courts have been either trying to apply, or to resist, its directive to decide the validity of restrictions on the basis of the text of the Second Amendment and historical analogues from the time of the Founding. According to the ruling, an activity is presumed to be protected if it involves keeping and bearing arms by the people. The burden is then on the government to find historical precedents to show that a restriction is part of the nation’s history and tradition.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals applied Bruen to the federal ban on gun possession by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) and found it to violate the Second Amendment. State DVROs are often issued with little pretense of an adversary hearing or are mutually agreed upon in divorces without knowledge that it evokes a federal gun ban.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, U.S. v. Rahimi, and a barrage of amicus briefs have been filed on both sides. Mr. Rahimi faces several state charges involving actual violence, dwarfing the federal possession charge. The amicus brief of the National Rifle Association put it this way: “Rahimi should not only lose his Second Amendment liberties, but he should also lose all of his liberties—if the allegations against him are ultimately proven true with sufficient due process. But constitutional safeguards cannot be set aside to obtain those ends.”

Consider the supposed historical analogues cited by Biden’s Justice Department and its amici—discriminatory laws disarming Catholics, slaves and “tramps”; confiscation of arms by oppressive British monarchs and by our own patriots in the American Revolution (there was a war going on, after all); and wholly irrelevant laws against gun sales to children and intoxicated persons. The Court heard oral arguments in the case on Nov. 7, 2023.

The Third Circuit, in Range v. Merrick Garland, held the federal ban on gun possession by felons to be unconstitutional as applied to a person convicted of a minor, non-violent offense.  Again, no laws in the Founding era disarmed persons who were not dangerous. The government is asking the Supreme Court to hear that case after it decides Rahimi.

When it decided Bruen, the Supreme Court directed the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its upholding of Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Bianchi v. Frosh. That court had held that ordinary AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are not really different from machineguns and are “weapons of war most useful in military service,” even though no military force in the world issues them as service rifles.

The Fourth Circuit got right on it, holding its oral argument on Dec. 6, 2022. A year later, crickets. Still no decision. Is it really so hard to apply Bruen’s simple tests, or would the court not like the result?

Another “assault-weapon” case is pending in the Seventh Circuit, involving the recent ban passed by the state of Illinois and similar ones passed by Illinois localites. In the Bevis case, a Chicago court denied a preliminary injunction based on the “particularly dangerous” nature of ordinary AR-15s. In Barnett v. Raoul, the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois issued a preliminary injunction based on the Supreme Court’s “common-use” test, but the court of appeals reversed it. So, the Illinois ban remains in limbo.

Now on to the reliably anti-gun Ninth Circuit. When it decided Bruen, the Supreme Court told the Ninth, flat out, to reconsider Duncan v. Bonta, in which the Ninth upheld California’s magazine ban. The court could have easily invalidated the ban, but instead sent it back down yet again for reconsideration by District Judge Roger Benitez. After a trial, Judge Benitez again held the magazine ban unconstitutional, this time in a 71-page opinion, and issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement.

The Ninth Circuit, en banc, stayed the injunction except as to the possession ban on magazines lawfully acquired before the lower court’s order. Dissenting, Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote, “The story of the Second Amendment in this circuit has been a consistent tale of our court versus the Supreme Court and the Constitution. That tale continues today, and will continue as long as a number of my colleagues retain the discretion to twist the law and procedure to reach their desired conclusion.”

When it decided Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its upholding of Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Bianchi v. Frosh. The Fourth Circuit held its oral argument on December 6, 2022. A year later, crickets. Still no decision. Is it really so hard to apply Bruen’s simple tests?

The Ninth Circuit also remanded Miller v. Bonta back to Judge Benitez, who earlier found California’s ban on “assault weapons” violative of the Second Amendment. The judge again invalidated and enjoined the prohibition on such commonly possessed rifles, and the state is off to the Ninth. Déjà vu all over again.

California bans the retail sale of semi-automatic pistols that do not have a chamber-load indicator, a magazine-disconnect mechanism and microstamping capability (a futuristic design in which the firing pin imprints the identity of the pistol on the primer when fired). In Boland v. Bonta, Judge Cormac Carney of the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction against all three requirements. Predictably, the Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction, except for the part applicable to microstamping. Perhaps to moot the microstamping issue for now, the California legislature recently amended the requirement to apply only to semi-automatic pistols manufactured after Jan. 1, 2028.

There has been a major development regarding prohibitions on the sale and carrying of firearms by young adults aged 18 to 20. The issue should be a no-brainer, given that the Second Amendment protects the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms, the Militia Act of 1792 required male citizens aged 18 to 44 to acquire and carry firearms and young adults are eligible for military service. Despite that, Florida law bans the sale of a firearm by a licensed dealer to a person aged 18 to 20.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in NRA v. Bondi, upheld Florida’s law. Contrary to Bruen, it ignored the lack of any such sales restriction at the Founding and relied on a handful of late 19^th-century laws as analogues. This method would be unthinkable as applied to any other guarantee in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Just hours after the Bondi decision was announced, a judge withheld issuance of the mandate in the case (a procedure that would have made the decision final), and later a majority on the court voted to vacate the panel decision and rehear the case en banc.

Just after the panel decision in Bondi, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, in Worth v. Harrington, held that young adults aged 18 to 20 are protected by the Second Amendment in obtaining permits to carry handguns. The state has appealed that decision to the Eighth Circuit.

Turning to the subject of the right to carry handguns regardless of age, Bruen invalidated New York’s law that issued permits to a favored few and held that law-abiding citizens generally are entitled to carry without showing a special “need.” Seeking to nullify that decision, New York enacted laws banning permit holders from carrying a firearm in most public places, including public transit, churches and synagogues and public parks. To carry a gun into a business open to the public, a sign must be posted inviting gun owners; otherwise, carrying there is a felony. That turns upside-down the normal rule requiring a “no-trespassing” sign to exclude persons for whatever reasons.

In Antonyuk v. Hochul and in His Tabernacle Family Church v. Nigrelli, and other cases, district courts held the New York ban likely to violate the Second Amendment and issued preliminary injunctions against its enforcement. The Second Circuit court of appeals summarily stayed the injunctions without explanation. While the Supreme Court denied a motion to vacate the stay in Antonyuk, Justice Alito admonished the Second Circuit to expedite the appeal.

The Second Circuit held oral argument in the cases on March 30, 2023. And since then? Again, crickets. Despite the hundreds of pages of legal history set forth in the district court opinions, and the existence of a fundamental constitutional right at stake, the court of appeals has remained silent.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been attempting to foist new, far-reaching regulations upon American gun owners. In violation of the separation-of-powers under which Congress makes the law and the executive branch enforces the law, the ATF purports to expand its reach on its own.

The first regulation seeks to expand the definitions of “firearm” and “frame or receiver” in the Gun Control Act (GCA) to include partially machined raw material that the GCA doesn’t restrict. In VanDerStok v. Garland, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas vacated the entire set of regulations, the Fifth Circuit substantially approved, but the Supreme Court allowed the regulation to go into effect for now. After that, the district court issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the regulations against the plaintiffs in the case.

While VanDerStok focuses on the attempt by the ATF to exceed its authority under the GCA, Second Amendment rights are implicated by the attempt of bureaucrats to restrict the right to keep and bear arms in a manner not condoned by Congress, much less by the text and history of the Second Amendment.

In the second ATF regulation change, after years of classifying pistols with stabilizing braces as pistols, the ATF promulgated a regulation classifying them instead as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act. In Mock v. Garland, the Fifth Circuit held that the rule is likely invalid and temporarily enjoined its enforcement. Concurring, Judge Don R. Willett wrote, “Rearward attachments, besides making a pistol less concealable, improve a pistol’s stability, and thus a user’s accuracy. Accuracy, in turn, promotes safety.”

Back in the district court, Judge Reed O’Connor enjoined enforcement of the pistol-brace rule as applied to the plaintiffs, their customers and members of the association that is party to the suit. Besides violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the regulations were found to violate the Second Amendment. Pistols with braces number as many as seven million and are “in common use,” which Heller held to be one aspect of the test. The Second Amendment protects “making common, safety-improving modifications to otherwise lawfully bearable arms,” as well as “the right of personal gunsmithing.”

The third change involves the ATF proposing new regulations seeking to expand the definition of “engaged in the business of dealing in firearms” in a way that would require untold numbers of ordinary gun owners to get dealer licenses. In the GCA, Congress defined the term to require “dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit,” excluding occasional sales. The ATF has now made up a list of actions that create a presumption that one is engaged in the business, such as “rents … temporary physical space to display … firearms they offer for sale, including … a table or space at a gun show.”

So while the Biden administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy seeks to drive actual dealers out of business—guns are too available, you know—the proposed regulation seeks to make as many as possible get dealer licenses. The motive is clear: “universal background checks” couldn’t get through Congress, so they want to force people who aren’t actually dealers to get licenses and do checks anyway. To exercise the right to buy and sell a gun occasionally, you’ll have to get a license, keep records and be subject to inspection by the ATF. That cannot be consistent with the Second Amendment, and litigation will definitely break out once final regulations are adopted.

If you think that the American media’s relentless attacks on the right to keep and bear arms represent a credible threat to the Second Amendment now, just wait until they come to realize that, instead of merely proselytizing against your rights, they can turn your support for them into a “thought crime.”

Over the last few years, politicians from a handful of states have gotten into the bad habit of teaming up with the media, academia, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and key parts of corporate America, and of using the remarkable power of their alliance to contrive and promulgate political narratives that, even a few weeks earlier, had been on virtually nobody’s radar. In 2017, this team brought us the Trump-Russia Collusion hoax, which started as a salacious and unsubstantiated rumor but quickly became all Washington, D.C., was interested in talking about. That fake narrative was broadcast during every news program; it was conveyed during a lot of professional sports telecasts; it was featured in corporate press releases; it was appended to the splash pages and login forms of widely used websites; it was woven into the algorithms of streaming services and search engines and online stores. Its scope, in short, was astonishing.

This could also happen with guns and our Second Amendment rights. And when such an orchestrated effort comes, they will work overtime to make it just as all-consuming. They’ve already been trying. Every time a mass-murderer attacks—almost always in a so-called “gun-free” zone—the same cabal of media, entertainment personalities and politicians who want to disarm America’s armed citizens try to create a feverish movement to force through gun bans and more.

The only reason this trick has not yet resulted in major new national gun-control legislation is because gun owners have organized themselves. Still, the players necessary for such a push—politicians in anti-Second Amendment states; the White House; many in big tech, academia, the mainstream media and the entertainment industry—are all ready and waiting. They believe that this topic lends itself well to revisionism and mass hysteria. And, because the political will to achieve what its practitioners want to achieve simply does not exist, an end-run around the process is unusually tempting to them.

Practically speaking, this play might take many forms. If they wished to, online behemoths such as Google, Facebook and YouTube could demonetize or bar any user (or bury/misdirect searches) who expressed support for the individual right to bear arms, or even anyone who showed a mere interest in it, on the grounds that such support was “ahistorical” (“misinformation”) or “violent” (“unsafe”). If they decided to, universities and TV stations could reflexively append the word “denier” or “hater” to any figure who opposes gun control, and effectively shut a super-majority of the population out of the national conversation. If they were so inclined, America’s streaming services could refuse to carry any material that contained pro-Second Amendment sentiments, while relentlessly promoting content that called for stricter regulation, or even full prohibition.

Does that sound far-fetched? If so, may I ask why? To my eyes, at least, the last few years have made it abundantly clear that if our elite class wished to go down this road with vigor, it could do so at a moment’s notice. Indeed, if we have learned anything at all from the last decade, it is that the cultural power wielded by a handful of American industries is extremely difficult to resist, and that the tools that those industries use in pursuit of their aims are so flexible that they resemble a blank check. Bluntly put, the truth doesn’t enter into it; what matters is what a handful of potent institutions decide the truth needs to be.

Many big-tech companies, such as Google and Facebook, are already antagonistic to gun ownership, but what if they go a step further?

During the 2020 election, the news of Hunter Biden’s laptop needed to be treated as “misinformation,” so it was—even though it turned out to be entirely true. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, any criticism of the government’s approach needed to be treated as “misinformation,” so they were—even though much of that criticism proved to be correct. In 2017, skepticism toward the wild claim that the president of the United States was a Russian asset needed to be treated as “misinformation,” so it was—even though that skepticism was so obviously accurate as to defy belief.

“Safety,” likewise, has proven endlessly pliable. For years—on college campuses, in major newspapers and on the big-tech platforms—all manner of words and ideas have been labeled as “unsafe,” but then thrown out as soon as it ceased to suit the politics of the administrators. To believe that these protean weapons could not be aimed squarely at the Second Amendment is naïve in the extreme.

We cannot stop the gun-control movement from attempting to make windows into our souls, but we can board up those windows.

In fact, on a smaller scale, the process has already begun. The press already pretends that the Second Amendment is a far-fetched invention of a “right-wing” Supreme Court; it already insists that the Gun Violence Archive is a reliable source; and it already promotes descriptions of how guns work that have absolutely no relation to reality or elementary physics. Online advertisers already punish websites and content-creators who debate or review firearms. Social-media sites, such as Facebook, already have stricter rules governing the discussion and transaction of legal firearms than they do governing illegal drugs. And a handful of states—the ones in which every bad gun-control idea tends to originate—are already pushing to include individuals’ social-media histories in their permit-application processes.

Together, these developments represent a considerable threat to the future of the right to keep and bear arms. The attempt to cast pro-gun voices out of polite society is a straight-up cultural play, the obvious aim of which is to weaken the ability of pro-Second Amendment figures to make their case in the public square. They thereby want to turn America’s hundred-million-plus gun owners into a fringe group that is relegated to the margins of public life.

Despite the many important legal victories that have been won over the last two decades, the renaissance in the right to keep and bear arms has primarily been driven from the ground up—by the people. Alarmed by the prospect that a key part of the U.S. Bill of Rights was on the verge of being read entirely out of the U.S. Constitution, advocates of the Second Amendment did the work: They did research, made arguments, knocked on doors, joined the NRA, voted in elections and called their elected officials until, eventually, they achieved real change at all levels of government. The attempt to remove these voices from the digital space represents nothing more sophisticated than an attempt to reverse this momentum in any way possible, and to send a signal to those on the fence that, if they seek to join in, they will be penalized for it.

The attempt to punish would-be permit-holders for their political views serves as the practical arm of this push. After the Bruen decision was issued in 2022, the State of New York enacted a law that requires all applicants for a concealed-carry permit to furnish “a list of former and current social-media accounts” to state police. According to the architects of the law, the purpose of this provision is to help authorities judge the “character and conduct” of a given applicant. But this, of course, is extraordinarily subjective. Leaving aside the obvious constitutional problems that attach to any system in which applicants are adjudicated on the basis of their particularized characteristics rather than of their compliance with a neutral set of rules, there is simply no way of narrowing down the definitions to the point at which they would rule out abuse.

“Character and conduct” are in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, they cover real threats. But, in the wrong hands, they could also cover religious beliefs, political views, tone of voice and so forth. The key distinction between a right and privilege is that rights are maintained by those citizens whom the government dislikes and privileges are not. Ultimately, the inclusion of private opinions within the permit-review process helps the opponents of the Second Amendment both coming and going: Not only is the state accorded the opportunity to exclude those it disdains from the exercise of their constitutional rights, but those who might want to exercise those rights in the future are incentivized to keep quiet lest their words be arbitrarily used against them. The effect, by design, is to chill the use of this right.

Former California Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson introduced a measure that would have expanded the prohibited list to include those convicted of non- violent misdemeanors—an effort to convict people of pre-crimes.

In California, legislators have pushed for a slightly different approach toward the same end: Instead of attempting to punish thought crimes, as New York has, California has considered experimenting with pre-crime. In 2019, for example, then-Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) introduced a measure that would have added a new class of non-violent misdemeanors that would have resulted in a 10-year ban on the possession of firearms. Among the misdemeanors were public intoxication, disorderly conduct and driving under the influence. Naturally, one does not need to approve of public intoxication, disorderly conduct or driving under the influence to understand that the logic undergirding this bill is terrifying. In effect, Sen. Jackson was assuming that a person who has demonstrated a willingness to break laws that society considers to be relatively minor will, in the future, demonstrate a willingness to break laws that society considers to be relatively major.

This is not how the law works in a free country. If California wishes to treat public intoxication, disorderly conduct or driving under the influence as felonies, then it ought to treat them as felonies. But it cannot have it both ways—keeping them as misdemeanors in the schedule, except for their effect on the right to keep and bear arms. Vetoing a similar measure the prior year, then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said, “I am not persuaded that it is necessary to bar gun ownership on the basis of crimes that are non-felonies, non-violent and do not involve misuse of a firearm.” Indeed, it is not. Unless, of course, the aim isn’t to police crime, but to provide yet another pretext for disarmament.

Second Amendment advocates ought to respond to these threats in two distinct ways. Culturally, we must continue to discredit institutions that have exposed themselves as dishonest actors; meanwhile, we must back alternatives that can pick up the slack where necessary. When organizations such as Facebook and YouTube demonetize or penalize firearms-based content, they are flying in the face of political trends, which have been toward more Second Amendment freedom—and a more diverse gun-owner demographic—not the other way around. If, in a fit of ideological pique, those companies wish to alienate the majority, that is their prerogative. But they can only do so without hurting themselves if there is no ready substitute to which the dispossessed may flock. Those substitutes exist. We must ready them and use them.

On the legal side, we must keep pushing to institute systems that cannot be hijacked by the would-be thought police. Ultimately, subjective judgments are possible only where rights have not been fully guaranteed. Constitutional carry cannot be hijacked, because there is no permitting process to corrupt. “Shall issue” cannot be hijacked in the way that “may issue” can, because it does not allow space for government officials to insert their own opinions. We cannot stop the gun-control movement from attempting to make windows into our souls, but we can board up those windows.

By now, the outlines of the playbook have been made clear. There is no excuse for us to be unprepared if it comes.

Those reading this should seriously consider themselves forewarned!

There was a time in this country when our elected leaders actually cared about protecting the innocent. But today, they don’t. Instead, they misuse and abuse the power of their offices to protect criminals. Because public safety isn’t their goal. Tearing down freedom and disarming you and me is all they care about. In their warped world, criminals are coddled, not punished.

And so violent felons terrorize our communities and prey on the innocent, thanks to a sinister revolving-door “justice” scheme that is purposefully designed to keep them on the streets and out of jail. You can see it everywhere you look!

Far-left political elites—from the President of the United States on down to governors, mayors and radical district attorneys—they fuel a raging fire of violence, murder and crime in our communities. And then those same elites blame you, me, our fellow NRA members and our constitutional freedom for the carnage they create. Their answer to violent crime is to render the innocent helpless against the deadly criminals they enable.

That’s why political hacks in federal agencies pump out propaganda designed to convince more and more Americans that lawful gun ownership, and the fundamental human right to self-defense, is a “public-health problem,” a disease that’s spread by you, me and all patriotic Americans who exercise their God-given right to protect themselves and their loved ones. 

And what do they say is the cure for this make-believe illness? Gun registration. Gun bans. Ammunition bans. Not to mention the outright shaming and vicious persecution of law-abiding gun owners. Think about that. 

Biden and his ilk go out of their way to make excuses for dangerous, violent and murderous criminals and to keep them on the streets. But when it comes to peaceful, hard-working, law-abiding Americans? We’re mocked, slandered and vilified every time Biden finds his way to a microphone.

In all the years of fighting for our God Given and Constitutionally backed rights have we ever witnessed this level of hatred aimed squarely at the principles and values that we hold dear. The same principles and values that made America the freest and most prosperous nation on earth. 

The NRA is one organization holding that line for freedom and advancing it! Right now, 26 states have constitutional-carry laws on the books. They won’t stop fighting until all 50 states recognize what you and I know to be true: Our right to carry a firearm is guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and no law-abiding citizen should have to ask for special government permission from their babysitting governent to defend him or herself or those of their loved ones.

Just last summer, the biggest victory for gun rights in a decade was when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law-abiding Americans have the right to carry firearms for self-defense outside our homes. And more recently, when Joe Biden’s ATF tried to force millions of law-abiding firearm owners to register, alter or surrender their lawfully owned stabilizing pistol braces, they sounded the alarm and are leading the attach charge to stop them.

American freedom, once admired, revered, respected and emulated worldwide—is now under attack from within. Next year’s national election will not decide the future of our freedom for the next four years. It will decide whether our freedom, as we know it, survives at all.

Right now, we have a president who views each and every one of us as his enemy for the simple reason that we protect the fundamental, natural rights found in the Second Amendment–-and he wants to strip those rights away from us. 

Right now, we have a president who said that law-abiding gun owners who own semi-automatic firearms are sick people. And that owning them has no social redeeming value.

Right now, we have a president who wants to reinstate Bill Clinton’s sweeping, crushing gun ban. Right now, we have a president who wants to ban all standard-capacity magazines and force everyone who owns them to either register them with the federal government or turn them in.

Right now, we have a president who wants to roll out a red carpet for trial lawyers to sue American gunmakers out of existence. And right now, the only thing stopping Joe Biden from completely gutting our freedom is a handful of votes in Congress.

From now until Election Day, you’re going to hear from pollsters and so-called experts that this group over here, or that group over there, is the key to this winning this election. One day they’ll say it’s women voters. The next day it’s men. The day after that it’s young voters or retirees, or this religion or that race.

But let me tell you something, and if you take away only one thought, I hope it’s this: If all of us does his or her part today, tomorrow and every day leading up to Nov. 5 next year, we can take back our country and our freedom! We can preserve our Second Amendment rights! We can rekindle a passion for freedom in the hearts of all Americans!

And we can do it all by kicking Joe Biden out of office into pasture and his army of corrupted alphabet agencies to the curb and letting the doors hit ’em in the asses on the way out as well!