On the day of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order called “Protecting the American People against Invasion”. It was not language designed to ingratiate himself with the American people’s Catholic bishops. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, described the executive order as “deeply troubling” and predicted that it “will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us”.
To defend the new Administration’s initiative, Vice-President Vance, a Catholic convert, invoked his favourite theologian, the 5th century bishop and philosopher, St Augustine, whose opinion was that people who deserve our good will are ranked in a hierarchy. “Just google ‘ordo amoris’,” he tweeted in response to a critic. “Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”
By the way, in answer to Vance’s rhetorical question, yes, there really are people who think that their duties to children in Zambia are the same as duties to their children. The leading one is the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer along with his acolytes in the “effective altruism” movement. They are nuts.
However, that’s not to say that Vance is correct. In the Vice-President’s hands, “ordo amoris” is Latin for MAGA. As his boss’s executive order put it:
Enforcing our Nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States. The American people deserve a Federal Government that puts their interests first and a Government that understands its sacred obligation to prioritize the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.
He has justified his plans to deport 10 or 12 million illegal immigrants by describing them all as criminals. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag,”he said shortly after he was elected.
So Vance is partly right and partly wrong. But the part that is right is trivial and the part that is wrong is a distortion of his Church’s teaching. Obviously, it’s right that he should feed his own kids before feeding kids in Zambia. But it’s wrong to sprinkle Latin tidbits over the executive order and to imply that it is applied Catholic social teaching. The English translation of “ordo amoris” is “charity begins at home”, not “mass deportations of animals masquerading as humans”
In any case, “ordo amoris” or ordered charity, is probably not the right frame for the knotty question of immigration, in the US or elsewhere. As Benedict XVI explained in Deus Caritas Est: “Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful.” Charity towards our neighbour is by no means irrelevant to the plight of immigrants, legal and illegal. But the first way to determine what a government’s obligations are is through the lens of the virtue of justice. If obligations to migrants are regarded only as acts of charity, they may seem simply supererogatory (google it, to quote Mr Vance). In other words, nice idea but I’m having lunch.
Trump’s plans for those mass deportations may be mostly bluster for his fans. His words are inflammatory and repulsive, but vague. They allow lots of wriggle room for reneging on his more extreme ideas.
However, he is a head of state and his words have to be taken seriously. That must be why Pope Francis has reacted so strongly to Vance’s coopting Catholic social doctrine for Trump’s ambitions. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality,” he wrote to American bishops this week. And he went on to say:
This is not a minor issue: an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized. The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all — as I have affirmed on numerous occasions — welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.
Trump’s language about immigrants is an affront to human dignity. It’s no wonder that it has incensed the Pope.
JD Vance is an amazing person with astonishing achievements on his CV. Not the least of them is to have been rebuked by the Supreme Pontiff. A few years ago, he wasn’t even a Catholic. This week he became a theological punching bag. The Pope wrote: “The true ordo amoris (a very pointed dig at Vance) that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Without launching into theological exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan, the first thing to observe is that he didn’t call the wounded Jew an “animal”. What would Trump have done?
Vance had an acerbic exchange with former British diplomat and politician Rory Stewart over “ordo amoris”. Stewart wrote: “We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love…”
To which Vance responded: “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.”
Stewart is way, way, way down there in Vance’s “ordo amoris”, so far down that perhaps he looks like the vermin to which Trump has compared immigrants. Perhaps we should just let this arrogant sneer from America’s foremost exegete of St Augustine speak for itself.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-15 15:51:262025-02-15 15:51:26JD Vance, Pope Francis and Immigration
When the Euros take offense at statements by U.S. officials, you know something must be going right.
This week’s Munich security conference, an annual confab with our NATO partners, was full of verbal fireworks. First, you had the Europeans frothing at the mouth at the very thought that Donald Trump might actually talk to Vladimir Putin.
Remember, Biden shunned the Russian leader, whom he called a cold-blooded murderer, for over three years, and most of the Euros were pleased.
The EU’s top foreign policy official, former Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas, actually trotted out the Munich word: appeasement. That was her description of Trump’s phone call to Putin, which she said was “giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started.”
Wrong. I was happy to see Ms. Kallas upbraided by Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who described the European position as “to support killing as long as it takes.”
“While President Donald Trump and President Putin negotiate on peace, EU officials issue worthless statements,” he added. My kind of guy.
The Euros were also upset to hear the unvarnished truth from Pete Hegseth, now our Secretary of Defense. Pete told them its was “unrealistic” to talk of Ukraine joining NATO, and the Euros exploded.
This one has always bemused me, it’s so obvious. The NATO charter prohibits extending membership to any country at war, and ceasefires don’t cut it. Ukraine has to have a negotiated peace with Russia before any thought can be given to NATO membership. That could be decades away, if ever.
Of course, what really irked them about Pete was his sheer masculinity, joining U.S. grunts at 6 AM for PT — jogging, push-ups, and bench presses. None of the champagne-caviar crowd could even think of such a thing. Muscles? What’s that?
But the real skunk at the Euros garden party was Vice president JD Vance. He began with a lecture on the failed Biden policy in Ukraine – failure to actually arm Ukraine early on, failure to truly pressure Russia later — and then drove home Trump/s mantra about NATO members needing to contribute more to their own defense.
But the real kicker was his speech to the conference. Instead of wonky details about missile defense, or nuclear deterrence (or the price of caviar), JD hit them where they were expecting it the least: in their hypocrisy.
You see, in Europe, hypocrisy is a vital organ, like the heart or the lungs. And he hit it hard.
I loved Politico’s description of it. Vance “launched a blistering attack on European governments on Friday, chastising them for ignoring the will of their people, overturning elections, ignoring religious freedoms and not acting to halt illegal migration.
“It was a U.S.-style MAGA, red meat speech that… hit on some recent hot button cultural issues, from abortion laws in Britain to the recent election in Romania.”
This is the rag that until DOGE came along was being subsidized with tens of millions of US taxpayer dollars, disguised as subscriptions. Now they will have to work for a living like the rest of us.
Oh, and JD’s criticism of Romania was because a court in November annulled its presidential election results on the pretext the winner had benefited from a “Russian-style” social media campaign when in fact the justices just didn’t like the conservative winner.
Here is JD, telling it like it is:
““The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within,” he said “The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America….
“Shutting down media, shutting down elections … protects nothing. It is the most surefire way to destroy democracy … If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.”
Trump and his team offered the Euros a reality sandwich, and after the first delicate nibble, they were appalled.
I talk about this as well as the reckoning underway in Tehran by a regime seriously worried about its future, and the possibility of a joint US-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.
As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, you can listen to the podcast here.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-15 15:51:252025-02-15 15:51:25Team Trump and the Euros
In Treasury’s basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.
“We’re in,” Akash Bobba messaged the team. “All of it.”
Edward Coristine’s code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor’s algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran’s analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn’t even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury’s operations than people who had worked there for decades.
This wasn’t a hack. This wasn’t a breach. This was authorized disruption.
While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE’s team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run. “The beautiful thing about payment systems,” noted a transition official watching their screens, “is that they don’t lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail.” That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.
By 6 AM, Treasury’s career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden were already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours. Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.
“Pull this thread,” a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE’s screens, “and the whole sweater unravels.” He wasn’t wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point. This wasn’t just another transition. This wasn’t just another reform effort. This was the start of something unprecedented: a revolution powered by preparation, presidential will, and technological precision.
The storm had arrived. And Treasury was just the beginning.
THE FOUNDATION
“Personnel are policy.”
For decades, this principle, articulated by conservative strategist Troup Hemenway, remained more theory than practice. Previous administrations spent months, even years, trying to staff key positions. Trump’s first term saw barely 100 political appointees confirmed by February 2017. Every delay meant another victory for the permanent bureaucracy.
But this time was different.
While media focused on campaign rallies and political theater, a quiet army was being assembled. In offices across DC, veteran strategists mapped the administrative state’s pressure points. Think tanks developed action plans for every agency. Policy institutes trained rapid deployment teams. Former appointees shared battlefield intelligence from previous administrations’ failures.
By Inauguration Day, over 1,000 pre-vetted personnel stood ready—each armed with clear objectives, mapped legal authorities, and direct lines to support networks. This wasn’t just staffing; it was a battle plan decades in the making.
“This is the new normal,” Vice President JD Vance declared from his West Wing office, studying real-time data flows across agency systems. “He’s having the time of his life,” he added, referring to the President’s relentless drive. “We’ve done more in two weeks than others did in years.”
The secret wasn’t just speed—it was precision. Instead of waiting for Senate confirmations, the transition team prioritized non-Senate-confirmed positions. While Democrats prepared for traditional confirmation battles over cabinet posts, an army of aligned personnel was already moving into place. Strategic positions were identified. Legal authorities were mapped. Support networks were established.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” the President reminded his team daily. “Four years is a lot of time in political life but it’s not a long time in real life.”
This urgency drove innovation. When DOGE’s young coders breached Treasury’s payment systems, pre-positioned legal teams neutralized resistance within hours. When career officials tried revoking system access, they discovered DOGE’s authority came from levels they couldn’t challenge. When leaks surfaced, rapid-response units fed counter-narratives to alternative media almost instantly. “When you look at the people surrounding the president,” Vance noted, “we’re trying to make it sort of easy for him to do what he wants to do in government. When you have the entire team firing on all cylinders you can get a lot done.”
The permanent bureaucracy never saw it coming. They were prepared for resistance. They were ready for protests. They had plans for leaks and legal challenges. But they had no defense against an opponent who had spent years preparing for this moment.
This wasn’t just about filling seats—it was about building a machine designed to transform American governance. Every position mattered. Every appointment carried weight. And behind it all stood a president counting down not years or months, but weeks and days, driving his team forward with relentless energy.
The foundation was set. And the revolution was just beginning.
THE SPREAD
USAID fell next. No midnight raids this time. No secret algorithms. Just a simple memo on agency letterhead: “Pursuant to Executive Authority…”
Career officials panicked—and for good reason. Created by Executive Order in 1961, USAID could be dissolved with a single presidential signature. No congressional approval needed. No court challenges possible. Just one pen stroke, and six decades of carefully constructed financial networks would face sunlight. “Pull this thread,” a senior official warned, watching DOGE’s algorithms crawl through USAID’s databases, “and a lot of sweaters start unraveling.”
The resistance was immediate—and telling. Career officials who had barely blinked at Treasury’s exposure now worked through weekends to block DOGE’s access. Democratic senators who had ignored other moves suddenly demanded emergency hearings. Former USAID officials flooded media outlets with warnings about “institutional knowledge loss” and “diplomatic catastrophe.”
But their traditional defenses crumbled against DOGE’s new playbook. While bureaucrats drafted memos about “proper procedures,” the young coders were already mapping payment flows. While senators scheduled hearings, pre-positioned personnel were implementing new transparency protocols. While media allies prepared hit pieces, DOGE’s algorithms exposed decades of questionable transactions.
The scale was breathtaking:
EPA climate initiatives? Not just mapped—found unauthorized programs in 47 states. Education’s DEI maze? Not just exposed—revealed coordination across 1,200 programs. Intelligence community black budgets? Not just traced—uncovered patterns hidden for 30 years. “The administrative state runs on two things,” a senior advisor explained, watching patterns emerge across DOGE’s screens. “Control of information and money flows.” His eyes tracked new connections forming in real-time. “We’re not just exposing their networks—we’re rewriting their DNA.”
The cracks began showing in unexpected places. A career EPA director, tears streaming: “Everything we built…” A USAID veteran, hands shaking: “They’re inside all of it…” A Treasury lifer, closing his office: “They move faster than we can think.”
Across Washington, officials who had weathered every reform since Reagan began quietly updating LinkedIn profiles. A Deputy Director: “Open to opportunities.” An Agency Chief: “Exploring new challenges.” A Bureau Head: “Time for change.”
DOGE’s algorithms weren’t just programs—they were archaeology tools, excavating decades of buried networks. Each data point connected to another. Each discovery revealed new targets. Each pattern exposed larger systems.
“It’s beautiful,” one of the coders whispered, watching connections form across his screen. “Like watching a galaxy map itself.”
For the permanent bureaucracy, this wasn’t just change. It was an extinction-level event. Their power came from controlling who got paid, when they got paid, and what they got paid for. Now those controls were evaporating like dawn burning away darkness.
The pattern was devastating in its simplicity:
Map the money flows
Deploy aligned personnel
Expose the networks
Restructure the systems
By the time bureaucrats drafted objections to one breach, three more had already occurred.
The revolution wasn’t just spreading. It was accelerating.
THE IMPACT
The first bulldozer arrived in Springfield, Ohio at 6 AM on a Tuesday. By noon, three blocks of notorious potholes were filled. Local news crews arrived to find not just construction crews, but data analysts with laptops, mapping every dollar spent against real-time progress.
This wasn’t just road repair. This was revolution in action.
A woman grabbed the analyst’s arm, tears in her eyes. “Twelve years,” she whispered. “Twelve years I’ve been calling about these potholes.” He turned his laptop, showing real-time data flows. “Look,” he said. “Your tax dollars. Actually working.” She stared at the screen. “My God,” she whispered. “It’s really happening.” Across America, funds once lost in administrative mazes suddenly found their way to actual problems needing solutions. In rural Tennessee, broadband expansion projects long buried under bureaucratic red tape broke ground overnight. In Michigan, water treatment plants received upgrades that bureaucrats had studied for decades but never approved.
The transformation was measurable. In just two weeks:
Tens of thousands of redundant programs identified
Billions in waste exposed
Hundreds of unauthorized initiatives halted
Countless local projects unleashed
But the real metric? Trust in government rising for the first time in 50 years.
The revolution spread with surgical precision:
Real-time tracking replaced quarterly reports
Algorithmic oversight replaced review boards
Local solutions replaced federal mandates
Results replaced process
“He’s done more in two weeks than Biden did in four years and Obama did in eight,” Vance noted from his West Wing office. “But this isn’t just about speed. This isn’t just about tech. This isn’t just about personnel. It’s all three, perfectly aligned.”
For ordinary Americans, the impact was undeniable. Roads repaired. Schools revitalized. Water purified. But more importantly, something else was being restored: trust.
For the first time in generations, people saw their government not as an obstacle but as a tool for positive change. The permanent bureaucracy had long operated on a simple assumption: presidents come and go, but they remain. That assumption now lay shattered, replaced by a new reality: when preparation meets presidential determination, nothing is permanent. “They thought we’d slow down,” Vance said, studying real-time data flows across agencies. “They thought we’d get bogged down in process. They thought we’d play by their rules.”
He smiled. “Instead, we’re just getting started.”
THE NEW DAWN
The sun rises early in Washington. On this morning, its first rays caught the classical columns of the Treasury building, casting long shadows across streets still quiet. But inside, beneath the marble and granite, screens still glowed blue. DOGE’s algorithms never sleep.
“The administrative state was built over decades,” a senior advisor explained, watching new patterns emerge across the displays. “Built to resist change. Built to outlast presidents. Built to preserve power.” He paused, tracking a particularly interesting data flow. “But they never imagined this. They built walls against political attacks. Defenses against media exposure. Shields against congressional oversight.” “They never prepared for algorithms that could map everything. For personnel pre-positioned everywhere. For a president who counts every week like it’s his last.”
The numbers tell the story: In Treasury—networks mapped, waste exposed, systems rewired At USAID—decades of hidden flows revealed, power structures dismantled Across agencies – redundancies eliminated, authorities realigned, missions refocused.
But numbers aren’t the whole story.
Imagine, changes, coming to a community near you:
Springfield, Ohio, potholes that plagued residents for twelve years actually disappeared overnight. Rural Tennessee, where children can finally connect to high-speed internet their parents were promised decades ago. In Michigan, people truly drink clean water while bureaucrats’ memos about “studying the problem” gather dust. This isn’t just reform. This isn’t just change. This is American governance reimagined.
“The pace is going to be the same,” Vice President Vance declared this week. “It’s just the priorities that are going to change.” The permanent bureaucracy built their administrative state over decades, brick by bureaucratic brick. They thought it would last forever. They thought it was too big to map, too complex to understand, too entrenched to change.
They were wrong.
Four young coders with laptops proved that. One thousand pre-positioned personnel proved that. A president counting weeks proved that. The sun continues rising over Washington. Classical columns still cast their shadows. But inside those buildings, everything has changed. The administrative state finally met its match: preparation plus presidential will plus technological precision.
This isn’t the end of the story. This is just the beginning.
The revolution isn’t just continuing. It’s becoming the new normal.
And for those who thought the D E E P S T A T E would rule forever?
They’re about to learn what happens when smart strategic minds meet determination. When preparation meets opportunity. When a new generation decides it’s time for change.
The storm isn’t just gathering. It’s here to stay.
The sun continues rising over Washington. But now, for the first time in generations, it illuminates something new:
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-15 14:51:282025-02-15 14:51:28Rewiring American Power — Bureaucracy
In a letter that no doubt sent shock waves through Washington’s permanent, untouchable bureaucracy, President Donald Trump’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday informing it that the Justice Department will no longer defend the constitutionality of federal laws that limit the ability of the president to remove the heads of “multimember regulatory commissions.”
Those are the so-called independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
This effort to implement accountability is long overdue.
Congress has passed laws providing that the commissioners of many agencies can only be removed “for cause,” while at others like the Federal Election Commission, where I once served as a commissioner, the law provides that a commissioner will continue to serve even after his or her term ends until the commissioner is replaced with a new member.
That provision is what led to FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, continuing to serve as a commissioner until she was recently fired by Trump. Her term ended in 2007, but she continued to serve because Democrats—happy with her partisan decision-making at the FEC—refused to provide any subsequent president with a possible replacement for her Democratic seat that they would confirm in the Senate.
Weintraub is contesting Trump’s authority to terminate her, as are commissioners at other agencies.
In 1926, in Myers v. U.S., the Supreme Court recognized that since Article II makes the president the head of the executive branch, he has the “unrestricted” power of “removing executive officers”—even those who have been confirmed by the Senate.
So, it doesn’t matter, for example, that an attorney general assumes his post only after his nomination by the president has been confirmed by the Senate. That attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president, and the president can fire the attorney general at any time for any reason—or no reason.
Harris, the acting solicitor general, points out in her letter, however, that these independent agencies with “for-cause” removal restrictions on the heads of the agencies, are relying on a very old decision by the Supreme Court issued in the middle of FDR’s New Deal overhaul of the federal government.
With the creation of new federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, in 1935 in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the Supreme Court created a very narrow exception to the Article II power of the president. The court said that Congress could restrict the ability of the president to remove the head of such an agency “except for cause” on the grounds that the FTC only exercised “quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial powers.” In other words, because the FTC was supposedly not exercising executive branch powers, it could act “independently of executive control.”
As Harris correctly observes, all of the independent agencies continue to rely on this narrowly drawn exception that simply doesn’t apply to the enormous power of today’s federal agencies, which she says, “exercise substantial executive power.”
They are, in reality, “Mini-Me’s” of the executive branch. Each one, from the FTC to the NLRB to the FEC, are mini-executive branches. Harris’ letter outlines the executive branch powers they have, including “promulgat[ing] binding rules” and “unilaterally issu[ing] final decisions … in administrative adjudications.”
In other words, they can issue binding regulations that have the force of law, and they can enforce them against all of us, exactly the same way that executive branch agencies under the direct control of the president, such as the Department of Justice, can enforce the law. The FEC, where I served, not only issues binding regulations, but it can go after you in judicial proceedings when you violate the law.
The only difference between the FEC and the Justice Department is that the FEC only has civil enforcement authority, while the DOJ has criminal enforcement authority over the Federal Election Campaign Act. The FEC is, in fact, a “Mini-Me” of the division inside the Justice Department responsible for enforcement of federal campaign finance laws.
Any claim that it is not exercising executive branch functions is laughable and is not in accord with modern reality.
Even in 1935, the Supreme Court said recently in Seila Law v. CFPB, the court seems to have mistaken the powers of the FTC. The court noted that the earlier court’s conclusion that the “FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time.” Neither has the Humphrey’s Executor decision.
Harris concluded by saying that the Justice Department will “urge the Supreme Court to overrule” that 1935 decision to the extent that it “prevents the president from adequately supervising principal officers in the Executive Branch who execute the laws on the president’s behalf.” That, no one should forget, is one of the president’s principal duties under Article II: “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Those who make the now tedious claim this is a “threat to democracy” have it exactly backwards: A president is accountable to the people through the election process. It is these “Mini-Me’s,” these independent federal agencies, that are the true threats to democracy.
The commissioners who run them are not accountable to voters because they are not elected, and when the person who is accountable to voters—the president—is restricted from the ability to remove them and hold them accountable for their actions, democracy is imperiled.
Only the Supreme Court has the authority to overrule one of its own precedents. It appears, however, that the Justice Department will likely give the court an opportunity to do just that.
Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Hans on X: @HvonSpakovsky.
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You don’t hate them enough. More evidence of why the Democrats has been so defensive about DOGE and Mr. Musk exposing the enormous reckless and corrupt spending.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ramped up grants for migrants from 2020 to 2024 — which included cash assistance to buy cars, homes and even build credit for startup businesses, according to a shocking watchdog report that found taxpayers were left on the hook for $22.6 billion.
HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — which came under fire last year for having lost track of 32,000 migrant kids in the US — handed out the high sum to a host of nonprofits, effectively acting as a “giant magnet” for those crossing the US border and claiming asylum, auditors from the money monitor OpenTheBooks revealed exclusively to The Post.
Tasked with settling migrants, asylum seekers and other refugees in America, ORR drastically increased the number of noncitizens eligible to receive funding over the bulk of President Joe Biden’s term, with more than $10 billion shelled out to grant-receiving organizations just in fiscal year 2023.
That coincided with all-time records being set for southern border crossings into the US, with 2.4 million apprehensions by Customs and Border Protection over the same period.
Non-governmental groups bilked taxpayers for up to $1.7 billion in services including dollar-for-dollar matching savings plans for cars, homes, college educations or startups; small-business loans of up to $15,000; loans to repair credit history of up to $1,500; “cultural orientation,” “emergency housing support,” legal assistance and Medicaid care.
Some programs were only available to migrants or refugees who had been living in the US for several years, who were employed or who were making around double the federal poverty level or less, among other stipulations.
The most funding, however, was spent on unaccompanied migrant children, with $12.4 billion obligated over the five years — even as federal whistleblowers were calling out ORR for placing many of the 291,000 kids in their care with unvetted and at times abusive sponsors.
“The Shining City on a Hill, with its walls and doors, makes room for legal immigrants and legitimate refugees and asylum seekers, but the ORR has made a mockery of that vision in recent years,” OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart told The Post.
“ORR is part of a troubling trend of using nonprofit groups as ideological proxies. Vast sums are being outsourced to evade accountability and prop up an immoral, exploitive system that is hurtful to both American citizens and people in other countries who are longing for a better life.”
Thursday’s report comes after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came under fire for sending around $80 million — subsequently clawed back by the Trump administration Tuesday — to put migrants up in New York City hotels and provide other services.
More than $2.6 billion went out the door in fiscal year 2020, $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2021, $3.3 billion in fiscal year 2022, $10 billion in fiscal year 2023 and $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2024.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-15 14:51:252025-02-15 14:51:25Biden’s HHS Left Taxpayers on the Hook for $22.6 BILLION for Giveaways to Illegals for Cars, Homes, Startup Businesses
Listen to this great speach by JD Vance at Munich Security Meeting where he righteously hammered the EU and NATO.
Summarizing what he said was the reasons for the Failed Project Europe was their allowing “mass migration” of Arabs, Africans and Middle Easterners ; their left wing (socialist) economies and their lawfare against freedom of speech including social media especially anything negative about LGBTQ; Islamic Jihadism; Pro-Life, etc. All of this has negatively impacted their traditional Christian values. Europe has become a museum of its former self, former culture and values.
Following is a combination of commentary from Charley Kirk and myself based on JD Vance’s speech. EU and NATO are too reliant on USA for defense and use Russia as the excuse for all their problems. Remember the false narrative using Russia for fighting against the election of Trump and his impeachment. The EU and NATO can no longer depend on US subsidies to defend the home of our forefathers. The shutdown of freedom of speech including social media by making it illegal to unfavorably address such topics as LGBTQ; Pro-Life; Islamic Jihad, etc. and arresting/jailing people for doing so is another area of great concern to our current govt.
The German Minister of Defense then criticized Vance while he was still in Germany stating his speech was “unacceptable” even though he knows Germany is the original architect for un vetted “mass migration” which has led to an increase in crime and the deaths of German and other EU citizens because their govts. have fallen on the swords of Islamic Jihadists. He hypocritically lectured Vance on Democracy, Freedom of Opinion etc. even though they have become a weak, pathetic version of their former selves and are ruled by unelected Oligarchs and recently canceled the Romanian election..
Other information on Vance’s meeting with Ukraine President Zalensky while in Europe includes Zalensky’s failure to sign an agreement where Ukraine will not continue to pursue joining NATO. This would be akin to us agreeing to the takeover of Mexico by China and the insertion of nuclear missiles into Mexico. Also the agreement included Ukraine reimbursement for Billions $ in US support by trading for rare earth minerals found in Ukraine.
TRANSCRIPT OF VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES JD VANCE’S COMMENTS
Well, thank you, and thanks to all the gathered delegates, luminaries, and media professionals. Thanks especially to the host of the Munich Security Conference for being able to put on such an incredible event. We’re, of course, thrilled to be here. We’re happy to be here.
One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. It’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as a United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now.
But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely—to improve their lives.
I want to say that I was fortunate, in my time here, to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours. I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people, even as they are, of course, reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack.
The first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife—who’s here with me today—on a personal trip. I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people. I just want to say that we are very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.
Now, I hope that’s not the last bit of applause that I get.
We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security, and normally, we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, we also believe that it’s important, in the coming years, for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.
However, the threat that I worry most about for Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values that are shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears.
For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values.
Everything—from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship—is billed as a defense of democracy.
But when we see European courts canceling elections, and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.
And I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.
Within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against tyrannical forces on this continent.
Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, closed churches, and canceled elections. Were they the good guys?
Certainly not. And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty—the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build.
As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe.
We believe those things are certainly connected. Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners. I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content.”
Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online, as part of “Combating Misogyny on the Internet: A Day of Action.”
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britain in the crosshairs.
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
Not obstructing anyone. Not interacting with anyone. Just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply: “It was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.”
Now, the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new “buffer zone” law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.
He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke—a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.
But no.
This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called Safe Access Zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizen suspected guilty of thought crime.
In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.
Misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China.
Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
So, I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer.
And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite.
And I hope that we can work together on that.
In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.
Now, we’re at the point, of course, where the situation has gotten so bad that, this December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.
Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections.
But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective.
You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections.
We certainly do.
You can condemn it on the world stage, even.
But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.
And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their minds will make them stronger still.
Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations.
Now again, we don’t have to agree with everything—or anything—that people say.
But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.
To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way—or even worse, win an election.
Now, this is a security conference, and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years, in line with some new target.
And that’s great.
Because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent.
We don’t think—you hear this term “burden sharing”—but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together, that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.
But let me also ask you—how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we are defending in the first place?
I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations, and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course, that’s important.
But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly, I think, to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?
And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people.
Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making.
If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.
Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.
You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing—that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens.
If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern—because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things. And of course, we know that very well in America. You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.
Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States—also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much higher since. And we know—the situation didn’t materialize in a vacuum.
It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday, in this very city.
And, of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims—who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined.
Our thoughts and prayers are with them, and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place? It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately, too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.
How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?
No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.
But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And, agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more, all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children. And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics.
Contrary to what you might hear a couple mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy.
And it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.
I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or, worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing.
In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.
And speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential.
And trust me, I say this with all humor—if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.
But what German democracy—what no democracy, American, German, or European—will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle, or you don’t. Europeans—the people—have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.
You can embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you.
And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we have built together as a shared society. To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice.
And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said:
“Do not be afraid.”
We shouldn’t be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.
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JFeed: A shocking investigation has uncovered that USAID provided $3.3 million in taxpayer money to a Gaza-based organization whose leader produces anti-Semitic rap content comparing Israel to Nazis, raising serious questions about oversight of U.S. foreign aid programs.
The organization “Tomorrow’s Youth,” led by rapper LXIV 64 (Raffoul Saadeh), received the substantial grant in 2022 under the guise of peace-building initiatives, despite evidence of the leader’s inflammatory content. The funding came through the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA), which was intended to foster peace and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.
Palestinian Media Watch exposed that Saadeh’s musical content includes explicit anti-Semitic themes, with his song “Scars of Gaza” containing direct comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany – the exact opposite of the program’s stated peace-building mission.
Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY) has demanded accountability: “American taxpayer dollars are being used to fund hatred and anti-Semitism under the false pretense of peace-building. This is unconscionable and demands immediate investigation.”
The funding was part of a larger $250 million MEPPA program, raising serious concerns about potential misuse of other grants. Critics point to a systematic failure in USAID‘s vetting process and question how an organization led by someone producing anti-Semitic content could receive millions in U.S. aid money.
The revelation comes amid broader concerns about U.S. aid money potentially supporting anti-Israel activities in Gaza, with calls growing for stricter oversight and immediate suspension of similar programs pending thorough investigation.
Taxpayer dollars are being disbursed through a fund named for a former New York Democrat congresswoman, Nita Lowey, to support Palestinian Arab causes.
By Anthony Grant | March 6, 2024
As Israel’s prime minister stresses “deradicalization” as one of the central pillars of the country’s strategy for post-war Gaza, questions are emerging about the role of America in funding projects with extremist elements, and lacking sufficient vetting.
Raising the alarm is Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, a group that monitors Palestinian Arab society and culture for extremism and support for terrorism. “The United States should be using its money to fight radicalization, and not to intensify it,” Mr. Marcus tells the Sun.
The centrality of deradicalization to Israel’s vision for Gaza was outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in December and reiterated last week in a Fox News interview.
“Gaza will have to be deradicalized,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote. “Schools must teach children to cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it.”
At issue for Mr. Marcus is a charity innocuously called Tomorrow’s Youth Organization. The group is using millions of dollars from a fund named for a former New York congresswoman, Nita Lowey, to support Palestinian Arab causes even as that organization’s executive director does double duty as a rapper who glorifies illicit drug use and hatred of Israel.
In December 2020, Congress passed the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act. America’s major civilian foreign aid agency, USAID, is tasked with doling out the $250 million fund, in coordination with the Department of State, for cultural “dialogue” efforts it deems worthy. Prominent among them is Tomorrow’s Youth, whose executive director, Raffoul Saadeh, writes and performs rap songs under the name LXIV 64.
One such ditty is “Scars of Gaza,” which contains the lyrics, “Auschwitz reincarnated brought back to life by the victims who were burned by the Nazis.” According to Mr. Saadeh’s Facebook page, a video for the song, which ends with a call for violence, was posted to YouTube in May 2021, but has subsequently been removed.
Federal records show that in 2022, USAID committed nearly $3.3 million to Tomorrow’s Youth, whose flagship office is situated at what it refers to as “Nablus, Palestine.”
Mr. Saadeh’s lyrics are bristling with other spurious and defamatory references to Israel — another video, according to PMW, is “one continuous demonization with lies and libels against Israel with yet another Holocaust comparison.” The video for the song “From the Ghetto,” which also demonizes Israel, was seemingly scrubbed from YouTube following a PMW report mentioning it last March.
Mr. Saadeh “writes and sings rap songs about Palestinian issues in which he compares Israel to Nazis and his life in Jerusalem to being caged in a ghetto,” PMW states, adding that “he also writes love songs, including Snow White, in which he presents the use of illegal drugs and gun violence as normal behavior.”
How all this squares with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization’s stated aim of “implementing specific mental health, psychosocial and educational interventions and programming” for Palestinian Arab youth is not addressed in the USAID-funded group’s literature. Mr. Saadeh as well as Ms. Lowey did not respond to the Sun’s requests for comment. It is unclear if Ms. Lowey believes that directly or indirectly underwriting hate speech “builds the foundation for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians” as the fund enacted in her name is supposed to do.
Mr. Saadeh, for his part, describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as someone with “vast experience in Palestine and Lebanon” and cites as assets his “personal and professional relationships with NGOs and donors.”
Mr. Saadeh’s songs, which are available on various public music platforms and are viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, “demonize Israelis and normalize the use of guns,” Mr. Marcus says. Mr. Marcus is concerned that “as a successful rapper, Mr. Saadeh naturally is a role model for youth who are exposed to his hate and normalization of violence.”
Is there any oversight mechanism in place to monitor how the group under Mr. Saadeh’s stewardship spends the hundreds of thousands of dollars Americans are sending it? In response to a query from the Sun, a USAID representative would say only that it takes precautions.
“We take,” the spokesman says, “every precaution to safeguard all U.S. taxpayer-supported assistance for its intended purpose and to support Palestinian civilians directly. USAID’s work with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization is specifically to support over two hundred women entrepreneurs and dozens of women-led small businesses, while fostering coexistence and reconciliation within and across communities.”
The record, though, shows that of the more than $3 million already spent, none of the money went to Jewish Israeli or Arab Israeli youths’ communities — it all flowed to the “West Bank.”
The “radicalization of Palestinian youth, through the demonization of Israelis,” Mr. Marcus says, “plays a major role in inciting Palestinian youth to see terror, including killing Israelis, as a worthy option.” This impact, he says, is also tied to the horror of the October 7 attacks on southern Israel.
“There is no doubt that the decades of demonization of Israelis and glorifying of terror is what led to the Hamas terror atrocities” of that day “and the Palestinian population’s overwhelming support for the attack.”
USAID would not disclose what monitoring, if any, there is of the use of its funds. Another wrinkle is that in some cases, as with Tomorrow’s Youth, funds committed are invariably mixed in with monies from the Qatar Fund for Development to support “various projects in the West Bank.” One of the worst-kept secrets in the Middle East is that Qatari money — lots of it — has also flowed into Hamas coffers in Gaza.
Some of what Partnership for Peace Fund money does is support advisory board meetings during which members, not all of whom are American citizens, spend time thanking each other for efforts that are not clearly delineated.
Examples of tangible achievement appear to be few. One such achievement, described at a meeting last August, involved transporting an 8-old-boy with cerebral palsy, along with his father, to Tel Aviv from Ramallah to “connect with Israeli and Palestinian engineers and designers” and to go for a swim using an adaptive surfboard. The cost of a private taxi to Tel Aviv from Nablus is a relatively inexpensive $170.
The $250 million is meant to be spent over the course of five years.
USAID’s administrator, Samantha Power, recently stated that “in addition to getting more assistance into Gaza, more must be done to protect aid workers putting their lives on the line to deliver that assistance.” Ms. Power, who served as America’s ambassador to the UN under President Obama, made no mention of the suffering that Gazans have brought to bear on Israeli civilians as well as soldiers on and since the October 7 attacks.
USAID, according to its own website, now prioritizes “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
With an annual budget of $27 billion, money is less of an issue for the agency than how and where it is being spent. The junior senator of Indiana, James Risch, last year questioned Ms. Power at a hearing on a USAID budget request related to famine — or “food insecurity,” as it’s known in Washington — in Ethiopia. Mr. Risch now heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Sun has reached out to Mr. Risch for comment about growing speculation that the Partnership for Peace Fund’s monies are ending up partly in some sullied hands.
In January, several Western countries, including, America suspended funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the world body’s agency for serving Palestinian refugees, after it emerged that hundreds of the group’s employees were members of terror groups. Some of them actively participated in the attacks on October 7. Much of the funding, including from the European Union, has already been restored.
“At a time when hate, violence, and terror by Palestinians is something the United States is trying to eliminate,” Mr. Marcus concludes, it is “unimaginable” that America should be funding an “organization headed by an individual whose public image is promoting the problems that the United States is trying to overcome.”
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While Obama judges empower campus terrorist supporters.
“The Court is dismayed by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the Jewish students should have hidden upstairs or left the building,” Judge John Cronan wrote, blasting the Manhattan college’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit by Jewish students who were trapped in the library by a mob of terrorist supporters. “These events took place in 2023—not 1943—and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic.”
The strong language in the ruling was similar to how Judge Mark Scarsi had criticized UCLA.
“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in response to the university’s complicity in Hamas supporters setting up checkpoints and encampments to harass Jews.
The two federal judges who spoke forthrightly in defense of Jewish students had two things in common: both were conservatives associated with the Federalist Society.
And both men had been nominated by Trump.
To fully appreciate the moral courage of Judge Scarsi and Judge Cronan, compare them to their colleagues who had been nominated by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
When Jewish students at Harvard and MIT turned to Judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton nominee, he dismissed the MIT lawsuit entirely, claiming that MIT had not reacted “in a clearly unreasonable manner”, and dismissed the lawsuit charging that Harvard had discriminated and retaliated against Jewish students, but allowed the lawsuit accusing the university of maintaining a “hostile educational environment” to move forward.
He did concede that, “Harvard failed its Jewish students.”
Judge Fernando Olguin, an Obama appointee, however sneeringly dismissed a complaint by Jewish parents and students against the antisemitic Los Angeles ‘ethnic studies curriculum, claiming that he could not understand it. Olguin, who had worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a proponent of ethnic studies curriculums, proved to be one of the most unsympathetic judges yet.
In Pennsylvania, Judge W. Scott Hardy, a Trump appointee, refused a request by Carnegie Mellon to dismiss a lawsuit by a Jewish student who had been harassed by a professor over her Jewishness and Israel’s war on terror, upholding an allegation of “deliberate indifference” against the university.
Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr, an Obama appointee, however showed outright skepticism of a lawsuit against the California College of the Arts in San Francisco brought by a Jewish professor who had been put through the wringer at her school for challenging Students for Justice in Palestine’s pro-terrorist student activists.
Judge Gerald Austin McHugh Jr, another Obama appointee, dismissed a complaint by Jewish students against Haverford College, mocking it as a collection of “every frustration and disagreement of Jewish students and faculty” that “reads more as an opinion editorial’ and tipping his ideological hand, accused them of strategically “seeking to blur the line between Zionism as a political philosophy and Zionism as a component of Jewish identity, and in the process implicitly sweep any and all criticism of Israel into the basket of antisemitism.”
The handling of lawsuits filed by terrorist supporters also varied wildly by federal judges.
Judge Peter Messitte, a Clinton nominee who had worked in Yemen, issued a preliminary injunction requested by CAIR, which had supported the attacks of Oct 7, to allow a pro-terrorist event on Oct 7. Messitte, now deceased, had also insisted on blocking a Trump order during his first term allowing local officials to stop terrorist refugee resettlement in their communities.
By contrast, Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg, a Bush appointee, had rejected a lawsuit by the Faculty for Justice in Palestine group against the University of Pennsylvania trying to force the university not to cooperate with a congressional investigation of campus antisemitism.
In Texas however, Judge Robert Pitman, an Obama nominee and the “first openly gay judge” in the Fifth Circuit, backed a lawsuit by CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus hate group whose chapters cheered the Oct 7 attacks, against Gov. Abbott’s antisemitism policies.
And back in California, Judge James Donato, an Obama appointee who had waged a judicial war against the Trump administration, allowed pro-terrorist activists to help defend the University of Berkeley against Jewish students alleging campus antisemitism.
While much has been written about the direct actions by the Trump administration on behalf of Jewish students, President Trump’s judicial appointments are playing a significant role in challenging campus antisemitism. The moral clarity brought by Judge Scarsi redefined how judges could speak directly and succinctly about the state of hate on college campuses.
And Judge Cronan’s equally strong and forthright words show that is becoming the new norm.
Meanwhile the behavior of Obama appointees like Messitte, Olguin and Pitman show the other side of the equation, and what the stakes are for American Jews in federal judicial appointments. Trump appointees have stood up for the civil rights of Jewish students while Obama appointees, true to their president’s policy, have enabled campus antisemitism.
Democratic Jewish groups have warned about the alleged ‘extremism’ of President Trump’s judicial appointments and championed confirming Biden’s extremist judicial appointees..
“We urge the Senate to confirm President Biden’s judicial nominees and fill all 44 judicial vacancies before Trump and the GOP return to power,” the Jewish Democratic Council of America had pleaded.
That included Adeel Abdullah Mangi, who had served on a think tank that had promoted Islamic terrorist figures, calls for BDS and “vile antisemitic propaganda”. By contrast, fourteen conservative judges, most appointed by Trump, visited Israel after Oct 7.They included Judge Lee Rudofsky, a Trump appointee who had warned that he would reject any law clerks that supported Hamas.
Are American Jews better off with Judge Rudofsky or with Mangi on the bench?
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The Trump administration bolstered Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms, vowing to overturn any and all encroachments on the Second Amendment enacted under the Biden-Harris administration.
“The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty,” declared President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” which he signed last Friday, February 7. “It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation. Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.” The order requires the attorney general to review all the Biden administration’s executive orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, or agency actions that infringe on the Second Amendment and present an action plan within 30 days.
The gun rights order from President Trump — whose sons Donald Jr. and Eric are competitive shooters — targets Joe Biden’s “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” pertaining to firearms and/or federal firearms licensees (FFLs), which results in automatic loss of license for relatively minor infractions. That led to 338 license revocations between Biden’s inauguration and June 2024, according to Master FFL, which helps gun dealers comply with the federal regulatory burden. License revocations prevent Mom-and-Pop firearms dealers from earning their livelihood.
The Trump White House also noted, in his first term, “President Trump removed the United States from the United Nations (UN) misguided Arms Trade Treaty to protect Americans from the threat of global regulations of conventional firearms.”
The firearms industry as a whole came under hostile fire from his two Democratic predecessors, said Trump administration officials. “Firearms manufacturers have been de-banked or denied services simply because they make guns — which allow Americans to exercise a constitutional right,” adds a White House fact sheet.
Operation Choke Point 1 and 2
Upon taking office, Barack Obama launched Operation Choke Point, which discouraged bankers from offering their services to disfavored industries, including legal firearms dealers. “The original Operation Choke Point began in 2013, when the Obama DOJ, working with the FDIC, bullied banks to stop serving the firearms industry. This had the intended impact of choking out deposit and lending services to the firearms industry, which Old Glory Bank has been working hard to solve since we launched in April of 2023,” testified Mike Ring, who founded Old Glory Bank with country music star John Rich and talk show host Larry Elder, before the Senate last week.
While the effort officially ended in January 2015, critics said the Obama administration cranked up pressure against the same industries throughout its time in office. After his departure from office, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) harangued bank executives to stop serving the fossil fuel industry, as well as partnering on the Fossil Free Finance Act to enact their views into law.
“Under the Biden administration, we’ve seen the rise of what many are calling Operation Choke Point 2.0, where federal regulators exploited their power, pressuring banks to cut off services to individuals and businesses with conservative disposition, or folks aligned with industries they just didn’t like,” explained Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) during his opening statement at the hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. “[D]ebanking someone over their political ideology is un-American and goes against the core values that our nation was founded on.”
Last week, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) revealed that a page from the Federal Reserve’s Internal Implementation Handbook warns banks to be cautious about offering their services to “controversial” industries.
Bipartisan Opposition
Opposition to debanking created a rare moment of bipartisan agreement between Scott and one of the chamber’s most outspoken “progressives.”
“For me, this is straightforward. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, what you believe, or the origin of your last name — people shouldn’t be arbitrarily denied access to their banks, locked out of their accounts, or stripped of their banking privileges,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
“Donald Trump was onto a real problem when he criticized Bank of America for its debanking practices,” continued Warren, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination to unseat him in 2020. The Bank of America debanked Indigenous Advance, a U.S. charity dedicated to serving Uganda’s poor, and a church in Memphis. “[U]pon review of your account(s), we have determined you’re operating in a business type we have chosen not to service at Bank of America,” said the bank in an April 2023 letter. The bank later explained allowing the charity to use its services “no longer aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance.”
“Nonprofits and charities operating internationally have been de-banked through no fault of their own,” said Warren. The Massachusetts senator went on to cite 11,955 complaints over closed accounts lodged with the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who reintroduced the Fair Access to Banking Act, revealed that “some of the bank presidents, who have never dared say it out loud, tell me they support” the bill, because they want the “burden” of “this political pressure from their 30-year-old staff, or the regulator they fear, or the political movement of the day, or the activist investors trying to impose their values … removed from them.”
“I commend the new FDIC leadership for its commitment to transparency, but it is a shame that it took an election — an election — for the agency to begin following the laws of our country,” said Scott.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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After an internal leak jeopardized a deportation mission, President Donald Trump’s border czar is alleging that bad actors within the FBI may have been responsible. Border czar and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief Tom Homan confirmed Monday night that he’s closer to identifying the individual who leaked information regarding an ICE raid in Aurora, Colorado to members of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang. The raid, carried out last week, initially targeted at least 100 TDA members, but ICE officers ultimately only arrested one, after the leak provided gang members a chance to evade ICE.
“We think it’s coming from inside. And we know the first leak in Aurora is under current investigation. We think we’ve identified that person,” Homan said in a Fox News interview. He explained that leaking information regarding ICE operations is more than just “giving the bad guys a heads-up so they can escape apprehension,” but is actually “putting officers’ lives at risk. It’s only a matter of time before we walk into a place where there’s going to be a bad guy who doesn’t care. He’s going to be sitting in wait to ambush an officer. This is not a game.”
Homan confirmed that “some of the information we’re receiving tends to lead toward the FBI” as the source of the leak. He added, “I talked to the deputy attorney general all this weekend. They’ve opened up a criminal investigation, and they have promised that not only will this person lose their job and lose their pension, they will go to jail.” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi committed to prosecuting the individual responsible for the leak. “If anyone leaks anything, people don’t understand that it jeopardizes the lives of our great men and women in law enforcement,” she said in an interview Sunday. Bondi pledged, “If you leaked it, we will find out who you are, and we will come after you.”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem also named the famous federal law enforcement agency as a likely culprit after information regarding another ICE raid in Los Angeles was leaked. “The FBI is so corrupt. We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem declared.
Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, a planned ICE raid in Chicago had to be rescheduled after information regarding the raid was leaked to The Wall Street Journal. Homan reported Monday that the leaks will not stop deportations. “I’m going to double the manpower in those sanctuary cities,” he warned, adding, “If we can’t get them in their homes, we’ll get them at their place of employment.” The border czar continued, “Sanctuary cities are a sanctuary for criminals, bottom line. So, we’re going to do everything we can to find them. Regardless of what it takes, [we’ve] got a strong president in the White House; he’s giving us all the authority we need. We’re coming.”
According to reports ICE has posted on social media, the agency made over 8,200 arrests from the time Trump returned to office and the end of January. The agency has not yet posted data for the month of February. Although he has explained that deportation numbers may seem low while ICE focuses its efforts on arresting violent illegal immigrants, Homan affirmed late last month that he intends to increase the number of daily arrests and deportations. “We’ve got to do more. We’ve got to open that aperture up, which we’re going to do,” he said at the time, adding, “And we need more deportations, a lot more deportations, and that’s what we are working on.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-13 15:51:352025-02-13 15:51:35Did the FBI Leak Deportation Raid Plans to a Gang? Border Czar Homan Thinks So
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been conducting raids across the country, illegal immigrants, criminals and gang members have been taken in en masse, with several big arrests occurring Monday alone, the Daily Caller has learned.
As of Jan. 29, ICE has made a minimum of 4,829 arrests since President Donald Trump was inaugurated and the widespread raids began, according to NBC News. In the last week of January, the Trump administration was averaging 753 arrests per day. Though the number of total arrests Monday is so far unclear, ICE arrested several big criminals, including an MS-13 gang member, the Daily Caller has learned.
ICE Corpus Christi arrested Sergio Arquimides Pineda on Monday, an aggravated felon and MS-13 gang member who was in the U.S. illegally, a White House official told the Caller.
Pineda, who was criminally convicted for assault, was first ordered for removal by an immigration judge in May 2015 and had an outstanding order of deportation for failing to appear at his immigration hearing, according to the information shared with the Caller. He has since been processed for removal and will remain in ICE custody.
On Monday, ICE Miami arrested Cuban citizen Dario Gonzalez, who had previously been convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison for lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, the White House official shared with the Caller. Also previously sentenced to ten years in prison but arrested on Monday was Silvester Kagwe Akola, a citizen of Kenya who was taken in by ICE Baltimore, the Caller learned. Akola had previously been convicted of robbery.
Also on Monday, ICE Houston arrested Mexican citizen Jorge Hernandez, who was previously convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to five years in prison, the official told the Caller.
The White House’s Twitter account announced other major arrests that came Monday in the raids, including the arrest of Ciro Teodoro-Rivera, a Mexican national and registered sex offender who was found in Cincinnati, Ohio. Teodoro-Rivera reentered the country illegally without being admitted, and had previous convictions for sexual imposition and aggravated assault, the tweet explains.
In Dallas, on Monday, ICE arrested Guatemala citizen Juan Ramos-Alonzo, who had been convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor and sentenced to 25 years in prison, the White House Twitter account shared.
MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN: Ciro Teodoro-Rivera, a Mexican national and registered sex offender, was arrested by ICE Cincinnati on February 10, 2025. Prior convictions: Sexual imposition and aggravated assault. Teodoro-Rivera illegally reentered the U.S. without being admitted. pic.twitter.com/csrLKgwqNx
MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN: Jose Miguel Perez-Perez, a Mexican national, was arrested by ICE Chicago on February 10, 2025. Conviction: Sexual assault of a child. Perez was sentenced to 6 months in jail. pic.twitter.com/7kY3b3jSor
ICE Chicago arrested Mexican citizen Jose Miguel Perez-Perez, who had previously been convicted of sexual assault of a child and sentenced to 6 months in jail, according to the White House.
Trump campaigned on the promise to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in the country’s history. In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, daily ICE arrests have increased and deportation officers have taken enforcement actions in more areas across the country.
Under the Biden administration, there were roughly 8.5 million migrant encounters along the southern border, an era of unprecedented illegal immigration into the country. According to Customs and Border Protection data, Border Patrol agents made nearly 120,000 encounters specifically with criminal non-citizens during Biden’s time in office.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-13 15:51:342025-02-13 15:51:34EXCLUSIVE: Meet The Worst Criminals ICE Arrested This Week … So Far
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) launched a tip-line for whistleblowers to report “abuses of power” in the Trump administration. However, Schumer’s snitch portal immediately backfired after conservatives bombarded the tip-line with alleged abuses of power committed by Democrats.
BLAZE MEDIA — On Monday, Schumer and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) announced a new portal for whistleblowers to lodge a complaint about “abuses of power.”
“As Senate Republicans refuse to fulfill their constitutional duty to provide a check on the executive branch, Senate Democrats remain steadfast in our commitment to uncovering the truth. We are prepared to issue demand letters, preserve public records, and pursue legal action where necessary,” Schumer and Peters wrote in a letter to “brave public servants and whistleblowers.”
The letter described whistleblowers as the “backbone of government oversight and accountability.”
“Whistleblowers are essential in helping uncover fraud and abuse in the federal government,” the letter continued. “If you have information you want to share about wrongdoing, abuse of power, and threats to public safety, we stand ready to support you in your pursuit of truth and justice.”
The portal is hosted on the website dedicated to Senate Democrats.
“Whistleblowers are a vital part of congressional oversight to hold the administration accountable,” the site states.
Schumer wrote on the X social media platform, “I’m calling on our brave public servants: I’m launching a new portal for anyone who wants to expose corruption, abuses of power, and threats to public safety with the legal protections of being a whistleblower.”
Schumer likely did not receive the internet reactions that he had hoped for as conservatives flooded the tip-line with accusations of wrongdoing by Democrats.
Elon Musk mocked Schumer by telling his 217 million X followers that the responses to the tip-line are “comedy gold.” Musk didn’t stop there. The Tesla CEO added, “Look into this Schumer guy, he’s definitely done crime!”
Schumer’s X post received over 33,000 responses, including no shortage of replies spotlighting Democrats for alleged abuse of power.
Elon Musk re-posts this SHOCKING video: Hunter Biden reportedly ‘commandeered’ the White House after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump.
Former Democrat fundraiser Lindy Li: “After the debate, Hunter basically commandeered the White House. He sat in on all of the White House top level meetings.
We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history. Does that sit right with you?”
Shawn Ryan: “No.”
Li: “Without security clearance mind you. That’s basically who was running the show. Hunter basically batten down the hatches after the debate to make sure his father would only receive intel he pre-approved.”
The Biden administration makes a lot more sense if you view it through the prism of ‘The brains of the operation was on crack’ with a Vice-president who seemed to be smoking weed and giggling all the time, busy running for president!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-13 14:51:172025-02-13 14:51:17MUST WATCH: Hunter Biden Ran White House After Biden-Trump Debate
Is it the right thing to do and can it work? Yes it can.
After President Trump proposed resettling the Arab Muslim settlers currently living in Gaza, there was an outbreak of furious objections from politicians, activists and media outlets.
The objections could be roughly divided into the moral and the practical. The ‘moral’ objection was that it was ‘wrong’ to resettle the population currently occupying Gaza, and the ‘practical’ objection was that it would be impossible to accomplish. Both objections do not hold up.
The Jewish population of Gaza was resettled twice, once after the Egyptian invasion and the conquest of Gaza during the War of Independence, and the second time after the 2005 ‘disengagement’ forcibly eliminated 21 Jewish communities and expelled families living there.
Not only did politicians and the media not object to the forcible removal of the Jewish communities of Gaza, but they celebrated it as a step forward for peace in the region.
Many, if not most ‘peace plans’, propose the further resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria to make way for a ‘Palestinian’ state. Even as they object to resettling Gazan Muslims in Arab countries, they refer to Jews living in the ‘West Bank’ as settlers, to their communities as ‘settlements’ and propose that they be resettled elsewhere.
UN Resolution 242 has been interpreted by many politicians and the media to mean that Israel must withdraw from territory, including parts of Jerusalem, where 450,000 Jews live. The same people who insist that it’s morally wrong and impractical to resettle 2 million Muslims out of Gaza also argue that it’s morally right and practical to resettle nearly half a million Jews in Israel.
Opponents of Trump’s proposal don’t believe it’s wrong to resettle a population, they would just rather expel and resettle Jews than expel and resettle the Arab Muslim colonial population.
They don’t oppose resettlement, they support terrorism.
With the moral question out of the way, what about the practical one: is it even possible?
Some say that the Gaza Arab Muslim population could not be moved without ‘door-to-door fighting’. But Israel’s recent experience in the war after Oct 7 shows that’s clearly not true.
Despite the false claims of genocide, the Israelis kept civilian casualties to a minimum by evacuating as much as the ‘civilian’ population as possible from one part of Gaza to another.
Despite being told it was impossible, Israelis evacuated hundreds of thousands of Gazans to make way for military operations. During the beginning of the war, around 1 million Gazans left the north for the south and the UN would later claim that as many as 1.5 million Muslim settlers in Gaza had been displaced. Most of those in Gaza followed orders and got out of the way.
Looking to examples beyond Israel, the Black September war between Jordan and the PLO resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 terrorists, as many as 25,000 civilians, according to Yasser Arafat, and some 20,000 ‘Palestinians’ were resettled in ‘refugee camps’ in Lebanon
After the Gulf War, Kuwait punished the ‘Palestinians’ who had collaborated with Saddam Hussein, by expelling some 280,000 of them in a mass purge that was later joined by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf allies for a total estimated by ‘Palestinian’ advocates at 400,000.
Kuwait shelled ‘Palestinian’ neighborhoods and sent in death squads to massacre them. Tanks and troops were deployed, checkpoints were set up and most of the ‘Palestinians’ were driven from their country and their neighborhoods were eliminated. Parts of Hawally, where the ‘Palestinians’ used to live, were bulldozed and turned into an amusement park.
“I think we’re expecting a little much if we’re asking the people in Kuwait to take kindly to those that had spied on their countrymen that were left there, that had brutalized families there, and things of that nature,” President George H.W. Bush told reporters at a press conference.
Saudi Arabia deported over 50,000 ‘Palestinians’, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar, which has since become a state sponsor of Hamas, also began firing, expelling and deporting ‘Palestinians’
None of these events occasioned much protest or commentary, they occurred with the support of western governments who, like President Bush, compared it to the reactions of the French against collaborators after the Nazi occupation, and life soon went on as it had before.
The resettlement of large numbers of ‘Palestinians’ has happened before in the Middle East. While the resettlement of Gaza would take place on a larger scale, it would not be that much larger than the resettlements during the war or in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Such a resettlement is both practical and morally defensible since there are no other options.
The underlying problem in the conflict is that Israel resettled some 800,000 Jewish refugees from the Muslim world, while the Arab Muslim nations who attacked it failed to do likewise. Along with the UN, they insisted on maintaining them under the fake identity of ‘Palestinians’ as a perpetual army of occupation: forming into terrorist groups for an endless war with Israel.
“You have to learn from history. You can’t keep doing the same mistake over and over again,” President Trump pointed out.
Every possible effort has been made to create a ‘Palestinian’ state for over 30 years. After multiple peace proposals, land concessions, endless rounds of negotiations and taxpayer funding (over $2 billion through USAID to the ‘Palestinians’ since Oct 7 alone) nothing worked.
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, leaving behind greenhouses and plans for new industries, along with sizable international funding, Hamas turned it into a war zone.
Two-state solutionists continue to argue that if Israel were to offer even more land, expel and resettle more Jews, the Muslim terrorists would finally agree to a permanent peace.
But there has never been a single shred of evidence that would work. None of the Israeli proposals or concessions undertaken since the late 1980s have led to any kind of peace. The PLO and Hamas used terrorism at every turn to press for more Israeli concessions while giving nothing in return. Their leaders have said again and again that they intend to destroy Israel.
After Oct 7, everyone is finally taking them at their word.
Diplomats insisted that peace could not come without the expulsion and resettlement of Jews from Judea and Samaria. President Trump flipped the table by suggesting that it can’t come without the resettlement of Arab Muslims from Gaza. Which makes more sense?
Debate is still going on about President Trump’s proposal for an American role in Gaza. Many Americans and Israelis see the move as unnecessary. They would prefer to have Israel take care of business alone with the political support of the United States. Just as Bush provided political support for the Kuwaitis to expel the ‘Palestinian’ population from their country.
President Trump is a visionary and his idea reframed the entire view of the conflict, and while it may only be an opening for a negotiating position, like his talk of annexing Canada or Greenland, there is no doubt that it has shaken up all the conventional wisdom in the Middle East. His basic premise, that Gaza is a lovely place that will be a source of conflict as long as it is populated by Islamic terrorists and their supporters, is fundamentally sound.
The objections to it, both moral and practical, are groundless. Resettlement is feasible and moral. If the Kuwaitis and the Jordanians could resettle the ‘Palestinians’ out of their countries on far less grounds than the atrocities of Oct 7, the Israelis certainly have the right to do it.
The politicians, diplomats and reporters who advocated for the mass resettlement of nearly half a million Jews have no moral grounds for opposing the resettlement of Gaza Muslims.
And after trying everything else, including decades of failed efforts to make peace with the terrorists or trying to coexist with them in the absence of peace, it’s time to do what makes the most sense for everyone, and the only thing that has any hope of bringing peace to the region.
Today, we as a nation are monstrously in debt and borrowing more and more off the backs of our children and grandchildren. Yet Alexander Hamilton, our country’s first Secretary of the Treasury, said in Federalist35 that our economy will work best when we have less needless regulations.
He notes: “It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.” He says what we need is “a judicious exercise of the power of taxation.”
Fast forward to today. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and his whiz kids at DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), are uncovering outrageous misuse of our hard-earned tax dollars by previous administrations.
Take USAID, which was established over sixty years ago to provide “U.S. foreign development assistance from the American people
Most Americans, if they knew anything about the agency, thought we were providing food or clean water to impoverished nations, but noooo.
What has been revealed is outrageous. U.S. Congressman Brian Mast from Florida has released a laundry list of outrageous uses of our tax dollars, supposedly to help with “development assistance.” This list includes USAID funding as well as that of the State Department.Mast notes that these are some of the ways our tax dollars are at work around the world— because of the left’s hijacking of USAID and the State Department:
$15 million for condoms to the Taliban through USAID.
$446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal through the State Department.
$1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa through the State Department.
$14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department.
$20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department.
$47,020 for a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department.
$32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru through the State Department.
$55,750 for a climate change presentation warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina to be led by female and LGBT journalists through the State Department.
$3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean” through USAID.
As Gary Bauer puts it (End of Day Report, 2-10-25): “they are promoting anti-Christian values, including LGBTQ ideology and abortion worldwide.”
Half a million dollars spent to promote atheism in Nepal? The founding fathers said America was founded on the belief that God is the source of our rights. Why are we spreading unbelief in other places? To this day, our national motto is “In God We Trust.”
Mast also lists: “$425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly through USAID.” And on it goes. Think about this when you’re doing your taxes this year.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now the head of USAID, and he said last week he’s paring that staff down from 10,000 to 300. That’s like Gideon’s army in the Bible. There were 10,000 wanting to serve, but God had Gideon trim it down to only 300, and He gave them the victory.
The founders of America would be appalled that this is how far we have fallen from their vision of limited government, based on God-given rights and the consent of the governed. I never consented, nor would I consent, to such immoral goals.
No wonder President Trump is trying defund this wasteful spending.
In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned the new nation to be careful about national debt: “As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.” Yet we are not using public credit “sparingly” at all.
James Madison said, “I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than in any other.”
Thomas Jefferson also gave some strong warnings about our economy. In his First Inaugural Address, our third president stated, “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
Thomas Jefferson once said, “To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”
And to think part of our debt today is because of these left-wing boondoggles. One can only imagine what the founding fathers would think of our bloated government today.
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USAID: The swamp is deep. One of the activist judges blocking Trump’s agenda, Judge John Bates, is married to the founder of a USAID-funded NGO.
Carol Rhees is a Democrat lawyer who started Hope for Children in Ethiopia a long-time USAID grant recipient. (Amuse ON X)
You see how that works?
John Bates is the judge who ordered the Trump admin to restore website info on gender ideology and sex change operations.
Elon Musk on Wednesday criticised a federal judge’s decision to reinstate government web pages removed under President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender ideology, calling it “truly absurd.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-13 14:51:142025-02-13 14:51:14Wife of Radical Far-Left Judge Blocking Trump’s Agenda is a USAID Recipient
In what turned out to be hardly a showdown at all between the triumphant Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, Super Bowl LIX still surprised audiences with its pro-America themes throughout.
Here is your cultural rundown of what happened during the big game Sunday night:
Player and Prayers
The two biggest players in Sunday night’s game directly attributed their successes to their faith. When sideline reporter Erin Andrews asked Eagles quarterback and Super Bowl LIX MVP Jalen Hurts how it felt to win, he replied:
“God is good. He’s greater than all the highs and lows.”
Even Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes on X thanked God for “every opportunity he has given me” after his team’s devastating loss, which he took responsibility for.
Patriotism Is Back
Christian singer Lauren Daigle got her “moment of vindication” while performing “America the Beautiful” at Sunday night’s game just five years after New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell attempted to cancel her New Year’s Eve performance in the same city.
Why? In 2020, Daigle gave an impromptu performance at an outdoor prayer service and concert that also served as a protest against COVID-19 restrictions on churches.
During jazz singer Jon Batiste’s rendition of the national anthem, some players were moved to tears. Moreover, The New York Times reported that not a single player took a knee during the anthem in protest of racial inequality this year.
Also during the national anthem, the crowd roared with applause and cheers when the jumbotron showed President Donald Trump.
He is the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, and he came flanked with an all-star crew of congressmen and prominent conservative voices.
But not all celebrity attendees were feeling the love, as Taylor Swift was met with boos when she appeared on the jumbotron. Bad night for “Miss Americana” as her “Heartbreak Prince” and Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce gave credence to her lyrics, “My team is losing.”
The NFL removed the “End Racism” messaging from the end zone. Maybe with the woke scolds gone from the White House, people realize we aren’t the racist nation they told us we were.
‘Trad’ Ads
Instead of forcing wokeness down our throats between plays, this year’s Super Bowl advertisements promulgated traditional (trad) values, much to the surprise of everyone.
One category of ads in particular promoted creating healthy, women-only sports spaces. An NFL ad advocated for making “girls flag football” a varsity sport rather than inserting girls into the more dangerous, male-geared version, football.
Nike also ran an advertisement with the theme of female empowerment, and not a single male transgender-identifying athlete was featured.
Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Performance
Rapper Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show has conservatives divided on whether his performance was just alright or the worst of all time.
I will let you make up your own mind on this one. From where I’m standing, there were no indecent wardrobe malfunctions, vulgar dances, or obviously woke messages thrown in our faces. A win is a win.
Lamar also performed his Grammy award-winning song “Not Like Us,” in which he calls out rapper Drake for allegedly being a “certified pedophile” on the national stage—a bold choice that should strike fear in the hearts of his fellow entertainers who conceal this kind of behavior.
Regardless of which team you were personally rooting for—if either at all—this Super Bowl indicated a shift in American culture. The oddly apolitical messaging of the big game cannot be ignored considering its past inclination for the woke, and we should embrace these small wins as potential indicators of a much larger move back to sanity.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-12 15:51:162025-02-12 15:51:16CULTURE SHOCK: Why Super Bowl LIX Was More Significant Than Met the Eye
President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, will prioritize ending politicization of the Intelligence Community (IC) and restoring transparency, according to a list of priorities obtained by the Daily Caller.
The Senate confirmed Gabbard as DNI on Wednesday. Her day one priorities highlight politicization and the need for unbiased intelligence collection.
“End politicization of the IC and ensure clear mission focus to the IC on its core mission of unbiased, apolitical collection and analysis of intelligence to secure our nation” the document reads.
She assailed weaponization of the intelligence community during her confirmation hearing’s opening statement, citing Trump’s reelection as a “clear mandate” to end weaponization of the intelligence agencies.
She specifically pointed to the 51 former national security officials who signed a letter implying the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story was a “Russian information operation.” That was proven false and Trump recently revoked the officials’ security clearances.
Gabbard will also work to restore trust “through transparency and accountability,” the document said, calling the priority a “national security imperative.”
Two Republican senators who were initially hesitant to support Gabbard, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, cited the ODNI’s bloated size in their endorsements of Gabbard.
Collins said in a statement that the ODNI is too expansive and that Gabbard shares her “vision of returning the agency to its intended size.”
I will vote to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. While I continue to have concerns about certain positions she has previously taken, I appreciate her commitment to rein in the outsized scope of the agency, while still enabling the ODNI to continue its…
Gabbard will also work to “address efficiency, redundancy, and effectiveness across ODNI to ensure focus of personnel and resources is focused on our core mission of national security” on day one.
Gabbard will also prioritize assessing threats and identifying gaps in intelligence.
“Assess the global threat environment and where gaps in our intelligence exist, integrate intelligence elements, increase information-sharing, and ensure unbiased, apolitical, objective collection and analysis to support the President and policymakers’ decision-making,” the document reads.
She also plans to collaborate with Congress, specifically the Senate Intelligence Committee, on these issues. Senators expressed frustration about intelligence failures during her meetings, citing a “lack of responsiveness” to information requests, according to the document. There have been several major intelligence blunders under past DNIs, including the Afghanistan withdrawal and terrorists taking over Syria after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The document also referenced “failures to identify” the origins of COVID-19. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said in January that it now believes the virus came from a lab in China, according to The New York Times. The agency reached this determination with “low confidence.” This typically indicates that the agency making the determination lacked sufficient credible information or had concerns or issues regarding their sources, according to the DNI’s website.
“Lt. Col. Gabbard looks forward to working with Senators and the Intelligence Committee directly on those issues,” the document concludes.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-12 14:51:262025-02-12 14:51:26Tulsi Gabbard Reveals Plans To ‘End Politicization’ Of Intel Agencies On Day One In Office
It’s an old story: When people are allowed to get their way for too long, when they’re never told “No!” they may get too big for their britches. They may develop a sense of entitlement and even become narcissistic. And proving that judges are no exception are a number of recent court “opinions” designed to scuttle President Trump’s agenda.
One disallows DOGE from scrutinizing Treasury Department data.
Another states that the Trump administration must unfreeze funding on grants and loans.
A different opinion puts a freeze on Trump’s buyout offer for federal employees.
And yet another ordered the administration to restore sexual devolutionary (on “gender” and “sex changes”) government web pages Trump’s team had rightly deleted. So Biden could create those pages but, somehow, the current president may not remove them. Yes, it’s insane.
There’s a little known reason, however, why the rogue judges in question could so confidently engage in such insane judicial overreach. To wit:
We long ago accepted the overreach known as “judicial supremacy.”
This brings us to the simple remedy. Trump could just paraphrase the paraphrase of Andrew Jackson and say, “The courts have made their decisions — now let the judges enforce them.”
A “Constitutional Crisis”?
Some say this is illegal, that it would create a “constitutional crisis.” A “legal analyst” and ex-federal prosecutor named Elizabeth de la Vega, for example, condescendingly stated Monday that someone taking this position should “at least read Marbury v. Madison.” That’s a deal.
Note here that Marbury was the 1803 SCOTUS opinion declaring that the judiciary must be the ultimate arbiter of laws’ and actions’ constitutionality and that, consequently, its rulings can constrain the other two governmental branches. Translation:
The courts gave the courts their trump card (and Trump card) power.
Not the Constitution — the courts themselves.
Well, that’s like me crowning myself King of America and saying, “Now I get to rule — and you have to obey me.” Are you O.K. with that?
(And while we’re at it, off with those activist judges’ heads.)
As to this, there’s a reason Thomas Jefferson said in 1819 that if the judicial-supremacy opinion is valid, “then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se” (act of suicide).
There’s a reason a 5th Circuit judge pressed Barack Obama’s DOJ in 2012, after Obama had spoken dismissively of the courts, to submit a memo on the administration’s position on judicial supremacy.
And there’s a reason late Justice Antonin Scalia warned in his dissent against the outrageous 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges (marriage) opinion that with “each decision…unabashedly based not on law” the Court moves “one step closer to being reminded of [its] impotence.”
That is, judicial supremacy is not in the Constitution. That’s why Jefferson was incredulous about it, the 5th Circuit judge was insecure about it, and Scalia warned that the Court could be told to forget about it.
It’s an extra-constitutional power the courts enjoy at the other two branches’ pleasure. The moment they decide to stop playing the sub role in this master-servant relationship, the power goes bye-bye.
Method to the Madness
Now, it’s helpful understanding why, in a world in which arrogating power to oneself or one’s corps is status quo, the other two branches do play this sub role. First, it’s a tradition, one so entrenched that pseudo-intellectuals will defend it as if it’s law. But a very significant reason was epitomized by something then-Ohio governor John Kasich said in 2015 after the Obergefell decision.
“[T]he court has ruled,” he proclaimed — “and it’s time to move on.” He seemed almost gleeful. And why not?
Kasich no longer had to take a stand on the controversial marriage issue and thus alienate part of the electorate.
And Kasich’s attitude is the norm. It’s the same reason why, I can guarantee you, many Republicans got severe agita when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Now they actually had to legislate, as they’re supposed to, on prenatal infanticide. So what legislators — and presidents often, too — get from judicial supremacy is the luxury of, like Pontius Pilate, being able to wash their hands of a matter: “The courts have ruled! Don’t look at me!”
Apropos here, just as legislators outsource their responsibility to judges, the latter outsourced their responsibility to bureaucrats with the now overturned Chevron opinion. What judges got from this was the benefit of lightening their case loads and not having to strain their gray matter trying to settle legislative ambiguities.
Regardless, whether the decisions are made by unelected judges or unelected bureaucrats, the result is identical: You don’t have a government of, by and for the people. In fact, it’s even worse than that.
If the courts can overturn law, contravening the will of the people’s duly elected representatives, then they’ve to an extent arrogated to themselves the legislative power. If they can dictate to the president what executive actions he may or may not take, they’ve to an extent arrogated to themselves the executive power. And, of course, they enjoy their judicial power.
Now consider something James Madison, Father of the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist Papers, Number 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands” is “the very definition of tyranny.”
We have for ages been venturing too close to judicial tyranny. In fact, Jefferson warned that judicial supremacy would reduce us to an oligarchy — of judges.
How it’s Supposed to Work
Remember, too, that federal and state officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution.
They do not take an oath to uphold judges’ opinions.
This means that if I’m a president or governor and a court issues a ruling I truly believe is unconstitutional, I have a duty to ignore it. Otherwise, I’m violating my oath.
“But what of rogue legislators or presidents?” some may ask. Well, what of rogue judges (who apparently are everywhere)?
The answer is the Founders’ one: No branch can intrude into the others’ spheres. This doesn’t mean there aren’t checks and balances. If, for example, a president believes a law is unconstitutional and refuses to enforce it, or takes an allegedly unconstitutional executive action, Congress can try to remove him; it can also impeach and remove renegade judges. As for House representatives themselves, the remedy is removal via the ballot box. This is why they must run for re-election every two years: Since they’re meant to be the most powerful branch (e.g., spending bills must originate in the House, and only it can file impeachment charges), they’re placed closest to the people’s reach.
Power means nothing, though, if not exercised. If congressional and executive powers are outsourced, it then can reduce us to what we’ve become: a government of, by and for judicial oligarchs.
So, no, President Trump doesn’t have to obey blatantly unconstitutional court opinions. This said, with how he’s shaking up the system and busy draining the bureaucratic swamp, it’s perhaps politically prudent to remedy the current judicial adventurism through the higher courts, as he’ll almost assuredly win on appeal. At some point, though, it will be time to drain that fetid judicial swamp and address the real constitutional crisis: the rule of judges who would be kings.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-12 14:51:242025-02-12 14:51:24No, Trump Does NOT Have to Abide by Mythical “Judicial Supremacy”
We had the chance to interview Dr. Ann Gillies the other day who is one of the most outspoken and well informed experts on the Marxist intersectional line of attack against sexual identity, “Critical gender theory”.
This focuses more on the facts and somewhat the law. But apply your understanding of Marxist dialectical lines of intersectional destruction and the information here gives you a more complete picture.Critical Gender Theory is to human sexuality, what mass immigration + multiculturalism is to a cohesive nation state.
The transgender movement isn’t about ‘affirming gender identity’—it’s a government-backed experiment that drugs, radicalizes, and mutilates children while systematically destroying sexual identity itself, unleashing a wave of violence no one dares to acknowledge.
The transgender movement isn’t just about freedom of personal sexual identity. It’s a full-scale attack on Western and biological sexual identity altogether. one that’s being carried out on vulnerable young people with irreversible consequences. Canadian Doctor Ann Gillies has spent years warning about the dangers of Marxist radical gender ideology, and in an exclusive interview with RAIR Foundation, she pulled no punches.
From violent transgender gangs and the capture of medicine to a corporate and ideological agenda and for government-backed destruction of the family, Dr. Gillies made one thing clear: this isn’t about helping people—it’s about control, manipulation, and chaos.
Transgender Killers and the Media Blackout
It’s a story you won’t hear on the news: a group of self-identified transgender killers operating a cult out of California, tied to a cult-like organization. The details are disturbing, but what’s more shocking is the near-total silence surrounding it.
“In Canada, we don’t hear about this stuff happening, which is a little scary,” Dr. Gillies said. “At the same time, it’s not surprising to me because what we’ve witnessed at different events where these individuals show up is a lot of aggression.”
Dr. Gillies pointed out that while this gang may not be massive, it doesn’t need to be. The connection between violent behavior and radical transgender ideology is becoming undeniable.
“These individuals have been on very strong hormones,” she said. “It’s dangerous—very dangerous. A lot of them are women transitioning to men, which means they’re on super high doses of testosterone.”
And the effects of those hormones? It’s a ticking time bomb.
Testosterone Overload: A Recipe for Psychosis
The human body isn’t designed to handle massive hormonal shifts, and the numbers Dr. Gillies laid out are staggering.
“The normal range of total testosterone in a female is between 10 and 50 nanograms per liter. But what’s being prescribed under so-called ‘gender-affirming care’? Anywhere between 300 to 1,000 nanograms.”
That’s 600 to 100 times the normal level—the kind of hormonal surge that has never been studied long-term in healthy women.
“What we’re seeing now, from reports by doctors like Michael Laidlaw, is that these super high levels of testosterone are causing severe psychiatric conditions,” Gillies warned. “It’s a prescription for insanity.”
The effects of these high doses include:
Extreme aggression
Manic-like euphoria and grandiosity
Psychotic breaks from reality
Violent, uncontrolled rages
Gillies explained that historically, the only people with these kinds of hormone levels were bodybuilders abusing steroids or individuals with extremely rare tumors. Now, this level of hormonal manipulation is being intentionally prescribed to young women and teenage girls.
“I’ve talked to several detransitioners,” Gillies said, “and one of the things they’ve said to me is, ‘It made me crazy.’”
And it’s not just leading to self-harm—it’s pushing some of them toward homicidal behavior.
Transgender Homicidal Ideation: The Story No One Will Tell
For years, activists have used suicidal ideation as an argument for “affirming” gender confusion. But Gillies raised another issue, one the media refuses to acknowledge:
What about homicidal ideation?
“There’s a lot of pent-up anger,” she said. “Unexplained, violent rages. That could easily lead to homicidal behavior. Easily.”
She pointed to real-world cases of transgender-identifying killers.
“You look at that young woman who was transitioning to male, who shot up a Christian school,” Gillies said. “This is the reality of what happens when you take young people who are already struggling, pump them full of hormones, and put them in a radical ideological bubble.”
Gillies made it clear: the vast majority of these individuals had pre-existing mental health conditions before transitioning.
“You take kids who already have mental health struggles, you put them on testosterone—which we know can cause aggression and psychosis—and you push them into an environment where they’re encouraged to think everyone is their enemy. What do you expect?”
This isn’t a fringe theory. It’s happening. And it’s deliberate.
Unapproved, Off-Label Drugs: The Greatest Medical Scandal in Modern History?
One of the most shocking revelations from the interview was that these hormone treatments aren’t even approved for “gender transitioning”.
“These medications aren’t even approved for what they’re being used for. They are simply hormone replacement therapies,” Gillies said. “Doctors are prescribing them off-label, at extreme dosages, to children.”
This means there have been no long-term studies on the impact of these drugs when used for gender transition—yet they are being given out like candy.
“This is a giant experiment,” Gillies said bluntly. “But instead of lab rats, they’re experimenting on kids.”
Bill C-4: The Law Criminalizing Parents
If a teacher convinces a child they are transgender, they are protected by law. But if a parent suggests their child wait until adulthood before making irreversible decisions? They can be charged with a crime.
“That’s exactly what Bill C-4 does,” Gillies confirmed.
“If a parent tries to talk their child out of transitioning, they can be reported for ‘conversion therapy.’ The child can be taken out of their home. It’s happened multiple times across Canada.”
Meanwhile, radical teachers and activists are free to indoctrinate children into gender confusion with no consequences.
“This is about dismantling the family,” Gillies warned. “It’s about removing parental rights and putting the government in charge of children.”
Trump’s Pushback: Will Canada Follow?
Gillies pointed out that while Canada is racing off the cliff, President Donald Trump has taken an unapologetic stance against this insanity.
“I wasn’t surprised when he said, ‘There are only two sexes,’” Gillies said. “I was thrilled. Because most people know that’s true.”
Trump is also going after the Department of Education, the driving force behind radical gender indoctrination in schools.
“Here’s a novel idea,” Gillies said. “Why don’t we have the money to follow the child? Let parents decide where to send their kids to school. That would end a lot of this garbage overnight.”
“We Need to Start Telling the Truth”
Gillies didn’t mince words: Canada is in trouble, and time is running out.
“Our children are being radicalized, medicalized, and mutilated. And if we don’t stop this, we’re going to see more and more violence—against them and by them.”
It’s not just about politics. It’s about basic reality.
“We need to start telling the truth,” she urged. “We need to stop being afraid of the mob. Because if we don’t fight back now, we’re going to lose a whole generation.”
The question is—will anyone listen before it’s too late?
EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column with video posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-02-11 14:51:272025-02-11 14:51:27VIDEO: Dr. Ann Gillies Interview On Trans-Killers, The Drugging of Our Youth Into Murderers