Amazing. With a clear display of exactly what’s wrong with the Washington Establishment “swamp”, over 200 people — in thoroughly and tellingly bipartisan fashion — have affixed their names to what they call “An Open Letter Opposing White House Retaliatory Investigations.” Among other things, the Open Letter says the following: We write with grave concern about the two presidential memoranda dated April 9, 2025, targeting Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, respectively — two former national security officials who served the people of the United States. These executive actions represent a dangerous escalation in the abuse of presidential power: weaponizing federal agencies to carry out personalized retribution against named individuals. The Letter goes on to say a decided falsehood. It says: Presidents of both parties have long respected the independence of federal law enforcement and refrained from using the power at their disposal to punish perceived enemies. Indeed, presidents have gone out of their way to avoid even the appearance of impropriety or influence. Say what? Were these people asleep when the Biden Justice Department and local Democrat prosecutors in New York and Georgia went out of their way to issue multiple indictments of Biden’s political opponent, Trump? It doesn’t take much to make a trip to Wikipedia and find this: Trump was indicted on state charges in a March 2023 indictment in New York. He faced 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records in the first degree related to payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The trial began on April 15, 2024; Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts on May 30, 2024. Sentencing was scheduled for September 18, but was delayed until November 26, 2024. On January 10, 2025, Trump received an unconditional discharge of his sentence. Trump was indicted in June 2023 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in a federal indictment related to classified government documents. Trump faced 40 criminal charges alleging mishandling of sensitive documents and conspiracy to obstruct the government in retrieving these documents. Trump was indicted in August 2023 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in a federal indictment related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump faces four criminal charges of conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. Trump was indicted on state charges in an August 2023 indictment in Georgia. Trump faces 8 criminal charges related to alleged attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, alongside 18 accused co-conspirators. In other words, contrary to the impression this Letter gives that previous presidents have “refrained from using the power at their disposal to punish perceived enemies,” the Biden administration and local Democrat prosecutors did exactly that. And to say the least, that was a decidedly authoritarian move on which both Taylor and Krebs were apparently and mysteriously silent. Using the power of the federal government and state governments in New York and Georgia, 44 — say again 44 — criminal charges against then-former President Trump were filed. Which is to say, this “Open Letter” is based on a serious untruth. Next is the conduct of the two ex-administration officials who are the subject of the Trump memoranda. The Letter says President Trump “is explicitly targeting two Americans because they exercised their First Amendment rights and criticized him.” Hello? This is decidedly not about two people who “exercised their First Amendment rights and criticized him.” That, too, is a decided untruth. What these people did was use their government positions — neither of them elected — to sabotage the elected president of the United States as he went about doing what he was elected to do: run the government of the United States. Both Miles Taylor who was serving in the Trump first term as a deputy chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security, and Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, did exactly what a federal government employee should never do: use their position in the government to undercut the elected president’s administration of that government. If a government employee in a president’s administration does not agree with their duly elected boss — then resign. Instead, Taylor took to the pages of the New York Times to write an op-ed headlined: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” Using the pseudonym “Anonymous,” Taylor betrayed both the president and his colleagues by using his office to attack the president — anonymously, of course — for his policies. In a display of typical Washington Establishment arrogance, Taylor proclaimed, as mentioned, that he was using his government position “to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” What he should have done if he disagreed with the President is what any 10-year old with an understanding of right and wrong would do. Namely, write a letter of resignation, hand it to his immediate boss — the secretary of homeland security — gather his belongings, decidedly not including internal correspondence that was government property — and leave the building. Taylor did the exact opposite. He skulked around using the trust bestowed on him that he was an honorable and honest public servant, and betrayed that trust. In the New York Times! In Krebs’s situation, as reported in The Hill, Krebs “was adamant that the nation’s elections were not compromised.” Amazing. As detailed previously in this very space, my own state of Pennsylvania has a very long, documented history of “compromised” elections. (RELATED: The Washington Post Attacks Pennsylvania Election Audit) As noted when written in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, and 2008, “there were repeated examples of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. All seriously documented.” I also noted this New York Times headline from 1994: “Vote-Fraud Ruling Shifts Pennsylvania Senate” The Times article began by reporting this, bold print for emphasis supplied:  Saying Philadelphia’s election system had collapsed under “a massive scheme” by Democrats to steal a State Senate election in November, a Federal judge today took the rare step of invalidating the vote and ordered the seat filled by the Republican candidate. With multiple examples of voter fraud from six — say again six — Pennsylvania elections seriously documented, for Krebs to be, as noted in the Hill, “adamant that the nation’s elections were not compromised” is amazing. Laughingly, this Letter closes by saying this: “These actions, if carried out, will leave a permanent stain on our institutions and erode our democracy. History will not forget who stood silent. We will not stand silent.” Say what???!!! “History will not forget who stood silent. We will not stand silent.” Newsflash? The signers of this letter signed exactly zero letters like this when the Biden administration and New York and Georgia Democrat prosecutors were leaving a “permanent stain on our institutions” and going about eroding our democracy with their multiple Trump prosecutions. Yet there is serious, if decidedly unintended, merit in this letter. It illustrates clearly to Americans who voted for President Trump that there is, in fact, a Washington Swamp run by the insiders of both parties, and they cannot abide Outsiders. In this case, that would be the Outsider-in-Chief, who is the duly elected President Donald Trump. In short? In short, the “Open Letter Opposing White House Retaliatory Investigations” has backfired. Backfired Big Time. Throwing a spotlight on the very real corruption that permeated the Biden administration and permeates Establishment Washington itself. To borrow from the Letter? “History will not forget who stood silent.” Exactly. Which is why the moment to stand up and not be silent about the corruption of the Washington Establishment’s letter has arrived. Well done, Washington Establishment. Well done! READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Three Cheers for Kid Rock Shapiro v. Clooney: Two Democrat Parties China and the Art of War The post A Washington Establishment Letter Targets Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

During his first term, President Donald Trump distinguished himself as arguably the most pro-life president the U.S. had ever seen, from issuing “heartbeat” protections for unborn children to becoming the first president to speak at the March for Life to appointing the U.S. Supreme Court justices instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. However, since the Court’s landmark decision, Trump has retreated from his once-stalwart defense of the unborn. His more “moderate” approach has left many pro-life Americans feeling as though they — and millions of unborn children — no longer have a champion. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our spring 2025 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it. Months before his historic, landslide electoral victory last year, Trump publicly announced that he did not intend to advance pro-life policies or measures at the federal level. “The states will determine by vote or legislation — or perhaps both — and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said in April of 2024, after denigrating the Republican Party’s longstanding commitment to pro-life principles in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections. Trump has seemingly followed through on his campaign announcement, much to the dismay of many of his most loyal supporters. Although he has pardoned dozens of pro-life Americans targeted for prosecution by the Biden administration and promised to enforce the Hyde Amendment, effectively defunding abortion behemoth Planned Parenthood, the president has refused to endorse pro-life legislation at the federal level and has committed to expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which results in the deaths of far more unborn children than abortion does. For those of us who have supported Trump, in no small part due to his pro-life record — and have endured years of being derided as racists, fascists, and Nazis for doing so — his capitulation on pro-life issues is more than disheartening. There is, however, a strong case to be made for Trump reversing his position and once again standing as a champion of the unborn. First of all, the president is incorrect when he declares that overturning Roe relegated abortion to the status of a state-level issue. In his Supreme Court opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” At no point did the Court restrict abortion legislation to the states or bar the federal government from legislating on the issue. In fact, he wrote that the Court was returning “the power to weigh those arguments to the people and their elected representatives.” There is nothing — at least not as far as the Supreme Court’s ruling is concerned — to prevent elected representatives at the federal level from issuing stringent pro-life legislation. Any argument to the contrary is disingenuous and erroneous. There are, of course, unfortunate political realities that some in Congress feel inhibit the possibility of authoring and passing protections for the unborn. But even these political realities are, to a large extent, malleable, particularly in Trump’s hands. The president has already demonstrated, on numerous occasions, the significant sway he holds over the Republican Party. Despite nearly a decade of the most aggressive propaganda campaign ever launched against a U.S. presidential candidate, he managed to return to the White House, winning not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote. Were he to launch a campaign to outlaw the slaughter of the unborn, he would more than likely find a way to succeed and still maintain better-than-average polling numbers. The U.S. cannot be a patchwork of red states and blue states waging legal wars over abortion. An effort to boldly and clearly confront and eradicate the evil of abortion is morally necessary. It is also, however, rapidly becoming constitutionally necessary. Recently, Louisiana and Texas, states that both have strong pro-life protections, have clashed with New York over abortion. Specifically, an abortionist in New York has mailed abortion pills to women in Louisiana and Texas, violating those states’ laws. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, filed to extradite the abortionist who sent abortion pills to a parish near Baton Rouge, while a Texas judge fined the abortionist in excess of $10,000. Empire State Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has rejected Louisiana’s extradition attempts and refused to comply with the fine from Texas. New York has “shield” laws in place, allowing abortionists in the state to violate pro-life laws in other states without fear of consequence. He has before him an opportunity to avert what would likely become a calamitous national conflict. The U.S. cannot be a patchwork of red states and blue states waging legal wars over abortion. When the courts cannot or will not resolve those conflicts, that war will inevitably take a more brutal shape. The U.S. Supreme Court has already declared, in clear and reasoned terms, that abortion cannot be decided by judicial fiat. Yet the issue is of profound moral gravity, even more so than the issue of slavery, which was one of the chief factors in tearing the U.S. apart in the bloody Civil War. President Trump has declared himself a peacemaker and a champion for Americans, especially those who have been ignored, forgotten, silenced, and maligned by their government over the years. He has before him an opportunity to avert what would likely become a calamitous national conflict and, at the same time, fight for those who have been the most ignored, forgotten, silenced, and maligned by their government: the millions of unborn innocents slaughtered by abortion. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our spring 2025 print magazine. The post Why Trump Should Act Against Abortion appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Foreign Affairs magazine continues its establishment anti-Trump ethos with a feature article by Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the American Enterprise Institute titled “The Renegade Order,” which parrots his new book The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World. In the article, Brands faintly praises Trump for recognizing geopolitical shifts in the global order, but concludes that Trump’s “illiberal,” and “insurrectionist,” and “anti-democratic” tendencies have only gotten worse in his second term, and warns that “Trump’s world could become a very dark place.” And in the process of bashing Trump — which has become a ritual with most of those who write for Foreign Affairs — Brands distorts the classical geopolitical analyses of Halford Mackinder. To be sure, Mackinder and other classical geopolitical analysts are worth reading today, but the devil is in the details. (RELATED: Mackinder’s ‘Pivot Paper’ Still Relevant 120 Years Later) Eurasia is still the world’s dominant landmass, and hostile control of its geography and resources would endanger the security of the United States. The geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia is still a vital national security interest of the United States. Trump clearly recognizes that — his foreign policy approach is to attempt to drive a wedge between China and Russia, the two greatest powers on the Eurasian continent, while avoiding peripheral wars that sap our resources and undermine our ability to meet existential threats. Brands, however, urges Trump to “exploit escalation rather than avoid it” in Ukraine, and claims that Europe won’t be secure without a “decent peace” in Ukraine. Brands was and is a proponent of NATO enlargement who refuses to acknowledge that expanding NATO further towards Russia’s borders had anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, Brands wrote an article in May 2019 titled “If NATO Expansion Was a Mistake, Why Hasn’t Putin Invaded?,” perhaps forgetting that Putin took back the Crimea five years earlier (after the U.S. sponsored a “color revolution” in Ukraine that deposed a pro-Russian Ukrainian leader) and three years later invaded Ukraine again. (RELATED: Europe Is No Longer Worth Defending) Trump’s efforts to end the Ukraine War on imperfect terms meet with cries of “Putin apologist” and promoter of “autocracy,” views with which Brands obviously sympathizes. The growing number of foreign policy establishment thinkers who dismiss the possibility of a Sino-Russian rift resembles those in the 1950s and early 1960s who ridiculed the George Kennans of the world who appreciated the possibilities of a Sino-Soviet split long before it manifested itself on the global scene. (RELATED: Why Trump Is Pissed Off at Putin) Brands is an avowed Atlanticist who longs for a return of the mythical “rules-based international order,” which he believes Trump is endangering by encouraging autocrats like Putin to revise that order. Brands envisions the specter of an “autocratic alliance” (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) presumably dominating Mackinder’s “heartland” and endangering American security. Brands in his book repeatedly cites Mackinder’s 1904 pivot paper and 1919 book Democratic Ideals and Reality, but he neglects to factor in Mackinder’s last word on the subject in, of all places, Foreign Affairs titled “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace.” Mackinder wrote this article in the midst of the Second World War, and he envisioned a “balanced globe of human beings” where Eurasia was divided by Russia, Western Europe (with British and American offshore support), a rising China, and a rising India (“Monsoon lands”). Mackinder said nothing about promoting democracy or expanding a rules-based international order. The statesman he admired most was Bismarck, the consummate realist. Not democratic ideals, but the balance of power and spheres of influence, would produce order and stability, according to Mackinder. NATO enlargement — championed by Brands and many others — would likely have appalled Mackinder, just as it would have appalled another hero of democracy, Winston Churchill. Churchill, Brands may recall, offered Josef Stalin the “percentages deal” near the end of World War II, recognizing that spheres of influence and the balance of power were more important than spreading democracy. Churchill was also willing to negotiate spheres of influence in Europe with Stalin in the early 1950s. The key to understanding Russia, Churchill said, was Russian national interests. Trump understands that. Hal Brands does not. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Buckley at 100 Trump, Theodore Roosevelt, and US Naval Power The Importance of Elbridge Colby The post Hal Brands Distorts Mackinder to Bash Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In 2023, the Criminal Investigation Division (CI) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sought to hire special agents deploying firearms who “must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.” Rep. Barry Moore thinks that was a bad idea.  The congressman’s “Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act” prohibits the IRS from using federal funds “to buy, receive or store firearms and ammo” and requires “the transfer of IRS firearms and ammunition to the Administrator of General Services. The firearms and ammunition would then be auctioned to licensed dealers, put on sale to the public, and the proceeds used “for the sole purpose of deficit reduction.”  For another reason the IRS should not have guns, taxpayers might recall the hearings on the “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” by the Senate Finance Committee in 1987. As testimony revealed, IRS bosses posted signs reading “seizure fever, catch it!” and rewarded agents who confiscated the most property.  Whistleblowers testifying behind a screen, a Newsweek report noted, “told of an IRS that is a virtual police state within a democracy, a Borgia-like fiefdom of tax terror at the heart of the U.S. economy.” Unlike other government agencies, the IRS “wields vast power with wide discretion in every American’s life, yet it endures no regular oversight.” With a predatory, unaccountable enforcement division deploying firearms, the IRS could easily shoot first and avoid questions later, like the FBI in the case of Craig Robertson, gunned down in 2023 for threats against Joe Biden he allegedly made online. Selling off IRS guns and ammo could prevent such an outcome, but the measure might need fine-tuning.  All sales should be final, with no buybacks at any level, and not limited to the IRS. As the people should know, the federal Department of Education (ED), a legacy of the Carter administration, deploys an enforcement division armed with Remington Model 870 shotguns. Those guns would be better off in the hands of hunters and skeet shooters.  The federal government might also look to sell off surplus military firearms, altered for civilian use where necessary. As the U.S. Constitution makes clear, the people have the right to keep and bear arms, but why should an act aimed at deficit reduction be limited to guns and ammunition?  The people also have a right to property, but the federal government owns 80.1 percent of Nevada, 63.1 percent of Utah, 60.9 percent of Alaska, 52.3 percent of Oregon, and 45.4 percent of California.  The sale of federal land could help settle America’s debt obligations, as my colleagues, William Shughart and Carl Close explain, now “so huge that traditional methods for improving the government’s fiscal stance — namely, by raising more tax revenue, printing more money, or refinancing/reissuing government debt — are inadequate to the task and would create a host of major problems.”  The sale of federal government assets avoids these problems and offers advantages. “Asset liquidation could be better tied to debt reduction so that the revenues are not diverted to other government programs.” As ownership and control of the formerly government-owned assets move to the private sector, “profit-motivated business owners and entrepreneurs gain incentives to employ those assets in ways that maximize their economic value.”  For their part, non-profits would gain the ability to manage resources “in a manner consistent with their missions, rather than relying on the indirect method of lobbying the government.” It’s a win-win situation. “The road to national solvency is paved with sales receipts from the U.S. government’s vast property holdings,” the authors contend, “particularly its untapped treasure trove of energy deposits. The time has come to take that road and enlist others for the journey. The public debt clock is ticking. Let’s get started.”   Perhaps with a bill titled, “Why Does the Federal Government Need so Much Land?” READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Tulsi’s Task Force: From the CIA to EIS and Beyond Militarizing Misery: LA Enlists NeverTrumper in Recovery Effort Karen Bass Fails to ‘Build Back Better’ Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. The post Sell IRS Guns and Ammo to the People appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Bernie Sanders, traveling around America on his Fighting Oligarchy tour. The message is clear: billionaires are bad, the economy is rigged, and the people must be empowered. Crowds roar, fists raised in solidarity. The same speeches. The same outrage. The same thunderous applause. The same garbage. While Sanders decries wealth inequality and corporate greed, he zigzags across the country in the ultimate symbol of elite privilege: a private jet. Not once. Not in an emergency. Just this past quarter, his campaign spent more than $220,000 on private air travel, an expense completely at odds with the populist, working-class image he’s spent decades cultivating. (RELATED: Bernie Sanders and AOC Go Hunting for Oligarchs) And that’s just the start. This is the man who once made a career out of attacking “millionaires and billionaires.” Then, when he became a millionaire, he quietly dropped one of those words. Now it’s just the billionaires who are the problem. His wealth, you see, is different. It’s justified. Sanders wrote a bestselling book, after all. However, if we’re being perfectly honest here, book sales alone don’t explain the numerous houses, private jet travel, and a campaign bank account that bleeds like a hedge fund. The man who preaches frugality lives like the system’s biggest beneficiaries. If that feels hard to square, you’re not alone. As Michael Bloomberg once remarked: “The best-known socialist in the country is a millionaire with three houses.” Sanders didn’t deny it. That’s because he couldn’t. He simply muttered something about one of the homes being a summer camp on Lake Champlain. Apparently, in Bernie’s weird world, lakefront property doesn’t count if you don’t call it a mansion. It’s a pattern that’s become impossible to ignore. The senator from Vermont isn’t just out of touch; he has become a parody of his own populist message. The lavish lifestyle. The ever-shifting definitions of who qualifies as a threat to democracy. In 2016, the problem was anyone who was wealthy. In 2020, it was just the ultra-wealthy. In 2025, it’s everyone who can afford a lifestyle he obviously enjoys but pretends not to. On stage, he speaks in absolutes about the need to dismantle the oligarchy. Offstage, he charters flights through firms like Cirrus Aviation, N-Jet, and Ventura Jets, spending millions in campaign funds over the years while claiming to stand in solidarity with the working class. During his current tour alone, those firms accounted for nearly 75 percent of his total transportation costs. You don’t need to be a Wall Street analyst to see what’s happening here. Also, it’s important to remember that this is a man who also accepted donations from health insurance and pharmaceutical executives, the very industries he told voters were corrupt and should be shut out of politics. When ABC News uncovered those contributions back in 2019, Sanders called on his rivals to disavow those donors while quietly pocketing the cash himself. What’s so infuriating is not just the hypocrisy; it’s the sanctimony. Sanders is a full-blown brand. His campaign now functions like a traveling revival tent, part sermon, part merchandise booth. The oligarch he fights today is Musk; tomorrow, it’ll be someone else. But never himself. When pressed on his wealth, he gets defensive. “I don’t really give a damn about money,” he told the podcaster Lex Fridman last year, before explaining that he drives an old car, wears a solar-powered watch, and lives in “middle-class” homes. Three of them. In Vermont, D.C., and Lake Champlain. This would be laughable if it weren’t so dishonest. Sanders sells a story of righteous poverty while living in luxury that most Americans can only dream of. And yet he continues to speak as though he’s scraping by, still the working-class kid from a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. He’s not. Far from it. Of course, he’s well aware of this fact. In the same interview with Fridman, Sanders even admitted, “It’s a very easy trap to fall into — you can get separated from ordinary people and their struggles.” No kidding. What the oligarch-opposing octogenarian fails to grasp, or more likely refuses to acknowledge, is that the trap isn’t just about losing touch. It’s about exploiting the idea of being in touch in the first place. The illusion that he’s still a transparent representative for the people, flying Spirit Airlines, living a humble existence, untouched by power or comfort, is exactly that: an illusion. It’s nothing more than political theater. And it’s all a lie. When a man who preaches against excess begins to embody it, and when his followers cheer anyway, we’re witnessing a complete breakdown of political accountability. Sanders’s defenders will say the jet flights are for efficiency. The homes are not as spectacular as people with eyes and functioning brains think they are. That the donations were a mistake. That the message matters more than the messenger. They’re wrong. And here’s the most important point of all: Bernie Sanders is a far bigger fraud than Donald Trump ever was or ever could be. For all his bombast, the president never pretended to be poor. He didn’t hide his ambition behind moral purity. He flaunted his wealth and made no apologies for it. Sanders, on the other hand, lived and lives like a king while preaching austerity. Trump sold success. Sanders sold virtue, and then quietly cashed in. The left loves to accuse Trump of being a fake and a phony, but their hero is the real trickster. The revolution doesn’t fly private. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop pretending it does READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: Is Adam Sandler America’s Finest Actor? 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