President Trump Explains Why He is Suing Big Tech, With Links to Lawsuit Filings

Today President Donald Trump presented an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal explaining why he is suing Big Tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter. You can find the filings here:  YouTube/Google Lawsuit HERE and Facebook Lawsuit HERE

Donald J Trump – “One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it.

Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media—banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends.

No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence. They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself. Consider content that was censored in the past year. Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true. In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post—America’s oldest newspaper—for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden’s family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute.

Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social-media accounts of the sitting president. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you—and believe me, they are.

Jennifer Horton, a Michigan schoolteacher, was banned from Facebook for sharing an article questioning whether mandatory masks for young children are healthy. Later, when her brother went missing, she was unable to use Facebook to get the word out. Colorado physician Kelly Victory was deplatformed by YouTube after she made a video for her church explaining how to hold services safely. Kiyan Michael of Florida and her husband, Bobby, lost their 21-year-old son in a fatal collision caused by a twice-deported illegal alien. Facebook censored them after they posted on border security and immigration enforcement.

Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists and the Iranian dictator spew threats and hateful lies on these platforms with impunity.

This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country. That is why in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I filed class-action lawsuits to force Big Tech to stop censoring the American people. The suits seek damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts.

Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist.

Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party. As the cases of fellow plaintiffs Ms. Horton, Dr. Victory and the Michael family demonstrate, in practice this amounts to suppression of speech that those in power do not like.

Further, Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms according to the guidance of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Big Tech and traditional media entities formed the Trusted News Initiative, which essentially takes instructions from the CDC about what information they need to “combat.” The tech companies are doing the government’s bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas.

This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can’t use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful and un-American.

Through these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents. I will never stop fighting to defend the constitutional rights and sacred liberties of the American people.”  (link)

Part 2 – The Fourth Branch of Government, The Intelligence Branch

Part 2 of a series by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

If we start with this interview between Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald, we can see they get a lot of the foundation correct, but they misaligned the cornerstone.

When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate.  As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan {SEE DAY ONE}, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.

When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer.  Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.

WATCH the Interview:

Carlson notes his conversation with the congressional intelligence committee member was two years ago.  The discussion was with Trey Gowdy, and the conversation surrounded Gowdy’s decision to leave congress and the opportunity presented by Fox News to become a contracted contributor.

TC and GG say that congress is the solution to eliminating the fourth and superseding branch of government, The Intelligence Branch.  This is an exercise in futility because the legislative branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch.  The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.

Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner.  Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee.  None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

[Note: You might remember when Vice-chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018.  It was not accidental that exact senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself.  That republican senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate.  The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority.  Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily.  Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s chief of staff and Valerie Jarrett was senior advisor.

Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the mid-term “shellacking” caused by Obamacare backlash.  Mitch McConnell was minority leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign.  McConnell’s friend Senator Bob Bennett getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.

Dirty Harry and Mitch McConell saw the TEA Party through the same prism.  The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky.  This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.

In many ways the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy.  Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.

Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms.  Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015.  Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair.  Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate and Mitch McConnell took power again.

Republicans were in control of the SSCI in 2015 when the intelligence branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway.   [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.]   The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017.  Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.

Bottom line…. the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.

When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most.  They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct.  Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice-Chairman.

Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice-President, recommended fellow Hosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  [Apply hindsight here]

♦To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.  Remember Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama.  Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence.

Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes?  Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?  Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?

Contrast that amount of HPSCI railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by SSCI Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.

Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?

Oh, how quickly we forget:

The contrast of ideological alignment between the HPSCI, SSCI and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation.  You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch.   The SSCI facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the SSCI.  It really is that simple.

♦ The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI).  The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity.  I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design. I have looked the at stunned faces when I present silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another.

Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations.  Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote.  If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination.  The president is then blocked from that appointment.  This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.

♦ Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process.  The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret.  There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch.  {Go Deep} and {Go Deep}  This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

No-one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to.  Doubt this?… ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

♦ The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves.  They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work-product that is created by anyone else.  The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not.  The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not.  A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]

♦ Similarly the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information.  The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control.  If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her?   {Again, GO DEEP}  How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?… They have to go through the SSCI confirmation… See the problem?

Yes there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort.  As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. TC and GG have their emphasis on the wrong syllable.  Their cornerstone is false.

For their own self-preservation; the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years.  The cornerstone to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the legislative branch from coordinating with the intelligence branch.

Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch.   Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results.  Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.

More soon...

9 Years Ago, Andrew Breitbart Revealed Obama’s Ties To Critical Race Theory ‘Godfather,’ And Corporate Media Waved It Away

'It was like shouting into a dark room in the early years,' Joel Pollak said.

by Gabe Kaminsky for The Federalist

Critical race theory has blossomed in the United States into a culture war between institutions and those they purport to serve. As usual, legacy media have colluded to delegitimize any objections by either minimizing the dogma, re-defining it, or denying its existence. Americans ought to consider the media’s frenzy to smear writers exposing CRT in 2012 when examining the reality of today.

After Andrew Breitbart indicated at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he had footage to substantiate that President Barack Obama maintained a relationship with a prominent critical race theorist, it led to a news storm.

Breitbart’s fiery speech led to a now all-too-familiar CRT battle between two opposing media forces. Breitbart.com released footage of Obama speaking at a diversity protest in support of a professor named Derrick Bell, whom the outlet’s former editor Ben Shapiro referred to in an explainer column as “the father of Critical Race Theory (CRT).” Heritage Foundation fellow Mike Gonzalez told me in an email he is more like the “godfather” of CRT.

A Familiar Media Smear

Bell, a Harvard University Law professor at the time, was overwhelmingly defended by left-leaning pundits, as was Obama. If you can picture it, and hopefully you can given how investigative journalist Christopher Rufo and others have been treated by media today, Breitbart’s writers were lambasted as conspiracy theorists.

Joel Pollak, the editor-in-chief at the time and now the current Breitbart editor-at-large, was implicitly called racist on CNN by host Soledad O’Brien, a “smear artist” in The New Yorker, and told in The Nation he was unreasonably rebuking “intellectual leaders in a long tradition of calling on America to address racial unfairness.”

“The Breitbart.com approach is to turn every last human gesture into evidence in an ongoing character trial conducted by the most zealous members of an ideological tribe,” declared The Atlantic. “The people in charge of Breitbart.com belong on a 1990s college campus chanting ‘the personal is the political’ and fighting with their far-left analogs. Instead they’re running a popular conservative Web site, which tells you just how intellectually bankrupt movement conservatism has become.”

Rolling Stone rejected CRT’s radicalism, declaring, “Anyone who thinks power and race don’t figure in how the law is applied or that racism is a thing of the past is not paying attention.”

The narrative construction was equally apparent in Slate, which railed against Breitbart’s claim that CRT means tearing down meritocracy, or the American system. The key was to normalize it — just like today.

“And many of [Bell’s] ideas are not radical today in the sense of being outside the mainstream: Critical race theory is widely taught and studied, not only in law but in sociology, education, and other fields,” wrote Slate’s Will Oremus. “And it is part of the mainstream debates over affirmative action, immigration, and hate-crime laws.”

Pollak told me, “It was like shouting into a dark room in the early years,” noting the difficulty in years past with getting media to adequately focus on CRT. Just as Rufo recently credited himself and others with having “successfully frozen” the left’s CRT into the American psyche, the media in 2012 launched a campaign to instill the idea that Breitbart and the “right-wing radicals” were promoting nonsense.

However — and this is the important part — it turned out to be a sham. Media Matters, the far-left George Soros-backed group, admitted as much last week. While displaying a clear reluctance to acknowledge the obvious, Media Matters claimed while Breitbart’s reporting “failed” at the time, it has led to conservatives “dust[ing] off the same playbook from 2012.”

“Nearly a decade later, Breitbart News’ failed smear of critical race theory is back — and this time it appears to be working,” the group stated.

Corporate Media Loves to Downplay Critical Race Theory

Clearly, legacy media is paying attention nowadays to CRT. But how they do is the kicker. While it is true MSNBC’s Joy Reid told Rufo last month CRT is “made up” and merely “Christopher Rufo theory,” it’s the same old tune.

The left has sought for a decade to bury conservative media’s findings on CRT. Today’s commentators are engaged in a schizophrenic-like frenzy to protect their institutional allies. It is as if Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC News, and others have turned back the clock to 2012, with the targeting of Breitbart, Pollak, Shapiro, and all the rest mirrored in the young journalists who have taken this stuff on.

The only difference is that CRT is much more mainstream now than it was then. It’s ubiquitous. And the media is now faced with a reckoning. Can it truly hide something right in front of the people’s eyes like it did last time? Where will it end?

Just this week, Reid ventured to say conservative backlash to CRT is equivalent to far-right extremism. It is “an all-out war for power,” she said, as well as the effort is “steeped in…white nationalism.”

“Making it ‘Christopher Rufo theory’ is a way of personalizing it. The old [Saul] Alinsky method of personalizing something. And if they can demonize him enough, maybe this will go away and people will stop talking about it,” Pollak also told me.

Americans See The Truth

What we are witnessing today is the culmination of years of independent and conservative media reporting that validates what many people have come to realize: Corporate media will do whatever it can, however, it can, to hide the truth in order to appease party allies and mold narratives consistent with their political ideology.

CRT’s emergence into the public consciousness — albeit more widespread given its application in schools — is nothing new. But deceitful elites would have you think so. The media has been fortunate to be able to mold what Americans think of their history for decades.

But unlike 2012 — when parents did not overwhelmingly deal with CRT-infested curricula and employees could clock in and out without hearing the word “equity” — it is all too real.

At this point, the more corrupt outlets decry CRT as just another right-wing conspiracy, the more Americans will recognize the truth. Too many leftists who read teleprompters in soulless studios and craft editorialized theses crave nothing but power. Even if it means destroying America with manufactured racial tension to get it.

Fear Inc: 6 Months After Jan. 6, The Only Thing Democrats Are Serious About Is Power

The 6 month anniversary of the Capitol riot not by Black Lives Matter exposes exactly how unserious the left is about the reality of that day -- and how serious they are about using it for their own political ends.

by Christopher Bedford for The Federalist

The fencing around the Capitol is still up. It’s been up for more than half a year.

“Jan. 6 was worse than 9/11,” a guest and host agreed on MSNBC, above a chyron accusing the GOP of trying “to rewrite history.” The segment “nails” it, HuffPo gushed.

In interviews with Vice, reporters cried. They said they can’t sleep anymore and are afraid to go to work. “I used to call the Capitol my girlfriend,” one adult man said, choking back tears.

Democrats tried to launch a truth commission with unfettered authority and access to their political opponents’ records and communications. The riot, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi intoned, “was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history. ”

Some of them told CBS they’ve formed a support group and are in therapy now. Another donated his blue suit to the Smithsonian Museum for posterity. Perhaps some more ought to seek therapy.

Meanwhile, the raids on suspects continue, while some arrested months ago are still being held in solitary confinement. In the early days of the investigation, every available FBI agent was reportedly assigned to the case, which is still ongoing. Six months in they crowed that they’d seized a Lego set from one man’s home.

As a regular consumer of this cringe-inducing panic pornography, you could be forgiven for not knowing all the power of the FBI has failed to unmask the suspiciously Antifa-looking suspect who set live and deadly pipe bombs at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters. He’s received nearly zero attention from either congressional Democrats or their media fixers. It’s funny.

You might also be forgiven for not realizing only one person was killed that day. Her name was Ashli Babbitt, she was one of the rioters, she was unarmed, and she was shot by an officer — although we still don’t know the officer’s name.

Corporate reporters don’t seem bothered by this. Nor do any appear bothered by their roles in spreading the lie that Officer Brian Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Nor do any appear concerned with tracking down the suspects and instigators of months of national race riots that killed dozens of innocent people, destroyed hundreds of millions in property, and were cheered on by Democrats.

Also, while a “bipartisan report released by the top Republican and Democrat on both the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Rules and Administration Committee” found that the Capitol Police failed to protect the the Capitol that day, and while six months later CNN reports they still are in complete disarray, the Capitol Police are busily expanding their authority beyond the Capitol they failed to secure.

The six-month anniversary of the Capitol riot not by Black Lives Matter exposes exactly how unserious the left is about the reality of that day — and how serious they are about using it for their own political ends.

It isn’t simple bungling that leads elected officials to lie about Sicknick practically disregarding an active terrorist and the shooting of Babbitt. It isn’t casual foolishness that brings the entire weight of the FBI down on one riot while many of the the leaders of last summer’s deadly race riots, including those at the White House targeting Republicans, remained uncharged or free. It’s not just a goofy side note that we’re barraged with daily updates on what toys were seized from which suspect’s home while calling down the memories of those American men and women who died and who gave their lives in the service of our country on Sept. 11, 2001.

Fear is an industry in politics. In Washington, fear earns votes, it mints money, and it concentrates power. But it’s a hungry thing: It requires fences, museum exhibits, and especially daily headlines to keep going, or it fades away and is forgotten.

Why did that MSNBC guest claim that one riot was worse than 9/11? Because, he said, it’s given “permission to people to pursue autocratic means.” By “people,” he doesn’t mean the people in power, but  the targets of the people in power; the targets of their fear-mongering.

“Do you know what scares me the most?” the host replied, “That I’m not sure that most… elected Democrats in Washington agree with us or are as afraid as we are.”

We know she and her friends will do their best to change that. And fear is an industry that we should very much be afraid of.

Secure Law and Order in America

If the median American is afraid to step outside his 

or her house, little else in our politics matters.

by Josh Hammer for American Greatness

Over July Fourth weekend, according to CNN, at least 233 people were killed and 618 others were injured in more than 500 shootings across the country. Unbelievably, those tragic statistics actually represent a 26 percent decrease from July Fourth weekend in 2020. But overall, violent crime in 2021 across the nation—and especially in major urban corridors—has only increased over 2020’s horrific baseline. Nationwide murder rates in 2021 to date show a roughly 25 percent annual increase over 2020, and that number spikes to roughly 30 percent in our large cities. In New York City, there has been a 32 percent year-to-date increase in rape and a 42 percent increase in grand larceny.

Increasingly, Americans do not need to look very far to experience the horrific violence in an up-close and personal manner. Last week, for instance, a 22-year-old University of Chicago student was senselessly killed by what appeared to be a stray bullet while riding the subway system near the university’s Hyde Park campus. As a University of Chicago alum and former Hyde Park resident, that could have very easily been me. But such heartbreaks are not limited to the city of Chicago, America’s murder capital. All across the nation, “could have easily been me” is becoming commonplace, as Americans survey the carnage and destruction all around them.

The extended escalation in violent crime in America began in earnest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s unfortunate death. Black Lives Matter, an avowedly Marxist organization despite its anodyne-sounding name, immediately latched onto the post-Floyd national racial reckoning and instrumentalized it for its own agenda. Together with Antifa and various left-wing anarchist groups, BLM helped orchestrate a summer of riotous mayhem and bloodshed like the country had not seen in decades. Major cities were hit the worst, but even distant suburbs such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, were not spared the BLM-antifa warpath.

The 2020 summer of hell—since extended into a lengthier, ongoing hellish period—was deeply exacerbated by the pointed re-emergence of what the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald has accurately called “The War on Cops.” Almost immediately after the pitiful video of Derek Chauvin’s cruel knee suffocating Floyd went viral, the Left saw a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance its de-civilizational, pro-crime, and anti-police agenda.

Many already ascendant “criminal justice reform” initiatives, such as New York state’s outrageous “bail reform” law, took on renewed interest and were mirrored across the nation. Morally obtuse, anti-police rhetoric reached a fever pitch, disincentivizing cops from walking the beat (a proven crime deterrent) and inducing eye-popping retirement application submissions from active-duty cops. Qualified immunity, an abstruse legal doctrine, became a subject of intense national intrigue. George Soros-funded light-on-crime “progressive prosecutors” continued to cite “prosecutorial discretion” as a way to shirk their solemn responsibilities to enforce even low-level and petty crime, in line with the effective “broken windows policing” of the recent past. Federal jailbreak metastasized, as weak-on-crime judges sought to curry public favor with disproportionately light sentencing and early releases. And all along, far too many libertarians have stood in lockstep with the de-civilizational Left.

Enough is enough. The property and violent crime epidemic we are currently enduring might befit an ill-governed Third-World hellhole, but it ought to be utterly, unequivocally anathema to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Americans must rise up in unison to demand better of their public officials at every level of governance: Stop demonizing the police; give the police the funding and moral and rhetorical support they need to do their jobs; and increase the number of cops on the beat in crime-addled jurisdictions all across the nation. Recall pro-criminal, Soros-aligned “progressive prosecutors,” and elect district attorneys who will actually enforce the full breadth of the law.

We must also stop the absurdity of calling cops “racist” for merely prophylactically patrolling and retroactively stopping crime where actual crime occurs. As Mac Donald recently noted in City Journal, for example, in 2019, blacks in New York City constituted 74 percent of city-wide shooting suspects, even though they are only 23 percent of the city’s population. In other words, a cop who finds himself disproportionately intervening in a minority community is less likely to be a racist and more likely to simply be following the evidence and dutifully responding to 911 telephone operators who relay messages of “shots fired.”

Just as confronting the Chinese Communist Party is our most pressing foreign issue, so, too, has securing law and order become our most pressing domestic issue. If the median American is afraid to step outside his or her house, little else in our politics matters.