Is the Government Directing Big Tech Censorship?

Details in a case filed in a federal district court suggest government-directed censorship on social media and the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

by Adam Mill for American Greatness

We’ve heard it a thousand times: “The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private social media platforms.” That statement, however, presumes the private company’s independence from government action. But what if the social media platform defers censorship decisions to the government itself? Can the government circumvent free speech protections by using a cut-out to censor citizen speech critical of its policies or preferred political candidates? 

An explosive case filed in the Federal District Court of the Western District of Louisiana may shine a light on the federal government’s role in Big Tech censorship.

On July 12, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty (appointed by President Trump in 2017) granted permission for plaintiffs to conduct discovery into whether federal agencies violated the First Amendment rights of Americans by allegedly directing social media platforms to censor disfavored viewpoints and content. These topics include, “Speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns, and speech about election integrity and security of voting by mail.” More importantly, these agencies stand accused of working with social media companies to suppress, “The Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election.” If true, the government-directed censorship constitutes the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

According to plaintiffs, the alleged government-sponsored tech censorship is ongoing. Plaintiffs filed a “Motion for Preliminary Injunction,” requesting an order prohibiting government defendants from, “taking steps to . . . encourage, pressure . . . any social-media company or platform to censor, suppress,” etc., “. . . any speaker, content, or viewpoint expressed on social media.” The attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the lawsuit against various federal agencies on behalf of residents of each of these states.

The government opposed the lawsuit arguing that the states lacked standing to challenge government efforts to suppress speech on social media platforms. The court denied this challenge noting the states have standing because the laws and constitution of each state guarantee their residents free speech. The court noted that the lawsuit alleged injuries which, “are ‘imminent’ and allegedly ‘on-going,’ due to allegations of social media suspensions, removals of disfavored viewpoints, and censorship.” Federal agency suppression of citizen free speech, if proven, violates the laws and constitutions of those states.

The plaintiffs seek to force the federal government to reveal “the identities of federal officials who have or are communicating with social-media platforms about disinformation, misinformation . . . or any form of censorship or suppression of online speech,” in addition to “the nature and content of such federal officials’ communication with such social media platforms.” The plaintiffs have also asked for permission to “serve third-party subpoenas,” on selected social media platforms seeking, “similar information about the identity of federal officials who communicate with them, and the nature and content of these communications.”

Anticipating bad-faith objections and legal gymnastics to obstruct discovery, the plaintiffs further requested the court to rule on all objections. The court found, “the requests are reasonable,” and that, “Missouri and Louisiana have shown good cause for expedited,” discovery to aid in the resolution of the requested preliminary injunction. The court granted permission to the plaintiffs to serve the federal agencies with written discovery and third party subpoenas on “up to five major social-media platforms,” regarding the alleged coordination between the government and the platforms to censor and suppress speech. The judge then granted a mere 30 days for the federal agencies to respond. 

What’s more, the court informed the federal agencies that it would promptly rule on any attempts to thwart the requests. The court even established a schedule for ruling on the preliminary injunction. 

In October 2020, immediately after the release of the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the Daily Mail reported Facebook told Congress that it censored the information after the FBI told the platform that the information came from a “hack and leak” Russian disinformation campaign. The New York Post, which exclusively reported on much of the information, fiercely contested this claim—providing a detailed account of how a computer repair store owner legally obtained the laptop. Indeed, the Daily Mail published copies of a receipt bearing Hunter Biden’s signature which appeared to confirm the Post’s account of the origins of the story.

While the public has known about a letter signed by more than 50 former intelligence officials characterizing the laptop story as Russian disinformation, this is something different. A confirmation that current government officials helped censor the story would represent a significant development in the saga. As noted by the Epoch Times, the media coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story likely impacted the election outcome. If, as the plaintiffs allege, the social media companies acted at the direction of federal agencies falsely disputing the authenticity of the laptop, such a scandal would raise serious questions about the fairness of the 2020 election.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- July 23

 

Glad to see I've managed to bring enjoyment to this site with an Open Thread this weekend. :) Here's tonight's news:

This Is No Time for Bipartisanship

At the very least, Republicans should stop speaking about restoring a relationship that no longer exists.

by Paul Gottfried for American Greatness

“The Left, in revolutionary fashion, has waged a sustained and unapologetic attack on constitutional norms and long-held institutions—whenever it senses they no longer prove conducive to its own radical agendas.” So begins a trenchant commentary by Victor Davis Hanson on the repeated efforts of Democratic Party leadership to overthrow America’s constitutional republic. Hanson’s remarks stand in stark contrast to a famous interview given to Salon by Dana Perino in 2018, in which the former presidential press secretary was hailed as the “voice of reason.” Perino expressed disappointment that neither party “was talking civility” and considered her own party as much to blame for this incivility as the other one.  

These divergent views came to mind as I thought about how our two Senate leaders, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), rally their troops. McConnell is a politician deeply invested in bipartisanship. He is what the French call un maquignon, a horse-trading politician, whose livelihood is deal-making. Occasionally McConnell does advance the cause, e.g., helping Trump win Senate confirmation for three justices despite strong Democratic opposition; and keeping a hack leftist, Merrick Garland, from being elevated to the Supreme Court. But for the most part, McConnell sees his role as horse-trading, e.g., passing in conjunction with the Democrats a “red flag” law for would-be gun owners, while looking for other projects the two parties can tackle together. McConnell obviously didn’t relish having to deal with the more pugnacious Trump and bitterly declaimed against him after January 6.

Chuck Schumer, however, views his charge quite differently. He is there to raise hell and, if possible, to establish a one-party woke dictatorship. Anything that will increase the permanent hold of his party on the political system is fine with Schumer. He knows he can count on public administration, surveillance agencies, and an obliging media-educational establishment, to cover for him and his party, no matter what subversive activity in which they may engage. If Chuck doesn’t like how a Republican-appointed justice hinders his agenda, he hurls threats at him or her from the steps of the Supreme Court.

There seems to be a glaring mismatch between the two sides and their Senate leaders. Unless they play by the same rules, however, we may be headed for a situation that bears some resemblance to the one that caused the Nationalist uprising in Spain in July 1936. As the leading historian of that cataclysm Stanley Payne shows, by the summer of 1936, the leftists running the government had abandoned any semblance of fair play and could scarcely be described as constitutionally minded. Much of the Spanish Left energetically supported three coups against the Spanish Republic, did nothing to stop assassinations and bombings carried out by anarchists and radical socialists, and after February 1936 jailed their opposition. Although the uprising against the Left did not lead to the restoration of constitutional government in Spain, it may have been warranted, given the extent to which order had broken down. Although I doubt we can muster a Right as large and determined as the one that existed in Spain in 1936 or that we’re on the verge of the long, bloody civil war of the kind that lasted there until 1939, our ideological divisions seem every bit as profound.

In any case, the mismatch that now exists between our revolutionary Left and their mostly tepid, confrontation-shy opposition cannot go on indefinitely. Those playing defense must learn to battle back or else retreat into historical irrelevance. Just about all Senate Democrats voted twice to remove Trump from office, supported a congressional bill that would have legalized abortion up until birth everywhere, and endorsed the federalization of elections without safeguards. They also openly flout Supreme Court decisions, whether on abortion or the carrying of concealed weapons, if these decisions don’t advance their interests.

Democrats sat smiling as the summer of violence their leaders financed raged on two years ago. And they are not exactly broken up that their partisans are now threatening the homes and lives of uncooperative Supreme Court justices. Not a single Democratic Senator broke rank to vote for any Trump pick for the Supreme Court; nor can I recall Democrats who voted to confirm any Trump cabinet appointee. Where exactly do we find evidence of Democratic bipartisanship?

At the very least Republicans should stop speaking about restoring a relationship that no longer exists. It should stop imagining that a return to bipartisanship will occur if their side “cooperates.” The late, esteemed Angelo Codevilla issued this warning to the Democrats in September 2021:

The Democratic Party’s practical error, with regard to vaccination as with regard to the way it ended the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, is the hubris by which it has forgotten that when you make war on anyone, they may well make war on you.

We are still waiting for Codevilla’s prediction to come true, which means for a Republican opposition to push back with vigor.

Democrats Announce Season 2 Of Jan. 6 Saga After This Week’s Finale Ended With A Dud

‘We have far more evidence to share with the American people, 

and more to gather,’ said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federaist

The Jan. 6 Committee began the dramatic finale of its summer series Thursday night with the announcement of a second season after its seven two-hour show trials failed to yield the desired results of partisan panel members.

“We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather,” said committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., at the onset of the hearing, which was supposed to be a final performance. The following two and a half hours, however, illustrated why lawmakers might feel their work is unfinished: The finale failed to be the summer showstopper it was made out to be.

Thursday’s prime-time extravaganza featured another pair of former White House aides who defected from the Republican president in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot. Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews and former National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger testified as the committee walked play by play through the White House, combing through the president’s conduct to corroborate their former colleague, Cassidy Hutchinson.

“There will be no question over her veracity,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., told CNN of Hutchinson’s prior appearance ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

The two new witnesses’ corroboration, however, did nothing more than offer more evidence highlighting former President Donald Trump’s desire to march with his supporters to the Capitol, a desire the president expressed openly in his Jan. 6 speech.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump said of lawmakers supporting his election challenges. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Yet the committee has framed Trump’s ambition to travel down Pennsylvania Avenue as a grand revelation worthy of indictment with witness after witness testifying to something the president expressed openly.

At no point in the more than two-and-a-half-hour hearing, however, did lawmakers or their witnesses put forward any evidence to corroborate Hutchinson’s most sinister claim, which has been left unsubstantiated: that Trump violently assaulted a Secret Service agent to hijack the presidential limousine so he could drive himself to the Capitol. Nor did witnesses patch other holes in Hutchinson’s testimony, such as her story that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told her on the morning of Jan. 6, “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol,” and “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” which doesn’t square with multiple other sources who have said Cipollone was absent from the White House that morning.

Even if the president had gone to the Capitol, the trip would not have been out of character. Trump is known to cheer his supporters at every opportunity. When well wishers in 2020 stood outside Walter Reed Medical Center hoping for a speedy recovery from Covid, Trump jumped into a motorcade for a drive-by appearance.

Meanwhile, the overarching image the committee presented on Thursday, of a president failing to govern as the Capitol suffered under siege, undermined the broader narrative they’ve promoted for weeks of an active “insurrectionist” engaged in an open coup.

The panel’s season finale focused on “187 minutes” wherein Trump allegedly remained apathetic to the turmoil interrupting a joint session of Congress. But not only is the “187 minutes” figure a contradictory message to the story of Trump viciously demanding to go to the Capitol immediately, it’s a made-up timeline conceived by Cheney in December when she ignored the president’s tweets urging demonstrators to remain peaceful and go home.

According to a Jan. 6 timeline by the New York Times, the first barriers of the Capitol building were breached at 2:13 p.m. The Washington Post timestamps the first break-in at 2:15 p.m. The president’s first tweet addressing the rioters was published at 2:38 p.m., meaning Trump pled for peace after just 23 minutes.

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,” Trump wrote. “They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

About 30 minutes later, Trump addressed the demonstrators again on the same platform.

“I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!” the president wrote. “Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

At 4:17 p.m., or two hours after the first barriers of the building were breached, the president tweeted out a video demanding rioters leave the Capitol — a video Twitter promptly removed.

Yet the committee got the headlines it was looking for, with media blindly adopting the “187 minutes” across their front pages. CNN aired the chyron, “NOW: Jan. 6 Cmte Details 187 Minutes of Trump Inaction” for much of the hearing’s first half.

While the panel aired Trump’s speech urging rioters to go home, members glossed over the president’s posts that demanded protests remain peaceful.

Operating without any minority-appointed opposition, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred, lawmakers on the select committee will continue in September ahead of the fall midterms with show-trial proceedings reminiscent of the Soviet-era show trials. While the committee will also likely hold new hearings later this year to give itself more time to find the smoking gun — plus a book deal — the September timeline happens to coincide with elections. Democrats on the probe conceded in March that the investigation was all about the midterms as vulnerable members fret about losing voters who are worried about crime, high inflation, and unsustainable energy prices.

“Their challenge: Making the public care deeply — and read hundreds of pages more — about an event that happened more than a year ago, and that many Americans feel they already understand,” the Washington Post said.

It seems eight hearings produced with the help of a former ABC News executive failed to do the trick.

Jonathan Turley and Former U.S. Atty Raise Questions About 'Critical Stage' of Hunter Biden Case

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

As we noted, there were reports that the Hunter Biden case had reached a “critical stage” and the U.S. Attorney’s Office was considering whether to charge him, according to both CNN and Fox News sources.

But former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman is raising questions about the reports that are coming out, including about the grand jury

With the grand jury reportedly disbanding, the case may now be in the hands of government prosecutors to make the next move, which former U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman told “The Story” leaves a very strange dynamic:

“None of this adds up. None of it makes sense. Indictments should have been brought when you first started calling witnesses and close thereto, that’s standard,” he said.

“The fact that a grand jury is now terminating here fairly soon or has terminated, in essence, you have to start all over. If the new grand jury gets empaneled, you have to re-present all the evidence that you may have presented.”

Tolman said that normally charges or the threat thereof would be brought before the termination of the first grand jury. [….]

“[I]t’s not adding up. It’s certainly not what I would have done. And it’s not what the majority of my colleagues who served as U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys would have done in this case,” he said.

Unless you’re not going to charge him and you’re just buying time. Tolman was concerned about funny business as well.

“Anybody who wanted to seek justice in this case would have charged Hunter Biden very quickly,” Tolman said.

“You would have threatened distribution of narcotics and possession of firearms – which carry lengthy prison sentences,” he said, adding prosecutors could have also elected to press him as a “source” if they wanted to investigate allegations Joe Biden was aware of or involved in his son’s foreign business dealings – which the White House denies.

“I mean, this is so simple and so basic that the only conclusion I can make is political games are being played and have from the very beginning,” Tolman said.

Tolman observed that there was a trove of evidence that could be plumbed, “There’s just so much that this is the equivalent of a softball being floated and you have an extremely large bat.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley raised the big question — Joe Biden.

Most prosecutors would be looking to go after the bigger crime and/or the bigger fish and certainly one of the biggest questions here would be the allegations of influence peddling. There had been reports that the grand jury was looking into other issues besides taxes and the gun question. As we reported, they asked a witness to identify who the “big guy” was, which would indicate they were looking into the Chinese connections.

But that’s a legitimate concern that both Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and now Turley are raising that they might ultimately just try to get a narrow plea agreement on Hunter regarding the gun or his taxes that doesn’t hit on the bigger issues. Ron Johnson has also been raising the question of cover-up, saying the Biden Administration isn’t turning over the documents being requested on SARs regarding Hunter Biden. But if they had a narrow plea agreement, then the Democrats could take that and say, “See? There was nothing bigger,” when indeed, there’s a ton there to investigate. That could very well fit the facts we’re currently seeing. But once again, that would scream swamp, two different systems, and a complete failure of justice in this matter.

Latest Kamala Harris Boo-Boo Proves Too Much for the White House to Clean Up

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

Usually, when either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris commits a screw-up (which is often), their frenzied (and likely exhausted) handlers are on standby to play clean-up/translator with the mainstream media in hopes that they can mitigate the damage caused by whatever incoherent message Biden has delivered or word salad Harris managed to get out between the cackling.

The same holds true for any action either of them takes that goes contra to how they’ve advised their political opponents and average Americans to conduct themselves.

But every once in a while not even their minders can explain away something their bosses said and/or did, which brings me to the appearance Harris made Friday at the National Urban League annual conference.

As we previously reported, one of the first things Harris did when she walked onto the stage was to take her mask off and hug Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Randall Woodfin, who was also maskless.

The problem with this is that Biden, as we all know, has COVID, and Harris is considered a “close contact” of Biden’s. Because of that, she is supposed to be masked when she’s around other people per the CDC’s guidlines, you know, the ones we common folks are supposed to follow according to them. And yet this happened:

Refreshingly, during the Friday press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Biden COVID Response Coordinator Ashish Jha were grilled by multiple reporters as to why Harris wasn’t masked when the CDC very clearly says that she should be.

Watch below as Jha struggles to come up with an answer that makes sense. At one point he got so desperate he tried to bow out by saying he really couldn’t comment on something he hadn’t personally seen. He even looked to Jean-Pierre for assistance but she ended up deferring right back to him because she couldn’t explain it, either:

The White House’s bungled messaging on why Harris failed to follow the CDC’s protocols comes just one day after Biden was diagnosed with COVID but was then photographed in a room maskless while staring at a phone and holding what appeared to be a blank notebook, though he too should have been wearing a mask according to CDC guidelines since at least one other person was in the room (the photographer).

When Jean-Pierre was asked by a reporter during the Thursday briefing about why Biden wasn’t abiding by the CDC guidelines as he has repeatedly urged Americans to do in order to contain the coronavirus, her answer, incredibly, was to state that “he took off his mask so that the American people could see him and see directly that work he is doing.”

Though the collective intelligence of the American people continues to be insulted by this administration, fortunately, it appears that even some in the mainstream media are no longer content to allow the White House’s COVID mask theater to proceed as normal without question anymore. The walls are – at last – crumbling. Brick by brick.

It’s about time.

It’s Not Just What Energy Secretary Granholm Says, It’s How She Says It That Should Alarm Everyone

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm couldn’t tell you the difference between electromagnetic or nuclear energy if her life depended on it.  Then again, there’s not a single “climate change” ideologue in the Biden administration who has any concept of science at all.  None of them.  To them, everything is politics.

As you watch this brief soundbite from remarks Energy Secretary Granholm made to the Global Clean Energy Action Forum, pay attention to what she says and the way she says it.  The pantomime of how she says it. [11 seconds] WATCH:

What state elected her governor?  Oh yeah, she’s from Hunger Games district 5.

Trump Team Plans Post-Election Purge of Department of Justice, FBI, and the Intelligence Community

streiff reporting for RedState 

President Trump’s administration represents an object lesson in lost opportunities. The ability of the administration to cut the Gordian Knot of the Middle East “peace process” and turn the United States into an energy exporting nation was little short of amazing. That said, the horrible personnel choices made by President Trump and his personal indiscipline combined to create a constant sh**storm that prevented President Trump from ever developing the broad national support he deserved. While the choice of people and intemperate comments would have been background noise, his administration was the subject of a concerted campaign of sabotage and obstruction never before witnessed in our history. The campaign, centered in our “nonpartisan” civil service, robbed President Trump of his first term included a soft coup attempt based on the Russia Hoax and calculated leaks of national security information.

As the preliminary moves in the 2024 election takes shape and a Trump candidacy looks more and more likely, Trump’s team is planning to ensure that a second Trump administration will not suffer the fate of the first. Axios’ Jonathan Swan has looked into what a second Trump administration has in store and wrote about it in A radical plan for Trump’s second term.

First, the bad news.

According to the article, Trump is relying upon the advice of a small group of advisors.

Trump has doubled down with a small group he views as loyal and courageous. The group includes his former senior White House officials, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and John McEntee. It also includes his fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, though their relationship was strained when Meadows recounted in his memoir private details of Trump’s hospitalization with COVID-19.

Trump trusts only a few of his former Cabinet secretaries and senior government officials, sources close to him said. He still talks casually to many others, and is seldom off his phone, but former aides who felt they could occasionally persuade Trump to change course say he is quick to shut down advice he does not want to hear.

This is pretty much how President Trump operated during his candidacy. Of course, those of us who remember the infighting between Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort and you-name-it would rather not go through this again. I wrote about Trump’s inner circle at war during 2016 (see Donald Trump’s Unveils His “Team Of Vicious Gits” and Open Warfare Breaks Out Among Donald Trump’s “Team Of Vicious Gits”) and much of the chaos in the early weeks of the Trump administration was a direct result of the internecine battles that started on the campaign trail.

Now the good news.

MAGA-oriented “non-profits” are building a list of personnel for a Trump II administration and identifying policy roadblocks to remove.

One important hub of 2025 preparations is the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), an organization whose nonprofit status under the tax code allows it to conceal its donors’ identities. CPI is a who’s-who of Trump’s former administration and the “America First” movement.

Founded by former firebrand GOP South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint — the bane of Mitch McConnell’s existence when he served in Congress — CPI has become the hub of the hard right in Washington.

…

Another influential group is Vought’s Center for Renewing America — designed to keep alive and build upon Trump’s “America First” agenda during his exile.

Vought kept a relatively low media profile through much of the Trump administration but by the end Trump trusted him as somebody who would rebuff career officials and find edge-of-the-envelope methods to achieve Trump’s ends.

When Congress blocked Trump from getting the funds he needed to build the southern border wall, Vought and his team at the Office of Management and Budget came up with the idea of redirecting money from the Pentagon budget to build the wall.

In the final week of the Trump administration, Vought met with the former president in the Oval Office and shared with him his plans to start CRA. Trump gave Vought his blessing. CRA’s team now includes Jeffrey Clark and Kash Patel as well as other Trump allies including Mark Paoletta and Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

Vought plans to release a series of policy papers, beginning this year, detailing various aspects of their plans to dismantle the “administrative state.”

Vought has other far-reaching intentions. He has told associates it was too onerous in the past for Trump officials to receive security clearances, so he plans to recommend reforms to the security clearance system. He also wants to change the system that determines how government documents become classified.

…

America First Legal was launched by Trump’s influential senior adviser Stephen Miller less than three months after Trump left office. Its primary purpose was to file lawsuits to block President Biden’s policies — mirroring a well-funded legal infrastructure on the left.

But Miller has also been doing another job in preparation for 2025 that has not previously been reported. He has been identifying and assembling a list of lawyers who would be ready to fill the key general counsel jobs across government in a second-term Trump administration.

Trump’s close allies are intently focused on the recruitment of lawyers. Trump frequently complained that he did not have the “right” lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office.

…

Other senior officials, including Miller, believed the federal agencies were clotted with cowardly general counsels too worried about their Washington reputations to risk throwing their support behind Trump’s policies. Instead, the Trump team suspected, these general counsels allowed the career attorneys to steamroll them.

Miller has his eye out for general counsels who will aggressively implement Trump’s orders and skeptically interrogate any career government attorney who tells them their plans are unlawful or cannot be done.

Potential game-changer.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, President Trump used an executive order to create a new schedule, or class, of civil service employees. The civil service comprises three categories of employees: Senior Executive Service, competitive, and excepted. The Senior Executive Service was intended to be the equivalent of a general officer corps; to say it has not measured up to the dream is an understatement. Competitive means you apply for a job and are hired based on your race, ethnicity, ability to mouth progressive shibboleths, and sexual proclivities; sorry, I mean abilities. Finally, excepted applies to employees where an open competition may not be feasible or appropriate. The excepted category comes in five flavors:

Schedule A. Positions other than those of a confidential or policy-determining character for which it is not practicable to examine shall be listed in Schedule A.
Schedule B. Positions other than those of a confidential or policy-determining character for which it is not practicable to hold a competitive examination shall be listed in Schedule B. Appointments to these positions shall be subject to such noncompetitive examination as may be prescribed by OPM.
Schedule C. Positions of a confidential or policy-determining character shall be listed in Schedule C.
Schedule D. Positions other than those of a confidential or policy-determining character for which the competitive service requirements make impracticable the adequate recruitment of sufficient numbers of students attending qualifying educational institutions or individuals who have recently completed qualifying educational programs shall be listed in Schedule D. These positions are temporarily placed in the excepted service to enable more effective recruitment from all segments of society by using means of recruiting and assessing candidates that diverge from the rules generally applicable to the competitive service.
Schedule E. Positions of administrative law judge appointed under 5 U.S.C. 3105 shall be listed in Schedule E.

This link explains Schedules A through C; Schedule D is the Presidential Management Fellow program. Schedule E are administrative law judges. The excepted schedule that most people are familiar with is Schedule C, also known as political appointees. There are about 4,000 of these across government and about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. The role of Schedule C employees is to carry out the president’s policy objectives.

What President Trump encountered was a Civil Service that was implacably opposed to him and his policies. The handful of Schedule C employees was overwhelmed by the internal opposition in the agencies. On October 26, 2020, President Trump created Schedule F to the excepted category.

• substantive participation in the advocacy for, development, or formulation of policy, especially development or drafting of regulations and guidance
• substantive policy-related work in an agency or component that primarily focuses on policy
• the supervision of attorneys
• substantial discretion to determine the manner in which the agency exercises functions committed to it by law
• working with non-public policy proposals or deliberations generally covered by deliberative process privilege, and either:
  • directly reporting to or regularly working with an individual appointed by either the President or an agency head paid at the GS-13 level or higher, or
  • working in the executive secretariat of the agency or component
• conducting certain collective bargaining negotiations on the agency’s behalf

This would entail the reclassification of tens of thousands of employees as Schedule F, meaning they would be, for all intents and purposes, “at will” employees. Personally, I think this is a great move. It has no downside whatsoever for Republicans because the worst a Democrat administration can do is fill those positions with people like those who already hold them.

Gutting the Intelligence Community and Department of Justice.

There is no doubt that the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice, and the FBI declared war on President Trump. There was not only the obscene Russia Hoax but also the joint effort that resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment on the most flimsy and transparently partisan grounds. Likewise, when Hunter Biden’s laptop surfaced during the campaign, the Intelligence Community wasted no time declaring it a Russian fake.

As we and a federal grand jury (see Jonathan Turley and Former U.S. Atty Raise Questions About ‘Critical Stage’ of Hunter Biden Case) now know, the laptop is completely legitimate.

According to Swann, the Trump team has identified high-priority targets for cleansing.

Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority — go after the national security apparatus, “clean house” in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the “woke generals” at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.

Final thoughts.

This plan, aggressively executed, would be the best thing that’s happened to the nation since, at least, the election of Ronald Reagan. It would prevent the fifth column of activist Democrats inside the federal bureaucracy from carrying out the guerilla war against Republican administrations and return a large measure of control of the government to elected representatives. It is clear that the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are nothing more than Democrat stormtroopers. If a Republican president can’t bring them to heel, he’s doomed.

I do hope that President Trump looks at Joe Biden and decides not to run. I fear the behaviors that marred his first term are too much of his persona to change. He can do more to help his own movement by passing the torch than by running. If he does run and is elected, he has a plan to do what he was never able to do while in office. If he doesn’t run, he has left his successor a blueprint for action, and we should demand they promise to carry it out.