The Left Would Grab Your Guns In a Minute If Patriots Stopped Defending the Constitution

Don't be fooled by the Left's 'gun violence prevention' tactic

by Bronson Winslow for American Greatness

The Left constantly reassures Americans that they do not want to take away firearms, but actions speak louder than words.

In September, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) used an emergency public health order to suspend the Second Amendment for 30 days in Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County. Grisham knew fully well that she was violating the Constitution (in fact, she happily admitted so). A handful of gun control advocates quickly condemned her unprecedented decision, but not because they respect the Constitution.

Wary conservatives know better. Grisham had accidentally showed the gun grabbers’ hand and revealed their true goal: Total disarmament.

Recall that President Joe Biden announced he was establishing a federal gun control office just two weeks later, part of the Left’s piecemeal assault on your Second Amendment rights.

Grisham’s great “sin” was placing Democrats in a precarious situation by jumping the gun (pun intended) and firing up patriots on the Right.

As of now, many Americans still believe gun control does not end in total disarmament. But if the last 99 years of gun control (since the codification of the National Firearms Act) have taught us anything, it is that the anti-gun lobby is never satisfied with gun policy.

The Left knows Americans understand the value of an armed populace, so now they work to trick Americans into “gun violence prevention” because the previous “gun control” lobby was failing. Make no mistake, they’re the same, and work towards the same goal of total disarmament—one just markets better to moderates.

The Left has failed to convince a majority of Americans that the Second Amendment is inherently bad, but “progressives” can pull on your heart strings and manipulate voters into supporting anti-2A laws framed as “safety” measures. If you can tie “gun violence” to public health, people might just go along with it in the belief that they’re working towards the common good.

The worst part, aside from numerous constitutional violations, is that they target firearms legally bought and responsibly carried, while using crime (due to their policies), mass shootings, and illegal firearms as the justification.

Grisham’s decision provides a glimpse into how Democrats view the Constitution. They simply disregard it, throw out a measure, wait for legal challenge, tie up the courts, and see where things go—all while telling Americans that their actions are for the good of the people.

If the “progressive” Left is actively telling Americans that the Constitution is a hindrance to their safety, how can we expect Americans to cherish and defend it? Well, we cannot, and they know this.

Any action that even slightly violates the Constitution is terrible for the American people, as it erodes the very fabric that patriots died to protect. A fabric, tied together with freedom and liberty, intended to provide a means of representative governance checked by citizen militias.

But the Left does not view the Constitution that way. They see a wall that must be reduced and eventually toppled to allow for full control. They actively seek a large, taxpayer funded government that “takes care” of its people. People who have no means of ensuring just laws and constitutional freedoms are protected because they no longer have the ability to fight against injustice.

Take it from Grisham, who announced that “no constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute”—a terrifying statement for any politician to make.

Grisham’s ridicule from the Left shows us that we are stronger than we believe. If Democrats thought they could move forward full-throttle in suspending the Second Amendment, they would’ve praised Grisham for boldness and courage. That they won’t is testament to the work of countless citizens and gun rights groups countering the Left’s lies.

The war is far from over, though. Many people are referring to “gun violence” as a public health emergency, and if the implications that only the federal government can suspend the Second Amendment come to fruition, it would not be too far to assume that they would use Biden’s gun control office to declare an emergency health order that suspends the Second Amendment.

Nevertheless, Second Amendment advocates have much to celebrate, including the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling against the gun control lobby in 2022 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which held that every American has the right to carry a firearm.

The high court ruled that any existing gun control law that is not tied to a historical tradition of firearm regulation in America is unconstitutional, abolishing highly restrictive gun laws across the country.

Don’t be fooled by this rebranding into “gun violence prevention.” These ideologues aim to “protect” you by using emergency public health orders to take away your constitutional rights. They do not care about genuine gun safety, but winning political victories.

We stand together as responsible gun owners knowing we decrease “gun violence” through vigilance and responsible action.

And we Know, On the Fringe, and more - Oct 11

 

Imagine If Our Intel Agencies Targeted More Actual Terrorists instead of Conservative Americans

Imagine if all those counterterror resources were redirected away from targeting Americans for their political views and aimed at stopping real terrorists.

Elle Purnell reporting for The Federalist

The barbaric attack on Israeli civilians over the weekend by Hamas terrorists has left people wondering, as we often do after mass tragedies: How did no one see this coming? As a surprisingly sophisticated, coordinated surprise attack left nearly 1,000 people dead and countless more innocents wounded or kidnapped, anyone can recognize the massive intelligence failure without calling into question who is morally culpable for the invasion. Iran-backed militants attacked civilians from multiple points of entry, hang-gliding into a music festival and dragging the bodies of murdered women through the streets, all effectively livestreamed on the internet.

It wasn’t just an intel failure on Israel’s part — as a close ally with an intelligence presence all over the world, the United States also failed to foresee the attack. A senior U.S. military official admitted to NBC News that “We were not tracking this.” CIA counterterrorism veteran Marc Polymeropoulos told the outlet he was “stunned” that American intel agencies were caught off guard.

Intelligence operatives are fallible, yes. But instead of identifying the threat from Hamas terrorists, the Biden administration was busy sending money to their state sponsors in Iran and employing Iranian conspirators at the Pentagon.

There’s another task that’s been keeping America’s so-called “counterterrorism” apparatus busy lately, though. Instead of focusing their efforts on actual terrorists — those abroad and those doubtless infiltrating our porous southern border — the Biden administration has continued, and escalated, the trend of turning our post-9/11 surveillance state against Americans, smearing them as “terrorists” for their political beliefs.

Just last week, Newsweek reported that the FBI is targeting Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists” ahead of the 2024 election. The universal line from the Biden administration is that “domestic terrorism” and its aliases — all of which are used as code for political right-wingers — are the No. 1 threat to national security. The effort to make an example out of Trump supporters who demonstrated at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is only one of numerous instances in which Democrats within and beyond intelligence agencies are working to equate “domestic terrorism” with their political opponents.

Two years ago, Biden’s Education Department infamously planted a letter from the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to target concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings to protest Democrats’ Covid policies and their racialist and sexually graphic curricula in public schools. The letter smeared those parents as domestic terror threats and urged the Department of Justice to wield counterterrorism laws against them, and Garland happily acted on the suggestion.

A few months later, the politicized Department of Justice announced a new “domestic terrorism unit” to deal with “an elevated threat from domestic violence extremists,” including “those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.” (Who knew the Founding Fathers were domestic terrorists?)

Taking things a step further, disgraced former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe claimed that targeting the “fringes of the right-wing movement” was insufficient to “catch this threat,” and instead called for federal suspicion of “mainstream” conservatives.

In June 2021, the Biden administration released a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It proposed to “counter domestic terrorism by addressing underlying racism and bigotry” — and they weren’t talking about the racism that led Hamas militants to slaughter Israeli civilians this past weekend and has driven violence against Israel in the region for decades. A National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued the same year lumped “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud” and “responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases” in the same sentence as “domestic violent extremist ideologies.”

Our intelligence apparatus expends resources on things like telling Big Tech companies which free-thinking Americans’ social media posts to censor, as we discovered via the “Twitter Files” and Missouri v. Biden. It’s actively researching how to most efficiently surveil what you say online. The FBI has been putting its resources to work targeting — and likely “infiltrating” — traditional Catholic congregations, and terrorizing peaceful pro-lifers like Mark Houck, a pastor who was dragged away in a surprise raid at his home in front of his family.

It’s not just domestic intel agencies being wielded against Americans; the CIA did its part to help Twitter censor speech, and even solicited signatures to help falsely smear damaging reporting about the Biden family as disinformation ahead of the 2020 election. (For some reason, none of those involved are being arrested for “conspiracy against voting rights.”)

Across the board, we’ve seen the people we elected, and countless bureaucrats we did not, weaponizing supposedly counterterror laws like the Patriot Act against Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment freedoms (at least).

Imagine if those resources were redirected away from targeting ordinary, law-abiding Americans for their political views and aimed at stopping actual terrorists who seek to harm us and our allies. Contrary to the pretense that surveilling Americans as walking national security threats is for our own protection, our world would be a lot safer.

World War Two experimental catapult unearthed by archaeologists

 

An experimental catapult designed to launch World War Two bomber planes into the sky has been excavated.

The prototype Royal Aircraft Establishment Mark III Catapult was unearthed at the site of a development at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

It was made to enable take-offs using shorter runways and so the planes could be loaded with more fuel.

The contraption was built between 1938 and 1940 when the site was RAF Harwell.  

  

However, the project was abandoned without ever launching an aircraft, because the engines would wear out and the design did not properly fit the bomber planes.

The mechanism was taken out and a normal runway built over the top.

The technology was a precursor to Catapult Armed Merchant (CAM) ships, which launched Hawker Hurricanes at sea via rocket-propelled catapults.  

How was the catapult meant to work?  

• A large rotating turntable directed aircraft towards one of two concrete track runways only 82m (269ft) long
• The aircraft was attached to an underground pneumatic ram using a towing hook
• Underneath the turntable Rolls-Royce Kestrel aero engines compressed air to 2,000 psi to drive the ram
• High-pressured air was forced into the pneumatic ram, which rapidly expanded to the length of the guided track
• The bomber would then be catapulted into the sky  

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-67052782

Tens of Thousands of 'Special Interest Aliens' Arrested at Border Since 2021—but How Many Got Away?

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

As Israel reels from the savage terror attacks carried out by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, many Americans are wondering, “Could it happen here?”

After all, we’ve seen it before—on 9/11, 2001.

New Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data leaked to Fox News only increases the worry, as the numbers reveal that tens of thousands of what the CBP calls "special interest aliens" have been arrested at the southern border since 2021, and many are from the Middle East.

Special interest aliens are people who could pose a threat to the homeland:

"Special interest aliens" are people from countries identified by the U.S. government as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat to the U.S.

The number of those detained is staggering.

That data, confirmed by multiple CBP sources and reflects apprehensions between ports of entry between October 2021 and October 2023, shows that agents encountered 6,386 nationals from Afghanistan in that period as well as 3,153 from Egypt, 659 from Iran and 538 from Syria.

What makes it worse is that we don’t know their current status or whether the government has any idea where they are. 

Agents also encountered 12,624 from Uzbekistan, 30,830 from Turkey, 1,613 from Pakistan, 164 from Lebanon, 185 from Jordan, 123 from Iraq and 15,594 from Mauritania. The data does not include information on how many of those migrants were removed or who were released into the U.S. with a court date.

The first question that comes to my mind is: how many crossed undetected and are now roaming around the streets of America? We know that there have been at least 1.5 million "gotaways" during Biden's tenure. We also know that terrorists are actively plotting to take advantage of the out-of-control situation:

The Department of Homeland Security’s threat assessment, published last month, noted that agents have encountered a growing number on the watch list and warned that "terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States."

"Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and permissive environments to facilitate access to the United States," the assessment also said.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin explained in a Tuesday tweet that the Border Patrol is extremely concerned about who's coming in:

From his tweet:

These are Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry only, this data does not include CBP encounters at ports of entry. Border Patrol sources tell me they have extreme concerns about who is coming into the country because they have little to no way of vetting people from these special interest countries. I’m told unless they have committed a crime previously in the US, or they are on some sort of federal watchlist, there’s no way to know who they are because most of their home countries don’t share data/records with the US so there is nothing to match a name to when BP agents run fingerprints. 

President Joe Biden has been a historically awful leader—just think about the Afghanistan withdrawal, crushing inflation, his vitriolic, divisive speeches, and so much more. However, I think his biggest failure, which certainly appears to be intentional, is his utter disinterest in securing the border and hence our nation. We just have to pray that no violent madmen with bloodlust for Americans slip through. 

With an even slightly competent leader, however, we would be doing much more than praying; we would be doing everything in our power to ensure our territorial integrity. 

Biden Administration Accused of Illegally Funding Hamas - What You Need to Know

Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

A new interesting bit of information has surfaced in Israel’s war against Hamas, which began when it launched a surprise attack on Saturday, killing more than a thousand people and taking hostages. The Biden administration has faced scrutiny over its release of $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, which has been found to have helped Hamas plan and execute the assault.

It appears the White House also helped to fund Hamas directly, despite being warned about the consequences of doing so. America First Legal published a post on social media in which it announced that it was filing a lawsuit against the Biden administration and was initiating the discovery process to find out what the White House knew about their plan to send aid to Palestinians.

We sued President Biden and Secretary Blinken for violating the Taylor Force Act and illegally subsidizing Palestinian terrorism.

Today, following barbaric attacks by Hamas — killing 14 Americans and 1000+ other innocent men, women, and children, and with an unknown number of Americans now being held hostage in Gaza — the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted our motion to begin discovery in our case. We are going to show what the Biden Administration knew about their plans and the outcomes of their policies.

In the document, the plaintiffs claim that a “recent production of records shows that the Government knew its ESF funding in the West Bank and Gaza was benefitting Palestinian terrorists, thereby ‘increasing the risk of terrorist attacks against the Plaintiffs and others similarly situated.’”

The lawsuit also notes that the White House’s “admission that its activities in the West Bank and Gaza benefit Hamas suggests, with reasonable particularity, the possible existence of other facts, currently hidden, establishing traceability.”

The Washington Free Beacon published a report in August detailing how Biden’s White House “pushed through plans to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer aid to the Palestinians despite internal assessments that those plans could boost the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas.”

According to documents that the news outlet obtained, officials working in the State Department warned that the agency could be funding Hamas by sending aid to the Palestinians.

State Department officials in 2021 outlined the concerns in private communications, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws that bar the U.S. government from injecting taxpayer aid into territories controlled by Palestinian terror groups. The Biden administration needed this authorization in order to move forward with its plans to unfreeze more than $360 million in U.S. funds for the Palestinian Authority that were cut off during the Trump administration due to the authority's support for terrorists.

"We assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza. There is less but still some risk U.S. assistance would benefit other designated groups," the State Department wrote in a draft sanctions exemption request circulated internally in March 2021, shortly after Biden took office. "Notwithstanding this risk, State believes it is in our national security interest to provide assistance in the West Bank and Gaza to support the foreign policy objectives."

The documents—obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust—show the Biden administration was privately worried its efforts to restart Palestinian aid could benefit Hamas and other terror factions operating in the Gaza Strip. As officials publicly provided assurances to Congress and the press that this aid would be doled out "consistent with U.S. law," the State Department was scrambling to secure a sanctions exemption that would let it skirt anti-terrorism laws.

Nevertheless, despite the concerns expressed privately by State Department officials, the agency moved forward with the funding. The Biden administration proceeded with its plans to restart Palestinian aid, which could also violate the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits funding to the Palestinian government as long as it pays salaries to terrorists and their families. The documents showed that officials were aware that they were possibly breaking the law.

If it is found that the Biden administration did fund Hamas, it would be yet another scandal that the president and his close friends and allies in the elite media would have to explain away. It is not certain whether the plaintiffs could seek damages – especially if they cannot prove that this funding led to Saturday’s attack, which has killed 14 Americans so far. Still, if the discovery process exposes the Biden administration for giving millions of dollars to a known terrorist organization, it could cause incalculable political damage to the president.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville's Official Statement on Ret. Gen. Hayden's X Post: 'He Shouldn't Drink Everyday'

Jennifer Oliver O'Connell reporting for RedState 

As our Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar reported, retired General and former CIA Director Michael Hayden took to X (formerly Twitter) to post what seemed to be a death wish for Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.

Quoting a Twitter post that asked, "Should Tommy Tuberville be removed from his committee? Yes or No?" Hayden wrote, "How about the human race?"  

Van Laar actually did a screen grab of the post because many were confident that just like our State Department with their Israel posts, he'd have to backtrack this casual threat and purge it. Instead, after much criticism, Hayden doubled down.

Ahh, Hayden is using big words now. Yes, as Van Laar covered, Sen. Tuberville has been intransigent on Biden's Department of Defense nominees because he is taking a principled stance to see an end to the abortion tourism mess.

Unlike many Republicans, Tuberville has remained steadfast in his opposition and continues to place holds on senior military promotions. Hayden's retired. What does he care? Or is Tuberville blocking nominees for whom Hayden greased the skids? 

Whatever Hayden's reasons, it's not a good look and he deserved the backlash he received. Despite Hayden's claims, it's not just "MAGAnuts," who are upset over his attempt at... ahem... discourse. 

At first, Tuberville commented on Hayden's posts and commentary in his inimitable Southern fashion and expressed hope that he'd receive an apology.

"It was one of those late-night tweets," Tuberville said following a Walker County Chamber of Commerce speech. "... I would expect an apology soon. I would hope. The problem is you've got so many psychos out there that read that stuff, and we have enough problems with death threats and all those [things] that go on anyway, but you think this guy would know a little bit better. It's obvious he should've never been in the position he was in."

[...]

"It's obvious that he doesn't have both oars in the water," Tuberville said. "He shouldn't drink every day. I don't know what he's doing. That's uncalled for. I've never said that about anybody, whether you like them or dislike them. Even Alabama fans never said that about me when I was Auburn's coach."

But since Hayden's double-down, Tuberville issued a public statement on the matter. 

Tuberville has since reported the incident to the Capitol Police. The former CIA spook will be under investigation.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) released the following statement regarding General Michael Hayden’s comments that called for violence against Senator Tuberville.

“This morning my office was made aware of a statement made by General Michael Hayden calling for a politically motivated assassination. This statement is disgusting and it is repugnant to everything we believe in as Americans. Given General Hayden’s long career in Washington, he must have known that, by making such a statement, he was committing a serious crime. His own efforts today to reinterpret what he said are only a tacit admission of guilt. If we still have a nonpolitical justice system in this country, then General Hayden will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. My office has reported this incident to the Capitol Police and I expect that they will once again do an excellent job protecting members of Congress and bringing criminals to justice.

Tuberville also called out the Democrats for their silence. Aren't they the ones that scream, "Silence is violence"? 

“I am not aware of a single Democrat member of Congress who has condemned this reckless statement. This deafening silence tells us everything we need to know about Democrats and their commitment to ‘Our Democracy.’ In fact, Democrats have only continued to attack me by name today. Sadly, General Hayden is just the latest in a long line of Washington Leftists who have engaged in reckless rhetoric against me over the past few months. This must stop and it must stop now.

Tuberville then reminded America of Hayden's record of failure and collusion against the very people and Constitution he swore to protect.

“General Hayden presided over some of the biggest failures in the history of American intelligence, such as the September 11 attacks and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Further, General Hayden actively participated in the Russia Hoax and lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop to get Joe Biden elected President. Both of these lies tore our country apart and did enormous damage to the fabric of our republic. General Hayden is in no position to criticize anyone as his credibility was completely destroyed long ago.

Tuberville finally called for the lies and the propaganda to stop and for the reckless statements, like the ones issued by Hayden, to be condemned. 

“I am a conservative and a Republican, but above all, I am an American who cares about this country and is deeply concerned for its future. I am not a politician, and when I came to Washington, I did not expect to be popular among the clown show; but I certainty did not expect to be lied about on the Senate floor and threatened by former government officials like Michael Hayden. Anyone who actually cares about our country must go on the record and condemn his reckless statements.”

Tuberville's credibility and record stand in stark contrast to Hayden's years as provocateur and fabulist. This is one way to rescind the shadow influence and never-ending careers of these swamp rats. 

🚨 The 1st big interview with NCIS Sydney's showrunner has been posted!

 

Source: https://tvline.com/lists/ncis-sydney-preview-australian-spinoff-cbs/

• 
  

The premise for NCIS: Sydney: As international tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific, a brilliant and eclectic team of U.S. NCIS Agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are grafted into a multi-national task force, to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet.

The two teams are respectively led by NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey, played by Legends of Tomorrow vet Olivia Swann, and her 2IC AFP counterpart, Sergeant Jim “JD” Dempsey, played by Todd Lasance (Spartacus: War of the Damned).

The cast also includes Sean Sagar (Fate: The Winx Saga) as NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson, Tuuli Narkle (Bad Behaviour) as AFP Liaison Officer Constable Evie Cooper, Mavournee Hazel (Neighbours) as AFP Forensic Scientist Bluebird “Blue” Gleeson, and William McInnes (Blue Heelers) as AFP Forensic Pathologist Dr. Roy Penrose.

The first international NCIS offshoot’s eight-episode season will premiere on CBS on Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 8/7c, and also be available live and on demand that night for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers. (“Regular” Paramount+ Essential subscribers can stream each episode the day after it airs.)

Check out the exclusive key art poster above (click to zoom), then read on to see what series boss Morgan O’Neill has to say about the NCIS franchise’s trip to the land Down Under….

Photo : Courtesy of CBS

TVLINE | What was the genesis of NCIS: Sydney? Was CBS looking for an NCIS set on another continent, or was it, “We need a show for Paramount+ Australia”?

MORGAN O’NEILL | I think it was more the former, although the latter is probably a good upside for it, too. My understanding is that CBS was looking to expand the franchise beyond [the northern] hemisphere. Since the show revolves around naval crimes, naturally they looked at “the world’s largest island,” and then they pitched the idea to Bev McGarvey who runs Paramount+ Australia. She’s a massive fan of the franchise, so she said, “Let me take it to Endemol Shine Australia (ESA).” They then came to me and said, “We have this incredible opportunity to expand one of the world’s biggest franchises into Australia. How the hell would you do it?” I got together with the head of scripted at ESA and worked up what this show might look like and pitched it back to Paramount+ and to CBS. They flipped for it at lightning speed, which almost never happens in our industry.

TVLINE | Is there anything that a U.S. viewer should know before watching this, with regards to what’s different about law enforcement in Australia?
The first and most obvious difference is that while NCIS exists in Australia in real life, they don’t have the same kind of jurisdictional authority as they would in the U.S., because they’re in a foreign country. So when NCIS works in Australia they work in conjunction with our highest law enforcement agencies — in particular the Australian Federal Police, which are our equivalent of the FBI. From the perspective of our show, what’s going to be very, very different is that it’s effectively the first “blended family” where NCIS has to form a team with the Australian Federal Police and operate in conjunction with them.

It’s Australians and Americans working not always in concert, but certainly together, and working through cultural differences, working through the clashes that would naturally exist when you bring two disparate organizations together. But ultimately they find that there is this core DNA that they share between the two organizations that actually bonds them into a team really quickly, but with unexpected results.

Photo : Tuuli Narkle as AFP Liaison Officer Constable Evie Cooper and Sean Sagar as Special Agent DeShawn Jackson (CBS)

TVLINE | So, each case will need to involve some sort of U.S. serviceman…?
Absolutely. The basic premise that NCIS has to find a connection, a nexus back to the U.S. Navy, will continue, but what’s interesting in Australia is that it’s not just the Navy. If there is something that happens in Australia in the Army or the Air Force or the Coast Guard that pertains to the U.S., NCIS does the investigations. So, in a funny way they actually have a bigger remit than they do in the U.S. because they’re looking after the four other arms of the Armed Forces.

TVLINE | What are some fun character dynamics to watch for?
Well, No. 1 on the call sheet, the person who gets to kind of call the shots out here, is [NCIS Special Agent] Michelle Mackey (played by Olivia Swann). She’s a former Marine captain/chopper pilot and somewhat of a maverick, so she’s kind of a problem child who’s been handed around NCIS for a little while as they figure out how to handle her. She drops into Australia where we are, in and of ourselves — how should I put it nicely for my fellow countrymen? — a bit “antiauthoritarian.” So sparks fly naturally, which is great.

Then there’s a core group of characters, which in some ways will feel familiar to an NCIS audience, because they know that in the world of the show there are investigators and forensic pathologists and forensic scientists involved. They’ll look at the show and see a familiar architecture to it, but three-quarters of them are Australians and that makes for a very, very different experience. A lot of the things that Americans take for granted about the world will be put up into relief here a bit, and interrogated, but ultimately what’s fascinating about these characters and the first season of this show is that it doesn’t actually take very long to realize that they’re kind of cut from the same cloth.

Photo : Courtesy of CBS

TVLINE | Did you try to cast the Australian side of the cast with 100% percent Australians? How did that net out?
It’s interesting — the show is an entirely Australian show. Its cast, it’s crewed, it’s written by, it’s produced by, and it’s commissioned by Australians. All of the Australian characters are Australians, and that’s 95% of the cast including guest cast. But when you work on a show that’s as big as NCIS, which is is 200 territories, in 60 different languages, with trillions of hours of this show watched, the great relief from a showrunner’s point of view is that I don’t really have to go out and find “stars.” The show is already the star; I just get to cast the greatest actors on the planet! So we were able to cast really wide, really broadly, to find the best actors to slide into these pretty unique roles. And we were able to find a couple of actors out of the UK, as it would happen, who are just remarkable, in Olivia Swann and Sean Sagar.

TVLINE | I know Olivia from Legends of Tomorrow, and she’s great.
She’s incredible, and I had sort of been following both her and Sean. I’m a huge fan of [director] Guy Ritchie and Sean is one of Guy Ritchie’s favorite actors to work with.

I’ve worked on a lot of shows and I’m a huge believer in the idea that whatever the vibe is amongst the humans that make the show somehow translates to the screen. And in this case, as we wrapped production on Season 1, even though some actors when they wrap you never see them again, they kept coming back to set. In fact, Olivia wrapped up on the very last day of shooting, but Todd Lasance, who is her No. 2, made a point to be there. It’s a real vibe, and we’re really excited to see what the rest of the world thinks.

Photo : CBS

TVLINE | Will there be nods to any other NCIS shows along the way? “I once met Leroy Jethro Gibbs at a conference…” or something?
Look, there are a couple of little Easter eggs there. I won’t spoil them, but they’re definitely there. One of the things that I think audiences love about this show is the fact that it feels like a universe, not individual shows. And while they each have their own DNA, I think that’s what was really clever about the way CBS developed this franchise is they didn’t go out to make the same show twice. If you look at the original show, the mothership, it’s very different from L.A.…

TVLINE | Oh, NCIS: LA was chasing stolen nuclear materials, like, every other week!
Correct. Each show gets a different tonality, a different vibe, a different pace, a different rhythm, a different color palette, a different sensibility. I feel like what CBS did really cleverly was they realized that they needed to expand the audience and to expand the universe, but not just replicate it. So when they came to us, I kind of sat down and watched about 950 episodes of NCIS [programs] in the space of a few weeks to get myself up to speed — I feel like I have a PhD in NCIS! — and what I realized was that they were looking to capture the authenticity of a place. So I went back to [CBS Studios chief] David Stapf and his crew and said, “In order for this to be successful, I think it really has to capture that authentic rhythm, that authentic cultural sensibility of Australia — the colors, the flavor. We should lean into it.” And they said, “That’s music to our ears. Go for it.”

Photo : CBS

TVLINE | I was going to ask: After a person gets done watching this first season — and if they like me have yet to pull the trigger on an Australian vacation — will they kind of feel like they’ve been to Australia?
I hope so, I really do. You’ll certainly feel like you’ve been Sydney. I’m actually kind of surprised in some ways that they haven’t come here and created a franchise sooner. As I said to you before, Australia is the world’s largest island and Sydney Harbor is the world’s largest harbor. And our naval base, which is called HMAS Kuttabul or Fleet Base East, is right in the middle of that harbor. Like, our entire East Coast Navy Base fleet is based in town, so you’ve got an almost indefatigable, inexhaustible supply of stories right in the middle of the world’s biggest harbor on the world’s biggest island. And then you throw in the geopolitical realities of the part of the world that we live in, in that the Indo-Pacific is kind of the hotspot for all sorts of geopolitical tensions right now. It’s the most hotly contested patch of ocean.

TVLINE | The trailer plays that up a lot.
I mean, that’s the situation. Pick up the New York Times and I dare you not to find an article about tensions between China and the Philippines, or contested maritime rights in the South China Sea. It’s an incredibly diverse and vibrant part of the world. Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation on the planet, is just to our north — friends of Australia obviously, but it’s diverse. You’ve got one of the world’s biggest shipping nations in Singapore [3,900 miles away]. You’ve got the world’s second biggest island, Papua New Guinea, right there. You’ve got all these islands dotted across the Pacific, which fall under our sphere of economic cooperation, in terms of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and all of them are contested places at the moment. There are lots of forces vying for economic, military, social partnership.

The trailer mentions the AUKUS Agreement, a military alliance between Australia, the U.S. and the UK, which has only recently been signed. It’s a big deal and it’s literally there because we are in a really contested patch of the world right now. The show tries not to too political, obviously — that’s part of the appeal of it, I think — but the reality is we have basically an endless supply of stories pulled from the front page of the newspaper that seem to be really applicable.

Photo : CBS

TVLINE | What specific sites or locations were you excited to squeeze into the show?
When we started out, we looked at the Australian Navy base in the middle of the harbor, which is where all the American ships come into, and said, “Wow, it’d be fun to get on that, wouldn’t it? It’d be fun to be able to shoot on the actual operating Navy base.” So, we contacted the Australian Navy and said, “Look, we have this little show you might’ve heard of — NCIS? We’ll be doing a franchise here in Sydney, would you like to help out?” And believe it or not they said, “We’d love to, send us a letter with all the things you feel like you might need across the season.” I went, “Well, we need Seahawk helicopters, and we need access to your biggest ships, we’d like to get onboard your subs, we’d like to work and shoot on your Navy bases all around the country, we’d like to get some air assets….” And they came back and they were just incredibly supportive.

In the trailer, that Navy Seahawk helicopter flying at 50 feet above Sydney Harbor? That’s a real one. There’s no CG. We had to clear the harbor, we had an air exclusion zone, and we had the pilots from the Australian Navy flying up from their base down south and landing on a small aircraft carrier and taking off. It was an incredible thrill.

TVLINE | Were there any more “touristy” locales you filmed at?
When you film on Sydney Harbor you kind of spin the camera around and see the Harbor Bridge, you see the Opera House, you see this vast harbor….. We shot at Bondi Beach, which is Australia’s most famous beach. We shot in Kings Cross, which anyone who’s ever been a U.S. serviceman arriving in Sydney will know; it’s the red light district just up the hill from the base, so it’s seen its fair share of U.S. servicemen and women across the years, in all capacities.

One of the things that people think about when they think of Australia is the Outback. Obviously Sydney is not in the Outback, it’s a big urban center, but not too far away you drive up into the mountains and suddenly you’re in this pristine wilderness that’s very uniquely, quintessentially Australian. So, we find ourself up there.

TVLINE | And that lets you include a kangaroo and koala in the trailer!
It does!

TVLINE | Someone at CBS was like, “Yeah, we saw your first pass at the trailer, and there’s no kangaroo. You’ve gotta give them a kangaroo.”
It was a shameless plug for Australian wildlife, what can I say?