Monday, May 13, 2024

The Free World


Nothing in the balance of power has really changed since World War I. The West needs America for its survival as the free world. However, America for her part needs a leader dedicated to the cause of freedom, and prepared to take on the leadership of the West. Given what is at stake, isolationism is not an option.

Politically, the European countries are divided, and individually too weak to take over responsibility from America. Although a giant with 447,007,596 citizens — compared to the 331,900,000 of the United States (both 2021 figures) — the European Union has rarely been able to formulate a common position on urgent foreign affairs, let alone enforce it with self-confidence and determination in economic-military terms. A division based on historical disagreements, rancor, and envy remains noticeable despite the continued efforts of Brussels bureaucrats at erasure of national identities and “harmonization.”

In the face of imminent threats from outside, the European peoples show poor judgment and continue to rival their neighbors, behaving much like the self-centered city-states of ancient Greece when challenged by the Achaemenid Empire. As a result, salvation in the hour of need invariably depends on the Land of the Free. Nobody else could fill the void in her absence. The great powers of the post-war period have ceased to exist. Thus, France and Britain, engulfed by ethnic warfare in their cities, institutional collapse, and cultural self-denial, are long gone as world leaders.

The epitome of Gallic self-conceit, Emmanuel Macron, who famously described NATO as “braindead” in 2019, later tried his hand at mediation between Russia and Ukraine. For some time to come, TV viewers around the world are unlikely to forget his negotiations (or whatever it was that took place) with the Russian president across an immeasurably long conference table in the Kremlin. In the equally pompous and cynical fashion of his predecessors, he aspired to a historic role in world politics and subsequently made an effort to ingratiate himself with the Chinese president. Like Charles de Gaulle, another narcissist, he distanced himself from America, because it suited his immediate ambitions, and let it be understood that neither France nor the other countries in the West (as if he were entitled to speak for them) were indebted to America; in his words, they were not “vassals.” However, neither the Chinese president nor his ambassador in Paris found it worthwhile to reward his sell-out. Instead, they gave him a lecture in ice-cold realpolitik.

Boris Johnson appeared energetic and passionate for as long as circumstances allowed him to remain in the post of British prime minister. As a breath of fresh air and with an irresistible confidence, he won the hearts of the Britons. Accustomed to hand-wringing and vacillating, not to say “wimpish” leaders since Margaret Thatcher’s resignation, they enjoyed the experience of an irrepressible optimist. Time would show that they were woefully mistaken about his statesmanship. He was indeed the man who “got Brexit done,” bursting with slogans and gimmicks, but without having grasped, let alone properly prepared for, the economic consequences. Posterity will also remember him for his unwavering support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion, regularly posing for photography in the war-empty streets of Kyiv. Though witty, he was ultimately a clown — a buffoon. And since his days as a newspaperman, he had frankly shown a worrying disdain for the truth.

From a conservative point of view, both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak became synonymous with wasted opportunities. Great Britain used to be a stronghold of civilization whenever continental Europe fell victim to revolutionary psychoses, overthrew the social order, and resorted to indiscriminate murders against the backdrop of general anarchy. Something of critical importance to the nation’s self-understanding and will to endure has obviously been broken. An ominous sign of this development is the surrender of power over public space to triumphant enemies of civilization. In a general atmosphere of moral confusion and doom, (a) parliamentarians give up their seats due to personal threats (after the assassination of Sir David Amess), (b) judges hesitate to judge according to the laws for fear of after-hours reprisals, and (c) outnumbered police forces on the streets try to befriend rioters by acting as security guards at their marches, ordering people, whose visible identity might incite violence, to stay away. Obviously, the cultural disease cuts across the division of power. (If Brexit were ever meant to mark a break with Britain’s rampant immigration since 1997, a piece of — irreversible — social engineering on part of the Labor government, those in power, i.e. the Tories, subsequently failed to deliver on the promise to the people.)

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, a man dwarfed by his Republican predecessors, expedited the political decline of the West. As fate would have it, America suffered its deadliest attack since Pearl Harbor on his watch. Unlike his father, who was a distinguished war hero, though peculiarly absent-minded and indecisive towards the end of his administration, he himself was nothing but a privileged career politician, enjoying his connections, and escaping military service abroad during the Vietnam War. Addressing his nation from a New York mosque after 9/11, Bush famously exclaimed the following: “Islam is peace.” Those words, massively contradicted by reality before and after, live in infamy.

Bush was in a frenzy, lacking an independent overview of the situation and proper guidance. His successor, Barack H. Obama, a lanky charmer with notorious speaking gifts, subtly promoted ethnic identity awareness and took America even closer to the abyss. So self-confident was he that he imagined he could appease Third World tyrants by expressing self-reproach on behalf of America. In the end, he failed his moral responsibility to the oppressed of the world, including gassed civilians and rebels in the Syrian civil war. During his tenure, Christianity lost ground to a branch of moral relativism that encouraged the absurdities of identity politics at home and signaled abroad that America renounced any monopoly on the truth and therefore any right to interfere in the conflicts of other nations.

Then along came Donald J. Trump. An avowed critic of the Washington “swamp,” he won support from Americans because he had the guts to address the problems pointed out by others in a straightforward, intrepid fashion. Apparently, he perceived the long-term demographic — and electoral — implications of the migrant invasion from Mexico. Defying lawsuits and ridicule, he therefore made the decision to build a wall across America on the southern border. His successor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., reversed his immigration policies and invited millions of foreigners into the United States.

It may be that Biden — similar to Lyndon B. Johnson and other Democrat strategists — expects to redeem the electoral dividend sometime in the future. However, the guarantee of Democrat election victories comes at a high cost. By allowing millions of Third-World migrants to invade the country, leading to formidable changes in American demographics, the Democrats are changing the face of America forever. With the breakdown of ethnic stability, the institutions of society, including democracy itself, are at risk of corruption. It is ultimately about deeply rooted traditions, social cohesion, and genuine loyalty to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. The delicate balance that has prevailed since the birth of the nation is nearly gone.

Anthropological observers refer to the “Brazilianization” of North America, conveying an image of happy samba dancers and carnal brotherhood without borders. In line with the times, some of them congratulate the Americans on the increasing diversity. What is certain is that American culture is about to change. Adopting institutional habits from Latin America on a large scale, North America cannot remain America, as we have known her in the past, but must transform into something else. Whatever migrants provide by way of exotic cuisines and rites, experience largely contradicts a dependable relationship between their cultural heritage and an orderly society under the rule of law.

So how can an American nation presently obsessed with muddy notions of “equity,” “ethnic diversification,” and abolition of “biological constructs,” having lapsed into moral relativism, lead the free world? How can it save the West from obliteration in the history books, given the resolve of anti-Western conspiracies around the world and the ever-increasing demographic pressure?

Well, dare we believe that America is something truly special in history — vibrant, strong-willed, and indomitable? If so, there may be a living person, a daughter or son of that great nation, waiting to turn the tide.



The Fall of the House of Presidential Persecutions

 What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes?

None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people.

These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing him in transparent elections.

As such, the current lawfare joins the Mueller investigation of the Russian-collusion hoax. It is a continuation of the laptop disinformation caper and the “51 intelligence authorities” who lied about its Russian origins. It logically follows from the two impeachments, the Senate trial of Trump as a private citizen, and states’ efforts to remove him from their ballots.

The E. Jean Carroll case, the Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis local and state trials, and the Smith federal indictment share various embarrassments.

Suspension of statutes of limitations: Carroll and Bragg could only go to court through the legal gymnastics of enlisting sympathetic judges and legislators to change or amend the law to suspend the statute of limitations as a veritable bill of attainder to go after Trump.

Violations of the Bill of Rights: In the Bragg case, Judge Merchan’s selective and asymmetrical gag order likely violates the First Amendment (prohibiting “abridging the freedom of speech”). Bragg violated the Sixth Amendment by denying Trump the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation”. Judge Engoron, in the juryless James case, violated the Eighth Amendment (“nor excessive fines imposed”) in assessing Donald Trump an unheard of $354 million fine for supposedly overstating the value of real estate collateral for loans, while violating the Sixth Amendment as well (“the accused shall enjoy the right … to trial by an impartial jury”). The FBI likely violated the Fourth Amendment (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”) by raiding Trump’s private residence, seizing his papers and effects (many of them private), and then lying about its own shenanigans of rearranging the seized classified files to incriminate Trump.

The invention of crimes: The indictments of Bragg, James, Willis, and Smith had no prior precedents. These cases will likely never be seen again. Bragg bootstrapped a federal campaign violation allegation onto a state crime. Yet still, he has never explained exactly how Trump violated any particular law.

No one had ever been tried in New York for allegedly inflating real estate assets to obtain a loan from banks, whose auditors had reviewed favorably the applicant’s assets. Thus, the lending agencies issued the loans, profited from the interest, were paid back in full and on time, and had no complaint against the borrower, Trump. Nonetheless, James indicted Trump and convicted him of a non-crime without a victim, due the New York combination of a politicized left-wing Manhattan judge, prosecutor, and juror.

No local prosecutor until Willis had ever indicted a presidential candidate for calling up a registrar and complaining about the balloting or alleging that some votes cast were not yet counted, followed up by an additional request to find supposedly missing ballots. If such criminalization was the norm, a local Florida prosecutor in 2000 could have indicted both the Bush and Gore campaigns.

Prior to Smith’s federal indictment, all disagreements with presidents about the classification and removal of their private papers were handled administratively, not criminally, much less inaugurated by a staged, performance-art FBI swat-like raid on an ex-president’s residence.

Equal justice?: These indictments are asymmetrical, hounding Trump when other prominent left-wing politicians have been far greater violators of the same alleged crimes and yet were given exemptions. Special prosecutor Robert Hur found Biden culpable for removing classified files for far longer, in more places, in less secure circumstances, and without the presidential authority to declassify them. Yet Biden was not indicted on the Orwellian excuse that he, as president, was so mentally challenged no jury would convict such an amnesiac and debilitated defendant (who otherwise apparently can exercise the office of President of the United States.)

Tara Reade was as believable or unbelievable as E. Jean Carroll. Far poorer, and without Carroll’s New York elite connections, Reade alleged that Senator Joe Biden sexually assaulted her at about the same time as the Carroll claim. Yet Reade was written off as a nut, ostracized, and felt to have opportunistically piggy-banked on the #MeToo movement.

James and her predecessors were aware of hundreds of New York City developers who submitted loan applications with property assessment at odds with those of initial bank appraisals. She knows the solution is that either the bank’s sophisticated auditors refuse the loan or the disagreement is deemed not sufficient enough to sacrifice profit-making by offering a loan that will likely be timely paid back.

Willis knows that Stacey Abrams, in her own state, claimed herself the winner of the 2018 gubernatorial race (she lost by over 50,000 votes). Abrams then declared that the actual winner, current governor Brian Kemp, was and is an illegitimate governor. She further sued to overturn the election in the manner that Jill Stein had tried to overthrow the 2016 presidential election.

In a similar fashion of election denialism, Democratically-funded ad campaigns and sycophantic celebrities hit the airways in 2016 to flip the electors to become “faithless,” thus renouncing their constitutional duties to reflect their own states’ tallies and instead voting according to the national popular vote.

Bragg knows that Hillary Clinton was fined over $100,000 for 2016 campaign violations after she hid the nature of her illegal payments to foreign national Christopher Steele to collect dirt on her opponent Donald Trump. Barack Obama was fined—five years post facto!—by the same Federal Election Commission a whopping $375,000 for improperly reporting nearly $2 million in 2008 campaign donations. In neither case did a federal prosecutor, much less a local district attorney, seek to criminalize what was customarily considered an administrative or civil violation of federal law.

Bias: Never has an ex-president and leading presidential candidate been targeted with promises of indictment by candidates running for state and local offices. Yet that is precisely what Bragg, James, and Willis have done, fueling their campaigns for offices by promising to find ways to go after Donald Trump and subsequently raising money from such boasts.

Willis’s paramour, fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, met with the White House counsel’s office. One of Bragg’s prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, left his prestigious job as a senior federal prosecutor in the Biden DOJ temporarily to work on contract with Bragg’s Manhattan office to go after Trump.

Jack Smith was appointed by the Biden Department of Justice; his left-wing filmmaker spouse helped to produce a puff-piece documentary on Michelle Obama.

The judge in the Bragg case, Juan Merchan, donated to the 2020 Biden campaign. So did one of the lead prosecutors, Susan Hoffinger, who gave generously to Biden in 2020. Merchan’s own daughter, Loren, has made a small fortune as a Democratic campaign consultant, having guided her left-wing clients’ fundraising efforts to the tune of $90 million.

Given these egregious violations of the law, abject political bias, conflicts of interest, asymmetrical application of the law, and manipulations of the statutes of limitations, the public has slowly grown incensed. They rightly conclude that the lawfare is a left-wing coordinated effort to destroy candidate Trump by exhausting him physically and psychologically in five separate cases at the height of the campaign season, bankrupting him with what will likely be $1 billion in legal fees and fines, silencing him with gag orders, defaming him with salacious and sensational but irrelevant court testimonies, and keeping him off the campaign trail.

And now? The sheer preposterousness has resulted in two unexpected developments. One, the more the left tries to subvert the legal system to emasculate Trump, the more the latter wins popularity, especially in traditionally non-Republican constituencies, even as Biden slumps in the polls. And two, the four criminal cases are starting to fall apart because of their sheer ridiculousness and abject bias.

Will and her boyfriend, prosecutor Wade, likely lied under oath about both their covert romantic relationship and the money that fueled their global junketeering. A Georgia state appellate court is reviewing Willis’ suitability to continue the prosecution. One might ask, “How can a prosecutor who lied under oath while trying a case retain any credibility?” Whatever the state court’s findings, a state appellate or federal court will eventually exonerate Trump. No other prosecutor or jurisdiction would likely take over Willis’s tainted indictment.

Smith’s indictment is in limbo, largely because: 1) in unusual and partisan fashion, he sought to rush the prosecution to coincide with the 2024 campaign; 2) the Supreme Court is determining to what extent a president either has immunity or can be hauled into court by a special prosecutor appointed by the opposition party; and 3) his office lied to the court about the condition of the Trump files they found at his residence, collected, and then took possession of—in a fashion that was intended to prejudice the case in the government’s favor.

Bragg’s gambit of putting Stormy Daniels on the stand to offer irrelevant but lurid testimony to hurt candidate Trump may have backfired, given she proved unstable, narcissistic, unreliable, hateful, and promised to break the law and refuse a legally ordered payment to Trump after losing a defamation case against him. Convicted felon and liar Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness, has already hit the internet trying to get rich and will have less credibility.

James’s civil conviction of Trump and massive fine (originally $450 million with interest) may also be overturned on appeal, given it violates Eight-Amendment protection from “unusual punishment” (“bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed”), in addition to the selective prosecution of Trump where there is no criminal act and no victim.

So what will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes?

One, we have entered new territory. There will soon be hundreds of local and state prosecutors who feel they have now been given license in election years to go after national presidential candidates for political advantage, both local and national.

Two, conservatives are in a dilemma: whether to restore deterrence by boomeranging the left’s extra-legal effort to ruin a candidate and president or to refrain from what would be a descent into third-world, tit-for-tat criminalization of politics.

Three, the persecution of Trump, coupled with the derelict candidacy of Joe Biden, threatens to erode the traditional base of the Democratic Party and redefine politics in terms of class rather than race. Minorities are beginning to empathize with the gagged, railroaded, and victimized Trump while distancing themselves from the victimizers, who are using their “privilege” to warp the law on behalf of a bullying president.

Four, the U.S. has lost a great deal of credibility abroad due to the erosion of what was once seen as the greatest system of jurisprudence in the world. No longer.

Enemies like China and Russia now boast that America’s new political prosecutions are similar to their own systems, or even more egregious, and will welcome us into their own customs of bastardized justice.

Latin-American, African, and Asian dictators are delighted that the U.S. has lost the moral authority to lecture them on the need for a disinterested and independent judiciary and the rule of law.

Our democratic allies in Europe and Asia are increasingly disturbed that the instability and unlawfulness apparent in the current lawfare put into question the reliability of the United States and its adherence to a rules-based order—whether at home or aboard.

Any president who would sic the justice system on his opponent might be equally vindictive and lawless to his allies abroad.







Christian Patriot News, And we Know, and more- May 13

 




How To Neutralize The Campus Communists


You may have noticed the campus communist uprisings are fading into the background, at least for the moment. It was pretty clear that the entitled – and universally ugly – spoiled mutants (and their professional cadre organizers) were starting to get on the collective nerves of normal Americans, plus the Biden clique was already committing to betraying Israel in favor of the terrorists. The regime media has dialed it down as they served their purpose.

But don’t worry – they will be back. Even when the protest tactics – encampments, blocking freeways, rioting – become counterproductive, they are still fun for the participants. Chicago is going to be lit. Remember, the majority of these freaks are part of this garbage movement because they are friendless losers, especially the chicks – no man wants them, and so they cosplay as ISIS brides for a while before graduating with their Feminist Studies degrees and beginning their long journey toward inevitably dying alone in their one-bedroom apartment while reading a Toni Morrison book and then being eaten by their cats Marx and Engels as a Taylor Swift song plays on an endless loop.

Remember that all this protest crap is an information operation, not a kinetic one. That means they are trying to effect change by affecting us and making us do what they want. They sure can’t force us to do anything. Even when they do damage, the message is the effect, not the damage. They want to demonstrate that the authorities have no power, that their faction can do as it pleases, but also that they are victims of the fascist regime. It’s amusing to see liberal wine women administrators at the University of College painted as Franco or Pinochet, but that’s part of the scam. The commies are both victims and victors simultaneously – they embrace the identity they need to sway the weak-minded into surrender or submission.

Our minds are the targets, and sadly, too many Americans are vulnerable to this manipulation. Why? First, the regime media sympathizes with them and will always depict these creeps in the most favorable light. Or no light at all – when the communists get too obnoxious and start getting on the general public’s nerves, the regime media will (as it is doing now) cut the coverage even though the camps are still there. The communists have a huge edge with their alliance with the regime media – it is essential to their success. That’s why they hate hate hate the conservative media that gets out there and exposes the truth about these Marxist minions.

They also have the advantage of understanding how to appeal to the cultural vulnerabilities of Americans. Americans like to be nice and default to assuming the other guy is nice even when that’s not true. They are sympathetic, and some even care when cops drag these mutts away. They take others’ good faith for granted far too often, even when painful experience teaches the need for cynicism. These communists are actively supporting mass-murdering Third World Islamic terrorists. You have Becky and Ashleigh from the suburbs out there with their stupid keffiyehs and their “Queers for Palestine” signs chanting slogans about killing all the Jews. These are bad people, evil people who are our enemies. 

But far too many Americans will write this off as merely “caring too much.” See, it’s all about the Palestinian children. Baloney. It’s about wiping out Israel and then wiping out us. As for the hypocrisy of it, another advantage is that they are immune to irony. The “Jews for Palestine” people do not care that Hamas would butcher them in a heartbeat. The issue they are talking about is never the issue – not structural racism, climate change, or this Gaza stuff. It is all about moving the Marxist ball downfield. You cannot reason them out of it because reason does not matter – they don’t have to believe what they are saying because its objective truth or falsity is irrelevant.

Last, they understand and are trained to exploit normal people’s reactions. Normal people will try to reason. That’s why the commies scream and yell. It disorients normal people. The fat pink-haired pinko is not going to debate – xir is going to respond with screeching about genocide, not facts. You see it when the cops are dragging them off – little girls issuing a stream of vile obscenities and insisting they are being literally murdered. This is not normal – it freaks out the squares, and cops have to be trained not to slap them because that’s the normal reaction to someone having a hysterical freakout. Another tactic is to create uniforms and rank structures and demand we respect them – look at the organizers who wear reflective vests and insist that no one talk to anyone but them. These tactics are another way the enemy seeks an edge over regular folks.

But those advantages for our enemies are also potential weaknesses we can exploit to defeat them. The organizers understand that the homicidal sheep in their flock are morons working out their personal psychodramas and that they are vulnerable to us in a way the organizers are not. For instance, given the chance, the sheep will go off message and say the things that are not supposed to be spoken, like how all Americans are settlers and have to die. That’s great – these idiots talking like that can wake up the normals.

The sheep are also vulnerable to consequences. The organizers who come on campus don’t care, but the students sure do when it’s their degree or their future at stake. The campus administrators who have been most successful in nipping this crap in the bud are the ones who threatened expulsion, then followed through. It’s all fun and games until they kick your butt out – and it’s worse when video of you getting arrested gets immortalized online and jeopardizes your job prospects. Nine out of ten of these idiots are protest tourists just having fun – and we win when we impose consequences that make it not fun.

Another key is to be speedy and unreasonable. Move fast, and do not argue with them. When the nonsense starts, go full force immediately. If you do not, they build strength. Look at all their faculty supporters. Most were not out there on Day One. They waited and watched to see what would happen, and when the administrators dithered, the faculty joined in. Few faculty are going to risk their jobs. But if you are indecisive, consider “demands” and enter into “negotiations,” you have already lost. The authority must dictate from a position of strength, not beg their indulgence from a position of weakness. We see this works in the red states where the pipsqueaks tried this nonsense. Remember, they cannot force anyone to do anything; their sole power is to elicit a reaction that helps them. 

Now, the organizers are immune to those consequences. They go from cause to cause, organizing the sheep, not worrying about diplomas or resumes. Dealing with the pros requires something else – real prosecution, not the slap on the wrist stuff. There are plenty of state and federal laws that bar conspiracies to commit crimes, like burglary (taking over buildings) or civil rights violations (like banning Jews from campus spaces). Red state attorneys general should be filing charges; the statute of limitations will not have run when the Trump 2.0 Department of Justice takes over in January. As we’ve learned, we must prosecute these insurrectionists to the fullest extent of the law, right?

The way to defeat the campus commies is to implacably hold them to rigid standards and impose tough consequences upon their actions. Do not recognize them or their cause. Beating them requires ignoring their attempts to set the terms of engagement, whether it be ignoring their internal hierarchy, rejecting demands and negotiations, or ignoring the performative screaming and yelling. They get nothing – not deference, not respect, not even an opportunity to be heard. That’s how you beat them. And the authorities who fail to do this, who treat these communist kiddies as special snowflakes, will get broken and humiliated. The enemy feeds on weakness. The answer is simple – don’t be weak.



Democrats Are Getting Desperate, Now Is The Time To Twist The Knife


As the old saying goes, when your enemy is destroying himself, let him. Well, when they’re flailing desperately in a state of panic, it’s time to twist the knife.

Look, politics is a blood sport, it just is. I didn’t invent it, the left did. They’re nasty as hell, and vicious as you can imagine. When a Republican passes away, it’s not just the random social media weirdo cheering their death, it’s the official, written long ago, edited and approved by a committee of people believed to be imbued with good enough judgment to be the gatekeepers of an institution’s reputation who do it too. How many absurd, offensive obituaries of Republicans do you remember reading? But when a terrorist leader leaves this Earth to go meet the 72 virgins who will be shoving red hot pokers into his rear end for all eternity, they call him an “austere religious scholar.”

It doesn’t matter that they usually change all of them, what they do before the world sees it is who they are; what they really think.

They’re horrible people. I know I’ve said that a million times before, but it’s true and gets truer every day, so it’s worth repeating. 

So, when I see Democrats starting to panic, starting to get desperate, I rejoice. A bad day for them is a good day for America. Let’s twist the knife a little bit on a few of them, shall we?

First David Trone. I’ve never seen a Member of the House (who bought his seat and doesn’t even live in the district) have campaign ads run by his opponent, who is not a Member of the House, featuring nearly every other member of the state’s Congressional delegation. But that’s what’s happening in Maryland, and that’s how unpopular and unliked Trone is among his liberal colleagues.

Trone is a down the line progressive. A filthy rich white guy with white savior complex. He once features his daughters in an ad about abortion and the death of his nephew in an ad about drugs. Imagine calling your sibling to let them know you’re going to use their worst day to help your campaign? Worse, imagine not calling at all. 

He tries to raise money to claim a “grassroots campaign,” like how he claims to have been effective in Congress when he’s done nothing. But, rather hilariously, as it was put on Twitter, “#MDSen Democratic candidate David Trone raised $216,145 from donors not named David Trone in Q1 and $18.5 million from those in the opposite category. Trone has now poured over $41.7M into his campaign, ending March w/$1M remaining.”

Anyone willing to spend that much of their own money in a desperate scramble to obtain power should not be allowed anywhere near it.

Then we have everyone else. There’s a deadline coming up. Not an important deadline, it means nothing, really, unless you’re running for office and then you have to do some paperwork. The Federal Election Commission makes campaigns file paperwork for who donated to them. If you didn’t know that, your life would be no different. But it’s the most important thing ever if you read Democrats’ fundraising emails. They’ll use anything to create a false sense of urgency in order to try to separate fools from their money.

Montana Senator Jon Tester wrote, “Okay listen, folks. We’ve got just 5 days to go until our last FEC deadline before the general election starts, so I’ll keep this email to a few sentences.  The fundraising team just called me to let me know that we’re still not on track to reach our goal before Wednesday’s deadline.”

The primary in Montana is June 4, Tester has an opponent you’ve never heard of, and will never hear of, even if you’re a member of his family. In short: Tester is easily going to be renominated. But he’s still trying to squeeze money out people hit hardest by the failed policies of Jon Tester and Joe Biden. 

I honestly don’t know how these people live with themselves.

This stuff is not done from a place of strength, it’s done out of panic. They can’t make a case for themselves, so they scream and cry about everyone else somehow being worse. When your opponent is drowning, toss them a brick. When they’re flailing, let them. Finish them off figuratively in every way you can, twist that metaphorical knife until the election is over and you’ve won. Then get ready to do it again the next time and every time after that too. 



The Nonprofits Making Billions off the Border Crisis.

 

Federal funding has turned the business of resettling migrant children into a goldmine for a handful of NGOs—and their top executives.

While the border crisis has become a major liability for President Biden, threatening his reelection chances, it’s become a huge boon to a group of nonprofits getting rich off government contracts.


Although the federally funded Unaccompanied Children Program is responsible for resettling unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S., it delegates much of the task to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that run shelters in the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California.


And with the recent massive influx of unaccompanied children—a record 130,000 in 2022, the last year for which there are official stats—the coffers of these NGOs are swelling, along with the salaries of their CEOs.


“The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,” Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, said of the NGOs. “We’re going to find that the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money will rival what we saw with the Covid federal money.”



The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy


In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023. 


Endeavors’ 2022 federal disclosure form also shows that it paid $5 million to a company to provide fill-in doctors and nurses, $4.6 million for “consulting services,” $1.4 million to attend conferences, and $700,000 on lobbyists. In 2021, the NGO shelled out $8 million to hotel management company Esperanto Developments to house migrants in their hotels.


 Endeavors, which gets 99.6 percent of its revenue from the government according to federal disclosure forms, declined to comment to The Free Press.


The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, funds the nonprofits through its Office of Refugee Resettlement, and its budget has swelled over the years—from $1.8 billion in 2018 to $6.3 billion in 2023. The ORR is expected to spend at least $7.3 billion this year—almost all of which will be funneled to NGOs and other contractors.

When asked about the funding increase during a January media event, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the chief executive of Global Refuge said, “We’ve grown because the need has grown.” The nonprofit did not make Vignarajah available for an interview.

But while it’s true the number of migrants has exploded in recent years, critics say these enormous federal grants far exceed the current need. The facilities themselves are generally owned by private companies and are leased to the NGOs, which house the unaccompanied minors and attempt to unite them with family members or, if that’s not possible, people who will take care of them—their so-called sponsors. The ORR does not publicly list the specific number of shelters it funds in its efforts to house migrants, a business The New York Times once described as “lucrative” and “secretive.” 

While some NGOs have long had operations at the border, “what is new under Biden is the amount of taxpayer money being awarded, the lack of accountability for performance, and the lack of interest in solving the problem,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that researches the effect of government immigration policies and describes its bias as “low-immigration, pro-immigrant.”

Consider Global Refuge, based in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2018, according to its federal disclosure form, the Baltimore-based nonprofit had $50 million in revenue. By 2022, its revenue totaled $207 million—$180 million of which came from the government. That year, $82 million was spent on housing unaccompanied children. Global Refuge also granted $45 million to an organization that facilitates adoptions as well as resettling migrant children. 


Now Global Refuge employs over 550 people nationwide, and CEO Vignarajah said in January that the nonprofit plans to expand to at least 700 staffers by the end of 2024.

Vignarajah, a former policy director for Michelle Obama when she was first lady, took the top job at Global Refuge in February 2019 after she lost her bid to be elected governor of Maryland. She has since become one of the most prominent advocates for migrants crossing the southern border, appearing frequently on MSNBC and other media as an immigration advocate. Her incoming salary was $244,000, but just three years later, her compensation more than doubled to $520,000. 


In 2019, Global Refuge housed 2,591 unaccompanied children while spending $30 million. Three years later, the NGO reported that it housed 1,443 unaccompanied children at a cost of $82.5 million—almost half the number of migrants for more than double the money.


In a statement to The Free Press, Global Refuge spokesperson Timothy Young said that while in care, “Unaccompanied children attend six hours of daily education and participate in recreational activities, both at the education site and within the community.” 


The man with the $1 million salary is Dr. Anselmo Villarreal, who became CEO of Southwest Key Programs, headquartered in Austin, Texas, in 2021. (Villarreal took a drop in pay compared to his predecessor, Southwest Key founder Juan Sanchez, who paid himself an eye-popping $3.5 million in 2018.) 


Despite a number of scandals in the recent past, including misuse of federal funds and several instances of employees sexually abusing some of the children in its care, Southwest Key continues to operate—and rake in big government checks. In 2020, the year of Covid-19, its government grant was $391 million; by 2022, its contract was nearly $790 million.

Southwest Key’s federal disclosure forms show that in 2022, six executives in addition to Villarreal made more than $400,000, including its chief strategist ($800,000), its head of operations ($700,000) and its top HR executive ($535,000). Its total payroll in 2022 was $465 million.


Endeavors, Inc., based in San Antonio, Texas, is run by Chip Fulghum. Formerly the chief financial officer of the Department of Homeland Security, he signed on as Endeavors’ chief operating officer in 2019 and was promoted to CEO this year.


In 2022, Fulghum was paid almost $600,000, while the compensation for Endeavors’ then-CEO, Jon Allman, was $700,000. Endeavors’ payroll went from $20 million in 2018 to a whopping $150 million in 2022, with seven other executives earning more than $300,000.


Perhaps the most shocking figure was the size of Endeavors’s 2022 contract with the government: a staggering $1.3 billion, by far the largest sum ever granted to an NGO working at the border. (In 2023, Endeavors’ government funds shrank to $324 million because the shelter was closed for six months. Endeavors says this was because the beds were not needed, the border crisis notwithstanding.)

Despite these astronomical sums, the Unaccompanied Children Program is fraught with problems and suffers from a general lack of oversight. Because so many unaccompanied youths are crossing the border, sources who worked at a temporary Emergency Intake Site in 2021 said the ORR pressured case managers to move children out within two weeks in order to prepare for the next wave of unaccompanied children. 


In 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis empaneled a grand jury to conduct an investigation, which showed how the ORR continually loosened its safety protocols so children could be connected to sponsors more quickly—and with less due diligence. 


The same report revealed that because there’s often no documentation to prove a migrant’s age at the time Border Patrol processes them, 105 adults were discovered posing as unaccompanied children in 2021. One of them, a 24-year-old Honduran male who said he was 17, was charged with murdering his sponsor in Jacksonville, Florida.


“We used to have DNA testing to make sure we had these family units,” Chris Clem, a recently retired Border Patrol officer, told The Free Press. But since the border crisis, the ORR has abandoned DNA testing, according to congressional testimony by the General Accountability Office. In 2021, ORR revised its rules so that public records checks for other adults living in a prospective sponsor’s home were no longer mandatory.


Tara Rodas, a government employee who was temporarily detailed to work at the California Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake shelter in 2021, told The Free Press she also uncovered evidence of fraud within the sponsorship system. “Most of the sponsors have no legal presence in the U.S. I don’t know if I saw one U.S. ID,” said Rodas. “There were no criminal investigators at the site, and there was no access to see if sponsors had committed crimes in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico.”


Last October, the ORR published a series of proposed changes to its regulations in the Federal Register that will effectively codify the more relaxed standards. The new regulations, which will go into effect in July, will allow background checks and verifying the validity of a sponsor’s identity—but wouldn’t require them.


“It is mind-boggling that ORR has not seen fit to adjust the policies for (unaccompanied children) placements, except to make them more lenient,” Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies told The Free Press. “They could do a much better job, but they only want to streamline the process and make the releases even easier.” The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to emailed questions from The Free Press.


Deborah White, another federal employee temporarily detailed to the Pomona Fairplex facility in 2021, told The Free Press: “Ultimately, the responsibility is on the government. But the oversight is obviously not adequate—from the contracting to the care of the children to the vetting of the sponsors. All of it is inadequate. The government blames the contractor and the contractor blames the government, and no one is held accountable.”

Maddie Rowley is an investigative reporter. Follow her on X @Maddie_Rowley. And read Peter Savodnik’s piece, “A Report from the Southern Border: ‘We Want Biden to Win.’”