The Modern Slave

Autonomy without self-control is slavery.

posted by Leslie Corbly at American Greatness 

On the Fourth of July, Americans came together in their communities to honor the birth of our nation. But this year in particular, celebrations occurred against the backdrop of a nation adrift. Politically and culturally, various ideologies war for dominion over the consciousness of the country as Americans struggle to define our sacred, core value: freedom. 

What is Freedom?

Everyone, whether they identify as Republican, Democrat, conservative, or progressive, advocates for freedom. However, it has no self-evident definition, and the culture that birthed the American Revolution bears almost no resemblance to present-day reality. The American founding predates our current era by over two centuries. The Founding Fathers lived during the time of the Enlightenment, long before the ideas popular in postmodernism took root in Western culture.

And, while the belief in individualism has always been at the root of American identity, there has been a dramatic shift in our cultural understanding of the term. In 1776, it was widely believed that the ability to live as a responsible and authentic individual involved virtue and a commitment to sound moral character.

Contrast that with the prevailing idea of individualism today and the difference is striking. Now, expressive individualism has replaced the traditional understanding of individual autonomy. This phrase describes the belief that people are defined by their feelings and that individual identity is found in the ability to publicly act out these feelings without constraint.

Although this belief has its roots in philosophers of the past, its dominance in society took centuries to emerge. But what was once novel is now baked into our cultural DNA. From the dogma of bodily autonomy to the insistence that a rejection of the use of newly created neopronouns is a form of bigotry and abuse, the rich philosophical theory of liberty championed by our forebears has been hollowed out.

Free to Become Slaves

Freedom once came with a cost paid in the currencies of self-control, prudence, and temperance. To live free meant to voluntarily place passion and emotions in their appropriate places. Liberty was the acting out of deeply held philosophical or religious beliefs, making it the synthesis of belief and action, not the realization of fleeting inner feelings.

Now, liberty has become synonymous with licentiousness. Our founders debated philosophical differences between structures of self-governance. Today, we debate whether men can, in fact, become women. With this simple fact in dispute, our culture now has serious conversations about whether individuals should face legal liability for refusing to deny biological reality.

As celebrations of liberty wane and our nation stares down the barrel of contentious and absurd elections, lawsuits, and political events, Americans should look at the state of our culture and ask questions that go far deeper than partisan politics.

For, as Ronald Reagan once opined, liberty is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” And freedom is lost culturally before it manifests in the political realm. Simply put, we did not get into this mess overnight. For generations, we pursued rights without responsibility, freedom without virtue, and autonomy with neither scrutiny nor self-control.

Today, we reap the benefits of irresponsibility. Tomorrow, our children may find themselves born into slavery from the squandering of freedom’s blessings.

May we all, individually and collectively, determine how to responsibly use the freedom we have—before it is too late.

Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union. . .By Victor Davis Hanson

 Like the late-stage Leonid Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/11/our-brezhnev-our-pravda-our-soviet-union/

Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.

By Brezhnev’s late sixties and early seventies, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.

Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.

“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom—or even their lives.

Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader—even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.

The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.

Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.

Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Leonid Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.

Now, Biden can no longer even perform his assigned ceremonial tasks of putting a moderate veneer on radical, nihilist agendas that are stagnating the country.

Yet our Pravda journalists have sworn to the American people that, in private, the reclusive, three-day-a-week Biden outpaces the energy and drive of those half his age. Obsequious staffers plant stories in the Soviet-like ears of reporters about Biden’s singular dynamism.

Any dissenters are publicly demonized as peddlers of “cheap fakes.”

When Biden’s reclusiveness prompts too much gossip that he is near senile, he is wheeled out for a staged interview that must be edited before release. Or he answers questions secretly shown to him in advance.

On sporadic occasions where the state media and the Biden nomenklatura cannot control events—such as rare presidential debates or international summits—our Pravda media go into overdrive to convince the public that what they see and hear is not real.

In the end, Brezhnev could not even hobble to the May Day dais to celebrate communism’s national holiday.

He soon reached the point that his debilities were so manifest that even his hirelings and the media could not hide them. He then vanished from public view, leaving the Russian people with no idea as to who was running their communist nation.

Then one day, Soviet propagandists announced suddenly but matter-of-factly that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now brilliantly running the Soviet Union.

Biden, too, is at that point of stasis. He cannot do press conferences, town halls, debates, or real interviews. To do so would confirm to the public the truth: that Biden is too cognitively challenged to continue his presidency.

And yet the cloistered Biden can no longer hide during a campaign season with his accustomed three-day workweek.

The media has done its best to continue its Orwellian ruse. They claim that Trump interrupted Biden (he did not) in the recent debate and that he lied (if so, not as much as did Biden). Sometimes, the press corps just blurts out that an inert, left-wing Biden is still preferable to a dynamic, conservative Trump.

What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?

We will continue to be lectured on the vigor of Biden—until one day we aren’t, when Biden either steps down—or worse.

Then, our Pravda will likely present the new official narrative. They will convince us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underappreciated genius whose past portfolios led to solving the border crisis and renewing American dominance in space.

One day, the same reporters who swore Biden was a virtual Socrates behind closed doors and then suddenly just confessed he was not when their lies were no longer operative will sing the praises of our new comrade leader—the brilliant, accomplished, eloquent, and articulate Kamala Harris.

How Fani Willis — and the Possibility of State Prison — Could Haunt a Second Trump Term

 It is the racketeering case from Fulton County that could present the most sustained headache for a second Trump term.

https://www.nysun.com/article/how-fani-willis-and-the-possibility-of-state-prison-could-haunt-a-second-trump-term

President Trump’s rising presidential fortunes have thrown into sharp relief the possibility that he could soon face his legal woes from the Oval Office. 

A second turn at the presidency would give a Trump ample defenses over the federal charges handed up by Special Counsel Jack Smith, assuming they survive the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity. He could, say, instruct a new attorney general to fire Mr. Smith, or even possibly issue himself a self-pardon. What was once a grave threat from federal law enforcement would likely evaporate.

The then 47th president, though, would have far less sway over the state cases against him brought by a pair of elected big city Democrat district attorneys, Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg. Mr. Bragg has already secured convictions in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, but the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, has postponed by more than two months a sentencing hearing to consider the immunity implications. 

It is the racketeering case from Fulton County, Georgia, that could present the most sustained headache for a second Trump term. The case is now frozen as the Georgia court of appeals considers Trump’s motion to disqualify Ms. Willis for her secret love affair with her former boyfriend and special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. The 45th president also cites Ms. Willis’s accusations that her opponents are “playing the race card.”

Ms. Willis made that accusation before the congregation of a historic Black church at Atlanta. It is now being cited by Mr. Trump as evidence that she is trying to poison the jury pool at Fulton County, a majority-minority jurisdiction. 

The court of appeals has set a tentative date of October 4 to hear oral arguments on disqualification, though Ms. Willis has moved for the review court to dismiss Trump’s appeal. She argues that he has not yet cleared the evidentiary bar needed to earn a reversal of Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling keeping her on the case once Mr. Wade departed the prosecution. 

Whether Ms. Willis keeps her assignment or is removed, though, the Constitution assigns the president scant oversight over state criminal law. He cannot fire a state district attorney, and he is granted  the “power to grant Reprieves and Pardons” only for “offences against the United States,” not against the individual states. The Department of Justice forbids prosecuting a sitting president, but that guidance only applies to federal prosecutions. 

In 1997, the Supreme Court allowed a federal civil case to move forward against President Clinton. The DOJ, though, has twice reckoned — in 1973 and 2000 — that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.” It is for similar reasons that the high court just ruled that presidents are entitled to immunity for official acts. 

Ms. Willis has struck a defiant posture despite the obstacles encountered by her case. In March, she acknowledged that there were “efforts to slow down this train” but declared that “the train is coming.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that one ally of Ms. Willis argues that she won’t “be deterred by the results of an election … in order for the prosecution to stop a court would have to intervene.”     

During a hearing at an earlier stage of the case, Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, contended that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and his duties as president of the United States dictate that “this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office.” At the time, Mr. Sadow was arguing for an indefinite delay in the case, past a possible second term for Trump.   

The section of the U.S. Constitution that he cites ordains that “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

This means that when state law and federal law conflict, federal law triumphs. Otherwise, state laws would govern where federal law is silent. 

Trump’s best defense against a trial at Fulton County were he to take the oath of office in January 2025 is likely the Supreme Court. First, Ms. Willis’s indictment must survive the immunity ruling. Trump’s attorneys are likely to argue that her charges, like Mr. Smith’s, are founded on official acts, and therefore immune. Whoever is prosecuting the case is liable to respond that acts like, say, calling Georgia’s secretary of state or assembling an alternate slate of electors are unofficial and therefore not immune. 

The logic, though, of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States could lead the justices to intervene to foil any attempt to try — or convict — Trump during a potential second term. Chief Justice Roberts quotes Alexander Hamilton in 70 Federalist for the proposition that the “Framers designed the Presidency to provide for a ‘vigorous’ and ‘energetic’ Executive,” an aim that a criminal prosecution appears likely to frustrate. As would an order to report to prison, with or without the Secret Service in tow. 

A.R. HOFFMAN

Mr. Hoffman is an associate editor of the Sun, where he covers politics and culture. He holds a PhD from Harvard and a law degree from Stanford.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- July 11

 

The Politician Formerly Known as ‘The Great Talker’

posted by William Sullivan at American Thinker 

Channeling his inner Hillary Clinton, who just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t 50 points ahead of Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, a forlorn Joe Scarborough told his audience after the 2024 presidential debate that he has “no idea why this race is close.”

Scarborough asks a good question, but not for the reason he thinks.  Joe Biden’s approval rating of 38.7% in the 13th quarter of his presidency is the lowest in history, so he is arguably punching above his presidency’s weight in the polling.  To put things in perspective for Scarborough, who claims he “will destroy anyone” who challenges Joe Biden’s record of excellence as president, Jimmy Carter’s approval rating in April of 1980 was nine points higher at 47.7%.

There’s an interesting factoid here, of which Joe Scarborough and Co. are almost certainly ignorant.  As Annie Linskey relates in her excellent article at the Wall Street Journal, there was a coordinated effort to replace Jimmy Carter on the 1980 Democrat ticket — and among the leading conspirators was none other than Joseph R. Biden.

Back then, Biden was a relative newcomer to the D.C. scene, but also an undeniably slippery and effective politician.  “That man’s in trouble, politically in trouble,” Biden correctly said of Carter.  He wanted a president that could keep the White House, and he wasn’t “certain that’s Jimmy Carter right now.”

The problem wasn’t that the incumbent was showing clear signs of cognitive and physical impairment, or that he had difficulty functioning outside the hours of 10AM and 4PM.  Americans were undoubtedly more serious people back then, and the mere thought of such circumstances for a candidate in a tightly-contested presidential race would have undoubtedly yielded swift replacement.

No, Biden’s problem with Carter, if you could believe it, was that Carter’s budget proposal lacked the necessary reduction in government spending and a needed “pull back on taxes.”  Biden also thought it best for Democrats to promote (get ready for your mind to be blown) “across-the-board budget cuts and employment ceilings” for federal agencies.

“There’s a helluva lot of fat” in those agencies, Joe Biden said at the time.  His employment of such colloquial language, easily understood among working class Americans, would go on to become a staple of his long career.

In April of 1980, Biden stumped for Carter in Pennsylvania, carefully crafting his message.  “Let’s face it, Jimmy Carter isn’t the finest thing since wheat cakes; he’s not the second coming,” he said, “but he’s doing a good job.”

Biden was a far less devoted lickspittle for Carter in 1980 than Joe Scarborough is for Biden in 2024, whose solemn diatribe after the debate included nearly seven minutes of such sycophantic drivel as “without any apology, I love Joe Biden” and that “Joe Biden has been the most effective president,” with only one moment to say, in a waffly sort of way, that perhaps he’s not the right candidate for this moment.

Mika Brzezinski continued, saying that Biden “could not land a thought, not even in the closing statement” which is “the easiest part -- you write down a few words, go through the thoughts.”

Scarborough and Brzezinski were, like millions of other Americans on the left and right, shocked by Biden’s inability to think or speak coherently on the debate stage, or in a follow-up interview with George Stephanopoulos which had to have been nightmarish for Democrats hoping he’d quickly right the ship.  But now that Biden’s family has determined that they’re digging in, they are asking their audience to pretend that they should have never been shocked by these awful performances, and neither should you.

Brzezinski: Everyone was watching the Stephanopoulos interview, and obviously the debate performance. Joe Biden, it’s not like this is the first time he flubs his words…

Scarborough: He’s been doing it for about 54 years…

Brzezinski: Yeah, no, how old is he? He has a stutter, on top of that, he flubs his words. He mangles his words.  He’s not an expert in elocution and Ivy League phraseology, and never will be.  But now everyone’s looking at it like it’s new. 

She’s correct that Biden’s never spoken like an Ivy Leaguer.  The suggestion that Jimmy Carter isn’t “the finest thing since wheat cakes” or “the second coming” isn’t an appeal to people who communicate like Ivy Leaguers.  And while this point may be lost on Scarborough and Brzezinski, who eloquently speak into a tiny bubble of MSNBC viewers who are often either Ivy Leaguers or like to pretend that they are, most Americans hate that, and generally find it pretentious and absurd.

But their suggestion that Joe Biden has never been able to talk well or effectively communicate his thoughts, so therefore his current inability to speak or communicate thoughts shouldn’t be a reason for alarm, is utterly ridiculous.

And it’s peak gaslighting.

Few Americans might know it, and even fewer might believe it after having witnessed the decaying specimen that has been serving as president these past years, but there was once a time when Joe Biden was referred to by a fawning media as “The Great Talker.”

Nearly fourteen years ago, that’s how I vividly recall fangirl Lisa DePaulo referred to him in a GQ interview.  The polished Barack Obama was “the Great Orator,” she suggested, while she labeled the coarse Joe Biden as “the Great Talker.”  She acknowledges that Biden can’t “raise the rafters like his boss,” but “nobody can flat-out talk like Joe Biden.”

One might think that a backhanded compliment, but Biden certainly would never have taken it as such at any point in his career.  Just as a professional wrestler fashions a persona, Biden had adopted the stage name of “Scranton Joe,” champion of the middle class against the Washington elites and big corporations.

And while DePaulo suggests that she doesn’t share his affection for their mutual hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, she appears to revel in his quaint Scranton-isms like “Yer’ kiddin’ me!” and “I’ll be damned” and “God love ‘em,” and is thankful that “the Scranton thing” gets her an extra twenty minutes of interview time and a “big hug.”

Joe Biden has always been gaffe-prone, that’s certain.  But his propensity to sometimes do and say stupid things is not the same as saying that he has always been unable to communicate with people as he appears to us now.  We have countless hours of video of him leading spirited inquisitions on Capitol Hill over several decades, including partisan witch-hunts against Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas — and all without any hint of his recent cognitive or speech problems.

There are few who could have said that Joe Biden ever had a brilliant mind, even in his prime.  As a matter of domestic policy, he has blown with the winds of his party, wafting to-and-fro as the social tapestry changed over the decades, without any thought of fiscal responsibility or the inflationary outcomes, growing federal agencies and the federal government beyond anything ever seen in this country, supporting an open border policy allowing an invasion by illegal aliens, and supporting radical social upheaval in the form of promoting such things as racial preference in employment to castrating children as a means of affirming gender dysphoria.  As a matter of foreign policy, he was, as former defense Secretary Robert Gates once described him, “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” which even left-leaning Politifact rates as Mostly True.

None of that appears to have changed, despite MSNBC hosts insisting to a small minority of American viewers that the vast majority of Americans are wrong in disapproving of Joe Biden’s presidency.  The only thing that has changed is that the “Great Talker” quite obviously can’t talk, walk, or function after 4PM anymore.

And you and I, along with 80% of other Americans, are not crazy for noticing that, or the obvious reason for it.

Biden Aside, The Regime Media Is Toast Too

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Let’s put aside the crumbling ruins of the Democratic Party to celebrate, by making the rubble bounce, the total destruction of any residual credibility in the regime media. The regime media minions called in a napalm airstrike on their own position, and the fireball is rising. It’s beautiful, man.

For the last four years, the regime media has obediently defended Joe Biden against accurate observations by outsider media that he was a senile, decrepit, corrupt, old, perverted weirdo. This is because it didn’t matter to them that he was a senile, decrepit, corrupt, old, perverted weirdo. All that was fine. The regime media was perfectly happy with him being a senile, decrepit, corrupt, old, perverted weirdo as long as he wasn’t Donald Trump. So they either lied about it or did not do their purported job competently. Either way, they suck, and their sucking cannot and will not be hidden or excused.

Now, if you are of a certain age and you remember when the media at least pretended to be something other than a licensed and authorized propaganda front for the Democratic Party, you might be a little surprised at its open and obvious cheerleading for one partisan side. But to be surprised, you would literally have to have been in a coma for the last 20 years. The regime media is no longer a collection of once prestigious media outlets but a unified propaganda outfit. We based conservatives knew it. We had no doubt about it. We’ve been saying it to each other all along. This did not shock us. But it did shock normal people who still expected that the norms that the left had bulldozed, set on fire, and buried were still in play. It turns out they are not still in play and have not been in play for quite a while.

It was hilarious to watch the regime media hacks get all huffy about being shown to be clowns in the week of the disastrous debate. I wish I had invested in Jiffy-Pop. The simple fact is that they either knew about Joe Biden’s descent into dementialand or they didn’t know about his descent into dementialand. Neither one is a good look. Either they knew about it and covered it up, which I think is what actually happened, or they didn’t know about it and ended up looking almost as incompetent as the guy they were protecting. That might be worse.

We conservatives knew about it. We in the conservative media have been talking about his senility for years. I have certainly done my part. Do a Google search using the terms “Kurt Schlichter Townhall dementia Biden” and you get countless columns pointing out that this guy was a shambling golem since before he ever even allegedly won the presidency. How did we knuckle-dragging right-wing extremists manage to discover something all the geniuses of the regime media somehow overlooked? We conservative media types didn’t attend the University of College’s prestigious Media Matters School of Journalisming. They all did. That’s how they got their gigs at the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, and all those other paragons of reporting excellence that didn’t manage to notice that Joe Biden was perpetually on the verge of soiling himself in public. How could they fail to ferret out this important information? Obviously, they weren’t looking. Did they somehow believe that because the right-wing media had identified an issue that they couldn’t look into it? Yes! We just watched over the last month as the regime media dismissed our observations of reality as a “cheap fake” conspiracy theory. Or, even more embarrassingly, did they actually believe the lies the Biden courtiers told them? “It’s a stutter, and if you say anything about it, you are a right-wing racist!”

There is no good outcome for them. There is only a good outcome for us, assuming our enemies around the world don’t use the incompetence of the White House as an excuse to nuke us. As I have said many times before, we are not the target of these revelations. All these revelations do is confirm what we’ve known through all the various regime media lie-cycles over the past decade. Remember the Russiagate lie? They gave each other Pulitzers over that one. Remember how Covid wasn’t brewed up in a Wuhan lab, and to so say it was anything but contagious pangolins was racist? Remember how Hunter‘s laptop was Russian disinformation – 51 bureaucratic hacks said so, dammit!

No, we conservatives know that if the media is talking, the regime media is lying in the service of the Democratic Party. But normal people don’t, or at least they didn’t until debate night. Normal people don’t go through life following these issues. Normal people go through life having actual lives. Every once in a while, politics intrudes on them because they’re good citizens, and they feel that they should at least pay a little bit of attention to politics around election time. And, unfortunately for Joe Biden, they paid attention when he challenged Donald Trump to walk into an ambush and ended up staggering out mortally wounded.

You couldn’t ask for a better humiliation for the regime media, which has no real choice but to fall back on “Gosh, can you believe those people in the Biden administration lied to us? What a bunch of rascals they are!” Their shameless finger-pointing is hilarious. It’s delightful to remind the Jake Tappers and Peter Bakers and Tater Stelter that if you have been reading Townhall, you knew the truth, and if you had been watching/reading CNN, the New York Times, or the Potato Post, you were utterly ignorant and misinformed.

What the regime media is going to find is its already limited credibility even more hamstrung, and that’s great because the regime media has been a potent weapon in the Democrat arsenal. Normal people just going through their day watching “Good Morning America” or “The View” or any of those other idiotic shows did not realize that they were actually being wet down by an unfiltered fire hose of leftist propaganda. The leftist messaging was hidden behind a haze of objectivity and delivered by nice ladies and men who pretended not to have an agenda when they totally had an agenda. But now, normal people know that these folks are liars. They know that they have been pulling an okey-doke. They know that the regime media has been treating them like idiots, and, hopefully, they are offended.

Yes, for the next couple of decades, every time the regime media says anything to us, our response needs to be, “What about Russiagate, Laptopgate, and Dementiagate?” To the limited extent that any Republican ever again goes on any of those regime channels or talks to any of the regime reporters, the first thing out of his mouth needs to be, “You’ve already shown yourself to be liars by pretending Joe Biden wasn’t senile until he senile all over himself on the debate stage, so I don’t expect to be treated fairly here. I expect you to continue to lie to your viewers and to me, and I’m going to point it out. Now, what are your loaded questions?”

The regime media could never endure for long pretending to be objective to get the benefits and respect an objective outlet is entitled to while simultaneously shrimping the toes of the Democrat Party. This collapse was inevitable. This humiliation was deserved. And this farce will never be forgotten.

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Leftist Elections ‘Task Force’ Is A Who’s Who Of Infamous Election Meddlers

Among the task force’s more than 50 members are some of the most infamous names in the election rigging business.

Logan Washburn reporting for The Federalist

A group of left-wing power brokers have formed a supposedly “nonpartisan” “task force” to control the narrative around the 2024 election.

The National Task Force on Election Crises is a project of the left-wing Protect Democracy Project, a litigation group created to “oppose” former President Donald Trump’s policies, according to InfluenceWatch. The group portrays itself as a disinterested “task force” of election experts working to preserve what it defines as “democracy.”

“Our mission transcends party and ideology,” the group’s website reads. “The task force’s mission is to use its expertise to help civil society and decision-makers prevent, prepare for, and mitigate a range of election crises. The only electoral outcomes the task force advocates for are free, fair, and safe elections.”

But it sounds like this “task force” may be more concerned with censorship and political vengeance than the proper administration of elections.

The group aims to control election discourse on social media, with recommendations to “downgrade or delete” what it deems to be election “disinformation” from media platforms, “hand-pick or remove trending lists,” and prevent supposed “disinformation about voting options and the validity of election results.” 

The task force also seeks to “hold candidates and their attorneys accountable” for what it alleges are “bad-faith or frivolous legal challenges” concerning election administration, and “continue to pursue accountability for those who committed criminal acts on and leading up to January 6.”

The group called to remove Trump from office following his speech in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, naming him an “imminent danger to our country.” The group claimed Trump tried to “overturn the results of a free and fair election” and called for his “remov[al] from office” via “impeachment and/or potential invocation of the 25th Amendment.”

Among the task force’s more than 50 members, which range from government officials to nonprofit and corporate leaders, are some of the most infamous names in the election rigging business.

Government Officials

James Baker, the former FBI counsel who pushed censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story while working at Twitter, is a member of the group. Before that, while at the FBI, he worked with a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to investigate Trump for since-disproven “Russian collusion,” a lie Baker peddled to Congress.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is also part of the task force. He is a co-author of the Patriot Act, which enabled the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. The 2001 bill curtailed the Constitution’s First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments in the name of safety. The CIA may still have been collecting data on citizens as late as 2022.

Matthew Masterson, former senior cybersecurity adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is another member of the group. CISA has been described as the “nerve center” of government censorship of Americans, and it has recently been focusing on defining and silencing election “disinformation.” Masterson is now director of “information integrity” at Microsoft, which recently drew fire for censoring content in China at the command of the Chinese Communist Party-led government.

Former Congressman Tom Coleman, R-Mo., also a task force member, wrote an opinion in 2019 calling the Trump presidency “illegitimate” and calling for impeachment. “In addition to receiving campaign help from Russian operatives, the president obstructed justice,” Coleman wrote. He based his argument on the long-since debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign planted. 

Amber McReynolds is the vice chair of the board of governors for the United States Postal Service. In 2020, McReynolds was CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI), which works to advance mail-in voting across the country. The group accessed absentee ballots and worked to shift Michigan’s election policy. McReynolds is also a current member of the task force.

Left-Wing Nonprofit Leaders

Héctor Sánchez Barba, chair of Planned Parenthood Global, is another member of the group. Planned Parenthood Global advances abortion and what it calls “sexual and reproductive health and rights” across 10 countries. He is also CEO of Mi Familia Vota, which aims to mobilize immigrants and Latino communities to vote for the left.

Task force member Janai Nelson is president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. While the group won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, it has since strayed from its mission. According to InfluenceWatch, the group argued for a university’s “race-conscious admissions program” at the Supreme Court in 2016.

Tiana Epps-Johnson, founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and David Becker, a “hardcore leftist” and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, are both members. Mark Zuckerberg shuttled close to $420 million through CTCL and CEIR to local election offices in 2020, boosting Democratic turnout in the general election. The partisan election funding took on the nickname “Zuckbucks.”

Member Tammy Patrick is CEO of programs at the National Association of Election Officials. She is also in the circle of advisers at NVAHI and was a senior adviser for elections at the left-wing financial powerhouse Democracy Fund.

Jennifer Morrell is co-founder and CEO of The Elections Group, which claimed to offer assistance for election officials during 2020 due to Covid-19, according to InfluenceWatch. The group partners with CTCL and NVAHI to offer “solutions” to officials relating to Democrat-backed practices like mail voting and ballot drop boxes. Morrell is also a consultant for Democracy Fund. 

Megan Lewis is co-founder and director of Voting Rights Lab, which aims to “transform our voting systems,” according to InfluenceWatch. The group supports felon voting and advances vote-by-mail policies. Voting Rights Lab is a “former project” of New Venture Fund, which falls under the umbrella of left-wing dark money network Arabella Advisors.

Corporations

Yasmin Green is CEO of Jigsaw, a unit within Google that develops technology to address perceived “threats to open societies.” The group has been described as the “National Security Council of Google,” and it aims to strengthen “collective defenses” against what it considers “disinformation.” Green is also a member of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder, which was created to research “‘mis- and disinformation’ on topics including the 2020 presidential election and ‘vaccine safety,’” according to InfluenceWatch.

Task force member Sam Hirsch works for Jenner and Block, a law firm that often takes Democratic causes, according to InfluenceWatch. He was former President Barack Obama’s deputy associate attorney general and has been involved in multiple left-wing redistricting projects.

Implications Going Forward

If the task force’s public vitriol for one of 2024’s two main presidential candidates and its calls for using censorship and lawfare to chill speech aren’t enough evidence that the group may not be an unbiased arbiter of “free and fair elections,” its membership list should be. 

From the co-author of the Patriot Act, to leaders of “Zuckbucks” groups, to the CEO of Google’s de-facto “National Security Council,” the group’s roster raises the specter of powerful interests collaborating to meddle in America’s electoral process.