The Establishment Does Not Get a Say Anymore

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Anonymous defense officials, according to the regime media, were up in arms because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took my friend Jack Posobiec – a former Navy intelligence officer targeted by the Deep State while he was still in uniform – along with him on an overseas trip. Jack is an America First patriot and a very popular conservative media voice, so naturally, the bureaucratic functionaries within the Department of Defense were up in (spindly, girlish) arms about it. Of course, none of them dared to share their mean girl gossip publicly, nor did they explain why we should care about the opinions of people who have failed to unequivocally win a major war in the last 30 years. What is important about this incident? It is that Pete Hegseth gave them all the credit that their oral slam book scribblings deserve.

None.

Zero.

Zilch.

What would’ve once been a minor scandal that dominated the communist cable networks and social media passed like flatulence in a hurricane. Part of the reason is that there are so many other things going on, from uppity United States attorneys getting fired to DOGE detecting billions in communist perversion spending to JD Vance outraging the euroweenies and their fellow travelers by standing up for free speech. The regime media really can’t keep up with the tsunami of stuff, so this Jackgate popped up and then just went away. But this minor incident Is emblematic of something bigger.

We have totally stopped caring what they think.

That is, the establishment – of which the Deep State is a key component – just doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t give it a second thought. All those experts and professionals who we are supposed to listen to? We don’t listen to them anymore. Why? Because they took their credibility, poured gasoline on it, and set it on fire.

At one time, they used to get to decide who got past the velvet rope and into the club. But they’ve lost their security guard jobs and we’ve stripped them of their clipboards. They don’t get to tell us who is in and out. Instead, they have to stand across the street, shouting at the people who are getting inside. And it kills them to know that they have lost the power to determine who is acceptable and who isn’t.

This is the big problem leftists face when they capture once-respected institutions. The purpose of an institution is to serve the institution’s stated purposes, not some political agenda. For instance, the Department of Defense is supposed to defend the United States of America against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Of course, in the case of the DOD, it failed to defend us against foreigners and, under the guidance of that treacherous, carb-curious ribbon horse Mark Milley, focused on domestic enemies. Of course, these weren’t domestic enemies of the United States. They were domestic enemies of the Democrat politicians Milley supported.

Members of institutions that serve the greater good have respect, trust, and credibility based upon them doing their jobs as neutral public servants. Ideally, we should be able to rely on them no matter who occupies the White House. Their advice, insights, and efforts will not change because they work for the common good instead of for a particular political party. But that’s not what leftists want. That’s not why leftists infiltrate the institutions in the first place. Leftists infiltrate the institutions to turn the institutions into weapons to be used in their leftist revolution. They are no longer neutral. They are no longer impartial. They are no longer trustworthy because their advice will not be unbiased. It will be expressly biased towards obtaining the political result that they seek. That is their highest goal, not the common good, but the good of their party.

It is skinsuiting.

For a long time, that was hard to accept, particularly for the soft Republicans who didn’t want to believe that the institutions they had grown up relying upon had been totally corrupted and infiltrated by communists. It’s not a pleasant revelation, but it’s the truth, and it took some of them years to accept it. Lots of us saw this happening 15 years ago, around the time of the Tea Party. When we piped up about this manifest fact, the Republican establishment didn’t get mad at the bureaucrats who had betrayed their duties. The old-school GOP types got mad at us for pointing it out. It’s always the Cassandras who get the grief. There’s always a natural inclination to kill the messenger because it’s easier than accepting the unpleasant message.

Well, four years of Joe Biden have ended that. The GOP learned the hard way. There’s almost no appetite among any Republicans for giving deference or the benefit of the doubt to any institution or to any bureaucrat. This mistrust has been well-earned. The Deep State is a disgrace. So now, when they whine about something, if we even listen at all, we merely shrug. At one time, maybe we would’ve heard them out about Jack or others. Not now. Now, we understand that any time they object to someone it’s not because he’s awful, but because he’s a threat to their pinko paradigm.

Go ahead and slander us. We’re going to laugh it off. The members of the establishment gets nothing from us – not deference, not trust, and not a say. They don’t even get in the room anymore. Their names are not on the list clipped to the clipboard. They’re nothing. And we America First patriots are in the VIP room as they watch from outside, seething, across the velvet rope.

TUCKER CARLSON NETWORK

 People are waking up to the inconvenient truth that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator. 

He canceled his country’s elections and outlawed religious freedom, for crying out loud. No leader who cares about “democracy” would ever consider that. 

What’s it like to live under an oppressive ruler like that? U.S. media seldom reports on life inside Ukraine, but it should. That would give the American public a real understanding of how anti-Christian and anti-liberty the operation they’ve spent the past three years funding is.

Lawyer Bob Amsterdam is one of the few Westerners with a real sense of the true state of Ukraine and how dire the situation is. He joined today’s Tucker Carlson Show to reveal the truth. Click the image below to watch.
 

Bob Amsterdam on the state of Ukraine:

“Zelensky is wildly unpopular. There are press gangs to take people to the front [lines]. People are without hope, and the casualties are enormous. And the corruption is enormous. Imagine sending your child to the front, knowing all of this.”
 

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These are the corporate media’s dying days.

Look no further than the Trump administration’s first White House press briefing for proof.

“Millions of Americans, especially young people, have turned from traditional television outlets and newspapers to consume their news from podcasts, blogs, social media, and other independent outlets,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the stunned press corps.

The establishment’s lies caused this. Truth seekers across the country are sick of their propaganda. The Biden administration prolonged their survival, but only temporarily. Their time is running out. Thanks to backing from our members, our independent journalism operation is here to stay. 

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X22, And we Know, and more- Feb 19

 

California is in Cahoots with China on Climate Policy

By Ian Oxnevad    *     February 19, 2025     *      CounterCurrent: Week of 02/17/25

CounterCurrent: China Edition is a monthly newsletter of the National Association of Scholars uncovering and highlighting the effects of the Chinese Communist Party's influence on American education.

Back in 2012, Donald Trump posted on Twitter that the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” This idea of climate change politics being more about economic warfare than saving any ecosystem has been a staple of Trump-era politics. In 2016, Hillary Clinton used this tweet to mark Trump as a climate-change denier. This year, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, stating the “United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.” We have often discussed Chinese influence in American higher education, but rarely its relation to climate change. Through partnerships between China’s Tsinghua University and the University of California, California’s Democrats are manufacturing science and policy to justify costly electric vehicle (EV) mandates that hurt America’s economy and benefit Beijing.

California was called a “land of fruits and nuts” starting in 1932, and was called this for the quality of its agriculture rather than any politics. The state’s fruits and nuts are pretty good, particularly its medjool dates. More recently, the Golden State has become a Mecca for inspiring policy related to climate change and emissions standards. In 2017, then-California governor Jerry Brown and the head of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese manufacturers in order to accelerate a transition to zero-emissions vehicles. California not only looked to China for a supply of EVs, but it also looked to Beijing for how to mandate its way around the market by demanding all new cars in the state be electric by 2035.

High politics is different from the slow grind of policy. The former is flashy, while the latter is not. Governor Brown’s trip led to the creation of the “China-US ZEV Policy Lab” at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) in order to deepen relationships between China’s vehicle industry and the firms that supply their needed batteries. The “ZEV Policy Lab” at UC Davis is more than just a think tank; rather, it is uniquely constituted to push policy by exploiting academic credentialism and regulatory mandate. The center is part of a larger initiative housed throughout the University of California system called the California-China Climate Institute.

This subnational agreement between California and a foreign power is based in UC Berkeley’s School of Law and its own Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, and the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at China’s Tsinghua University. This is precisely the kind of institutional arrangement suited to take policy informed by a foreign power’s university, translate its research across an international boundary, repackage it as legal theory, and then use it to pressure willing lawmakers. California’s government, dominated by Democrats, also may not know that Tsinghua is not a normal university.

Tsinghua, the alma mater of Chinese President Xi Jinping, is a premier university known for funneling graduates into the elite echelons of the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party. Tsinghua is not only involved in nuclear weapons development but also in artificial intelligence, guidance systems, and economic espionage. In 2018, Tsinghua was involved in cyberattacks targeting the U.S. energy industry, telecommunications, and government. On climate change, Tsinghua University also works with Harvard’s Belfer Center to promote carbon net-zero policies. Xie Zhenhua, who worked with Jerry Brown to found the climate initiative, had a close relationship with United States climate envoy John Kerry and also promoted the Paris Climate Accords alongside the concept of a “greener” Belt and Road Initiative.

The Chinese-California climate change relationship, facilitated by Tsinghua University, also included Chinese EV companies such as BYD, the Beijing Auto Group, Yangtze Motors, Great Wall, Geely, and Dongfeng Xiao Kang in order to discuss “plans for developing new models of zero-emission vehicles and support needed to enter the U.S. market.” In other words, California was in discussions to help foreign automakers enter the American market. Worse, California solidified this relationship by later implementing the 2035 pro-EV mandate that would favor these same companies over American manufacturers. China could hardly ask for more willing partners than California’s Democratic Party or for a better vehicle to produce politicized science and law than the University of California.

The ties between China and California politics have only been confirmed under the leadership of Gavin Newsom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Newsom penned a deal with BYD worth $1.4 billion for protective equipment. Ke Li, the head of BYD’s auto subsidiary, donated $40,000 to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign. BYD also manufactures shoddy EV buses ordered by Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles. Topping it off, BYD is heavily financed by the Chinese government and has come under scrutiny for human rights abuses related to its battery supply chains. Tsinghua University is a primary training source for BYD’s workforce.

In sum, Trump is right about China’s interest in using climate change to its economic advantage. China controls about 90 percent of the rare-earth elements needed for EV batteries. BYD alone has factories worldwide to support China’s Belt and Road Initiative. What makes China’s passion about climate change suspect is its hypocrisy. China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. As it is, any emissions California reduces are more than replaced by China’s pollution. American consumers, and Californians in particular, are enriching China while making sacrifices that make little economic sense. At the same time, California climate policy tends to get replicated by other states. The recent tariffs that the new Trump administration volleyed against Beijing are part of a larger chess game in which climate change is just another piece. As for California, it looks to be on China’s side. The fact that California is working with Tsinghua University, a university designated to facilitate technology transfer, nearly confirms it.

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Photo by Dancing Man on Adobe Stock

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/california-is-in-cahoots-with-china-on-climate-policy

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Trump and Hegseth are killing it

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

Puppet president Biden and Defense secretary Lloyd Austin spent four years transforming the U.S. military into a woke joke.  They prioritized “climate change” as America’s number-one enemy and recruited delusional men with fake breasts to fight the weather.  Whereas videos from Russia and China routinely spotlight strong and serious warriors training for deadly conflict, the Biden-Austin clown show featured fat slobs wearing pushup bras, makeup, and high heels.  Dudes pretending to be women shaved their legs, wore tight-fitting skirts, and repeated the same mantra — “diversity is our strength” — as if such nonsense came straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.  

Biden and Austin were textbook examples of both (1) failure in leadership and (2) dereliction of duty.  Under their watch, they executed a catastrophic retreat from Afghanistan, provided Iran and Hamas with enough money to wage war on Israel, and transformed a Ukrainian civil war into a potential conflagration between Russia and the rest of Europe.  While bankrolling Ukraine’s government and providing weapons to kill Russian soldiers, the Biden White House remained indifferent to the prospect of igniting World War III.  Fake news “journalists” promised that Biden’s presidency would bring international stability.  Instead, the mad imbecile left America less safe and the world more dangerous.  

Morale in the armed services plummeted during the Biden-Austin leadership vacuum.  While the “trans” troops were throwing tea parties and posting provocative pictures of themselves in uniform, the rank and file were forced to attend brainwashing sessions during which they were indoctrinated to view Christianity, “white supremacy,” and patriotic speech as dire threats to the nation.  Unsurprisingly, the Pentagon’s attempts to psychologically reprogram enlistees drove a lot of white, Christian patriots to reconsider their career options and convinced a huge number of potential recruits to avoid military service altogether.  When Biden and Austin decided to mandate the experimental mRNA “vaccines” on service members, they slammed the door shut on the healthiest and most physically fit members of America’s youngest generation.

Word got out quickly.  Biden and Austin had no problem leaving America’s borders unguarded or flooding the interior with tens of millions of foreign nationals, but American warriors might very well be expected to defend Ukraine’s thirty-year-old borders with their lives.  Merit, leadership ability, and physical achievement would take a backseat to sexual orientation and skin color.  Expressions of Christian faith could limit advancement.  Expressions of solidarity with LGBT, Black Lives Matter, and other identity-based groups might be expected.  And if you were put in harm’s way, there was no guarantee that Biden and Austin had your back.  The thirteen U.S. service members who were unnecessarily killed at Abbey Gate near Kabul’s airport in August of ’21 proved that.  

Recruitment numbers during the Biden-Austin feelings-first freak show plummeted.  Americans don’t want to put their lives on the line for ineffective “leaders” who discriminate against them, ridicule them, punish them without cause, and disappear when all hell breaks loose.  When military service is turned into a nursery for woke politics, competent people do not answer the call.  When technical expertise and warfighting skills are valued less than “diversity” and “political correctness,” smart, athletic young people seek opportunities elsewhere.  When psychologically unstable service members are showcased as the armed forces’ future, psychologically healthy Americans stay far away.

Given the immense damage Biden and Austin inflicted upon America’s military readiness, it is all the more impressive that the Army just posted its best recruiting numbers in fifteen years.  Expect to hear similar figures in the months ahead.  The propaganda press has long blamed the Pentagon’s enlistment struggles on Biden’s “stellar” economy (a lie), disinformation about COVID (also a lie), and the military’s hostility toward “minorities” (a really big lie).  It turns out that patriotic Americans were just waiting for patriotic commanders to return.  Have you ever noticed that “leaders” who kneel during the National Anthem have trouble recruiting warriors willing to fight and die under the American flag?

When President Trump announced Pete Hegseth as his choice for secretary of Defense, the same political pundits who have gotten everything wrong these last ten years immediately mocked both men.  Of course the “reality TV president” would choose a “Fox News weekend host” to lead the Pentagon, they lampooned in unison.  And once again, President Trump proved that he knew exactly what he was doing.  

Secretary Hegseth is not only a smart and capable man, but also an unapologetic Christian, advocate for veterans, and staunch American patriot.  He handled his nomination hearings with the tenacity you want to see in a military leader.  He answers questions clearly, and he speaks of the armed services with tremendous pride.  He is calm under pressure yet makes it clear that he is not someone to be threatened.  Unlike some of the doughy men who previously held his office, he actually looks and acts like a fighter.

There’s a picture making the rounds of Secretary Hegseth doing P.T. with a strong, smiling Special Forces warrior.  Responding to the public’s interest in the image, Hegseth posted to his X account, “Stronger people are harder to kill = Fact.”

President Trump and his Defense secretary have rededicated the military to its essential mission: maintaining a peerless fighting force capable of safeguarding the American people.  Patriots from coast to coast recognize the change in leadership and want to join the mission.  The new message is clear: warriors wanted.

Why would anyone be a Democrat?

posted by Bob Weir at American Thinker 

The 2024 presidential election was a seminal moment in our history.  It did more than provide a wide margin of support for one candidate over another.  It spoke volumes about how deteriorated our culture has become when the issues of the campaign were as polar-opposite as love and hate.  President Trump talked about closing the southern border in order to stop illegal immigration, whereas Biden/Harris told us the border was secure, notwithstanding daily videos of thousands of illegals forcefully streaming into our country.  The Biden administration was telling us that inflation is transitory while consumers were paying double and triple prices for goods and services.  How deluded were the Democrats to think their party could win by denying everything that was occurring right before the eyes of all Americans?

Moreover, after they suffered the devastating loss, they continued to fight against all the issues that Trump ran on, and that voters overwhelmingly supported.  As promised, President Trump got to work quickly by issuing hundreds of executive orders.  By the way, did you ever think, in your wildest imagination, that a president would have to issue an order proclaiming that there are only two genders?  How about an E.O. declaring that men can no longer participate in women’s sports?  He even needed an E.O. to stop the flow of illicit drugs across our borders.  During a saner time in our history, such actions would have been part of the normal order of government business.

It makes me wonder why anyone would be a Democrat and have to defend the insanity of the radical left in his party.  Isn’t there anyone with the courage to speak common sense to the extremists within?  That so-called “Squad” of reprobates, who evince obvious hatred for the country they were elected to serve, appear to have an iron grip on the other 200-plus in their party.  I refuse to believe that all those Democrats are in favor of policies that support radical surgery on the sex organs of children to “affirm” their gender.  That amounts to a form of child mutilation performed on those much too young to understand what’s happening to them.  Perhaps that’s why the promoters of perversion want it done before the child is old enough to understand the damage being done, both physically and mentally.

If you’re a Democrat who is sensible enough to know that men can’t give birth to children, why don’t you take a stand against the crazies in your orbit?  Are you so morally bankrupt and cowardly that you would remain silent simply because you’re a member of a political party and don’t want to hurt your chances for re-election?  At what point do you stand up for the commonsense ideals that once ranked your party in high esteem with at least half the citizens of your country?  If there was ever a time for a profile in courage, that time has arrived for at least one intrepid member of your party.  Surely, you can’t be so intimidated that you would continue to abandon common sense and align yourself with one absurdity after another.  

As a lifelong Republican, I probably should encourage Democrats to continue on this path toward the destruction of their party.  Yet I don’t think it helps our country to sit back and watch the division as though it were a spectator sport.

Although they may begrudge the fact that Donald Trump showed courage and leadership when he took on the immense power of the Deep State, Democrats might be smart to learn from it.  He took a look at the country in 2015 and decided that it was so bogged down in bureaucracy that it needed an enema.  He had the audacity to come down that escalator and say he was the laxative that would unclog the system and allow the free flow of American industry and ingenuity to make our country great again.  Even those Republicans who resented having an outsider show them up by trouncing them in the primaries are now totally on board with the chief executive.  Trump is a charismatic leader whose vision and strength of character has made believers out of those who didn’t dare be so bold.

Frankly, the Dems need to find a leader who is bold enough to take on the pernicious gang of reprobates that have turned their party into something that would horrify Dems of a few decades ago.  Therefore, someone with a moral foundation, in a party that has lost its connection to reality, can either switch to the GOP or take a deep breath and valiantly rebuke those who have forsaken the principles that his party once embraced.  I can imagine there are many in the Democrat party who would follow him if he were brave enough to take the lead.  

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Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok Wipes X Account Ahead of Kash Patel’s Confirmation

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has abruptly wiped his X account clean just as Kash Patel awaits confirmation as the new FBI Director. Strzok, whose name has become synonymous with controversy following his involvement in anti-Trump text messages and the Russia investigation, made the decision to erase his online presence amid growing anticipation of Patel’s confirmation. The move raises questions about Strzok’s intentions and whether it is linked to Patel’s expected leadership at the FBI. 

Strzok, who was dismissed from the FBI in 2018 for breaching bureau policies, played a key role in initiating the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Meanwhile, Patel led the investigations into the origins of the Russiagate controversy, which cast a long shadow over the FBI's handling of the matter. 

In 2023, House Judiciary Republicans exposed text messages between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which they discussed an “insurance policy” to keep President Donald Trump out of office in 2016. Patel recently discussed this during an interview with Shawn Ryan, declaring that Strzok and Page “broke the law, broke every regulation there is in the FBI,” and “weaponized the system of justice against a political target they hated.” 

What the deep state uses the most to cover up their corruption is an illegal application of the classification system. Remember the Lovebirds’ texts from… This is a beauty. The Lovebirds’ texts from the FBI, DOJ, and Russiagate—Strzok and Page were texting each other. They were running the Russiagate investigation against Trump.

They were the heads of the counterintelligence unit at the FBI, and they were having an extramarital affair together. You can’t make this stuff up. They’re sending each other texts about how much they hate Trump and are going to create an insurance policy to stop Trump. Then we finally find those text messages. You know what the FBI and DOJ did for a year? They redacted them to Congressional investigators and the Congressmen and women running the oversight of their agency. That’s just one example. But it gets even better. Here’s the deep state in full circle. Just last week, do you know what Strzok and Page received from the Department of Justice? What? A [$2 million] payout to settle a lawsuit that Strzok and Page brought for the improper disclosure of their personal text messages on FBI phones. And the DOJ just rewarded them.

In a recent op-ed, Morgan Murphy stated that DC’s swamp is terrified of Patel because he will be an FBI director who is serious about investigating corrupt public officials. 

“After 10 years of abuses, the FBI’s judgment day of reckoning may arrive this week in the form of Senate confirmation for Patel,” he wrote. “In an age where senior lawmakers are literally accepting gold bars as bribes and lawmakers making $200k a year have net worths north of $50 million, Americans are asking questions. Expect the FBI’s new director to start finding answers.” 

900+ Former and Current Main Justice Lawfare Operatives, Self-Identify

Sundance reporting for CTH 

Yesterday, 900+ career DOJ lawyers signed an open letter in support of ongoing Lawfare operations against President Trump and the American judicial system.

[SOURCE – w/ pages of signatories]

Put another way, 900 career DOJ lawyers, who used Main Justice as their platform to participate in corrupting and weaponizing the American judicial system for their own financial benefit, have now publicly self-identified.

These are the legal abusers within the system. The professional gaslighters, Lawfare activists and legally trained abusers of trust, who twist, distort and tear at the foundational fabric of our constitutional republic, while claiming moral superiority and cloaking their efforts under the guise of victimhood.

They are self-identifying and self-deporting from the system.  America is winning again.

'Good Luck With That'—CNN Hits Brick Wall at Full Speed When Snooping Into Elon Musk's Security Clearance

Teri Christoph reporting for RedState 

In possibly one of the funniest moments yet in the very short—yet fruitful—history of DOGE, CNN got an epic response to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about Elon Musk's government security clearance: "Good luck with that."

CNN staffers submitted the request to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking "for records related to the security clearances of Musk and anyone from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who has been granted access to sensitive or classified government networks." In return, they got an email telling them: “Good luck with that, they just fired the whole privacy team."

It would seem that the aforementioned DOGE had just notified several OPM staffers, some of whom may deal with "privacy" issues such as security clearances, that their services would no longer be necessary going forward. Terrible timing for CNN, who did admit, however, that they were told not everyone on the privacy team had been terminated and some of the fired staff would not be leaving until after April 15.

It's clear that CNN is in desperate need of a "scoop," perhaps to help them stop bleeding viewers or the fact that one of their star reporters is a Luigi Mangione fan, but Elon Musk's security clearance was never going to be it. In fact, Musk himself addressed this issue just last week, but maybe the eagle eyes at CNN somehow missed it.

I’ve had a top secret clearance for many years and have clearances that themselves are classified. 

That said, FAR too much information is made “classified”. If something is easily found online or patently obvious, it should NOT be classified. This impedes effective communication within the government.

Unsurprisingly, the man that builds rocket ships for NASA and has worked closely with the U.S. military and intelligence communities holds a top secret clearance designation, and has held it since well before forming an alliance with Donald Trump. 

And, as it turns out, CNN has no right at all to snoop into Musk's clearance status via FOIA request because releasing such information is against the country's national security interests. 

The Department of Justice has made its position on this very clear:

1. FOIA Exemption 1 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1)) – This exemption protects information that is classified under Executive Order 13526 (or its successors) for national security reasons. Security clearance information often falls under this exemption because it involves classified material.

2. FOIA Exemption 3 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3)) – This exemption protects information that is specifically restricted from disclosure by other statutes. Security clearance details may be shielded under laws such as:

   • 50 U.S.C. § 3024(i)(1) – Prohibits disclosure of intelligence sources and methods, which often relate to security clearances.
   • Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. § 552a) – Protects personal records, including an individual's security clearance status.

3. FOIA Exemption 6 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6)) – Protects personal privacy by preventing the disclosure of information that would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Security clearance status is considered personal information.

4. FOIA Exemption 7 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)) – Protects records compiled for law enforcement purposes, including background investigations related to security clearances.

It's interesting to see CNN put in this position after years of conservative media outlets having their FOIA requests ignored, denied, or approved but with the caveat that hefty surcharges would be applied by the government for extracting the FOIA information.

Trump’s Immediate Border-Crossing Plummet Shows Biden Could Have Secured The Homeland But Didn’t

Brianna Lyman reporting for The Federalist 

Upon President Donald Trump assuming office in January, illegal migrant apprehensions dropped sharply from more than 2,000 per day to just 786, according to new data. The dramatic change wasn’t by chance — Trump took immediate action to secure the border, proving former President Joe Biden simply chose to allow (and incentivize) the mass invasion.

Border patrol agents apprehended 96,035 migrants in December, but that number plummeted to 61,465 in January, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. According to ABC News, “From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85% from the same period in 2024. … In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93%.”

None of this was accidental. As explained by my colleague John Daniel Davidson, upon taking office Trump signed a series of executive orders declaring a national emergency at the southern border and ordering construction of the border wall to resume. Trump also reinstated his “Remain in Mexico” policy to deter illegal crossings. Trump also authorized the National Guard and active duty military to work with Customs and Border Patrol agents to secure the border. The Trump administration also ended the use of the CBP One app that “the Biden administration had used to dole out mass paroles for illegal border-crossers — some 30,000 a month under Biden,” Davidson explained.

The Trump administration has also begun carrying out deportations, threatening tariffs on countries that refused to take back their own people. Colombia initially refused to take back Colombians who entered the United States illegally, and American planes transporting the illegal aliens were denied entry. Colombian President Gustavo Petro even said that Trump needed to create a “protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.”

Trump told Petro to kick rocks and announced he would levy a 25 percent emergency tariff on all imported Colombian goods, as well as travel bans and visa sanctions. Shortly thereafter, Petro announced Colombia would take back Colombians.

As Davidson pointed out, “The Biden administration could have done all of this.”

Instead, as reported by my colleague Tristan Justice, Biden stopped construction of the border wall, “expanded the ‘illegal’ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” reversed “Trump-era executive orders that enforced immigration law,” issued a deportation moratorium, lost track of thousands of children illegally in the country, resurrected an Obama-era parole program for illegals — and the list goes on.

As the border crisis worsened, Biden peddled the claim that he lacked authority to secure the southern border, telling a reporter last January that he had “done all I can do.”

“Just give me the power! … Give me the border patrol! Give me the people! The judges! Give me the people who can stop this and make it work right!” Biden told a reporter who asked whether he had done everything he could do via executive authority.

In the months following, illegal border crossings continued at record-high numbers. Miraculously in June, Biden suddenly had the “power” to sign an executive order to halt asylum claims temporarily.

It’s not that Biden ever lacked the power — Biden didn’t want to use the power he had to stop the illegal invasion of the country. As Davidson said, “A secure border was always within reach these past four years.”

But “Biden and the Democrats sold out their fellow Americans, threw open the borders, and then pretended they had no choice in the matter.”