You Didn’t Really Think You’d Learn ‘the Truth’ About Jeffrey Epstein, Did You?

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

Was he the world’s greatest pervert? Was he a spy or an asset for some clandestine organization somewhere? The simple answer is usually the right one, but there is nothing simple about the Jeffrey Epstein case. This week, the FBI and the Department of Justice let it leak that there is no “client list” and pretty much no one else is going to be charged with anything. 

As you might imagine, this set off a whole new round of conspiracy theories about who had gotten to whom and what they might have on them. There is no shortage of ideas about “what really happened” floating around the Internet.  

What is the truth? I have no idea. But neither does anyone else insisting they are the gatekeeper of truth or the only person who knows it. 

Rather than rehash all the conspiracy theories – and I use that term because it is accurate and not meant in a derogatory way, there’s just no other way to describe the ideas floating around about this case.

But for any of those theories to be true, there would have to be more people involved than could populate a small town. Having worked and lived in the Washington, DC, area for a couple of decades, I can assure you that no one can keep a secret around here, especially if they think they could make a career advancement off it.

What’s amazing about this whole affair isn’t the end result, it’s the obstinance with which it was announced and the refusal to even try to explain the difference between what the principles said before they entered government service and what the official line is now. These people made a lot of money off the “story” of there being this massive conspiracy to silence Epstein and protect the powerful. They also propped themselves up by insisting they were one of the few around willing to stand up for what is “right” and “speak the truth.” 

Now that the wheels have come off, and they’re no longer in a position to make money off it (at least not directly, as some of their family members still profit off old endeavors, which means they do too), there’s no serious discussion of how they got it so wrong. There should be a public eating of huge steaming pile of crow (or a huge steaming pile of something else), but that won’t happen. These people aren’t the type to hold themselves accountable, no matter how much they profess to be.

And that brings us to the real lesson of this debacle: stop believing people simply because they are on TV or are popular. “Fame” and attention does not imbue anyone with special powers to discern truth from fiction; it’s usually the opposite.

There is no room for nuance in today’s media, which means there no money in admitting you simply do not know for use. That leads to declarative statements based more on what the audience wants than what the facts indicate, with some going so far as to say they have “sources” who implicate a former President. Well, that person is now in a position to know, so were they lied to or just lying? Where is the accountability? What happened to integrity? 

You hear a lot about how people “respect” some involved in this for reasons they can’t clearly articulate, but boil down to the idea that they say things their dedicated audience agrees with. A person saying all the popular things you agree with is not a reason to respect them, it’s a reason to doubt them. 

There will never be any accountability for anyone associated with Jeffrey Epstein, either because they didn’t do anything or they’re too rich and powerful for it to happen to them. And there will never be any accountability for anyone who profited off telling you they knew what had happened when they did not.

A good rule of thumb is the louder someone insists they’re honest, the less honest they are, just like it’s only unfunny people who can’t shut up about how funny they are.

No matter what side of the theories out there you fell on, you were lied to. Whether it was done for attention or it was done for money or it was done for fame, the fact remains that it was done. There needs to be accountability for that or they or people exactly like them will just do it again.

X22, And we Know, and more- July 10

 

Elon Will Be Back and Everything Will Be Fine

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Elon Musk is a genius and a great American to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. Any one of his myriad achievements is enough to make him a legend. His purchase of Twitter broke the back of the leftist narrative dominance. SpaceX has revolutionized rocketry. Tesla has not only created a fantastic vehicle and thousands of jobs but has also made a significant amount of money for many regular shareholders like me. Starlink was saving lives in Texas this weekend. But his idea for a third party is a bad idea, and he’s going to see that soon enough, and he’s going to realize that he is not a movement, but rather, a part of a coalition, and he’s going to come back and rejoin us.

And we’re going to welcome him with open arms.

Elon Musk’s challenge is that he is an engineer. He sees politics as a problem to be solved, not an art to be mastered. It’s very American to dislike the idea of politics. It’s hard to find a more American idea than that politics suck besides baseball, apple pie, and an AR-15 in every home. But that’s always been a flaw in the America psyche. Politics is simply the process of governance, and unless you’re an anarchist or a libertarian, we’re going to have to have a process of governance, and that means we’re going to have a process by which we create policies and collect the resources to execute them. This process requires deals and compromises. It just does.

Elon Musk finds this messy and inefficient, and he is absolutely correct. Politics is always dirty and inefficient. This is because it’s politics. Now, Musk has a very clear picture of what right objectively looks like. Obviously, we should not be spending more money than we take in, and the national debt is a looming disaster just waiting to detonate at some point in the future. But the problem with politics is that what right objectively looks like doesn’t matter. Politics is not an objective process. It’s a subjective process where individual and group interests take precedence over what a technocrat applying his ideology might prefer.

I like the free market, but the free market has flaws, those flaws being effects that I don’t prefer. For instance, if we had a completely free labor market, that would necessitate a completely free system of migration, allowing people to move to take advantage of economic opportunities wherever they arise and businesses to import the cheapest workers possible. Milton Friedman might think that’s a great idea. We don’t think that’s a great idea because we would prefer not to have the entire Third World move here and bring the entire Third World problem set here. 

Oh wait, we kind of had that – unofficially and without voters approving it.

But life is more than economics. That understanding is one of the secrets of Donald Trump’s success. The Republican Party used to be purely focused on economics - tax cuts, budget cuts, and deregulation. Trump understood how important the economy is, but he also understood that our society was in such a sorry state - torn apart by millions of illegal aliens, crime, perverts and perversions, and the Chardonnay fascism of the Democrat Party - that our priority stopped being how to make a buck and started being how to break the left’s stranglehold on our culture. Almost all of us are willing to sacrifice some degree of theoretical economic efficiency to preserve our culture and make America great again. 

What Donald Trump did was take a bunch of disparate groups with a few things in common but some differing interests and bring them together in a coalition to take on the establishment. Elon Musk and his tech bro contingent were just one of those coalition partners. However, it was not the key coalition partner. The coalition will survive without him and his faction. We’d rather have his group with us, but it’s not going to be the sole driver of Trump 2.0 policy. Right now, what’s driving America First policy is getting rid of illegal aliens, fixing our military, suppressing crime, and doing the undoing of the commie nonsense that Biden put into place, like trans idiocy, DEI, and all the other cultural fascisms the Chardonnay women wish to impose upon us.

Sure, the debt is important, but our coalition decided that other things are more important at this moment. That’s why the Big Beautiful Bill had to pass. It had an economic component, continuing the tax cuts, but also cultural components, like increasing the ability to enforce immigration laws. Would it add to the deficit? Well, there’s a lot of ambiguity there because of creative Washington accounting that considers not stealing citizens’ money to be a “cut,” but yeah, we’re going to keep spending more than we take in for a while. There’s simply no constituency to not do that at the moment. Who is the voter who is in favor of a 40% cut to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, the real drivers of debt? There are some. Probably about 5% of voters. There is a huge theoretical constituency for balancing the budget today, and nearly zero constituency for doping the things required to make it happen.

Elon Musk felt betrayed by this, which he wasn’t. His coalition faction just didn’t get everything what it wanted. The idea that he’s now going to go out and attempt to create this America Party operates under the assumption that a significant number of Americans share the particularized view of Elon Musk’s sliver of the America First coalition to such an extent that they will abandon the America First coalition, embrace policies that have almost no constituency, and rally to his third party in what history teaches us is going to be certain defeat. That is this would have a substantial chance of helping the Democrats is the mayo on this Schiff sandwich. 

Here’s Elon Musk’s challenge. The Republicans are a little annoyed with Musk, though we would love nothing more than to make up, break bread, have a beer (or a Diet Coke for DJT), and hug it out. But the Democrats hate him. They want to destroy him. The Democrats’ catspaws are using violence to attack his business interests. Before Trump came in, the Democrats had weaponized agencies across the board to persecute him and his companies. If they don’t murder him outright – we’ve already seen how they tried twice to kill Trump, how their allies have and are hurting and killing opponents, and how they are openly advocating violence in response to not getting what they want – they will imprison Elon Musk forever. As with Donald Trump, political success is a matter of life and death.

And for what? It’s not clear how much effect this new America Party is going to have. Is there a significant constituency out there for austerity on the part of regular Americans but continued lower tax rates and subsidies for Silicon Valley tech bros? Are there millions of voters clamoring for increased H1-B visas so indentured serf foreigners can replace American workers? Who is his constituency? He’s already attracted leftist Mark Cuban, teen gadfly Andrew Yang, and national joke Anthony Scaramucci. That’s inauspicious. It’s entirely possible that the America Party will become the home of disaffected Democrats since the statistics say there just aren’t many disaffected Republicans. I mean, there’s Thomas Massie, who only proves that sometimes you can have addition through subtraction.

Why would a Republican leave Trump to go to Musk even if American third parties were not doomed to failure structurally, practically, and historically? Elon Musk is outstanding on free speech, but just a few years ago, he was telling us he doesn’t believe in gun rights. Is he for or against abortion? What does he think of a basic income? The fact is that he’s a political newcomer. His views on key cultural issues, assuming we like them (and we can’t necessarily assume that), are not firmly set. Trump’s are. There are videos of him from 40 years ago talking about the same things in the same way that he’s putting into practice right now. A decade in office has shown us that Trump knows what he believes, makes it policy, and keeps his word. This isn’t a hit on Elon. Elon doesn’t have Trump’s track record. Musk is new to politics, and Americans probably aren’t going to take a chance that his current set of beliefs, even if voters liked them, aren’t going to change.

The America Party’s strategy appears to be spending an inordinate amount of money on key races to either win them outright or swing them. Winning is tough; who is the popular candidate who’s going to forgo a major party campaign to run under this novelty banner? How many Republican voters are going to abandon a loyal MAGA candidate for a loyal Musk candidate? Not many, but maybe enough to swing the election to a Democrat. Again, that’s very annoying for us Republicans, but that’s very dangerous for Elon Musk.

Trump and Musk have thrown punches at each other, some under the belt, but there was once friendship there, and there should be again. It makes no sense for them to be in opposition. Inside the tent, Musk can at least get a hearing. Outside, he gets nothing – or worse. It doesn’t need to be that way. The America First coalition can almost certainly survive without Musk and his faction, but why should it? Musk is a huge asset to our coalition, and frankly, Musk has nowhere else to go. 

Eventually, he is going to come home. When he does, we should slaughter the fatted calf and welcome him.

By Halting The Federal Judiciary’s Left Turn, Trump Has Saved America

posted Steve McCann at American Thinker 

What Donald Trump has achieved in the first six months of his non-sequential second term borders on the unprecedented. The most lasting and impactful accomplishment will be Trump’s ongoing victories in permanently reining in a rogue and increasingly radicalized federal judiciary. His electoral victory in 2024 and uncompromising battles with the judiciary have rescued the United States from an irreversible decline and fall.

Over the past 70 years, the federal judiciary has increasingly assumed the extra-constitutional role of arbitrarily setting the boundaries of congressional and presidential authority. This has been an evolutionary process that reflected the American left’s long-term strategy of appointing collectivist judges to the federal judiciary.

All Marxist-inspired despots of the twentieth century understood that party or state control over the judiciary is a key factor in successfully transforming a nation into a one-party socialist or communist state. This process was dramatically accelerated in the United States after Barack Obama became president. During his two terms in office, he and the Democrat party, per the Marxist blueprint, were singularly focused on radicalizing the federal judiciary.

This single-minded determination culminated in Obama and his minion, Joe Biden, appointing vast numbers of radical left-wing judges during their combined twelve years in office. The unabashed and unconstitutional lawfare directed at Donald Trump and the January 6th protestors was a manifestation of their success.

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, dozens of Obama-Biden district court judges have unconstitutionally interjected themselves in Trump’s lawful exercise of executive power, issuing an unheard 45-plus national injunctions in less than six months.

From the Constitution’s ratification until the dawn of the Twentieth Century, courts did not issue any nationwide injunctions. Beginning in 1900 and spanning 21 presidencies, courts issued 170 nationwide injunctions. Of those, 112—or 65% of all national injunctions over 249 years—came during the four years of Trump’s first term and six months of his second. By comparison, per the Harvard Law Review, the last Republican president, George W. Bush, experienced just six nationwide injunctions over eight years.

It is not a coincidence that this avalanche of injunctions began after the Obama presidency, during which he appointed hundreds of radical district judges. There are currently 631 serving District Court judges in 94 districts, and Obama and Biden appointed over 60% of them. This makes it easy to find a judge sympathetic to the Marxist-inspired Democrat party and willing to issue unconstitutional nationwide injunctions or conduct rigged trials against political adversaries.

After experiencing a record 64 nationwide injunctions during his first term, surviving the egregious travesty that was unconstitutional lawfare directed at him, and observing the appalling and blatant political persecution of the January 6th protestors, Trump came into office in 2025 single-mindedly determined to take on this Marxist monolith.

Trump knew that the Democrats’ strategy was to derail his agenda. During the four years of his second term, they intended to file lawsuits continuously with their dependable sycophants in the judiciary. These judges would then issue an unending avalanche of judgments, restraining orders, and national injunctions that would freeze the Trump agenda.

They theorized that Trump would either openly defy lower court orders, thus alienating the Supreme Court and becoming susceptible to accusations that he was a fascist-inspired dictator, or he would not be able to aggressively marshal the legal team and strategy to fight continuous battles in innumerable district courts, the circuit courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court.

Trump, however, knew what was coming. Before his inauguration, he assembled an experienced and loyal legal team that was later installed in the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s office, expressly to contest the anticipated lawsuits.

Upon assuming office on January 20, 2025, Trump turned the tables on his feckless and fatuous adversaries by immediately issuing a massive number of executive orders. The Democrat party strategy was immediately exposed to the public as they and their fellow travelers predictably filed 328 lawsuits in the first 100 days of his presidency, stretching their credibility and resources to the limit.

Most importantly, Trump wisely allowed the processes to play out and did not traffic in unhinged accusations or hyperbole when reacting to the inane (and insane) lower court rulings and injunctions. However, he made clear he would never back off in contesting every judgment, restraining order, and injunction. Lastly, he never threatened to ignore any court order, regardless of its merits or constitutionality.

These overall tactics caught the Democrat machine by surprise as they assumed Trump was incapable of restraint. Trump’s willingness to respect the separation of powers was not lost on the Supreme Court Justices, who would be the final arbiters of the validity of many rulings, especially the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions.

As a result, Trump has amassed an unexpected winning streak, not only before the Supreme Court but in many lower courts, too. This streak included the monumental win in Trump v. CASA, Inc., which saw the Supreme Court permanently and dramatically limit district courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions. This effectively eliminates a major tool Democrats use to thwart their political opposition and abet their transforming America.

In all likelihood, considering the tenor of recent Supreme Court decisions, Trump will amass a considerable portfolio of wins that will result in permanently reining in the radicalized judges currently in office. None of this would have been possible if a resolute and indefatigable Donald Trump had not prevailed in the 2024 election. If Kamala Harris had won, this nation would have been set on the path of inevitable decline and fall.

Based on historic averages, Harris would have appointed upwards of 160-170 District Court judges, bringing the total number of all district court judges appointed by the Obama/Marxist-controlled Democrat party to more than 85%. Additionally, she would have nominated between 30 and 35 appellate judges, resulting in 75% of all appellate judges being appointed by Democrats.

The two oldest Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, will be 80 and 78 years old, respectively, by 2028. That created the distinct possibility that Harris would have added two leftist justices to the Supreme Court. In that case, the Supreme Court would have made a dramatic turn to the radical left.

Once the radical left so dominated the judiciary, it would have been virtually impossible, short of a civil uprising, to change the federal courts’ makeup or political leanings. The Marxist-inspired Democrat Party would have had free rein to govern as it wished.

When Democrat presidents issued executive orders, they would have been immune to any challenges. Virtually no action by a Democrat administration or Congress would have been declared unconstitutional. Additionally, the Democrat voting fraud and manipulation that marked the 2020 election would have been effectively ratified by a compliant judiciary. The same judiciary would, of course, have promoted and been complicit in dramatically altering not only the First and Second Amendments but the entire Bill of Rights.

Despite his many accomplishments, rescuing the United States from the clutches of a radicalized and runaway judiciary places Donald Trump in the same pantheon as Abraham Lincoln in saving the Republic.

What Happens When the Pendulum Swings Back? Disaster.

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

We are, at the moment, enjoying a pretty interesting time in American history. If you're reading these virtual pages, you probably favored President Trump over Kamala Harris in the last presidential election. You probably are glad to have (albeit narrow) Republican majorities in the House and Senate. And, you're probably cautiously optimistic about Republican chances to keep House and Senate in the midterms, especially since the Democrats seem to be getting more and more daffy with each passing day.

But what happens in 2032? In 2036? Ten years after that? That's a good question, and while the American political calendar tends to run in a four-year cycle between presidential elections, it may be time to start thinking in the longer term.

Why? Because, sooner or later, that pendulum will swing back the other way. Sooner or later, the Democrats will have an advantage again, and if there are two things we know about Democrats today, it's that 1) When they get power, they use it, and 2) They're nuts.

Oh, they'll overstep. They always do. They already are. And that's the right's best argument against them, but we have to be more specific than "they're nuts," even though that is completely and totally accurate. We have to be prepared to explain why they're nuts. How? Just look at their reactions to, among other things, the recent flooding in Texas, as my colleague Bonchie recently chronicled an example. 

Bonchie writes:

It takes a truly rotten soul to handwave away the deaths of children as the deserved outcome of daring to vote for Donald Trump and Greg Abbott. Further, as I wrote in a prior piece, there is no evidence that budget cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) played a role in the forecasting of this event. There was a 12-hour early flood watch in effect, and a 3-hour early flash flood warning was issued.

Yet, the idea that the NWS was "gutted" and led to this outcome is becoming a predominant theme among Democrats.

That's right, it takes a truly rotten soul, but it takes only five minutes on X or Facebook to apprise yourself of how many truly rotten souls there are on the left.

Also, when Democrats these days talk, they talk about control, about censorship, about lawfare. RedState's own Mike Miller recently gave us an example.

---

Mike writes:

While past efforts to establish an inspector general overseeing the Office of the President have been unsuccessful, Schiff and his comrades insist the need for a new executive branch watchdog is suddenly urgent with Trump back in the White House. Why do tell.

If the Democrats, especially the nutcase wing that includes the likes of AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Adam Schiff and Ilhan Omar have anything to say about it, we'll see the legal proscription of "hate speech" and "misinformation," which will be used to silence the right. Make no mistake about this; they will be only following the European left, where even in the United Kingdom one can be jailed for a tweet.

And finally, most concerning of all, the rank-and-file left is more and more favoring violence to further their goals. My colleague Nick Arama has an example.

Nick writes:

The tweet said, “I wanna see a few dead ICE agents Los Angeles! Don’t let me down.”

The account was allegedly a man who formerly ran for city council in San Antonio and lost, Matthew Gauna. 

That's just one example. There are more.

These people. Must. Not. Gain. Control.

The problem is that the left is collectivist-minded. Give them credit where credit is due; they stick together. Not all the efforts of the GOP leadership were able to corral every single Republican vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill, although they did manage to get it passed. But the Dems never wavered. They stuck together while Mike Johnson and John Thune were herding cats. That's one lesson we would do well to take from them, and not just our elected officials but us, the voters.

Every election from here on out will be vital. Every midterm, every presidential election, every local election, from governors and mayors to third assistant dogcatcher. We have to vote. We can have either 80 percent of what we want or zero. If it's between 80 percent and what the Democrats are offering, every election, every vote will be vital. If a candidate isn't perfect, consider the alternative. Bite your tongue if you have to, because the alternative will be worse, and that's the choice we have. We can either hang together or we can hang separately. We must ensure that when that pendulum swings again, it's halted just short of the "crazy" marking on the left.

There is no other choice.

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What Is the Point of the Legacy Media Today?

posted by Brandon Morse at RedState 

There's a massive disconnect between the legacy media and the people, and Donald Trump's 2024 win made that absolutely clear. I've covered the legacy media's incessant attempts to destroy Trump and pointed out how their chief concern is making sure Trump's power is stymied, and that they'll do this at any cost. 

The cost is often their own reputation and trust from the people, yet despite being wildly unpopular, they don't stop. They just keep going and hope that at some point, among all the slop they're throwing at the wall, something will stick. 

A recent finding by the Media Research Center and presented by Newsbustersshows such a thing happening even now: 

Washington Week with The Atlantic, public television’s taxpayer-funded weekly political roundtable featuring a rotating stable of journalists, touts itself as "objective.”

But a review of the last three months of Washington Week (April 4, 2025 – June 27, 2025) proved Trump-phobic liberalism still reigns over the public airwaves. While unemployment is falling, inflation is down, illegal border crossings are plummeting under Trump, and the president dealing successfully with Iran’s nuclear threat, little of that positive news penetrated the tax-funded liberal bubble.

As the findings show, it was all a Republican bash-fest: 

■ The panelists spent 83 minutes opining on Republicans, focusing on Trump and his administration, in 93% negative fashion (77 minutes negative, six minutes positive).

■ Show “intros” by moderator Jeffrey Goldberg often set a mocking anti-Trump tone, not the “civil discourse” promised.

■ Of the 14 different media outlets that were represented on Washington Week during the study period, all but one hailed from the left end of the political spectrum – and that single one (The Dispatch) sounded as liberal as the rest.

I don't need to tell you that this is hardly objective journalism or commentary, and what's especially egregious about this is that this is coming from a taxpayer-funded place. We're effectively paying to have elitists in the media spit heavily biased nonsense about the guy we elected to our faces. 

It's wrong when the alphabet networks do it, it's especially wrong when public-paid sources do it. 

The question is, why does this keep happening? Why do they keep trying to push something on us that we rejected? 

In my last VIP piece, I covered how the elite in America, as well as all their luxury beliefs, are pushing their ill-gotten ideological positions on everyone else, and that a lot of this starts with brainwashing from high-profile academic institutions that convince the young and wealthy that their wealth and privilege is shameful. As such, many of them spend an inordinate amount of time trying to see to it that the system that gave them what they enjoy is torn down, while never truly giving up the privileges they're supposed to be ashamed of. 

This has been happening for generations now, and the trouble is that many of these people work their way into places of influence, whether it be a political office... or the media. 

They use their connections to infiltrate these places and begin pushing their beliefs from larger platforms. This is why the legacy media is filthy with leftists that can't seem to let go of ideas that not only proved detrimental, but can't seem to stop attacking the people who dismantle these proven bad ideas. 

In order to push ideas that work against the people's best interest, the media leans into a natural tendency of our species to be a pack animal. It figures that if it can convince you that most of the people in America believe what these elites believe, it pulls the natural instinct to run with the pack toward their way of thinking artificially. 

And there you have it. 

The legacy media exists to convince 90 percent of the population that a solid chunk of it believes what only ten percent of the elitist population actually does. They don't have to convince everyone, just enough to disrupt Republicans and set them up to fail as often as possible. From there, they can work to weaken the Republicans by accusing them of being ineffectual, uncaring, and corrupt, and people's short memories, resentments, and frustrations will take care of the rest. 

That's really all the legacy media exists to do today. Disrupt the process to allow their fellow elitists to take back control and carry out their elitist agenda. If the country actually knew how little we actually agree with them, or how little they actually care about us, they'd be hard-pressed to take power ever again. Sadly, they still control many of the information gateways and big stages. 

This battle will continue for the foreseeable future. 

Douglass Mackey, aka “Ricky Vaughn”, Wins Second Circuit Court of Appeals – Dismissing Egregious First Amendment Prosecution

The background of the insufferable case is HERE and HERE.

Yesterday, the second circuit court of appeals finally overturned one of the most ridiculous Obama/Biden dystopian lawfare cases against the first amendment.  Defendant Douglass Mackey wins his appeal and the case is dismissed [RULING HERE]

The ridiculous case was against Douglass Mackey, aka Twitter user Ricky Vaughn, who posted a silly meme against Hillary Clinton in 2016.  The Biden DOJ prosecuted Mackey saying he was part of a conspiracy to rob Clinton of the election, by posting memes of disinformation around the election.

Mackey was tried and convicted in New York; however, finally an appeals court looked at the stupidity of it and ruled in his favor, sending the case back to the lower court for dismissal.

Literally all the guy did was post snarky memes poking fun of democrats and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election…  However, the United States government claimed: “the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote.”

After the jury remained deadlocked for three days, and after thrice telling the judge they were deadlocked, Judge Ann Donnelly threatened not to release them from duty unless and until they came to a decision on guilt.  The jury in 2023 subsequently found Douglass Mackey, a 33-year-old who went by the name Ricky Vaughn on Twitter and a resident of Florida (insert DeSantis silence here), guilty of creating a meme against the interests of the U.S. government.

Rioters Charged With Assaulting Officers During Violent Antifa Protests Outside Portland ICE Office

Abigail Nichols reporting for The Federalist 

On Tuesday three anti-ICE protesters were charged with assaulting an officer along with other offenses during ongoing protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Oregon. A fourth individual was charged for allegedly “defacing the ICE building” with graffiti.

“[F]or weeks, individuals have repeatedly targeted the building and federal law enforcement officers with threatening statements, discharging pepper spray, and throwing rocks, trash, and bricks,” the U.S. attorney’s office for the district of Oregon said in a Tuesday press release.

Riley Freeman (26 years old) faces charges of “felony offenses of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon and possession of an unregistered destructive device.” Andrew Marcum (22) and Ian Joseph McCarthy (35) were also charged with a felony for “assaulting a federal officer.” The fourth protester, Jeremy Hummel (27), was charged with a misdemeanor for “depredation of government property.”

The federal building has been “under siege” for “more than 30 executive days,” with many rioters affiliated with “the anarchist extremist group Antifa” camping outside the building, The Post Millennial reported.

Officers arrested rioters at the same facility on June 14 when “No Kings” protests happened across the country. On June 20, six rioters were charged with misdemeanor offenses, including “assaulting federal officers and creating a hazard on federal property.” The Department of Homeland Security noted that on July 4 “violent rioters targeted an ICE facility in the Portland area — assaulting law enforcement, vandalizing federal property, and burning the American flag.”

Chelly Bouferrache, a journalist who’s been covering the Portland anti-ICE protests for the last 30 days, told The Federalist that the “cult-like” group protesting at the ICE facility uses “rhetoric” that “is increasingly more violent towards the officers.”

“I’m concerned there’s going to be a mass casualty,” Bouferrache said.

More arrests were made on Tuesday night, Bouferrache said in a post on X, as video appeared to show law enforcement deploying tear gas as protesters continued to riot outside the ICE building in Portland.

“We the people need sleep!” a Portland local named Cloud yelled at anti-ICE protesters in a video posted on June 29. The local filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the city for not taking enough action against the riots, saying the locals have been “trapped in nightly torture.”

The Democrat-led Portland City Council held a “Community and Public Safety Meeting” on Tuesday, though the meeting did not bode well for citizens hoping for a reprieve from Antifa violence. More than 40 people testified, with the majority of speakers calling the rioters “peaceful” and ICE “violent” or “nazis,” and asking the council members to revoke the ICE facility permit.

Councilor Angelita Morillo, who described herself as “the only immigrant on city council” and who goes by the pronouns “she/they,” opened up the meeting by emotionally announcing, “I am personally grateful for everyone who is out there protesting.” Councilor Eric Zimmerman also seemed to suggest that ICE agents are “the great cowards of our time.”

“We want our city to be safer again,” said David Medina, one of the two testifiers who spoke about the dangers from the anti-ICE rioters. He was called a “nazi” by a heckler during the meeting.

In Texas last weekend, ten alleged members of an “Antifa terror cell” were arrested and charged with three counts of attempted murder after attacking ICE officers, The Federalist’s Jacqueline Annis-Levings reported.

Border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News that he plans on visiting Portland. “They’re not going to bully us.”

“We’re going to double down and triple down on sanctuary cities. … So what you’re going to get, sanctuary cities, is exactly what you don’t want: more agents in your communities and more collateral arrests,” he said.