EU States Complete Brussels’ Surveillance Network

American  Thinker 

The EU is working at full speed to complete its online surveillance-and-informant network. By the end of the year, all EU member states are required to present so-called “Trusted Flaggers” -- institutions tasked with identifying “problematic” content -- to Brussels for accreditation. Politicians from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union appear especially eager.

Hendrik Wüst, CDU politician and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, is a child of the current zeitgeist. As the leader of Germany’s most populous state, he views it as his mission not merely to preach the dominant ideology of the CO2-neutral society, but to enforce it rigorously. Together with his Green coalition partner, he works tirelessly to transform what was once Europe’s industrial heartland into an economic wasteland, perfectly aligned with the ideological fantasies of Brussels’ chief engineers.

Out with nuclear power, end coal-fired electricity -- NRW must become “green.” And Wüst celebrates the coming economic collapse, soon to crown himself the king of debt, presiding over his own Rust Belt and mass unemployment. This disaster will secure him a special place in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Censorship and Opinion Management

But this is only one side of Wüst’s political mission. The Münsterland native naturally also embraces the zeitgeist-approved fight against “hate and incitement” -- that political doctrine used to suppress unwelcome opposition through moralizing poison darts, censorship, and the quiet threat of consequences. Wüst is the ideal politician of our time: ideologically flexible to the point of eco-socialist maximum contortion.

To give his convictions material force, Wüst pushed early for the use of so-called “Trusted Flaggers” -- institutions that scan online content for political cleanliness. His favorite: So Done GmbH, a private software outfit that has not yet received official flagger status but has previously been contracted by politicians such as Robert Habeck to hunt down critics.

Wüst repeatedly promoted the company in the past but was forced by attorney Joachim Steinhöfel to sign a cease-and-desist declaration. The principle of neutrality apparently still applies -- even for the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia.

A Seamless Spy Network

Wüst and his allies pursue a single goal: to close every remaining gap so that critical commentary on climate policy, the war in Ukraine, or future pandemic waves can be detected and sanctioned.

By year’s end, all EU member states must identify and submit such informant institutions for approval. Brussels alone decides who gets accredited, ensuring no ideological outliers slip into the network.

Germany’s list of Trusted Flaggers already includes groups like REspect! (Youth Foundation Baden-Württemberg), HateAid gGmbH, and the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv).

It can be assumed that many public administrations will gladly offer themselves for this new opinion-policing ecosystem -- a sort of taxpayer-funded employment program for bored bureaucrats convinced they’re defending democracy.

One for All

Wüst stands merely as a symbol of the current political zeitgeist, a pars pro toto in a sea of uniformity. Yet precisely because he is Minister President of the country’s most populous state, he becomes a pivotal figure in the fight against citizens’ sovereignty and free speech.

This fight has progressed so far that even private companies -- like So Done -- have discovered mass surveillance and content-scanning as a lucrative business model. Naturally, as so often today, publicly subsidized: financed with the very money taken from citizens to fund the surveillance apparatus that subsequently treats them all as suspects. One would laugh if it weren’t so sad -- and so dangerous.

The Digital Block Warden

The practice of Trusted Flaggers evokes unpleasant memories of the East German “Blockwart” -- the visible tip of a system wrapped in an invisible net of Stasi informants. Today the Orwellian state is taking shape: a visible leadership class cloaking its attack on civil liberties in soft democratic rhetoric, and a steadily growing pressure on critics, combined with a silent threat of consequences if one strays outside the permitted political corridor.

The silenced citizen -- always the ideal of every authoritarian system.

The surveillance apparatus is long past its beta phase. In the second quarter of 2025 alone, 29 million online posts were registered under the Digital Services Act (DSA) as deleted or restricted in visibility. All this through the work of Europe’s Trusted Flaggers.

The Digital Prison

The Trusted Flagger system -- baked into Brussels’ DSA and coordinated in Germany by the Federal Network Agency -- will unleash its full destructive force the moment Brussels succeeds in establishing absolute control over the monetary system.

Should the bureaucrats manage -- still technologically and intellectually questionable -- to use a digital euro to fully centralize, monitor, and algorithmically control all transactions, we would face the fusion of potential offense and instant punishment.

How quickly could the financial lifeline of bloggers, journalists, and freethinkers be shut off? What still requires court rulings, administrative procedures, or compliant banks could soon be a single back-end click.

Brussels’ power seems more advanced than we realize. All member states have obediently submitted to this directive. A loud opposition is nowhere to be found. And so the only real counterweight remains the United States, which -- for economic and ideological reasons -- resists the EU’s censorship regime, its DSA, and its chat-control ambitions.

For the free individual, only one hope remains in the fight against the EU Politburo: the government of Donald Trump and the possibility that America remembers its European roots.

A Pathetic Kowtow to the Surveillance State

The ultimate conclusion for any freedom-loving individual: the fact that a company like So Done GmbH is celebrated as a start-up and held up as an example of German technological competence is the most pathetic kowtow imaginable to the rising totalitarianism.

Like a loaded gun, the political class presses the destructive potential of digital technology against the temples of the sovereign citizen.

Europe stands on the brink of civilizational collapse -- exposed here as a vulgar form of corporatism, a grotesque collaboration between private industry and the state. The eco-socialist surveillance regime is the antithesis of European civilization, a bastard child of the 20th-century totalitarianisms.

Entertainment and podcast thread for Nov 25

 Just leave the past where it belongs in your life.

Around the World in 80 Tweets

Townhall 

Elon Musk shows where X accounts reside, and who knew that a Gazan could suffer so horribly in the Netherlands.

Americans, for the most part, are very good and generous people. America as a country does more for the world's success and safety than any other country. On the one hand, being good-hearted is a virtue; on the other hand, being somewhat too naive can have its dangers. Sure, one does not want to suspect every person and every little thing. But, sometimes being too "simple" has its risks.

One thing that Americans often do not appreciate is that other people have agendas that include harming the U.S. Israel has banned the presence of Chinese cars on air force bases. A while back, England accused China of using its cars to listen to and record conversations of ministers who happened to be riding in such vehicles. Unless the CIA specifically asked one of the U.S. auto makers to wire up a specific car expected to be used by a given target, it would never dawn on us that American cars should be used as governmental eavesdropping tools against anyone—friends or foes. Yet. Chinese cars, cranes, drones, phones, and other electronic goods routinely send data back to China and could be shut off by the Chinese should an order come down from on high to do so. As Americans, we can't fathom this—Zenith TVs in the Soviet Union would be programmed to show a 24-hour loop of Ronald Reagan speeches until the USSR collapsed? We don't think that way, and we don't act that way. Good for us, but we have a blind spot.

We don't appreciate that Chinese students and scholars often come to U.S. institutions not only to learn but also to transmit important data back to China. Look at China's new aircraft carrier with its electromagnetic launch system. It took the U.S. a long time and a lot of money to create the technology and get it to work on the USS Gerald Ford. Suddenly, the Chinese after one generation of carriers have the same. A Harvard chemistry professor went to jail for not informing the U.S. government of his funding ties to the Chinese government. Again, as Americans, we would be shocked to learn of an American physics professor spending a year overseas acting as a U.S. agent—unless it was some one-off operation. But for the Chinese and others, everything they do is to strengthen themselves and weaken the U.S.

The same theme was recently reported about the Qataris spending tens of billions of dollars on U.S. universities and other institutions in order to push the Muslim Brotherhood and "weaken democracy" from within. These donations are not like those of some fortunate billionaire who has a new building in his family's name. The latter has no demands other than for a big spotlight on his name at night. The Qataris are actively trying to destroy the basic fabric of the United States in order to advance a Sharia state and end our constitutional republic.

And that brings us to X, formerly Twitter. Elon Musk and his gang pulled a fast one and, in one fell swoop, revealed the physical location of people banging out X postings. We quickly learned that many of the Groypers were in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or the like. Gazans giving us the blow-by-blow pain in their lives actually live in Poland, the Netherlands, Egypt, and other points outside of the Gaza Strip. These people, like the Chinese and Qataris, also have agendas: to cause infighting in the MAGA movement or stoke antisemitism by making claims that have no basis in reality. It is a huge public service that X has performed in alerting us where people actually live when they claim that IDF soldiers came by and kicked their dog—all the while as they lived in Canada. Much of the anti-American and antisemitic material on X (and ostensibly other platforms) is for the purpose of dividing the U.S., creating hatred toward Israel and Jews, and advancing Sharia and other non-Western interests.

Now, if we go back far enough, the U.S. and Western European countries also used to like to sell their political wares, especially behind the Soviet Union. American broadcasts into the USSR were meant to weaken the authorities and promote a life beyond the reaches of the drab lives of the citizens behind the Iron Curtain. And while countries may still promote themselves today, things have changed—and not solely because the Soviet Union collapsed so many years ago. Western countries no longer believe in the goods that they have to sell. One can see the evidence of the same by the endless illegal immigration that any self-respecting country would never tolerate. Catholic countries like Poland and Hungary, which experienced both the Nazis and the Communists, have zero interest in turning their countries over to people who hate them. England, France, and other Western countries make almost no effort to either stem the flow in or start the serious flow out—because they don't believe in the goodness of their countries or their former religious values. If they were proud Brits, Irish, and Dutch, they would have never accepted an endless stream of people who hate them and their way of life. And if they only woke up now, they would be throwing out 10,000 a month until they returned to something that nominally resembled their former countries. Yes, go look at videos of England and Italy from the 1990s. Those countries no longer exist and are nowhere on the horizon. And if they don't care about their own homefront, why should they bother trying to influence others?

Americans are such good people that they are often unaware that others, like the Chinese and Qataris, are actively trying to take advantage of them and weaken their country. That awesome DJI drone you bought your kid sends every video he makes back to China so that they can record where telephone poles, hydrants, and other infrastructure are located. Do you think that the Chinese are buying farmland near sensitive military installations because they want to grow corn? Do you think that they would allow the U.S. to buy some buildings overlooking a CCP submarine pen? Of course not. This merry-go-round only goes in one direction: for the benefit of America's enemies at the expense of the U.S. and its people.

So, on the one hand, you don't want a nation that distrusts everything and everyone. On the other hand, the X revelations show that a lot of bad actors want to mislead Americans and make them more politically divided. What can one do? Shut down X? Hardly. But one has to be very aware of who is making the message and try to figure out what they're trying to gain—and at whose expense.

While people are laughing about the real location of many X subscribers, there are very insidious consequences of this business. One false Gazan account was a frequent source for the Jew-hating BBC. So a guy living far away from the conflict reports as if he is under an Israeli tank. The BBC gobbles it up and spews its lies out to its millions of listeners, some percentage of whom subsequently hate Israel and Jews even more. One fellow recently spoke with some Irish fellows at a pub. One of the guys said that Hitler's only mistake was that he did not kill more Jews, which brought a laugh from his buddies. A recent report claims that the BBC "villified" Israel over Hamas 3:1. I would venture 30:1.

So, check X-locations to see where your news is coming from. Not all things online are as they claim.

Just Imagine What We Could Do If Democrats Weren’t Evil

Townhall 

We have a lot of problems in this country, as we always have. But, just for a minute, imagine we had a political class interested in addressing those problems in a way that benefited as many Americans as chose to avail themselves of the opportunity to improve their lot in life? That's a wordy way of saying that the government should serve as a plow to clear the road ahead for everyone (of red tape, foreign and corporate interference, and anything else in the way) so everyone has a chance to make whatever they can, or would like, out of their lives.

Instead of that plow, we have half the political establishment staring at the ground, shuffling their feet and, like a bad stage actor, unsure what to do with their hands. The other half is actively throwing as many obstacles as possible in that road – trees, rocks, nails – and blaming "society" for all of it.

Republicans, at least, do try to get good things done, every once in a while. They also talk a good game, which isn't much but is slightly more than the nothing we've come to accept in politics.

Democrats, on the other hand, would be happy to bring the whole thing crashing down on anyone who refuses to bow to their will and whims. They are the ultimate parasite that kills its host – they're suicide bombers for the sake of the explosion.

But imagine if they weren't; imagine if Democrats loved the country as much as they love illegal aliens or violent criminals. What couldn't get done?

They don't, of course. They don't make flights to their home states to visit with families of victims murdered by illegal aliens, but they do launch pilgrimages to Latin America for a photo-op with an alleged wife-beater. In other words, their priorities are not American priorities.

Think of the effort it took to coordinate with six members of Congress to record a video with all of them advising members of the military to defy orders from the president of the United States. Aside from it being sedition by proxy and a wet kiss for treason, it was done for one purpose and one purpose only: to make the United States look bad on the world stage.

They did, just not in the way they'd hoped.

What if these people, and all the angry leftists hellbent on turning people against the country when they aren't in charge of it (and that's what they do), actually tried to encourage good things? Rather than turning Americans out into the streets to attack ICE agents, to block traffic or do damage to the economy, what if Democrats focused that energy to helping people?

I realize they don't want to help people; otherwise, they would. Their agenda is almost exclusively designed to make more people dependent on government to empower themselves, but what if they cared for real?

That's probably impossible – you can't rationalize someone's sociopathy away. But it's interesting to think about.

Expecting "good" or help from a Democrat is too much, but what the hell happened to them that we can't even hope for them to give trying to damage people a break?

Think of what they do, what they fight for. Is there anything – literally one thing – that is unambiguously good? Nothing comes to mind.

There are a lot of issues on which Republicans are on the side of the vast majority of the country – keeping boys out of girls' sports, stopping sex changes for kids, preventing criminals from entering the country – and Democrats are on the other side of every single one of them. It's not just that they're on the other side in a passive way; they are actively cheering the anti-American side – the one that gets people killed.

When Democratic Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin (she's single, fellas) cited the movie "A Few Good Men" in defense of their "defy the president" video, she showed just how far gone the Left is. That none of these people could come up with anything they could even lie about being an "illegal order" tells you all you need to know about their character. She did, by the way, manage to equate Vietnam veterans with Nazis at Nuremberg in the same defense, so you can see where she's coming from.

Maybe Democrats are not capable of doing things for the good of the country – I have no memory of them doing so in my lifetime, but it had to have happened at some point, right? Or maybe they simply do not care. There are a lot of people capable of a great deal of things that they simply do not do.

Personally, I don't care what the answer is; my problem is that there is the question. Well, a rhetorical question, really. We'll likely never know what could be done if Democrats were as interested in the good of the country as they are in their own glory and power, because it never occurs to them to try.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

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A New Book “Stolen Elections” with Lara Logan, Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

President Trump is calling attention to a recent podcast interview conducted by Lara Logan with Gary Berntsten and Ralph Pezzullo, surrounding the new book “Stolen Elections” as authored by Pezzullo. [TRUTH SOCIAL]

Several people have also sent me information related to this *video interview with strong recommendations to watch it and review the content.   The interview is over 2 hours long, and I know everyone’s time has value. I have only just begun to review the content, but I am sharing for those with interest.  WATCH: 

*Keep in mind, underneath all of the discussion is an intent to sell a book.  Out of respect for those who sent it to me, I will finish watching it.

CHAPTERS:
(0:00:00) – Exposing the True Power Players
(0:04:34) – The Stolen Elections Investigation
(0:10:04) – Foreign Influence
(0:20:12) – Uncovering Election Fraud Networks
(0:30:12) – Persecuted Christians

(0:35:41) – Revealing Evidence
(0:39:42) – Foreign Election Interference
(0:44:13) – Foreign Influence in US Intelligence
(0:58:08) – Global Election Fraud Networks
(1:06:33) – The Cartels’ Global Influence
(1:11:42) – Infiltration of American Institutions
(1:23:04) – Uncovering Election Fraud
(1:31:51) – Chinese Hybrid Warfare in US Elections
(1:44:47) – Investigating Election Fraud Networks
(1:55:24) – Father-Son Diplomatic Bond
(2:01:13) – State Department Covert Actions
(2:10:09) – The Fight to Save America
(2:15:56) – Cartel Connections

[SOURCE]

What Does The Republican Party Even Stand For?

Unlike Democrats, Republicans have no unified vision of what they view as success for the country.

The Federalist

On Friday, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives did what many thought was unthinkable. In what can only be described as a stunning act of bravery, these bold Republicans — wait for it — passed a resolution that condemns socialism.

Yes, you read that correctly. While Americans continue to grapple with high costs of living and an increasingly broken health care system — both products of reckless government intervention — your Republican House majority decided to expend what little “low t” energy it has on a useless resolution that basically says, “SOCIALISM IS BAD!”

The entire charade was like watching Olivia Nuzzi try to dish out marital advice. Consider that many of the same Republicans who enthusiastically voted to condemn socialism have had no problem bankrolling Obamacare, fraud-ridden welfare programs like SNAP, and every wallet-sucking entitlement program under the sun — all with zero intention of reforming or gutting any of them.

It’s as ironic as it is comical.

But Friday’s vote was hardly the first do-nothing dog-and-pony show Republicans have put on for their constituents. For years, GOP politicos have graced the airwaves of Fox News and conservative media, telling voters what they want to hear about the issues of the day while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing of substance to address them.

During the 2024 election cycle, Republicans promised a generational “America First” reformation that would reshape political governance as we know it. And now, 10 months into GOP trifecta control of the federal government, this “generational change” has amounted to little more than a tax bill, which many Republicans seem to believe is enough to keep them in power next year.

Meanwhile, many of President Trump’s transformative executive orders have not been enshrined into law; the Education Department has not been abolished; there’s still no plan to repeal and replace Obamacare; no urgency to codify any meaningful DOGE cuts; or to shut down lower courts’ judicial tyranny and impeach activist judges. Pick your issue of the day, and Republicans are nowhere to be found.

Whenever confronted with this lack of effort, GOP leadership will undoubtedly point to Republicans’ small House and Senate margins, arguing the party simply doesn’t have enough seats required to implement their supposed transformative agenda. You’ll notice, however, that fact didn’t stop Democrats from ramming through their radical agenda when Joe Biden was president and their party possessed small majorities in Congress.

The real reason Republicans “can’t” (and won’t) pass any significant “America First”-style policies boils down to a much more serious problem — one which the GOP will never admit to. That is, unlike Democrats, Republicans have no unified vision of what they view as success for the country.

For all of their alleged opposition to Democrats, too many Republicans agree with Democrats on several substantive issues and support more government involvement in areas where it has no business being. For all intents and purposes, the current GOP is a party comprised of various ideological factions, disillusioned as to what “America First” actually means.

The ongoing debate over whether to abolish the Senate filibuster encapsulates this problem perfectly.

From a purely numbers standpoint, Republicans clearly possess the majority required to nuke it. The problem is there’s no guarantee that, even if they did somehow manage to get rid of the filibuster, the policies supported by Trump and conservative voters would be able to pass both chambers, given the major ideological fragmentation within the party.

This isn’t to say that elected Republicans shouldn’t have any disagreement on any issues whatsoever. Healthy debate among representatives can be a positive thing and produce better results. But on the big picture policies of the day, having a central vision and common end goal is paramount.

Unfortunately for conservatives, this is a problem that’s not going to be fixed overnight. It took years of GOP voter complacency to get us to this point, and it’s going to take years of consistent citizen activism (and better endorsements and support from leaders like Trump) to fix it.

Electing your preferred candidate isn’t the end of self-governance; it’s merely the beginning. Being a citizen means being fully engaged with your elected officials and government, whether it be at the local, state, or federal level.

That’s the responsibility that comes with being an American. And until conservatives start acting like citizens and not just voters, they should expect more of the same, wherein Democrats destroy the country while their socialist-condemning Republicans do nothing but watch.

White House Announces Incredible News for Veterans and Their Families

RedState 

The White House announced incredible news for veterans and their families, revealing that the backlog many experienced in obtaining healthcare coverage during former President Joe Biden's presidency is now over.

In a post on X on Monday, the White House Rapid Response account wrote that "VA eliminates CHAMPVA (Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs) backlog, giving Veteran families faster access to health care." 

The article linked to the post included the following about the move by President Donald Trump's administration, which cut the application process from nearly six months down to only a few days.

The Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA) currently provides health care coverage to more than 900,000 qualifying beneficiaries. When President Trump took office in January, the program had a backlog of more than 70,000 unprocessed applications, with some families waiting over 150 days for action during the previous administration.

According to the department, the backlog was reduced to zero as of October, and new applications are now being processed in just a handful of days. The VA currently receives about 4,000 new CHAMPVA applications per week, but can now process more than it takes in — a significant change from earlier years.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to the exciting news, quoting from the article:

"The Department of Veterans Affairs has completely eliminated the backlog of CHAMPVA applications, ending years of delays that left thousands of Veteran spouses, dependents, survivors, and caregivers waiting for health care coverage, and ushering in what VA leaders say is a new era of faster, more efficient access for Veteran families."

VA Secretary Doug Collins remarked on the end of the backlog, too, in a post on X.

"Veterans around the country knew it was taking far too long to process CHAMPVA applications, and that meant delayed coverage for their loved ones," Collins post read. "We listened, and now the application backlog that caused so many unnecessary delays has been wiped out."

The article included a breakdown of two major changes made by Secretary Collins, which cleared up the VA backlog that had increased under the Biden administration:

• Providing overtime pay to CHAMPVA processors to surge through the existing backlog.

• Implementing process engineering and automation to sustain faster processing long term.

Truly great news for these families and veterans who have given so much. Great job, Trump team.

Foreign Operatives Revealed: New X Feature Identifies Wave of Accounts Behind Misinformation Push

Townhall 

Elon Musk’s company, X, recently launched a new feature on Friday that reveals the country of origin for every user account. The update is already raising eyebrows, offering a glimpse into how foreign-operated accounts may be using the platform to push misinformation on what has become one of the most politically consequential social media sites.

Many of the accounts based in foreign countries are pretending to represent the America First agenda.

For example, an account called "@1776General_" which describes the owner as a "constitutionalist, patriot and ethnically American," with over 140,000 followers, is based in Turkey. The owner posted that they work in international business, and are currently in Turkey, although that claim is unverifiable. 

Another account called "@AmericanVoice__" had over 200,000 followers, but was found to based in South Asia. The owner simply deleted their account.

Other accounts that have claimed to be journalists reporting on the war in Gaza were found to be misleading as well, with accounts claiming to be those of "Gaza-based journalists" being based in countries like Poland, Egypt, or East Asia and the Pacific.

X's head of product, Nikita Bier, said the feature will help people better identify misinformation.

"When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity. This is critical for staying informed about important issues happening in the world. Part of this is showing new information in accounts, including the country an account is located in, among other things," Bier wrote. 

Representatives from X said its new feature could be vulnerable to those using a VPN, who could mask a user's true location. In those cases, X added a warning that the user could be using a VPN, next to the listed location.

President Trump Recognizes Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters for Potential Foreign Terrorist Designation

Many of us who have watched U.S.-Mideast policy unfold for decades, accepted there was just no way for the U.S. government to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist group.

As noted historically in Kuwait, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and most recently Qatar, the U.S. government works collaboratively with chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the political arm of authentic Islam, and can be considered much like the umbrella organization for a host of different factions of Islamic fundamentalism.

The Brotherhood is the unified political voice of many regional chapters, each with a varying degree of authentic Islam behind it.

Qatar is the central bank for the Muslim Brotherhood; Turkey represents the Brotherhood’s biggest national support network, and Egypt is the intellectual or scholastic battleground where the values of political Islam are debated.

For many years several people, ourselves included, have called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization.  However, the duality of purpose of the Brotherhood was always given as a reason not to designate them.

Today, President Trump is trying to navigate this dynamic within his executive order [SEE HERE].

The executive order instructs the State Dept to officially begin the process to look at each chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood as a separate entity, and then see if the designation of a terrorist organization can apply to that chapter.

As noted in the Executive Order, “relevant here, its chapters in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns.”  It looks like Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt chapters of the Brotherhood will get the first review.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi already dealt with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood once, kicking their leadership out of Egypt.  The leaders fled to Qatar, and then ultimately ended up in Turkey, where Recep Erdogan absolutely loves the usefulness of the Brotherhood.

Jordanian King Abdullah has been balancing the Muslim Brotherhood influence for years, and Lebanon is a hot mess with the Hezbollah faction of the Brotherhood.  The Muslim Brotherhood, as a political structure, holds all kinds of extremist factions under its umbrella (al-Qaeda, al-Nusra etc.).

This effort to designate the “chapters” also looks like an appeasement toward the position of Israel, who has long called for the terrorist designation.  The nations of Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt were key stabilizing voices during the Israel-Hamas conflict over Gaza.

WHITE HOUSE – […] Section 1.  Purpose.  This order sets in motion a process by which certain chapters or other subdivisions of the Muslim Brotherhood shall be considered for designation as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, consistent with section 219 of the INA (8 U.S.C. 1189) and specially designated global terrorists, consistent with IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702), and Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001 (Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism), as amended.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, has developed into a transnational network with chapters across the Middle East and beyond.  Relevant here, its chapters in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.  For example, in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel, the military wing of the Lebanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood joined Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian factions to launch multiple rocket attacks against both civilian and military targets within Israel.  A senior leader of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, on October 7, 2023, called for violent attacks against United States partners and interests, and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leaders have long provided material support to the militant wing of Hamas.  Such activities threaten the security of American civilians in the Levant and other parts of the Middle East, as well as the safety and stability of our regional partners.

Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to cooperate with its regional partners to eliminate the capabilities and operations of Muslim Brotherhood chapters designated as foreign terrorist organizations pursuant to section 3 of this order, deprive those chapters of resources, and thereby end any threat such chapters pose to United States nationals or the national security of the United States.

Sec. 3.  Implementation.  (a)  Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit a joint report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, concerning the designation of any Muslim Brotherhood chapters or other subdivisions, including those in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, as foreign terrorist organizations consistent with 8 U.S.C. 1189, and specially designated global terrorists consistent with 50 U.S.C. 1702 and Executive Order 13224.

(b)  Within 45 days of submitting the report required by subsection (a) of this section, the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury, as applicable, shall take all appropriate action consistent with 8 U.S.C. 1189 or 50 U.S.C. 1702 and Executive Order 13224, as applicable, with regard to the designation of any Muslim Brotherhood chapters or other subdivisions described in section 1 of this order as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists. (more)