The Illusion of Peace and the Reality of Negotiation

American  Thinker 

In early December 2025, the Trump administration officially rebranded the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally created agency, with Trump’s name prominently displayed on its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The State Department described Trump as “the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history” and said the renaming reflects his role in brokering peace agreements. The change coincided with Trump hosting leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo at the building for a U.S.-brokered peace deal.

For decades, the world has been told that peace is the product of institutions. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the United States Institute of Peace, and countless other organizations have been funded with billions of taxpayer dollars, entrusted with the solemn responsibility of preventing war and fostering stability. Their headquarters stand as monuments to diplomacy, their budgets as proof of commitment. Yet when one looks closely at the record, the results are far less impressive than the rhetoric. These institutions have created the illusion of striving for peace, but they have rarely delivered it. They convene conferences, publish reports, and issue statements, but the citizens who suffer in war zones continue to die, displaced and forgotten, while the machinery of bureaucracy grinds on.

The contrast between this institutional inertia and the recent actions of President Donald Trump is striking. Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has pursued peace not through endless committees or abstract frameworks, but through direct negotiation. He has sat down with leaders, confronted the realities of conflict, and crafted agreements that tie peace to prosperity. In less than a year, he has claimed credit for multiple accords, eight with a ninth on the way, across the globe.

• Armenia & Azerbaijan — Peace agreement signed at the White House (Aug 2025).
• Democratic Republic of Congo & Rwanda — Treaty announced June 2025, credited to U.S. mediation.
• Iran & Israel — Trump announced a ceasefire after the U.S. joined Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites (June 2025).
• India & Pakistan — Ceasefire in May 2025 after U.S.-led talks; Trump threatened tariffs
• Cambodia & Thailand — Ceasefire July 2025 after border clashes; Trump pressured with trade threats.
• Israel & Hamas (Gaza) — Ceasefire agreement after two years of war; Trump’s 20‑point Gaza plan backed by UN.
• Ethiopia & Egypt (Nile Dam dispute) — Trump previously claimed to resolve tensions over Nile water rights.
• Serbia & Kosovo (economic normalization).

Whether one agrees with his methods or not, the tangible outcomes stand in stark relief against the decades of institutional stagnation.

To understand why this difference matters, one must first examine the role of NATO and the Institute of Peace. NATO was founded in 1949 as a collective defense alliance, designed to deter Soviet aggression and ensure that an attack on one member would be met with a response from all. Its existence has undoubtedly prevented direct war between major powers in Europe, and its deterrence posture remains a cornerstone of Western security. Yet NATO has never been a broker of peace treaties. Its budget—over $5 billion in common funding and over $1.6 trillion in collective defense spending—supports command structures, military readiness, and deterrence missions. It is a shield, not a negotiator. When conflicts erupt, NATO does not sit at the table to draft accords; it deploys forces to stabilize, to contain, to prevent escalation. That is valuable, but it is not resolution.

The United States Institute of Peace, created by Congress in 1984, was intended to complement this military deterrence with civilian expertise. Its mission was to prevent and resolve violent conflicts abroad through research, training, and dialogue. With a budget of around $61 million in 2025, it has trained thousands of peacebuilders and produced countless studies. Yet it has not directly resolved conflicts. Its role has been advisory, supportive, academic. When wars rage in Gaza, in the Caucasus, in Africa, the Institute does not broker treaties. It convenes workshops, publishes analyses, and supports local mediators. Again, valuable work, but not resolution.

This is the hypocrisy that many citizens see: vast sums of money spent on institutions that promise peace but deliver process. They create the illusion of striving for peace deals, but they never accomplish them. They talk, but they do not act. And in the meantime, ordinary people suffer and die. Families are displaced, children grow up in refugee camps, economies collapse under the weight of instability. The citizens of the world do not need more conferences; they need peace.

President Trump’s approach has been different. He has treated peace as a negotiation, not an abstraction. His template is pragmatic: tie peace to prosperity, use trade and investment as leverage, and bring wealthy and influential backers into the process. In Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, the accord was not just about ending fighting; it was about mineral rights and economic cooperation. In Egypt and Ethiopia, the Nile River dispute was eased not by appeals to ideology, but by agreements on water usage tied to development projects. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, the South Caucasus accord was framed as a pathway to economic integration. These deals may be fragile, but they are tangible. They show that when leaders are confronted with the choice between endless war and profitable peace, money often tips the balance.

Critics argue that this transactional approach reduces peace to a commodity, that it ignores the deeper ideological and cultural roots of conflict. Yet history suggests otherwise. Ideology inflames wars, but economics often ends them. Nations may cling to beliefs, but they bend when survival or prosperity is at stake. The Marshal Plan rebuilt Europe not through ideology, but through investment. Trump’s template is not new; it is a continuation of a pragmatic tradition that recognizes that human instinct, no matter how strong ideology may be, is ultimately shaped by material realities.

What makes Trump’s recent actions notable is not just the deals themselves, but the speed and determination with which they were pursued. In less than a year, he has claimed more peace agreements than NATO and the Institute of Peace have produced in decades. He has focused not on abstract frameworks, but on the citizens who suffer. His rhetoric emphasizes the human cost of war—the families destroyed, the children killed, the economies shattered. He frames peace not as a gift to leaders, but as a necessity for ordinary people. This is why many supporters argue that he is not a fascist dictator, as critics claim, but a compassionate negotiator. Fascism thrives on chaos and perpetual conflict; Trump’s emphasis has been on peace, stability and prosperity.

Of course, one must acknowledge that these accords are fragile. Ceasefires can collapse, agreements can be violated, and economic promises can be broken. Peace is not secured by a signature alone. Yet the fact remains that tangible accords exist, and they were achieved through direct negotiation. That is more than can be said for the institutions that have consumed trillions without producing treaties. The citizens of the world may judge peace not by its durability, but by its existence. For those who have lived in war zones, even a fragile ceasefire can mean survival.

The broader lesson is that peace requires action, not just process. Institutions like NATO and the Institute of Peace are necessary scaffolding, but they cannot substitute for direct negotiation. They can deter, they can advise, they can support, but they cannot resolve. Resolution requires leaders willing to sit down, confront realities, and craft agreements that tie ideology to economics, conflict to prosperity. Trump has shown that this is possible, and he has done so in less than a year. Whether one agrees with his politics or not, the record speaks for itself.

Trump’s determination to seek peace, not just for world leaders but for ordinary people, has created a template that others may follow. It is a template rooted not in ideology alone, but in the recognition that money, trade, and prosperity are the levers that move nations. It is a template that has already produced results, however fragile, and it stands as a challenge to the institutions that have promised peace but delivered only process.

Podcast thread for Dec 12

 

Hope time really does heal all wounds, or this is going to be 1 really miserable life..

The Global War You’ve Never Heard Of

It’s happening right now. And it may explain some of Trump’s perplexing foreign policy decisions.

American  Thinker 

American actions involving Venezuela have stirred up a flurry of theories and narratives around the United States’ strategic intentions.  Some theories highlight apparent contradictions between rhetoric and policy, such as President Trump’s despite his public anti-drug stance. Others frame potential U.S. military threats against Venezuela as being driven primarily by America’s .  Additional narratives have revived allegations of Venezuelan interference in U.S. elections, including from a former Maduro regime official about a “narco-terrorist war” against the United States.

In my effort to better understand the factors driving the building tensions around Venezuela, I decided to strip away all the explanations and start with what we know is happening.  The United States is striking small vessels, referred to as go-fast boats, reportedly carrying cocaine meant to be transferred onto ships bound for the Gulf of Guinea.  This sea route and the next step of the voyage have come to be known as Highway 10 because Venezuela is connected to the Gulf of Guinea via the 10th Parallel North on the globe.  The gulf includes several countries that tend to lack the resources necessary to patrol for and prevent the shipments.  From there, the payload can be passed on to the even poorer countries of the Sahel desert, where al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Russian mercenaries of the Africa Corps (not to be confused with the German unit of World War Two) have a certain level of autonomy and can move the cocaine to the Mediterranean Sea.  From there it enters the hands of Europe’s various iterations of the Mafia.  This drug route and the players involved has been laid out by the Argentine independent journalist Ignacio Montes de Oca under his X handle, @nachomdeo.

With this new information in mind, we can then apply events that we know have happened.  At the starting point of Highway 10, you have the United States destroying the go-fast boats before they can liaison with the ships bound for the Gulf of Guinea.  In the middle of the drug route you have the countries on the Gulf of Guinea, two of which have had coups in the last two months.  The first took place on November 26 in Guinea-Bissau, a on Highway 10.  The second appears to be a that took place on December 7 in Benin, another country to be on the Highway 10 route.

So at the starting point of the route, you have the U.S. striking go-fast boats.  In the middle, you have coups.  What’s happening at the finish point?  Well, in Italy, the Carabinieri are carrying out against the unpronounceable ’Ndrangheta.  The ’Ndrangheta happens to be the independent journalist Montes de Oca cites as central to this route.  For his part, French president Emmanuel Macron has been leading the call to against organized crime in Europe.  France even to the Caribbean.

I have no idea if the strikes on boats, the coups along the Gulf of Guinea, and the crackdown on organized crime in Europe are all coordinated or even connected, but I do know that within a small time frame, a series of events have taken place that make it difficult to be involved in the drug trade at the beginning, middle, and end of Highway 10.

So how do you condense all of this into a concept we can discuss without getting lost in tropes about war for oil or American imperialism?  Well, the first thing to do is give it a name to make it more manageable.  The Highway Ten War feels succinct to me.

Then we can start assessing the why and how of it all.  The first reason for the president to prioritize this route at this moment is that the first country in the route is an adversarial geopolitical entity that has given haven to our enemies.  Such a presence at such a close range is unacceptable, and with the governing circle of that country accused of comprising a cartel involved in the drug trade, it becomes impossible to separate that threat from Highway 10.

The next geopolitical reality is President Trump’s pledge to take on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.  Although Nigeria isn’t one of the central locations along the drug route, the Islamist groups attacking Christians in Nigeria’s north benefit from the finances and arms resulting from the routes across the Sahel.

There’s also the United States’ alliance with France to consider.  Not only have the French expressed concern at organized crime related to the Highway 10 drug route, but they have also seen their interests threatened by Russian expansion into countries along the route.  This brings us to Russia and the possibility that targeting this route could help pressure Russia during negotiations with Ukraine.

Because events in Venezuela, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, and European organized crime have been treated as separate geopolitical events, rather than one issue connected by the Highway 10 route, certain questions have gone unasked in the public sphere.  What level of coordination has gone on behind the scenes between the countries?  We know that Russia has interests in Venezuela and the Sahel, but what is the extent of those interests, and how are they connected by the disruption of this route?

Unifying these conflicts under the label of the Highway Ten War can help the public identify the questions that have to be asked in order to create a more complete understanding of the geopolitical map as we discuss American actions in this realm.

J.B. Pritzker and the Act of Choosing Sides

Pritzger's signature on Illinois state HB 1312 puts him in open rebellion against the federal government.

American  Thinker 

On Tuesday, Dec. 9, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker confirmed the status of Illinois as a state in open rebellion against the United States of America, by signing a bill passed by the state legislature during the recent veto session (HB 1312), forbidding federal authorities from enforcing federal law – including but not limited to immigration law – at a host of locations in Illinois, including hospitals, courthouses, universities and daycares, even to the extent of forbidding such entities from sharing information such as immigration status with federal law enforcement. 

Gov. Pritzker would, of course, disagree with the above characterization; he and his corrupt party have long contended that it’s the federal government that’s in violation of the law, by daring such basic tasks as law enforcement and protecting the borders, but they aren’t fooling anyone anymore. 

Illinois has reached the logical conclusion of a state that has long called itself a “sanctuary state,” illegally welcoming unvetted and unapproved aliens to its main sanctuary county, Cook, and its main sanctuary city, Chicago.   Having drawn a broad array of gang members and other criminals, welfare graspers and political activists to the city (far outweighing any net potential positive contribution of the few among them who are undoubtedly decent folks), Illinois is now the host of so many vermin that the federal government had to come in and help. 

Illinois has spent years refusing to arrest criminals committing “flash mob” style retail crimes; refusing to hold criminals after capture by making bail release completely free, and spending billions of hard-working citizens’ tax dollars on health care, housing, food, education, and more for illegal aliens.   

The federal government shouldn’t have to come to Chicago, in the very heart of the heartland, to enforce the border. Gov. Pritzker and his cronies necessitated this, by drawing these unworthy people to Chicago in the first place. 

In such enforcement actions as Operation Midway Blitz, the Department of Homeland Security has caught hundreds of criminals, from gang recruiters to lone wolves, from robbers and child abusers to murderers – criminals whom the powers-that-be in Illinois would prefer remain on the streets, free to terrorize their constituents at will. 

There are many theories; the Democrat politicians of a century ago would have put the safety of their constituents ahead of the freedom of criminals, but no longer. Perhaps some of today’s Democrat politicians value the political contributions of the criminal element. Perhaps they value the votes of that bloc on Election Day. Perhaps they like a situation that keeps their constituents poor and dependent on government.  Perhaps the interests of the United States of America are simply not on their list of priorities. 

Reviewing the list of places from which Pritzker’s illegal power grab would banish federal law enforcement, one cannot help but notice a common thread:  

Health care, daycare, colleges, and universities are largely funded, directly or indirectly, by federal tax dollars.  These aren’t “Illinois-only” locations that some 19th century states-rights advocate could claim as being independent of that far-off federal government; these are locations that the vast majority of users attend or consume with federal checks, federal tax credits (or refundable tax credits), or the array of grants that a century of leftist advocacy has created. Even the ones that look and feel the most private are funded largely by the kind of state money that the state received directly from federal largesse.  

In short, if the feds have a right to be anywhere, they certainly have a right to be here. 

To ban federal law enforcement from courthouses, hospitals, and colleges – with the specific intent of ensuring that everyone within those buildings remain at risk from known criminals – is the ultimate in malice.  Whoever Pritzker and his legislative goons may be serving, it’s not the law-abiding citizens of Illinois. 

At his signing ceremony, Gov. Pritzker rattled off an amazing statement, so tone-deaf in its implications: 

“Our people have been forced to live in fear. Everyday activities, like dropping off the kids at school, going to the park with your family, going to the doctor, showing up at your job, has meant risking your safety and your livelihood.  Fear and intimidation have been visited upon us by fellow Americans. It’s unconstitutional.” 

Speaking to his audience of Marxists and insurrectionists, he certainly felt logically consistent in this statement. 

But we outsiders, watching his speech from a distance, think of a very different situation: 

We think of the reality of a massive, intentional crime zone, the urban ghetto of Chicagoland, into which Democrat politicians have nourished an infestation of muggers and drug dealers, rapists and wife-beaters, child-abusers and murderers, to terrorize the community for generations. 

Try reading this governor’s speech from the perspective of the law-abiding citizen instead, and think of how many times his millions of constituents have been victims of the very criminals that Pritzker not only releases on Illinois’s behalf, but today tries to protect further, by tying the hands of the federal government so that the feds cannot help, either. 

It is the workers and children at these daycare centers, the doctors, nurses and patients at those hospitals, the professors and students at our colleges, the clerks, lawyers, witnesses and victims at the courthouses, who spend their days in fear for their lives.  

The people whom Gov. Pritzker pompously pretends to be protecting are in fact the very people he has been endangering, not only today but every single day since he took office. 

This HB 1312 is just one more type of lawfare, an illegal effort to hamstring the federal government in the same way that the Democrats’ many frivolous prosecutions of President Trump have attempted to retard his work over the past decade.  It will be declared unconstitutional, because it so plainly is just that, and nothing but. 

But as shameful an act as it is, as destructive and malevolent as a law can be, it serves us in one useful way:  HB 1312 shows us, more clearly than any other, just who today’s Democrat politicians are, who they serve, and what they think of the interests of their law-abiding constituents. 

If you work hard, obey the law, pay your taxes, and raise your family, Gov. Pritzker and his cronies want your lives jeopardized by the criminal element, because that’s the demographic they value, not yours. 

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

A Contrast in American vs British National Security Priorities

Conservative Treehouse 

Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019) was a rather eclectic fellow in the world of American politics for several generations. Some of his perspectives were sound and nationalistic, and some of his perspectives slipped into the realm of geopolitical conspiracy theory finding British Imperialism under every rock and blaming Queen Elizabeth II for assassination attempts against him.

Susan Kokinda and Barbara Boyd of Promethean Action continue the LaRouche tradition while smoothing out some of the more outlandish elements the originating political movement was known for. Barbara Boyd is the spokesperson and treasurer of the LaRouche Youth Movement. Boyd’s partner, Susan Kokinda, maintains a belief that eliminating British Imperialism is the objective of President Trump’s America-First policy agenda.  This is where I disagree.

While the outcome of President Trump’s policy does factually lead to the result LaRouche advocated, I strongly doubt “eliminating British imperialism” is the prism through which Donald Trump’s thought process flows.  That said, in the overall picture of American politics, the Kokinda and Boyd analysis of Trump’s opposition is generally accurate.

In their most recent update, Susan Kokinda discusses how President Trump’s recent national security strategy marks a significant departure from over a century of British-influenced American foreign policy.  Their review delves into the geopolitical friction between the U.S. and the UK, particularly regarding their strategies toward Russia and Ukraine.

Mrs. Kokinda underscores the broader clash of worldviews between America-First sovereignty and British-led internationalism, highlighting the latest developments including reactions from Russia and European elites. The episode also examines the opposition Trump faces from both within the U.S. political establishment and British geopolitical strategists and emphasizes the importance of maintaining political support to ensure the success of Trump’s transformative policies.  WATCH:

The divergence between the worldview of the European Union and President Trump is accurately presented as above.  The Ukraine/Russia war serves as a case study in how the two worldviews conflict.  The core of U.K policy and national security strategy continues to view Russia as the biggest threat; the national security outlook by President Trump does not.

On the domestic side of the issue, there are several American elements in direct opposition to the geopolitical trade structure of President Trump.

The Koch PAC seems to have abandoned their use of former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem since she became President Trump’s Secretary of DHS (Dept of Homeland Security).  Instead, the Koch network is funding Thomas Massie (House) and Rand Paul (Senate) to represent their interests.  MTG is likely to be a beneficiary, and other more traditional GOPe types will also likely benefit from Koch/CoC financing.

Just as the Biden/Obama agenda included the targeting of President Trump for removal (Transition Integrity Project – originating group) in early January 2017, so too did another UniParty stop Trump operation begin in January 2025.  We saw the latest iteration surface in the odd (at the time), narrative surrounding Qatar -vs- Israel.

The ideologically similar GOPe elements within the Sea Island network, tech and traditional Republican party, are all aligned due to opposition to Trump policy. They continue their efforts to divide elements from the larger MAGA network.

The use of the Qatar vs Israel wedge is clear within the billionaire tech/political group, and essentially distillates to 2028 positioning, JD Vance -vs- Ron DeSantis.

As noted by Mrs Kokinda, ultimately the issue boils down to “trillions at stake.”

It’s Morally Righteous, Not Bigotry To Notice All Cultures Are Not Equally Good

Multiculturalism has created a rigid standard of moral relativism that insists every culture is equal, no matter how it may violate the most basic principles of liberty or life.

The Federalist

As expected, Democrats are outraged that President Donald Trump correctly pointed out that some countries are “shitholes.”

“Disgusting bigotry,” The Democrats posted on X.

Sen. Dick Durbin posted on X: “I’ll never forget hearing Donald Trump’s racist ‘shithole countries’ comment in a 2018 Oval Office meeting about immigration. Tom Cotton and David Perdue claimed Trump didn’t say it and accused me of lying. The truth comes out.”

Foreigner Mehdi Hasan said Trump’s comments are a “reminder that second term Trump is so much worse than first term Trump.”

CNN’s Aaron Blake claimed “Trump is upping the xenophobia.”

But the hysterics over Trump’s accurate statement isn’t happening because the left is offended by the language, but because his comments expose that the left has lost the ability to make the most basic moral distinctions between cultures.

The left would have been just as outraged if Trump conveyed the same message without cussing because they are trying to defend this warped ideological dogma that all cultures must be treated as morally identical, even when some of those cultures engage in outright barbarism.

And if people acknowledge those differences do exist, it makes it much harder to justify the mass importation of failed societies through unlimited third world migration (which Democrats love).

But that’s the reality of multiculturalism, which has created a strain of moral relativism that insists every culture is equal, no matter how it may violate the most basic principles of liberty or life. Under this dangerous worldview, it becomes unacceptable to suggest that a culture that mutilates young girls is not morally equivalent to a culture that protects women.

Under this toxic worldview, cannibalism and non-cannibalism are morally equivalent cultural experiences. A society that stones women is just as good as a society that protects women’s rights. The only “bad” thing would be to notice the differences.

But a functioning nation, like the U.S., cannot afford to pretend that all cultural norms are equal, for if they were equal, then they’d create the same outcomes. But they aren’t and they don’t. Which is why our immigration policy must take into account these distinctions.

And the left’s meltdown actually has a simple explanation: deep down, the left knows Trump is right. If some cultures are producing unlivable conditions, then it becomes impossible to maintain the position that America has no right to choose which values it wants to welcome into the country. But if all cultures are equal, then anyone, from anywhere should be able to come here.

The irony in it all is that Democrats subconsciously recognize the validity of Trump’s comments. Why else would they badger Americans that we must accept hundreds of thousands of refugees via Temporary Protected Status or other asylum avenues, otherwise these foreigners will die or face awful conditions in their home countries? Because they are “shitholes.”

And what makes them shitholes?

Their cultures.

Take Haiti, for example. The reason Haiti has such high crime, poverty, and instability is no mystery. The nation’s culture is simply not able to support the type of civic culture that underpins the types of institutions and laws that are required to sustain a functioning society. 

Or take Somalia, where young girls are victims of female genital mutilation, a practice rooted in their particular culture. Anyone who tells you that culture is just as equal as ours is lying through their teeth.

Take Niger, the Central African Republic, Chad, or Mali — countries with some of the highest rates of child marriage. In parts of South Africa, the cultural practice of ukuthwala involves abducting young girls for marriage. In parts of Pakistan, the custom of vani forces young girls into marriage to settle debts.

No morally righteous person can defend genital mutilation, abduction, or child marriages. And conversely, it doesn’t make you a bigot to point that out either. In fact, it’s a marker of moral clarity.

Democrats pretend that all cultures are equal — and that no nation is a “shithole” — not because the believe it, but because admitting the truth would force them to confront the question that would collapse their entire immigration position: Why should the U.S. import cultures whose norms produce the very dysfunction, danger and depravity that these foreigners are fleeing?

Democrats aren’t mad at Trump because he’s wrong, they’re mad because he’s right.

‘Birthright Citizenship’ Is A Feudal Relic That Has No Place In America

We used to base citizenship on consent, not birth. In an era of mass immigration, it’s time to get back to that older understanding.

The Federalist

With the Supreme Court’s announcement last week that it will hear a case challenging President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, the internet has been awash in debate over the meaning of Section One of the 14th Amendment.

That’s the part that says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” At issue is what the phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” really means. Does it mean anyone physically present inside U.S. territory, even foreign nationals who illegally crossed the border? Are the children of those people American citizens simply because they were born on U.S. soil?

That’s the view of those who support birthright citizenship today. According to them, citizenship is simply the product of one’s birth. They think the 14th Amendment is quite clear on this point, and that the men who drafted it in 1866 and ratified it two years later had nothing more in mind than to tie citizenship to the accident of birth.

There are however two major problems with this view, one jurisprudential and one practical. Because the first problem leads to the second, let’s take them in order.

Proponents of birthright citizenship will point — as they’ve been doing incessantly over the past week — to an 1898 Supreme Court case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, as proof positive that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship based on birth. Proponents of birthright citizenship, most of them on the left, want to stick to the letter of the Constitution as a way to thwart Trump’s executive order.

Without going into all the details of Wong Kim Ark — my colleague Brianna Lyman does that here, arguing persuasively that the Supreme Court should overturn the decision — it isn’t the silver bullet the left thinks it is. Specifically, Wong Kim Ark introduced a theory of citizenship to American jurisprudence that was alien to both the 14th Amendment and the Founding. Wong Kim Ark’s parents were subjects of the Emperor of China, but at the time of his birth in San Francisco in 1873 they were “domiciled residents.” The Supreme Court, ignoring how citizenship had been understood in America up until that time, declared that because Ark was born in the United States, the 14th Amendment meant he was a U.S. citizen.

Writing for the 6-2 majority, Justice Horace Gray argued that the 14th Amendment must be understood in light of English common law. By doing this, the Supreme Court enshrined the idea of citizenship based on feudal obligation found in English common law. Feudal obligation meant that, “one is bound from birth to the place where he is born,” as Hillsdale College’s Kevin Portteus has written. “He owes perpetual allegiance to the ruler of that place in gratitude for the protection he has been given. He is a subject, in the sense that he is involuntarily and perpetually subjected to a lord, and has no choice in the matter.”

According to feudal obligation, expatriation is impossible without the consent of the lord to which one owed fealty by birth. This is of course totally incompatible with the American Founding, to say nothing of the American Revolution, both of which rely on a theory of citizenship based on consent, not birth.

The Founders themselves were of course born in lands controlled by the British crown, but by breaking with the crown and declaring (and then winning) independence, they put forward a radically different understanding of citizenship and political community — one based on the mutual consent of free men. In framing the 14th Amendment, writes Portteus,

the amendment’s authors and sponsors believed that they were expunging a relic of European feudalism. The nature of political obligation under American chattel slavery very closely resembles European feudal obligation. Slaves were bound from birth to a master, and could only be released from their obligation with the master’s assent. They sought to transform subjects, slaves in this case, into citizens. The author of the citizenship clause and its supporters consciously and vocally rejected the doctrine of feudal obligation.

Indeed, Congress passed a companion to the 14th Amendment, the Expatriation Act of 1868, which declared expatriation to be “a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This was an explicit rejection of the medieval English doctrine of feudal obligation. As Rep. George Woodward of Pennsylvania said on the floor of the House of Representatives, “It is high time that feudalism were driven from our shores and eliminated from our law, and now is the time to declare it.”

With Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court reintroduced to American law the concept of feudal obligation that the framers of the 14th Amendment only thirty years earlier had thought they were stamping out! And as they so often do, Democrats today are apt to defend the political arrangements of the antebellum south; they would impose a conception of citizenship and political obligation that, in the American context, applied to slaves, not free men.

So much for the jurisprudential problem with birthright citizenship. Based on a fair and accurate reading of the relevant history and legal philosophy, the Supreme Court should overturn Wong Kim Ark and reject the feudal idea of citizenship based solely on birth — just as the framers of the 14th Amendment had sought to do.

But there’s another, more immediate reason to reject birthright citizenship. As a practical matter, under conditions of mass immigration birthright citizenship is simply national suicide. Consider that during the four years of the Biden administration, some 10 million people (probably more) entered the country illegally. Most of them were released or paroled by federal authorities pending the outcome of immigration and asylum cases that will take years to be adjudicated because of the backlog in our immigration courts.

The fact is, mass uncontrolled immigration has fundamentally changed the debate over birthright citizenship. Do proponents of birthright citizenship really believe that the children born in America to these 10 million illegal immigrants are and should be U.S. citizens simply because they were born on American soil? Maybe they do, but it’s an insane position to hold. It would mean millions of new citizens whose only connection to this country is that their parents snuck over the border in violation of our laws. Accepting this, and codifying it, amounts to a total rejection of national sovereignty and a repudiation of the American idea of citizenship by mutual consent — consent of the members of the political community and consent of those who wish to join it.

Whatever the Supreme Court said in Wong Kim Ark, and whatever our understanding of the 14th Amendment has been in the 127 years since that decision, the situation created by mass immigration has changed the terms of the debate. Biden’s four years of industrial-scale illegal immigration and retroactive “documentation” conferring dubious legal status on millions of illegal aliens represents a total break with the past. 

Perhaps in the 1890s and early 1900s we could presume to confer citizenship on the children of foreign nationals born on U.S. soil. Maybe we had enough social and cultural cohesion to afford the luxury of pretending that the framers of the 14th Amendment really meant to return to the medieval idea of citizenship based on feudal obligation.

But we cannot afford that luxury today. We need a complete overhaul of our posture toward immigration and citizenship — namely, a return to how we thought of these things for the first 150 years of our republic, when citizenship was based on the consent of free men, not the obligations of fealty imposed by the accident of birth.

A DOJ That Still Chases ‘Russian Hackers’ Will Never Reckon With Russiagate

The DOJ is prosecuting the fruits of a hoax on one hand and claiming to expose the architects of that hoax on the other.

The Federalist

With the indictment against former FBI Director James Comey dismissed on procedural grounds, we are back at square one on accountability for the Russia collusion hoax. There are some reports that Jason Reding, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, is examining the wider conspiracy involving Comey and several other key Russiagate figures who worked to conceal that the entire operation originated with the Clinton campaign. However, we have no clear sense of where that inquiry stands or whether it is moving at all.

What we do know is that any honest reckoning with Russiagate runs straight into a structural contradiction that would have haunted any prosecution of Comey and will continue to undermine any future attempt to hold the architects of the hoax to account.

No one has confronted the central problem that it is not logically or legally coherent to allege a domestic conspiracy to invent Russian collusion. At the same time, the Department of Justice keeps prosecuting Russian nationals for allegedly interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump.

Any defendant accused of promoting a false Russia narrative can point to the obvious contradiction that the same DOJ now accusing them still maintains United States v. Netyksho, the Mueller era indictment of twelve Russian officers that treats the supposed Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as established fact and uses it as the foundation for its entire case.

The Timing and Purpose of the Netyksho Indictment

Before any discussion of the technical evidence, we need to confront the most revealing aspect of the case, which is its timing. The indictment was unveiled on the eve of the 2018 Trump–Putin summit in Helsinki and its effect was immediate. It poisoned the meeting before it even began by publicly, and with far less evidence than advertised, pinning the alleged DNC hack on the Russian state. It was a political indictment from start to finish, crafted to box in President Trump and shut down any possibility of rapprochement with Moscow. Once that political purpose is understood, the case reveals both its inherent fragility and its true function as a fabricated narrative dressed up as law enforcement.

Even so, for nearly a decade, the official story of the DNC hack has been treated as settled fact: Russia did it, the intelligence community and Robert Mueller confirmed it, and that was supposed to be the end of the matter. Yet the more one examines the timeline, the forensic record, and the investigative process, the weaker the foundations of this narrative appear.

The False Predicate for the FBI Investigation

The most striking problem sits in plain sight. The metadata of the DNC emails released by WikiLeaks shows that the emails were exfiltrated in two short sessions on May 23 and May 25, 2016. However, media reports at the time, as well as Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, claimed they were stolen in April. That date was not a coincidence as it structured the entire chain of subsequent claims.

CrowdStrike, the private cybersecurity contractor that conducted the DNC’s internal forensic review — and the only entity ever granted access to the servers, not the FBI — told Congress that data had been staged for exfiltration on April 22. For years, government officials and major media outlets repeated the same incorrect story. Only later did the Mueller report shift the timeline to May 25 through June 1, a window that still failed to align with the May 23 and May 25 metadata. No official account has ever incorporated the actual timestamps contained in the email archive itself.

Once the incorrect timing of the exfiltration is acknowledged, the wider architecture begins to collapse. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation rested on the theory that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos possessed foreknowledge of the DNC theft when he met with the Australian Ambassador in London, Alexander Downer, in early May 2016. That assertion only makes sense if the emails were obtained in April. If the exfiltration occurred on May 23 and May 25, then Papadopoulos could not have had such knowledge.

For its part, CrowdStrike did not stop the theft, did not observe it, and later conceded in a 2020 “update” that “all of the exfiltration of DNC emails happened after CrowdStrike was already engaged by the DNC.” It offered no explanation for how this could have happened. In fact, when CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry testified under oath, he acknowledged that they had no evidence the emails were ever exfiltrated at all, which stands in stark contrast to the confident claims the company had made in non-sworn settings, like the Washington Post.

Some have suggested local transfers or insider access rather than an external hack. The slain DNC staffer Seth Rich, whose murder remains unsolved, is often raised in this context, though the evidence there is also inconclusive. But the ambiguity is the point. The political narrative insisted on absolute clarity when the underlying forensic record never supported anything close to it.

The ICA Fraud and the Legal Trap It Created

Despite the contradictions in the underlying evidence, the intelligence community moved forward with the Jan. 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), ordered by President Obama in the post-election scramble to cast Hillary Clinton’s loss as the result of Vladimir Putin’s interference. It presented the DNC hack as conclusively attributable to Russia, the report treated the “Russia hacked the DNC” narrative as settled fact, relying on institutional authority rather than any verifiable forensic data. In any other setting, such a document would never have passed muster.

There is also a deeper problem that shows how thoroughly the ICA still anchors official policy and why any talk of accountability collapses on contact with reality. In July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed that the ICA was not a mistaken assessment but a calculated inversion of the truth engineered by James Comey, James Clapper, and CIA chief John Brennan to pin Trump’s victory on Vladimir Putin. Her disclosures showed that the ICA buried the fact that the FBI and NSA concluded in 2016 that there was not enough technical evidence to link the DNC emails to Russian state-sponsored actors. Those suppressed findings matched what independent technical researchers had already uncovered, which means the heart of the ICA was known to be false from the beginning.

This revelation feeds directly into the next problem because the inversion of the truth inside the ICA is exactly what any conspiracy charge would target. Yet the same document is still treated as authoritative through Executive Order 13848. The order declares a national emergency over foreign election interference and uses the ICA as its factual foundation. The Trump administration renewed it in August, a month after the ICA had been exposed as a political fabrication.

It is entirely possible the president’s team did not grasp what they were putting in front of him, but that will not matter in court. Any defendant accused of participating in the Russia collusion hoax will point to this contradiction and ask how the government can call the ICA a hoax while also relying on it to justify an ongoing national emergency. The contradiction is so complete that it gives any defendant a straightforward path to walk free.

A Hoax Still Embedded in Federal Policy

The official story rests on an incorrect timeline, servers never examined by the FBI, a contractor that failed to detect or prevent a major exfiltration and could not keep its public claims consistent with sworn testimony, and an intelligence assessment built on assertions rather than evidence. At every step, the claims were driven by political need, not verified technical fact. These anomalies do not definitively point to another actor, but they are more than enough to undermine the certainty with which Russia was accused.

Once the basic problems with the official narrative are acknowledged, the claim that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC collapses under its own weight. This is where the Netyksho indictment returns to the center of the story. It was a political stunt from the moment it appeared on the eve of Helsinki, and it remains an active, unretracted federal indictment, treated as if it were not a central piece of the hoax itself. The same problem now appears in Executive Order 13848, which relies on the ICA as its factual foundation even though the ICA has been exposed as a political fabrication. Both the indictment and the order keep the hoax alive inside the machinery of government.

If there is to be any seriousness about accountability, the Netyksho indictment must be dismissed, as must the Executive Order. Both should have been corrected years ago. Keeping them in place signals that the permanent bureaucracy within the DOJ and elsewhere is still guarding the narrative.

No credible reckoning is possible while the department prosecutes the fruits of a hoax on one hand and claims to expose the architects of that hoax on the other. The contradiction is irreconcilable, suggesting either that the DOJ does not understand its own record or that it has no real interest in confronting it.