Tim Walz Hits Disgusting New Low As He Incites Violence Against ICE, Smears Agents As 'Occupiers’

RedState 

A new video posted Wednesday by Minnesota's scandal-ridden Democrat governor, Tim Walz, is blowing up on social media. In it, Walz is equal parts smug, condescending, and deceitful as he makes the absurd, repulsive claim that federal immigration officials are targeting "people of color" and "dragging pregnant women down the street."

Offering no proof at all, Walz goes on to claim that Minnesotans have been marked for retribution for peacefully protesting against ICE agents as they carry out their duties. And he has a message for President Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem: "End this occupation. You've done enough."

Walz proceeds to word vomit a disorganized list of grievances and ways to fight back against law and order. He's got a lot of big boy feelings he needs to get out, such as:

• Donald Trump wants chaos, confusion, and violence.
• You are not powerless, helpless or alone, said Walz to his progressive citizens. In a not-so-subtle reference to radical agitator groups like ICE-Watch, the governor put out this call to action: "All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities, not just to resist, but to help people in danger." Opportunities to learn such things as using your two-ton vehicle as a lethal weapon against law enforcement? Wonderful advice from a so-called leader.
• "Witness! Help us establish a record of exactly what's happening in our communities. You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities. Carry it with you at all times."
• "Help us create a database of these atrocities against Minnesotans ... to bank evidence for future prosecutions."

In other words, Tim Walz wants people killed. He wants his people to follow in the footsteps of Renee Good and put themselves and others in harm's way. There's really no other way to read this. He almost seems to be salivating for more deadly encounters between Minnesotans and federal forces. It's demented, bizarre, and disgraceful.

And it's truly a new low, even for him. 

Here he is in all his glory. Be sure to watch to the end to see his dramatic, theater kid exit.

And here's a partial transcript:

ICE agents are going door-to-door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live. They're pulling over people indiscriminately, including U.S. citizens, and demanding to see their papers. And at grocery stores, bus stops, even at our schools.

They're breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street – just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans. Kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.

Let's be very, very clear. This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government. 

Last week, that campaign claimed the life of Renee Nicole Good. We've all watched the video. We've all seen what happened. And, yet, instead of conducting an impartial investigation so we can hold accountable the officer responsible for Renee's death, the Trump administration is devoting the full power of the federal government to finding an excuse to attack the victim and her family.

At one point, Walz excoriates President Trump for promising the governor and his fraud-ridden state this week that "the day reckoning and retribution" is coming, something Walz misleadingly attributes to Minnesota voting against Trump three times. Walz then applauds Minnesotans for continuing to "stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace."

To that, I offer three words: "Drive, baby, drive!" There is nothing courageous, empathic, or graceful about this:

This is pure kabuki theater designed with one purpose: deflect attention away from the fact that Tim Walz oversaw a $9 billion Somali fraud scandal so big that he had to end his reelection bid. This isn’t leadership, it’s incitement. Tim Walz’s theatrical meltdown is nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract from his catastrophic failures – it's a shame people might actually follow his terrible advice and die because of it. 

The Left’s War on Truth and How You Can Fight Back

Townhall 

One of the toughest things for our side is getting it through our skulls that our opponents are not like us. We assume everybody is like us. We assume everybody is interested in objective truth. We assume facts and evidence can sway everybody. We assume that everybody wants the same thing that we do – a free, prosperous, and secure society. Except none of that's true. Our opponents don't want any of that. Our opponents are against all that. Facts, law, evidence – none of it matters, except to the extent that, at this particular moment, these things can support whatever the objective du jour is.

This leads to the phenomenon that we saw after the shooting of the communist poet woman in Minneapolis. The whole thing is on video. It's documented from every angle. There's no argument about what actually happened because it's all there. We see what happened. Now, one can argue about the meaning of what happened – although they also deny the law which governs the facts – but no one can honestly deny the facts themselves. Except they do, and it's hard to deal with.

It's meant to be.

We watch our opponents take facts that we can see, like that the vehicle physically struck the cop, and deny them. "No, he was never struck by her car," insist Democrat politicians, regime media hacks, and communist internet randos. Except he was.

We scratch our heads, point at the video, and say, "Look right here. He's getting knocked out of the way!" But they still deny it. To the extent that some don't deny it, they minimize it. "Oh, he was just winged," as if that's significantly different. Of course, 30 seconds before, their party line was that the agent wasn't even touched. 

It would be bizarre, and it would be baffling, except it's perfectly rational. Yes, their denial of the truth – outright lying – is entirely in keeping with their support for their narrative. If the facts don't support the narrative, it's not the narrative that needs to change. It's the facts.

But this drives us crazy because this isn't how we're supposed to do things. We're supposed to be a democracy – yeah, I know it's a constitutional republic, but go with me for a minute. When you have a democracy, you have the people deciding on how we're going to rule over ourselves. That means everybody gets input. What is that input? That input is an argument. "I think we should adopt the following policy because X." You are arguing for X. When you make an argument, you're using facts and evidence to convince people, to persuade them, to make them come around to see it your way. Counterarguments often claim that the facts are either wrong or misinterpreted.

Let me pause for a second – I'm using the word "facts" like a lawyer uses the word "facts." A "fact" in this usage is not necessarily true. That's why you have the phenomenon of "true facts." In a lawsuit, for instance, both sides present facts, and the jury must determine which facts are true. OK, back to my point.

So, all this leads to the inescapable conclusion that, if you have a democracy, you need citizens who can determine the facts so they can make decisions about their government. This implies that people can change their minds when presented with facts that compel them to reconsider their preconceived notions.

But this is an anathema to the Left, and not just because the facts are against them. The Left doesn't start with the facts and come to its final conclusion. The Left starts with its final conclusion and works backward to the facts. But the facts don't fit the Left conclusion, so what to do? Well, if the facts don't fit the conclusion, you change the facts.

"The guy got hit by the car."

"No, he didn't get hit by the car."

"But it's right there on video!"

"You are just a racist."

The Left is free of truth because the truth will free you from leftism. It's liberating for them. Being bound to the facts and thereby the conclusions they imply creates obstacles to attaining their final objective. Since their final objective is, by definition, good – remember that leftism is less an ideology than a pagan religion for people who have an empty space that should be filled with faith, family, and the Flag – ignoring objective truth is not merely acceptable, but is an affirmatively moral act.

In other words, they see themselves as obligated to lie about what we all know is true. And there are rewards for doing it. There are many stories of people under communism forced to lie when everybody knows what they're saying publicly is a lie, and, of course, the speaker knows it's a lie. It becomes an act of solidarity, a sacrifice to show dedication to their communist idols. What they are sacrificing is their own personal dignity. We see that a lot, not just in people denying what the video in Minnesota shows, but in other things. They deny that Hamas is a bunch of psychotic freaks who rape and murder, though they know Hamas is a bunch of psychotic freaks who rape and murder. They assert that a man, pretending to be a woman, is a woman, even though they know that a man pretending to be a woman is not a woman. They humiliate and degrade themselves by saying something they know is untrue, and that everybody else knows is false, and that everyone knows they know is false, in order to show their dedication to the cause.

It's kind of sick and creepy. It also makes democracy impossible. You can't have arguments if you have people who cannot or will not change their minds in the face of facts. Democracy where people can't be convinced to change their minds isn't a democracy. What it's going to be is a dictatorship because people who do see the truth are going to have to be compelled to accept an outcome based on lies because they're not going to be talked into it. They've got to be forced into it.

Again, this is like every communist dictatorship ever.

So, what do we do? How do we respond to people who are unable or unwilling to change their minds in the face of facts? What's the tactic for dealing with people who lie?

First, you've got to understand what they are and what they're about. Part of the reason they're successful is that we default into believing that people are like us. We sometimes assume, when somebody is gaslighting us outrageously, that they might actually have a point because no one would ever brazenly lie. We assume this because we wouldn't brazenly lie. But we saw this with the ubiquitous claim of "racism" that always gets leveled against us. Everything is racist, yet we know that's not true, and after a while, we just started to ignore it. No one cares if they call us "racist." Jasmine Crockett can launch into one of her minstrel-show tirades, and we shrug. Ilhan Omar can start whining about how we are too mean to these ungrateful Somalis we rescued, and who paid us back with fraud, but the only thing she will get from us is an ironic "Happy anniversary" on the day she married her brother.

We need to do that with everything they say. We must accept reality, the reality that reality doesn't matter to our opponents. We can't argue our way to victory with them. But normal people? Now, they are subject to argument. Normal people do look at facts and do change their minds. The tsunami of Democrat lies about obvious facts is not just an exercise in solidarity, but an attempt to browbeat normal people to the point where they doubt their own eyes. We can't let that happen. That's why we can't abandon the truth. That's why we must make arguments not to the Left but to the Center.

Normal people looking at what happened in Minneapolis can be convinced. They can look at the video, and they'll start asking the questions Democrats don't want them asking, like "What the hell is a mother doing out there blocking cops?" and "Why the hell didn't she just get out of the car?"

We've got to win over the normal people so that we have the political power to enforce our own will. We're past trying to persuade the Left because you can't convince the Left. There's no mechanism to do that, as we've seen. We've just got to do what we've got to do, and the key to that is ignoring all their lies, distortions, and slanders.

We're not here to convince the Left of anything. We're here to defeat it.

Podcast thread for Jan 14

 

More bad weather coming.

The Dominos Begin to Fall

American  Thinker 

The Domino Theory was a strategic concept popular in the 1950s and 1960s, which asserted that once one country succumbed to Communism, its neighbors would soon follow.

Because it was widely cited to justify the unpopular U.S. wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, it fell out of favor by the 1970s. That didn't mean it wasn't true.

Today, I believe we will soon witness an updated version of the Domino Theory. President Trump is calling it the "Donroe Doctrine," but I think it goes way beyond the Western Hemisphere.

The takedown of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and the apparent subservience of his successor, will have far-reaching consequences in Russia, Iran, and Communist China, but also in Europe.

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted back-to-back operations to intercept and board two "ghost fleet" oil tankers, one in the North Atlantic and the other in international waters near the Caribbean.

Both vessels "were either last docked in Venezuela or en route to it," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a tweet.

The Bella 1, a supertanker headed for Venezuela from Iran to collect Venezuelan oil, was first intercepted by the Coast Guard off the Venezuelan coast on December 17, but went dark and escaped into the North Atlantic.

While fleeing U.S. pursuers, the crew painted over the vessel's name with that of a ship registered to the Russian Federation, the Marinera, but it was intercepted and boarded on January 7 in heavy seas off the coast of Ireland. It was a scene right out of the Nicholas Cage movie, Lord of War.

The U.S. ignored Putin's claim of sovereignty over the vessel and has vowed to pursue the 300-vessel ghost fleet used by Russia, Iran, China, and Venezuela to evade U.S. sanctions wherever it sails.

Not only is this an America First national security policy, but it also makes for great television, with videos of Coast Guardsmen rappelling down from hovering MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters onto the decks of supertankers in roiling seas.

The Chinese had been big allies of Maduro for years, but the regime's slovenly approach toward business convinced Chinese state-run businesses to seek opportunities elsewhere in the western hemisphere, primarily Brazil.

China's malign influence in our hemisphere could be the next domino to fall. But the President has said, graciously, that we won't stop them from purchasing Venezuelan oil. In the future, however, the Chinese won't be getting the $20-per-barrel discount Maduro had been giving them. They will pay full freight, and the proceeds will be shared by Venezuela and the U.S. Treasury.

The biggest losers regarding Venezuela, beyond the narco-traffickers, are Iran and its ally, Hezb'allah. And that's where the dominoes are going to fall hard and heavy.

For decades, the Iranians have been building missile factories in Venezuela, under the guise of tractor production. In 2022, they signed a 20-year cooperation agreement with Maduro that included additional arms sales, defense plants, and oil field technology.
The deal gave Iran a logistics hub in the Western hemisphere to evade U.S. sanctions and its ally Hezb'allah a base from which to infiltrate terrorists across our southern border. By 2023, you could see the Iranian presence in Venezuelan military parades.

The Venezuelan navy also began to operate Iranian go-fast missile boats (top speed: 54 knots), armed with supersonic sea-skimming cruise missiles. All that will soon be gone.

I would not like to be an Iranian leader today. They see that when President Trump says he will do something, he does. And he has told them that if they start to massacre protesters, the U.S. is "locked and loaded" and ready to take them out.

That massacre has already begun.

On Thursday, the regime cut off the internet, just as Iranians across the country responded to a call from exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to "make noise" at 8 PM -- in the streets, at home, on the rooftops.

From around 45 protest-related deaths until then, the number has skyrocketed, with some estimates putting the death toll at over 2,000 over the past few days.

As always, the regime likes to kill in the dark. Hence, the importance of shutting down the internet.

I happen to believe that the United States has many ways of influencing events inside Iran -- and of making good on the President's threat of a "red line" -- without going into the country guns a'blazing.

For starters, the Iranian regime is intensely paranoid. After the 12-day war in June that took out their nuclear plants, they believe 1) that Israeli spies are everywhere, and 2) the United States military is a force to be feared.

When Ayatollah Khamenei sees Maduro taken away in handcuffs, he can feel those handcuffs slipping over his wrists in his dreams.

How do you keep from engaging in forever wars? By demonstrating the awesome power of the U.S. military, and instilling fear in potential adversaries.

There are no U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, nor any immediate plans to send them there. This president has demonstrated the big stick; now he can speak softly and be obeyed.

It's entirely possible that he could take down the mullahs in Iran with words alone.

But add to that targeted cyberattacks against the regime's command, control, and communications, and a few drones launched against the foreign thugs the regime is importing from Iraq to kill protesters, and I think the United States can give the Iranian domino a fatal push.

The 1979 revolution took a full year to succeed. In our cyber age, this one could happen much more quickly.

Trump’s Actions Around The World Aren’t Random; They’re America First

Everything Trump is doing, no matter the country with which he’s engaging, is intended to make America safer, stronger, and wealthier.

American  Thinker 

Like all good magicians, Trump never reveals exactly how a trick works. Trump, the most underrated President in American history, appears oafish, prideful, unrefined, a bit of a bully, even a mercenary at times. And that’s what some of his supporters say! To say that Mr. Trump regularly catches almost everyone off guard would be an understatement.

Trump’s recent actions should prompt everyone to reassess any preconceived notions they may have about him and his plans, not only for the United States but for the world. Today’s essay argues that the Trump administration views the world as interconnected and that it is wholly consistent to pursue an America First policy while being forcefully involved in selected hotspots worldwide, while picking our fights, resulting in minimal loss of blood and treasure. 

Mr. Trump’s strategy, not articulated to the general public but becoming increasingly clear to informed observers, is a resetting of the world order in America’s favor, done in such a way that our adversaries won’t have the means to challenge us. We see the pieces coming together in the President’s strategy in:

1.    Greenland or, more generally, the Arctic. Strategic signaling that the U.S. is in an all-domain conflict with China and Russia, and won’t cede the theater to Russia, which dominates it today. Greenland’s mineral wealth is a huge plus.

2.    Venezuela, specifically, and the Western Hemisphere as a whole, are becoming increasingly off-limits to the usual actors that have sought to diminish our power and prestige in our own backyard.

3.    Iran, where historic moments don’t come along every day. If the Mullahs lose their power, the dynamics in the Middle East and the world will change for at least a generation as the threat level recedes, allowing us to focus attention elsewhere.

4.    Russia/Ukraine, where great-power dynamics create significant inconsistencies. Exactly as Russia tries to dominate Ukraine, its fortunes, both internal and external, are being drained like a depleted battery. If Europe and the United States continue to foil Putin’s plans, Russia, too, will be in play, as we see with Iran now. Russia’s on the clock!

5.    Sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa, and the Sahel, which Trump understands requires suppression of terrorism, denial of our enemies’ training areas, and pushback against China’s quest to become a world superpower. And always increased access to more energy, which reduces ordinary Americans’ cost of living.

6.    Israel, which is the only Democratic power in the region and now undisputably America’s proxy sword. Israel’s technology can be counted on to help the U.S. defend itself in its quest to reset the table through technological and economic superiority. Israel is becoming America’s essential partner, much like Europe used to be.

7.    Canada and Mexico—in a nod to WWII Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere—see a Trump doctrine that seeks to dominate our nearest neighbors into becoming essential partners in America’s success and, by doing so, ensure the safety, protection, and economic stability of our neighbors.

8.    Taiwan, as with Ukraine, places China on defense. Just as we have seen the once vaunted Russian conventional forces as hollow, China is even weaker in proven tactical doctrine, combined arms execution, maneuver warfare, and command and control, to name just a few deficiencies or unknowns. Taking Taiwan is not a certainty, and failure would be fatal to the ever-cautious leaders in Beijing.

9.    Europe, where Trump has finally accomplished the turnaround he demanded in his first administration. Europe is on the path to defending itself and to reestablishing itself as a reliable partner to the U.S. in defending Western interests. Less certain (but early signs show some promise) is whether it will be able to expunge its Woke and DEI elements that encouraged Muslim immigration and are seeing the consequences as highly fertile Muslims begin to dominate Europe while holding on to the traditions and tendencies of the countries they emigrated from.

10.Fraud, which is not a geographic region but a problem that Trump has identified as the equivalent of a metastasizing cancer in our country, keeps millions from accepting work they deem beneath them, and encourages a system of lawlessness and sloth. Systematic fraud is a signal that our system has broken down. Trump plans to eliminate it and thereby return pride, thrift, family, and accomplishment to ordinary Americans.

The Trump doctrine (Trumpism) revisits the domino theory. For Trump, everything, domestically and internationally, is a form of connective tissue. From raging AWFULs to abysmally low reading and writing scores to millions of people dropping out of the workforce, living off the dole, or even worse, slaves to untreated mental illnesses or drugs. America can’t be productive with the drag of a society unfocused on what it takes to be successful and on America’s necessary place in the world.

This is the Trump strategy.

God Bless America!

🎭 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. 

2025 Inflation Was Lowest Since Last Time Trump Was President

The Federalist

Annual inflation in 2025 came in at 2.7 percent — the lowest annual rate since 2020, when President Donald Trump was last in office.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday, the annual inflation rate for 2025 was 2.7 percent. Inflation for shelter rose 0.4 percent in December “and was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Food prices rose 0.7 percent in December while energy prices rose 0.3 percent. Even so, the annual inflation rate for 2025 matched economists’ expectations.

That 2.7 percent figure is especially notable because it marks the first time inflation has returned to something resembling normal since before former President Joe Biden took office. In the final year of Trump’s first term, annual inflation was just 1.4 percent. Under Biden, inflation skyrocketed, reaching 7.0 percent in 2021, 6.5 percent in 2022, before slowing to 3.4 percent in 2023 and 2.9 percent in 2024.

Even CNN acknowledged the improvement, reporting that “the final CPI for the year did show some progress occurred: The overall and core inflation rates of 2.7% were cooler than January’s 3% and 3.3% rates, respectively, BLS data shows.”

Trump touted the latest numbers in a Truth Social post, writing: “JUST OUT: Great (LOW!) Inflation numbers for the USA. That means that Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should cut interest rates, MEANINGFULLY!!!…ALSO OUT, GREAT GROWTH NUMBERS. Thank You MISTER TARIFF!”

Yet some Democrats refused to acknowledge the reality. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed in a post on X: “Inflation is up … and the Republican economy is a complete disaster.”

But the data says otherwise. Compared to the inflation crisis under Biden, today’s numbers make the contrast between Democrat and Republican leadership hard to ignore.

‘There’s a harm there’: Supreme Court appears to side with bans on men in women’s sports

 

Buttons from a pro-women's sports rally lay on a table; The College Fix

By Micaiah Bilger - Assistant Editor  |  Posted on January 13, 2026

‘For the individual girl who … doesn’t get on the stand for the medal, or doesn’t make all-league’

Whether male athletes competing in women’s sports will become a thing of the past is a question in the hands of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices after a hearing on Tuesday on the matter.

A majority of the justices appeared to be on the side of female athletes like former college competitors Riley Gaines and Macy Petty who say it’s unfair and harmful to allow transgender-identifying males compete in women’s sports, Just the News reports.

The hearing Tuesday involved laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit male athletes from competing in women’s sports in k-12 schools and colleges. 

However, the court’s ruling “will likely impact bans passed in 27 states,” according to the report. Typically, the justices publish their rulings on major cases in May and June. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to lean toward upholding the states’ laws, CNN reports.

“For the individual girl who does not make the team or doesn’t get on the stand for the medal, or doesn’t make all-league, there’s a harm there, and I think we can’t sweep that aside,” Kavanaugh said.

Others also appeared to favor the states’ cases, according to Just The News:

Justice Samuel Alito noted that female athletes across the country have voiced opposition to biological boys identifying as girls competing against and alongside them.

“What do you say about them. Are they bigots?” Alito asked. “Are they deluded in thinking they are subjected to unfair competition?” …

The three liberal justices appeared sympathetic to the biological male athletes challenging the bans.  

“The numbers don’t talk about the human beings,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

Ahead of the hearing, Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt urged the high court to uphold her state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. 

“Title IX was written as an ‘exclusive’ document for girls and women to have the same opportunities as boys and men. It’s time this intent be upheld by the highest court in the nation,” Ehardt said in a news release from the Kansas Family Foundation.

Ehardt, a former college basketball player and coach, wrote the 2020 Idaho law and, more recently, led an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing for the necessity of keeping sports separated by sex.

Former NCAA volleyball player Macy Petty also weighed in, sharing her personal experiences competing against men in college.

“I experienced the reality of competing against a trans-identifying male firsthand, and not only was it unfair, it introduced another level of risk and harm to myself and my female teammates,” Petty said in a news release from Concerned Women for America.

“Men’s and women’s volleyball are two different games given the biological realities between men and women. Females can never be safe, nor have a level playing field, if they are forced to compete against men,” Petty said. She is now a legislative strategist at CWA.

The conservative women’s organization also cited its 2025 research report, which “found that trans-identifying males have stolen over 1,941 gold medals from women and girls in the United States; additionally, trans-identifying male athletes have stolen over $493,173 in prize money from women in professional sports.”

However, during a rally Tuesday hosted by the National Women’s Law Center, transgender advocates said conservatives are too focused on transgender athletes and not enough on “actual” problems with sexual abuse and lower pay in women’s sports. 

Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the center, said “the folks scapegoating trans athletes” are “silent on these actual issues.” 

“”They don’t care about women competing in sports, they care about controlling us. They want to define who we are, how we look, and whether we belong. Girls with short hair. Black and brown girls. Intersex girls. Trans girls. Girls who defy stereotypes,” Patel said.

MORE: Students: Colleges didn’t support us when we decided we weren’t transgender anymore

https://www.thecollegefix.com/theres-a-harm-there-supreme-court-appears-to-side-with-bans-on-men-in-womens-sports/

Judge Ho Takes A Sledgehammer To Judicial Supremacy And Its ‘Elite’ Enablers

‘If the American people can’t expect the judiciary to stay in its lane, then federal judges shouldn’t expect the American people to follow them.’

The Federalist

Years before becoming a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, James Ho clerked for the renowned Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. So, it should come as little surprise that after witnessing Thomas’ mastery of words up close, Ho would go on to display his own writing prowess in his judicial works.

Receiving little attention outside legal circles, Ho authored an article for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy last week criticizing what he views to be an increasing “arrogance” among many federal judges — an arrogance he argues is downstream from judicial supremacy. As The Federalist previously described, judicial supremacy is the belief that the executive and legislative branches are subordinate to the Supreme Court and the judicial branch, meaning judges — rather than the people’s elected representatives — are the ultimate authority on law and policy.

Ho started his article by highlighting how many of the federal judges now supposedly concerned about “judicial independence” after President Trump’s return to office were silent as left-wing “cultural elites bombarded certain Justices and judges with absurd ethical complaints.” Their silence persisted, Ho added, even “[a]s the [Biden] Justice Department refused to prosecute individuals for harassing certain Justices at their own homes” after the leak of SCOTUS’s 2022 Dobbs draft decision, and “[a]s elite law schools allowed students to disrupt events to protest certain judicial decisions.”

“It wasn’t until this year — following the inauguration of a new President — that the Federal Judges Association suddenly found its voice, and suddenly discovered a crisis over judicial independence,” Ho wrote. “After years of silence, it’s obvious that these concerns are not sincere, but strategic. What they’re really championing is not judicial independence, but judicial supremacy. What we’re really seeing in the judiciary is not principle, but arrogance.”

Ho contended that much of this arrogance — which he argued entails an elitist mindset among “[t]oo many judges” — stems from judicial supremacy and a backward system that teaches rising legal minds “to venerate (if not worship) judges.” He then dispelled the notion of America having three “co-equal” branches of government, noting that while the judiciary “has an important role in our constitutional republic,” “it’s a limited one.”

“Judges don’t write the law. Judges don’t execute the law. And that’s for one simple reason. As Americans, we believe that we can govern ourselves,” Ho wrote. “Our Constitution begins ‘We the people’ — not we the few with life tenure. Our Founders didn’t fight a Revolutionary War to replace one king in royal garb with hundreds of kings in judicial robes. Judges are supposed to apply the law to whatever disputes are brought before us — and leave everything else to the other branches of government.”

Citing The Federalist Papers, the Trump appointee further underscored that the framers viewed the judiciary as the “least powerful branch,” as it lacks the “sword” and “purse” possessed by the other two branches. Only by issuing rulings “based on what the law is — and not on our personal views on what the law should be,” he reasoned, can the judiciary “earn the respect of the other branches.”

Ho subsequently directed his focus toward the hypocritical views of “cultural elites” suddenly concerned about “judicial independence” under Trump. He specifically criticized them for “prais[ing] and protect[ing] judges who do their bidding — and condemn[ing] and cancel[ing] those who don’t.”

“The double standards are everywhere. And they aren’t inadvertent. They’re intentional. Because the elites don’t want neutrality. They want conformity,” Ho wrote. “If you don’t conform, they’ll call you corrupt, unethical, racist, sexist. They’ll say and do whatever it takes to get you to bend the knee. And even if you still won’t conform, they’ll attack you anyway, because they know that others will get the message and comply. The double standards don’t trouble the elites, because to them, this isn’t a debate — it’s a war.”

Ho further chastised (left-wing) members of the ruling class for “fundamentally misunderstand[ing]” how the judicial system is supposed to operate and noted how many Americans support real judicial independence because they believe judges should be “impartial” — not “imperial.” He surmised that judges abusing their authority and abandoning impartiality will result in a loss of trust among the people, which he said would be “fatal to the rule of law” and “entirely our fault.”

Ho’s commentary also touched on originalism, which involves interpreting the Constitution as originally written at the time it was adopted. He highlighted three key areas he views as “threats” toward the philosophy, namely the “insubordination in the district courts”; “fair-weather originalism,” which is when “you’re an originalist only when elites won’t be upset with you” and “when it’s easy”; and the temptation among judges to “avoid the kinds of issues that most energize and anger cultural elites — cases about abortion, transgender ideology, religious liberty, and illegal immigration.”

Ho concluded his article by voicing optimism about the future of the judiciary and judges faithfully interpreting the Constitution in the year ahead. Citing his more than a decade-long experience in the judicial selection process, he also suggested several “principles” to look for in potential future judges and reaffirmed the proper role of the judiciary in American life.

“My hope is that judicial supremacy will ultimately prove to be self-defeating — that the harder its proponents push, the more likely they’ll fail,” Ho wrote. “If the American people can’t expect the judiciary to stay in its lane, then federal judges shouldn’t expect the American people to follow them.”

Bari Weiss Effect Seen in Key Change to CBS News Piece on Minneapolis ICE Incident

RedState 

One of the most maddening things about the mainstream media is their deliberate word choices in describing people or things that have happened or allegedly happened, with the goal of crafting a specific narrative, and usually one that lines up with leftist talking points on any given issue.

We saw it, for instance, in many of the stories about illegal immigrant and suspected MS-13 gang member and accused domestic abuser Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the press often sympathetically referred to as a "Maryland father" in either the headlines, promos, or the opening paragraphs of their stories on his deportation to El Salvador and the Trump administration's battle to get him out of the country.

There are also the insulting characterizations of left-wing riots, referring to them as "mostly peaceful" when they have been anything but. This is something we saw, for instance, back in 2020 when then-MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi infamously referred to the arson and chaos going on around him during the George Floyd riots as "not, generally speaking, unruly, but fires have been started, and this crowd is relishing that."

Sometimes the media's deliberate terminology takes a more troubling and accusatory turn, which we saw recently in a CBS News report that referenced the incident between ICE agents and anti-ICE agitator Renee Good in Minneapolis, where Good hitting an agent with her Honda SUV led to shots being fired and her being killed.

In the video report in question, the reporter referred to what happened as "the murder of Renee Good." Watch:

In a later corrected version, however, the wording had been changed to "the killing of Renee Good":

Obviously, that's an important distinction to make. 

The only people calling what the ICE agent did "murder" are rabidly partisan Democrats who are trying to stoke the flames. While the corporate media undoubtedly are standing with Democrats on this, tossing the word "murder" into a story of this nature, especially when there is zero evidence of it, and when, in fact, a convincing case can be made otherwise based on multiple video clips, is pretty egregious and pretty much confirms what we've said about the media and their tendency to pick sides all along.

The word should not have been in the original report. The fact that it was changed, though, is just more evidence of the Bari Weiss effect at CBS News, which is a welcome change from the usual doubling and tripling down we get from the press in instances like this.