Artemis II Mission Offers Inspiring Unity for a Deeply Divided Nation

Townhall 

National confidence, unfortunately, is in short supply these days. In this season of springtime renewal, Americans would do well to look up — literally. Artemis II, NASA's first meaningful manned space mission in over half a century, has taken the nation by storm this month. In so doing, it has provided a timely reminder of what a great nation, acting with confidence and clarity of purpose, can still achieve.

Public polling confirms that Americans are a largely pessimistic lot. Our politics are fractured, our institutions mistrusted, and our birth and marriage rates have plummeted. Hope once sprang eternal, but today's zeitgeist is characterized by an unshakeable malaise. The daring Artemis II mission offers a rebuttal to this debilitating defeatism. Artemis II is a powerful symbol that the United States still possesses the will and the capacity to do big things. It presents a ripe opportunity to rekindle an inspiring national ethos that has been lost — one fostering greatness, rewarding courage and embracing the frontier spirit.

Put simply, a great country is not satisfied with managed decline. A great country thinks boldly and acts boldly.

In this respect, Artemis II is deeply consonant with — indeed, it is an embodiment of — the political ethos of President Donald Trump and the broader MAGA movement. Stripped of caricature and distortion, "Make America Great Again" is, at its core, a call for national renewal — to reject complacency and reassert American leadership and excellence. Whether in trade, foreign policy or space exploration, the premise is the same: America should lead, not follow.

Space exploration has long been one of the clearest arenas in which American leadership manifests itself. At the height of the Cold War, NASA's Apollo program had a loftier mission than merely beating the Soviets to the moon; the goal was to demonstrate to the world the superiority of American freedom and the American way of life. Now, Artemis II carries forward that legacy in a new geopolitical context — one in which rivals like China are racing to assert dominance on land, air, sea and beyond. If the 21st century is going to be an American century and not a Chinese century, missions like Artemis II will be crucial.

Yet Artemis II is not just a story about national power. It is also one about individual character. Consider Victor Glover, the mission's pilot. In an era obsessed with identity politics and the divvying up of individuals into racial, ethnic and sexual categories, Glover has offered a refreshing perspective. When recently asked about becoming the first Black astronaut deployed by NASA on a lunar mission, Glover fundamentally rejected the premise: "It's about human history. It's the story of humanity — not Black history, not women's history — but that it becomes human history." This is a tremendous and inspiring rebuke of today's suffocating wokeism.

Equally significant — if not more so — is Glover's openness about his Christian faith. He has openly spoken about the imperatives of studying God's Creation from orbit, and he took a personal copy of the Bible with him on the journey. Glover is a throwback to an older, bygone era — one in which the most renowned scientists, such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, understood their endeavors as a means of employing human reason to better understand God's Creation. This is a much more cogent understanding of the scientific enterprise than the false tension between science and religion that is often peddled today.

Taken together, the Artemis II mission and the individuals who have carried it out offer a powerful counter-narrative to the dour pessimism, censorious wokeism and rampant atheism of our age. This is a mission that embodies the best of America: technological prowess, individual excellence and a willingness to venture into the unknown to do big, bold and beautiful things. It is a story that has united Americans of all political, religious, racial and ethnic stripes.

In short, Artemis II is a feel-good story. And frankly, we could use more of those.

The United States has always been at its best when it chooses outward-looking hope over inward-looking cynicism. Artemis II is a reminder that such a choice is still readily available to us. The question is whether we will choose correctly — and, in turn, help make the 21st century a distinctly American century.

Podcast thread for April 10

 

bored.

The Reason Americans Chose Trump

American Thinker 

Some thoughts and notes I recorded two decades ago may help explain why Trump became president...

As a writer, had I chosen to be an historian, I would have written a history of the West that showed how haters of Christ plotted from Year One to block the Voice of the Creator in human affairs. I would start by demolishing the myth that Christianity is a set of opinions of any person or group and show that Christianity is the best link in human endeavors to the source of our being, God—in simpler words, the best path to our physical and spiritual wellbeing. I would go on to show that by deed or by default:

• Enlightenment God-haters tried to replace God’s path to wellbeing with mental concoctions derived from reason, which history proves is a plaything in the hands of scoundrels;
• Darwinist God-haters wanted to replace God with science, unaware that science is blind to the most important things in life, a long list beginning with love, hate, revenge, conscience, etc.;
• Freudian God-haters wanted to explain the growing void in their understanding of human beings by sorting and arranging the gaps in their own minds;
• Marxist God-haters wanted to pick up the pieces of failed reason and science, arrange them into lucrative contests between Oppressors and Victims, and play global board games;
• Clerical God-haters wanted to preside over the funeral of the Christian church.

God-haters of every description and era have been on a pathological mission to replace God with themselves. Blinder than bats to the limitations of the human mind and the waywardness of the human heart, they persisted like the demons they were, or became, to defy the Voice of God within every human being.

“All forms of life are animated by a power which does not originate within them,” Russell Kirk reminds us, commenting on the metaphysics of Coleridge in his book The Conservative Mind, Chapter IV.

A Purpose, a Will, emanates from God; this Will has created our humanity, and guides us now in ways beyond our understanding, toward ends which even our reason cannot make out clearly. Providence acts through the instincts and intuitions of our feeble flesh. This being so, the man who takes the materialist, the mechanist, and the Utilitarian for his preceptors in the ends of life is a forlorn fool.

And, I would add, a fool who facilitates the grab of power-hungry scoundrels.

Early in the history of the last century, John Randolph of Roanoke noted that Americans

can forge their own chains, and to flatter the people and delude them by promises never meant to be performed is the stale but successful practice of the demagogue, as of the seducer in private life.

I had long been disheartened by the rampant moral weakness and mental obtuseness of many called to govern. You needn’t have read Plato to know that mental and moral mediocrity has no place in government.

Yet the government in Washington had turned into a virtual asylum for political misfits, where they can live especially well by pretending to serve the American people while milking them for programs inconsistent with the job of serving them. Their top mission—it’s hardly a secret—has been to push for a “new world order.” Obama spent his eight years as president to grease the skids toward a Global Oz planned over a century ago by God-hating globalists and financed by amoral industrial moguls. In the alleged words of David Rockefeller:

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings [Bilderberg Group, Baden-Baden, Germany, June 1991] and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.

It required a lens to detect the difference between what I had come to call the Tweedle-dee Democrats and the Tweedle-dum Republicans. The two parties were, in fact, being called the Uniparty. It was hardly a surprise that after each presidential election, there was no significant progress toward improving American lives. The evidence instead revealed a significant decline in real wages, opportunities, freedom, and independence.

Then, like the sequel to a grade B horror movie, a virtual witch was running for president. Hillary Clinton had been Obama’s infamous Secretary of State and was the Democrat choice for president in 2016—her choice, to be exact. This time her path to the White House would not be obstructed by her lame-duck boss, nor by a “nice guy” like Bernie Sanders, whose wings she’d clip if necessary. Hillary made damn sure she’d improve the brew she mixed when she managed to get hubby Bill Clinton into office. It was a potent new brew that would make her the first woman president of the United States! Woe to anyone who got in her way!

The billionaire Donald Trump, who’d invited Hillary to his 2005 wedding to Melania, now stormed the stage of Republican candidates for president and dared call his opponent “Crooked Hillary.” In public. Ooooooooh!

Of the notorious Donald J. Trump, I knew next to nothing. By the 2016 election year, I had it “up to here” with a “democratic process” that reduced elections to voting for “the lesser of two evils” every four years, along a road that branched from detour to detour.

The extreme danger of allowing the ruthless Hillary Clinton to finish off America and sell it to globalists demanded that she and her minions be stopped. And it did not matter now who did it, unless that person was yet another political partner—in which case it was back to “politics as usual.” We were dealing here not with a choice between parties but between America and no America.

It did not escape my attention that the terrible situation we were in was straight out of ancient classic drama, at that crucial moment in the plot when imminent disaster is averted by a deus ex machina.

Who could earn that title and be the one to face and defeat the witch in Washington? Did Trump have the guts for it? When he stepped onto the presidential launching pad, Trump was ridiculed and lambasted by celebrities and by the mainstream media. Could a clown like Trump really be president? Hee-hee-hee-ha-ha-ha...

I watched and listened. Here was a guy who actually said something when he opened his mouth. The last president or candidate to talk with such substance and candor was Republican Ronald Reagan and, before him, Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Trump spoke like a guy you’d meet on the street or in a waiting room. There was no double-talk in his speech. He was a straight shooter and didn’t care whose ears it might sting.

Trump spoke of the entrenched corruption in our overblown government, the political meddling and military adventurism throughout the globe, the lack of respect for the Constitution, for law enforcement, for our veterans, for the common worker, the family, and for God. He dared say what many culture warriors had been saying for over thirty years. And he said it forthrightly and emphatically. This was the guy for a major correction in the way the government operated. Would this bolt of lightning wake Americans up?

Was there hope, finally, for ending the political and social degeneration of America, accelerated by Barack Obama and sure to be advanced by Hillary Clinton?

Hillary Rodham Clinton, an attractive woman (with makeup), had an irritating habit of barking out edicts while rolling her eyes and standing on a heap of ideological debris that she took to be the moral high ground. The sight and sound of Hillary made me reach for the TV remote to turn her off, something I also did with hubby, President Bill, and later with Obama, when his grandiloquent rhetoric failed to match any demonstration of care for America.

That Hillary in one of her speeches would say that half the people who supported Trump might be put in a “basket of deplorables”—that, during the final presidential debate, she would declare to the whole world that she would support the right of a woman to murder the child in her womb, up to the moment of birth—proved just how terrible a president she would be.

With a forward-swept coif of blondish hair on top of his big frame, an easy smile, witty use of words bordering on bombast, Donald J. Trump gave the impression of a colorful braggadocio. I could ignore boastfulness in anyone whose deeds and words match—as with an artist I knew, Charles Bohannah, whose achievements in art and everything he got into proved the truth of his boasts.

Mainstream journalists were portraying Trump as an egotistical opportunist, incapable of civility, let alone presidential leadership. This verdict combined with the explosion of invective from the Left were reason enough for me to opt for credibility in this man.

Trump proved to be a formidable contender in whatever contest, mowing down 16 other Republican candidates for president, among whom were “sure bets.” His glamorous Slovenian wife, Melania, was no mean asset to his bid for office. And his bold expression of faith in God struck a deep chord in most Americans.

In arenas jammed and overflowing with people in the thousands, in rally after rally, Trump showed he was the man for reclaiming America by stopping the flood of illegal aliens, vetting immigrants from Islamic regions known to harbor terrorists, bringing the manufacture of goods outside the U.S. back to America, creating jobs for Americans, eliminating industry-killing regulations, turning “free” trade into fair trade, upholding the sovereignty of the United States, restoring respect for the Constitution, restoring the respect due police officers, giving veterans the support and honor they earned, liberating church pastors from political speech restrictions, and in general giving Americans back their beloved country.

This was the first time people heard such talk from those running for office. The overwhelming enthusiasm of the crowds at these rallies transcended the medium through which they were conveyed. None of this was shown or reported on mainstream news channels except C-Span, Fox, and other alternative news sources. The obvious censorship was accompanied by a constant harping against Trump in any way possible—no holds barred.

Against all odds and most predictions, I sensed a win for Trump by a landslide.I could feel it in the rally crowds exploding with enthusiasm upon finallyhearing the truth being spoken by a presidential candidate (covering a lot of what I had reported in my newsletters, decades earlier.) I was convinced, as must have been the people attending the rallies, that Hillary would lose.

The night of the election, I went to bed not knowing the outcome. When I rose at 4:30 the next morning (as usual) and turned on the TV, the PBS analysts were still fumbling with the numbers. When I went to the computer for the news, I learned that Hillary had conceded the election. Hallelujah!

Fuming and blaming everyone but herself for the defeat, Hillary packed her rage into a book she called What Happened?

And President Trump tweeted: “I happened.”

In the wake of Trump’s political tsunami, which many believed Providence had a hand in, all hell broke loose, as those obsessed with ending America as a sovereign and independent nation under God dropped their masks and came after this human wrecking ball who crashed through their gates and ruined their party.

Bondi Was Putting Out Fires -- The Next AG Needs To Go To War

Bondi Was Putting Out Fires -- The Next AG Needs To Go To War 

Hans Mahncke for The Federalist

Pam Bondi was a personable attorney general placed in a difficult situation, and by most measures, she handled it with grace and loyalty. She navigated numerous crises, beginning with an early misstep involving the Epstein folder. Far more consequential were the relentless and unceasing efforts to block President Trump from advancing his agenda, which she had to confront constantly in the courts, from immigration to DOGE’s access to key departments, and the dismantling of USAID.

But only playing defense, even when done well, will not restore justice to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The problems baked into the DOJ are deep, structural, and decades in the making, and confronting them requires more than a caretaker or a fireman. It requires a field general, someone who arrives on day one with a comprehensive battle plan already drawn, who understands every front of a sprawling and complex war, and who possesses the stamina, attention to detail, and strategic vision to prosecute every challenge simultaneously without pause for the remainder of the administration. This is a task that demands more than competence — it demands mastery.

The Department of Justice is not a single institution but a constellation of them, each with its own culture, priorities, and internal politics. With approximately 115,000 employees and a budget of $42 billion, the DOJ operates as a prosecution machine, an intelligence gatherer, a regulatory enforcer, a national security apparatus, and a defender of federal interests in civil and administrative matters. 

It houses the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the U.S. Marshals, and dozens of specialized divisions and offices covering everything from antitrust to civil rights. Each of these areas contains a dense network of career staff, routines, and workflows shaped over decades by ideological priorities, institutional capture, and entrenched habits. Reforming a single division would be a formidable challenge, yet the task at hand is to reform them all at once while simultaneously pursuing accountability for past abuses and restoring public confidence in the Department’s integrity.

Approaching this role demands the perspective of a general surveying a theater of war, mapping every front and designing a coordinated strategy for each one. Every statute, rule, and procedure can be exploited, delayed, or weaponized, and when ideological staff and internal activism go unchecked, the system becomes vulnerable to insubordination, administrative obstruction, lawfare, and outright sabotage. The damage does not remain contained. When the Department fails, the rot spreads outward, and courts, bar associations, and oversight bodies follow its lead, amplifying partisanship, bias, and systemic dysfunction.

Decades of Capture and Abuse

The Department’s problems did not arise overnight. Washington D.C. is a deeply left-leaning stronghold, so the baseline culture of the DOJ was already heavily tilted in one direction. Over the past two decades, politically motivated hiring amplified that tilt, eroding the impartiality of the career ranks as ideologically driven appointees embedded themselves in key divisions. During the Obama years, incoming Attorney General Eric Holder said they would be “looking for people who share our values.” A review of just one section of the Civil Rights Division, itself only a small part of the DOJ, found that every attorney hired over the first two years of the Obama administration had a background in left-wing advocacy, with many coming directly from organizations like the ACLU and the NAACP.

These hiring choices were part of a long pattern of abuses that illustrate just how deeply the Department has been compromised. To name just a few abuses and failures, over the years the DOJ orchestrated Operation Fast and Furious, recklessly allowing firearms to reach criminals while obstructing congressional oversight, facilitated the IRS’s targeting of conservative and religious 501(c)(3) applicants, and played a central role in weaponizing Russiagate and other politically motivated investigations. It overaggressively pursued January 6 participants, labeled school board parents as domestic threats, allowed coordinated, damaging anti-Trump leaks against figures like Gen. Michael Flynn and Trump himself to go largely unchecked and uninvestigated, turned a blind eye to civil rights infringements during Covid, let rampant benefits fraudexplode, and declared the 2020 election above board without ever investigating.

Career staff frequently acted based on ideological priorities rather than the law. In one case, Jay Bratt from the DOJ’s National Security Division, who later joined Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, led the Mar-a-Lago investigation that targeted Trump. He coordinated with the Biden White House while simultaneously whitewashing Biden’s own documents case. Despite the Russia collusion hoax having collapsed, Andrew Weissmann pursued Trump as the brains behind the Russiagate witch hunt. He had previously headed the Criminal Fraud Section in the Obama DOJ before becoming Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s pit bull.

The Cost of Not Having a Plan

Yet no one has ever been held accountable for any of it. When Bondi arrived, the DOJ still lacked a plan to confront these challenges. Erik Siebert, for example, was appointed to lead the crucial U.S. Attorney’s office in Eastern Virginia, a post overseeing many high-stakes cases, and he predictably refused to pursue accountability for figures like James Comey and Letitia James. Siebert was a terrible choice for the role, with personal ties that made accountability impossible. His father-in-law is the godfather of Comey’s daughter and Troy Edwards, Comey’s son-in-law, was a senior Assistant U.S. Attorney in Siebert‘s office. There was never any chance Siebert would indict Comey.

This episode shows the consequences of having no plan. President Trump only learned at the last minute that Siebert was running out the clock on prosecuting Comey, forcing him to step in and do what the attorney general should have been managing from the outset. He firedSiebert and brought in Lindsey Halligan, who indictedComey just before the statute of limitations expired, only for the court to throw out the case on a technicality due to her last-minute appointment. It was an entirely avoidable own goal.

Worse still, the challenge is even greater than ideological infiltration, unchecked abuses, and unforced errors. Activist judges, treating the judiciary as a policymaking body rather than a neutral arbiter, have long undermined accountability and enforced the law selectively. Bar associations have acted in the same partisan manner, targeting Republicans while ignoring misconduct elsewhere. For example, former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark is still being targeted by the bar simply for carrying out his duties during the first Trump administration, illustrating how these enforcement mechanisms are used selectively.

While these problems technically play out outside the Department, they are tightly linked to how the DOJ operates.

Bar associations are not above accountability. The DOJ has the authority to act when they infringe on lawyers’ rights or pursue partisan discipline. Similarly, courts take their cues from what the Department challenges or ignores. In practice, this means the DOJ mostly turns a blind eye.

The one time it did act, moving against rogue D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg, it spectacularly failed. Reporting from The Federalist revealed that Boasberg, who had repeatedly obstructed Trump and let the Russiagate FBI lawyer who fabricated false evidence off with only a slap on the wrist, had also made improper comments about Trump to other judges. Yet after the DOJ inexplicably failed to attach the evidence to the complaint, the case was promptly dismissed.

These are the kinds of elementary tradecraft errors that cannot happen.

Beyond this visible layer, there is also a tight-knit network of lawfare activists operating largely out of public view, coordinating strategy, drafting legal theories, and effectively scripting cases for willing prosecutors. Their role goes far beyond filing ethics complaints against disfavored attorneys. In some instances, they have developed detailed prosecutorial roadmaps in advance, as seen in the Georgia case against Trump, where Fani Willis was handed a template for how to proceed. These actors function as an unofficial planning arm, shaping outcomes while remaining largely off the DOJ’s radar. A serious attorney general cannot afford to ignore this shadow network. It must be identified, monitored, and countered, both by exposing its coordination and by closing off the legal and procedural avenues it exploits.

The Leader this Moment Demands

Unfortunately, the timeline is unforgiving. Nomination and confirmation alone will consume months, especially with the added hurdle that Republicans in Congress may slow the process. Once in office, the new attorney general will have roughly two years to act. Those two years must be spent dismantling networks of ideological capture, reining in internal staff, executing plans to address past abuses and hold people accountable, and countering resistance from courts and bar associations, all while the day-to-day operations of the DOJ continue.

At the same time, the next attorney general cannot operate as though this is a one-off effort. If a Democrat administration returns to power, the same machinery will be redeployed, likely more aggressively and with the benefit of experience. That means preparing the battlefield now, insulating key processes, closing off avenues of abuse, and developing countermeasures in advance. The goal is not just to act in the present, but to make future politically motivated investigations, prosecutions, and institutional abuses more difficult to execute and less effective when they inevitably return.

This moment does not allow for learning on the job or cultivating personal popularity. The leader it demands must combine sweeping strategic vision with precise technical mastery. Imagine a war room where the entire Department is laid out, each division, problem, and deadline accounted for and updated daily. It is a daunting challenge, but also a once-in-a-generation, and perhaps final, opportunity to restore the DOJ as an impartial instrument of justice.

---

Hans Mahncke is in-house counsel at a global business advisory firm. He holds LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law. 

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A School Shooter Thought He Would Kill Children – This Heroic Principal Had Other Ideas

Townhall 

An Oklahoma school principal on Tuesday saved untold numbers of lives after he put himself on the line to stop a school shooter.

The incident occurred at Pauls Valley High School, according to Fox News:

An Oklahoma principal who was shot in the leg while tackling a school shooter on Tuesday was hailed a hero for stopping the gunman and preventing a worse tragedy, officials said.

Pauls Valley High School Principal Kirk Moore and other staff spotted the gunman, later identified as 20-year-old former student Victor Hawkins, and immediately jumped into action to subdue him, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI).

"The principal of the school had noticed that an adult male subject, 20 years old, had stepped foot into the school with a gun," OSBI spokesperson Hunter McKee told KOCO-TV. "When the principal noticed this, he quickly stepped in, as well as other staff. The subject was able to fire multiple rounds, where the principal was hurt, but no one else was."

Moore was airlifted to a hospital in stable condition, authorities said.

"The actions of the staff and the principal stepping in as soon as they saw a subject with a firearm saved lives today," McKee told the outlet.

The shooting unfolded around 2:21 p.m., according to authorities. The school was placed on lockdown until officers cleared the scene, and students were later reunited with their families.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt praised the principal for his heroism. “Principal Moore acted bravely to protect students’ lives,” he wrote in a post on X. “Sarah and I are praying for his quick recovery. I’m thankful for the swift response from law enforcement and school staff, and I’m grateful no students were harmed.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond called Moore “A hero and a legend” who “undoubtedly saved lives this week.”

Like anyone else reading about this story, I’m glad the principal managed to stop the assailant from harming students. But this story also shows how important it is for schools to have enhanced security measures.

We’ve already seen that gun control doesn’t stop these atrocities. In fact, if it weren’t for the principal’s actions, the anti-gunners would have had a field day with this story. However, he shouldn’t have had to tackle the shooter.

Armed security, metal detectors, and vigilance could have kept the suspect from setting foot on campus in the first place. Oklahoma did pass several laws aimed at encouraging schools to take greater security precautions to prevent shootings. But it’s up to the schools to adopt these practices. Perhaps this incident will show the rest why it’s so important to use methods that actually work.

Antifa Are the Real KKK: Proscribing Antifa and Their Supporters

Antifa Are the Real KKK: Proscribing Antifa and Their Supporters

A series of prosecutions and a landmark trial signal a shift toward treating Antifa as a terrorist threat, testing whether the rule of law can restrain political violence. 

White Papers Policy Institute and Kevin Taylor

Donald Trump is not our Caesar. Yet could he be our Sulla? Given the American Right’s inability (or refusal) to build a mass movement capable of matching the Left when it comes to protests, fundraising, campaigns, and political organization, state action from the top is the last card to play. Recently, the Trump administration won a major legal victory that could provide a way forward if we are serious about ending the seditionist groups that have plagued nationalists for so many decades. More importantly, another case could end the threat altogether.

It’s tragic and pathetic that the Trump administration has received so much criticism for “doing nothing,” given what the online Right has done in the months since Charlie Kirk’s murder.

The chief accomplishment was successfully freeing the Left from all blame for the death and instead redirecting it into a funhouse hall of mirrors where responsible parties include Egypt, Israel, Kirk’s widow, and various other parties, all at the same time. Recently departed National Counterterrorism Director Joe Kent even managed to raise doubt about whether suspect Tyler Robinson committed the murder because alleged “foreign ties” surrounding the killing were not investigated. If Robinson is acquitted, his defense team will owe Kent a fruit basket, as well as most of the influencers on what passes for the Right.

The Trump administration certainly could have done more. “Imagine if the situation were reversed” is the oldest argument in the conservative movement, but it is clarifying. Had such a crime taken place against a leading left-wing activist, most of the people reading this would be in jail now. One must only look at the response to January 6 to see how quickly the system can move against a perceived threat when it really wants to.

Of course, one key distinction is that the Biden administration enjoyed almost unanimous support from federal judges and liberal Washington D.C. juries, landing an almost 100 percent conviction rate against J6 defendants. In contrast, federal judges have sabotaged the Trump administration’s law enforcement efforts in many areas, and Antifa or illegal immigrant defendants have even been acquitted via jury nullification. Those who want President Trump to “do more” should have a plan about how exactly they expect to dispense with the entire judicial branch. I have my doubts if giving the Democrats (and their judges) unlimited power is the correct move.

Still, the Trump administration recently won a major victory in a recent trial against Antifa. Nine members of a North Texas Antifa cell were convicted of various charges for their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer and unarmed correctional officers at the Prairieland ICE Detention Center on July 4, 2025.

“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities—not under President Trump,” said former Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”

The significance is that this is the first federal terrorism case against supporters of Antifa. The guilty verdicts are an important precedent because it is less likely that handpicked juries and judges in deep blue states will simply be able to let their pets go after assaulting conservatives, nationalists, or immigration law enforcement. The press sees the threat, and the reaction has been hysterical.

• How the Trump Administration Has Turned Left-Wing Activism Into Terrorism, New Yorker, March 26, 2026
• ‘People should be scared’: convictions in US ‘antifa’ trial set dangerous precedent, Guardian, March 29, 2026
• Chilling Dissent: Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted On Terrorism Charges For Wearing All Black, The Intercept, March 13, 2026

This is a remarkable narrative for a “protest” put together by a coordinated group that culminated in the wounding of a police officer. A right-wing protest that ended in a police officer being killed would not lead to such furrowed brows and nuanced commentary. Such media warnings about “chilling dissent” were noticeably absent over the last decade as J6 protesters (or even some who weren’t even there) had their lives destroyed for appearing at a protest where the only fatality was protester Ashli Babbitt. For that reason, one should not entertain concern trolling from so-called civil libertarians whose true worry is about being lumped in with the right-wing chuds. Law is a function of politics, and all politics in a multicultural democracy is a function of who, not what.

Media concern about the government cracking down on their Antifa allies should also not be surprising. Antifa today is largely a media phenomenon. Though Antifa groups are quite capable of violence, they are not the working-class toughs familiar to European nationalists or the club scene of the 1980s. This bizarre menagerie of transgenders and effete political radicals would have little effectiveness were it not for the guaranteed legal support they enjoy from groups like the National Lawyers’ Guild and air cover from their friends in the media who either defend them as harmless protesters or occasionally deny their existence altogether.

For example, former Meet The Press host Chuck Todd interviewed Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook [PDF]in 2017.

However, when President Trump recently moved to define Antifa as a terrorist group, Todd complained this was a repressive measure that could be used against anyone because he didn’t know “what antifa is.”

Only the reader can judge whether this is malice or stupidity, but the age of social media has made it far more difficult to believe it’s the former. Rather than saying many journalists support antifa, it would be more accurate to say that many journalists are antifa and simply use “journalism” as a tactic. Bray himself has already fled the country in fear of President Trump, as several sympathetic media accounts dutifully reported.

The de facto partnership between Antifa and journalists was most comically revealed when Don Lemon joined a raid on a church on January 18, 2026.

The Cities Church was forced to suspend its worship service out of fear for its safety, with one child worrying aloud about whether their parents were going to die. According to the indictment, Lemon met with other organizers to discuss the operation before it took place, thus making him part of the conspiracy. Furthermore, the government claims Lemon thanked one of the organizers and pledged his silence about the target of the operation. He also said on his livestream: “We’re going to head to the operation. Again, we’re not going to give any, any of the information away” (i.e., telling anyone where they were heading and thus possibly alerting the target). He even told his audience, “We can’t say too much. We don’t want to give it up.”

Don Lemon and other defendants were charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and the KKK Act. It will be a useful test as to whether even the pretense of the “rule of law” exists. The former act was mostly an attempt to criminalize protests at abortion clinics, with criminalizing the disruption of church services added on to give Republicans cover to vote for it.

It was probably never meant to be used in this way. Minnesota Attorney General (and former black separatist) Keith Ellison gave the game away, protesting that the law was supposed to be used for abortion clinics. He has also argued for using it to protect mosques in the past. Either way, he and his political allies are horrified that the letter of the law is being obeyed and not the spirit of the law, which was simply to put pro-life Christians in jail.

The Ku Klux Klan Act is far more important. It criminalizes any attempt to use a conspiracy to deprive other Americans of their constitutional rights. This obviously includes freedom of worship, but it also includes freedom of speech. Clearly, the original intent (it was passed in 1871) and the way it has mostly been used were against right-wing groups. It provides a means for the federal government to break up any right-wing group that leftists or minorities can accuse of intimidating a protected class. However, in theory, it should apply to anyone.

Most of all, it should apply to Antifa. Consider what the aforementioned Mark Bray wrote in Antifa [P. 144] regarding Antifa’s approach to free speech:

Instead of privileging allegedly ‘neutral’ universal rights, anti-fascists prioritize the political project of destroying fascism and protecting the vulnerable regardless of whether their actions are considered violations of the free speech of fascists or not.

That is all very well for them, but a free nation of laws is defined by “neutral universal rights.” One could argue that Antifa is defined by the attempt to strip Americans of their constitutional rights. This does not simply have to be through violence but through threats to venues, participants, and attendees. Property destruction, media smears, doxing, and other tactics are familiar to all of us. For that reason, we all have a direct stake in the Don Lemon case.

The precedent has already been set that material support for Antifa, a terrorist organization, is a crime in the case of a violent attack. What is needed is precedent showing that Antifa, by its own nature, is inherently a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. Such a precedent would give the Trump administration a powerful new weapon against these groups. Perhaps more importantly, a conviction of Don Lemon would show that supposed journalists do not get to provide material support to such groups and participate in their actions while still pretending they are independent. It strikes the very root of the Antifa/media partnership that is a foundation of leftist power. The whole point of Antifa is to rob Americans of their constitutional right to free speech, and many journalists are eager co-conspirators in that effort.

In this case, too, X was filled with complaints in the days following, that the Trump administration had done nothing. It turns out the Trump administration did do something. It was actually preparing a serious case. In fact, the Trump administration did more than any presidential administration of our lifetime. Perhaps that is simply an indication of how little we have come to expect, as there is so much more to be done.

Yet the stakes in this case are far higher for us than many have understood. A conviction in the Don Lemon case will have effects even more sweeping than those secured in the Texas Antifa case. For supposed anti-system radicals, Antifa has never actually faced a real threat from the system, even at the level some pro-nationalist streamers take utterly for granted. That may be about to change, and we have everything to gain. As for Antifa, if Don Lemon goes down, more of them may want to join their “comrade” Bray in exile. If “the rule of law” suddenly applies to them, too, they will no longer be able to operate.

* * *

This article was originally published on April 3, 2026 on Substack. Kevin Taylor worked in conservative policy development in Washington, D.C. for over 20 years.

U.S. and Allied Lawmakers Demand UK's "48 Group" Open Its Books on Beijing's Elite Capture Network

 

Yang Tengbo, left, with the former Prince Andrew in October 2019 business networking event called “Pitch at the Palace.”

WASHINGTON — A transatlantic coalition of lawmakers formally demanded Thursday that the 48 Group Club — a London-based private organization with 500 members, deep access to the current British government, and links to an alleged Chinese spy accused of cultivating the former Prince Andrew — produce records documenting its relationships with individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the covert influence arm Beijing uses to groom foreign elites, suppress dissent, and shape the political environments of democratic nations.

Transatlantic lawmakers, including U.S. Senators and UK MPs, have formally demanded the 48 Group Club disclose documents regarding its ties to the Chinese Communist Party's "United Front" operations. The letter, signed by U.S. co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and UK counterparts, warns that the CCP views the group as a tool for "elite capture" and narrative shaping in Britain. 

Lawmakers specifically requested compliance, risk, and due-diligence assessments the 48 Group conducted when partnering with individuals affiliated with the CCP's United Front system.  They argue the group, which boasts over 500 members including prominent British figures, serves as a networking hub through which Beijing grooms Britain's elites to advance Chinese strategic objectives. 

The 48 Group Club has denied being a vehicle for Beijing, describing itself instead as an independent body promoting Sino-British relations, while also taking legal action to block a book titled Hidden Hand that details these alleged influence operations.  Despite these denials, the group's board has faced scrutiny over its high-profile connections, including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine, and its role in facilitating access to Chinese leadership. 

Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and leading UK lawmakers from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) have formally written to the 48 Group Club to demand transparency regarding the organization’s extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its “United Front” influence operations. The letter targets the organization’s deep-rooted links to Beijing’s “United Front” influence operations.

Moolenaar and Merkley, who serve as U.S. co-chairs of IPAC, sent the letter with Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP (IPAC UK Co-Chair, former leader of the Conservative Party) and Sarah Champion MP (IPAC UK Member).

In the letter, the lawmakers warn, “United Front work is a sophisticated blend of engagement, influence, and intelligence operations that the CCP employs to shape its political environment and advance its strategic objectives. These operations... seek to influence companies, associations, universities, think tanks, civic organizations, prominent individuals, and public opinion worldwide.”

They also write that “The CCP sees the 48 Group as a tool for its ability to shape British narratives and for elite capture. Reportedly with over 500 members, the 48 Group has been described as serving “as a meeting place and networking hub for friends of China, through which Beijing grooms Britain’s elites.” Given the 48 Group’s political access to the current UK government—the CCP is incentivized to cultivate influence with the organization to provide it with channels of leverage over the United Kingdom, its government, and, by extension, its British and international audience. In turn, senior leaders of the 48 Group have been on the record repeatedly spouting CCP talking points and propaganda.”

In conclusion, the lawmakers ask the 48 Group to turn over documents including, “compliance, risk, and due-diligence assessments that the 48 Group conducted when entering or expanding its partnerships with individuals affiliated with the CCP’s United Front system.”

https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/media/press-releases/transatlantic-lawmakers-demand-transparency-from-uk-48-group-over-ccp-united-front-ties