The Mar-a-Lago Raid Was About Burying the Fake Russia ICA

American Thinker 

In recent days, Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board Devin Nunes delivered a blunt confirmation on national television that aligns precisely with the investigative reporting I have published at American Thinker since the FBI’s unprecedented raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022.

The raid was never primarily a routine “classified documents” case. It was a desperate Deep State operation to recover and suppress a declassified congressional oversight report that exposed the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) as a politicized, flawed, and weaponized document at the heart of the Russia collusion hoax.

Nunes, who was then the House Intelligence Committee Chairman, led the painstaking investigation into the origins of the Russia narrative and repeatedly connected the dots. The House Intelligence Committee produced a detailed oversight report criticizing the ICA’s dishonest tradecraft: its reliance on uncorroborated sources (including the Steele dossier), its dismissal of dissenting analyst views, and its skewed conclusion that Vladimir Putin actively favored Donald Trump.

President Trump declassified this report before leaving office. According to Nunes, elements within the Intelligence Community feared Trump retained the only physical copy outside their control—making Mar-a-Lago a high-priority target.

This revelation should surprise no one who has followed the pattern of weaponization since 2016. The same officials and institutions that launched Crossfire Hurricane, pushed the Steele dossier, and sustained the Mueller investigation years after its premises collapsed were still operating in 2022—now under a Biden administration desperate to prevent Trump’s return.

In August 2022, I analyzed how the Mar-a-Lago raid had the hallmarks of political retribution rather than legitimate law enforcement. The timing (just before the midterms), the theatrical use of force, the shifting public justifications, and the selective focus raised immediate red flags.

My September 2022 follow-up highlighted how U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pushed back against the government’s overreach. Later pieces examined the dishonesty in the special counsel’s handling of the case and the broader pattern of selective prosecution.

In April 2026, after DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s significant declassifications, I noted that those documents represented “just the tip of the iceberg.” The HPSCI oversight report Nunes references is another critical piece of that iceberg—one that the raid appears designed to keep submerged.

Enter Kash Patel, who served as the lead investigator for then-Chairman Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee and was instrumental in the oversight work that produced the critical report on the ICA. Patel is now FBI Director, and in that role, he has made a stunning discovery: thousands of sensitive documents related to the Trump-Russia probe (Crossfire Hurricane) were hidden in multiple “burn bags” in a secret, off-the-books room at FBI headquarters. These documents should have been destroyed, but instead were hidden from accountability.

Patel has turned those materials over to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Chuck Grassley, and others (see Senator Grassley’s floor statement). This discovery further validates the view that the bureaucracy went to extraordinary lengths—including the Mar-a-Lago raid—to protect and bury evidence of misconduct in the original Russia collusion effort.

Patel revealed to Maria Bartiromo the scope of the fraud, along with promises that justice would be served:

FBI Director Kash Patel just confirmed that they are folding the stolen election into the entire Grand Conspiracy case and promises that arrests are coming very soon💥

“We’ve got all the evidence. I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re… pic.twitter.com/W70ULtAlwm

— Whiplash437 (@MrWhiplash_) May 7, 2026

I explained in January 2026 that all the Deep State acts form part of a broader, ongoing pattern that meets the legal definition of a RICO enterprise. This case will be litigated in Judge Aileen Cannon’s court in the Southern District of Florida (SDFL), where the Mar-a-Lago case originated and where accountability efforts are converging. Nunes has emphasized that statute-of-limitations issues are effectively moot in the context of this ongoing conspiracy—precisely because new overt acts continue the enterprise, keeping the clock from expiring.

If the pattern of alleged extreme measures holds—including the still-unresolved 2016 murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, which some have long suspected was connected to efforts to protect the Russia narrative—it illustrates the lengths to which certain actors may go when their apparatus is threatened. Whether that specific case is ever fully resolved or not, the broader record of concealment, raids, and document suppression speaks for itself.

Nunes’ latest comments tie it all together. The raid fits seamlessly into the continuum of efforts to protect the Russia hoax apparatus: from the original ICA, through the Mueller probe, the Ukraine impeachment, and right up to the 2022 search of a former (and future) president’s home.

With the Trump administration back in office and serious accountability efforts underway—including indictments and further declassifications—the public is finally getting a clearer picture.

On her final day as Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard released additional declassified documents accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of overseeing NIAID-funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance, funding for more than 120 biolabs in 30 countries, influencing intelligence assessments to downplay the lab-leak theory, and misleading Congress under oath (See her official video statement). She framed it as part of a broader cover-up on COVID origins, something that, in my view, is another element of the grand conspiracy to influence the 2020 election.

Nunes has emphasized that many of the same personnel who served under Obama continued into the Biden era in key roles at the DOJ, the FBI, and the Intelligence Community. The missing or hard-to-locate declassified report, combined with the burn-bag discoveries under Director Patel, underscores a deeper issue: elements of the permanent bureaucracy appear more interested in self-preservation than in transparency or the rule of law.

As I have long said, the truth will out—or, as some put it, truth seeks to be free. When a former president declassifies a document exposing misconduct in the intelligence community’s handling of a presidential election, and that community then raids his home to retrieve it—only for the same evidence to later surface in hidden FBI burn bags—we are far beyond normal bureaucratic friction. This is the behavior of an entrenched apparatus protecting its own.

My body of work at American Thinker—from the earliest days after the raid through the Gabbard declassifications and the RICO analysis—has consistently argued that Mar-a-Lago was about far more than boxes in a storage room. Devin Nunes’ confirmation on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, paired with Director Patel’s discoveries at the FBI, validates that analysis.

The American people deserve the full truth and real accountability. Not performative hearings or selective leaks, but a thorough reckoning with how the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus turned against a political opponent—twice. The more documents surface, the more Nunes and others speak out, and the more the record is corrected, the clearer it becomes: the Mar-a-Lago raid was the logical extension of the Russia collusion hoax. And the American Thinker readers who followed this story from the beginning were ahead of the curve.

Podcast thread for June 26

 

Anyone ever feel like they are sleepwalking?

The Next Stage of Iran’s War

Townhall 

In contemporary warfare, victory is increasingly determined by influencing key decision-makers and molding public opinion outside the combat theater.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Iran's strategic posturing.

For decades, Tehran cultivated sympathizers, promoted favorable narratives, amplified divisions within Western societies, and sought legitimacy through seemingly independent intermediaries while pursuing its hostile agenda.

Now, American policymakers must understand how these tactics may be employed during the next phase of the war.

With Operation Epic Fury over, the U.S. and Iran are negotiating. Washington entered the conflict with explicit objectives: deny Iran a nuclear path, dismantle its ballistic missile production, and sever its proxy ties. The efficacy of the U.S. campaign remains hotly contested.

Some argue that America’s expenditure of blood and treasure yielded little. Others assert that the campaign degraded Tehran’s offensive capabilities, despite its belligerent rhetoric.

 Irrespective, Iran claims victory in withstanding a withering onslaught from the world’s most powerful nation and is likely to change its information strategy, with consequences extending far beyond the Middle East.

Tehran’s statecraft has long focused on resistance, portraying a besieged state confronting superior adversaries, enduring despite the Big and Little Satan, with justice on its side. The suffering of its population, weaponized against the West, was used effectively to rally the faithful and generate support.

But winning is more attractive than surviving, and given Tehran’s weaknesses, the ayatollahs are strategic in declaring themselves victors. Each concession secured as negotiations proceed provides Tehran an opportunity to reposition itself from defender to vanguard.

Future framing is likely to focus on Western weakness, American decline, Tehran’s patience, and the effectiveness of Iranian warfighting and endurance. Every crisis in Washington will become evidence of decay. Every disagreement among Western allies will be proof of fragmentation.

Artificial intelligence offers unprecedented opportunities for narrative warfare. Since February 2026, Iran has dominated the information front with slick AI-generated Lego videos, pop-culture memes, and an onslaught of cognitive warfare operations, catching the Israelis and Americans flat-footed.

To be clear, Iranian information operations, carefully targeted at elites throughout the West, were underway before the war. Analysts, commentators, academics, advocacy groups, journalists, and foreign policy professionals played their part. Whether as sympathizers, fellow travelers, or outright agents, they mainstreamed messages that spread like a cancer from the brain of Western civilization to the body politic.

Eldar Mamedov, a Brussels-based foreign policy specialist serving as a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft – co-founded by Chairman Emeritus Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University, and Executive Vice President Trita Parsi – illustrates how these ecosystems function.

Quincy launched in 2019 with money from the left-leaning, Soros-funded Open Society Foundations and the libertarian/conservative Charles Koch Foundation, united by a commitment to shift U.S. foreign policy away from perceived militarism toward an anti-interventionist stance.

Consistent with this, Quincy advocated engagement and accommodation with Iran, while Parsi, Mamedov, and others criticized analysts and political figures favoring a more hawkish posture.

Prior to joining Quincy, Parsi founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which itself became the subject of criticism among circles opposed to the Iranian regime, including some in the divided Iranian expatriate community, as being too accommodating toward Tehran. In 2009, a Washington Timesarticle alleged Parsi was in communication with Iran’s UN ambassador, and NIAC was acting as an undeclared lobby for Tehran. Parsi was never investigated over the allegations.

More recently, The Free Press disclosed that Parsi, a green card holder reported to have Iranian and Swedish passports, is under investigation by the State Department “in a case that revives long-running questions over Tehran’s influence in Washington.” While the State Department went on record indicating that it will not deport him now, it maintained that it can “unapologetically terminate the legal status of any foreign national who participates in activities that undermine America’s national security.”

Mamedov, for his part, has experience in European institutions and worked on issues involving Iran, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. A former Latvian diplomat, he remains active in international dialogue networks, such as Pugwash Council, but was suspended from his advisory position in the EU Parliament in 2022 in an internal investigation into an influence-buying scandal. His affiliation with Quincy, however, continued.

Because influence campaigns succeed through narrative control rather than overt propaganda, Tehran intentionally leverages think tanks, universities, thought leaders, and the media to legitimize its goals. The crude rhetoric of Iranian state television – including chants of “Death to America” –generates Western hostility, but messages laundered through experts receive more serious consideration.

While less powerful states utilize asymmetrical tactics like cognitive warfare, stronger actors like the U.S. increasingly undermine their own strategic dominance by failing to do so. Overly reliant on military and economic power, U.S. authorities ignore the manipulation of human perception and institutional trust at their own peril.

Fake social media accounts, manipulated videos, anonymous websites, and coordinated hashtags remain a concern. But the most effective campaigns operate by shaping narratives and elite assumptions.

 The battle over the final outcome of the Iran war is underway, and legitimacy, prestige, and perception are the coin of the realm. Tehran seeks to convince global audiences that it remains a fixture of the Middle East landscape and resistance is futile, or at least not cost-effective, while accommodation is prudent.

With combat operations winding down, cognitive warfare will determine what happens next.

America Is a Young Country

American Thinker 

Only three generations separate me from America’s founding.  My maternal grandfather was born in 1861.  His father was born while Thomas Jefferson was still alive.  That’s one reason I think of America as a young country, with another 250 years ahead as the world’s beacon of liberty.

It’s common for the doomsters to portray America as a nation in decline, if not one on its last legs.  There’s always the shadow of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the whole notion of inevitable decline that permeates liberal thinking.  The problem with that comparison is that America has very little in common with the Roman Empire.  To begin with, we are not an “empire.”  Also, unlike Rome, which was determined to conquer as much territory as possible and was rebuffed only when it ran up against the ancient German tribes, the U.S. has no serious interest in expanding its territory beyond its current size.  (A strategic  arrangement with Greenland is possible, but it’s hard to imagine that unpopulated mass of ice as another “state.”)

The greatest danger to our next 250 years is socialism.  Benjamin Franklin’s remark at the close of the Constitutional Convention that America is “a republic if you can keep it” has served as a warning to centuries of Americans that democracy must be actively defended.  Ironically, one of the greatest threats to our democracy are those liberal sophists like socialists now running for Congress in New York, who claim that Donald Trump and other conservatives are intent on destroying our democracy.  It is liberals, and by extension progressives and socialists, who are the greatest threat.  They can speak of destroying democracy because they know a lot about it.

Socialism does pose a threat, as shown by the election of a number of socialists from the Democrat party.  But the idea that socialism is taking over the country is very much an illusion.  Zohran Mamdani and his kind get a lot of media attention, but the reality is that only 36 percent of Americans have a positive view of socialism.  (Yes, 62 percent of young Americans say they favor socialism over capitalism, but wait till they begin paying taxes.)  A declared socialist will never be elected president, at least not for a very long time, though progressives like Gavin Newsom and AOC are close enough to socialism to pose a problem.  Even those admitted socialists who are elected in places like New York City; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. will probably make a mess of things and not remain in office for long.  Despite some confusion and unwarranted pessimism, over 60 percent of Americans recognize that America is a land of freedom and opportunity and that socialism is not the path to either.

America’s economic future is especially bright, though it is not just economics: Our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are the cornerstone of our democracy.  We enjoy a degree of freedom unknown to any other society in history: freedom of speech, of religion, of association; free and fair elections, a just and speedy trial before our peers, the right to bear arms, and the rest.  We should never take those freedoms for granted, and no amount of material wealth would make up for their loss.

Still, Americans do enjoy material well-being.  Unlike many in my grandmother’s generation, who had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity, nearly all Americans today enjoy comfortable housing, abundant food, world-class medical care, and workplace opportunities unknown to Americans in the past.  Most of those who do not, including the homeless who live in makeshift shelters, do so out of their own bad choices.  (One study revealed that some twenty percent of the homeless in our country are mentally ill, but eighty percent are entirely capable of working if they choose to do so, and there are more than enough jobs to go around.  According to a 2026 survey, there were 7.6 million jobs going unfilled in the non-farm sector.)

America is a young, vibrant country with great opportunities for those who choose to work and with even greater opportunities in the future.  The rapid application of A.I. in the workplace is making employees more productive and leading to large annual wage increases.  In 2025, wages grew by 4.3 percent, outstripping 2.4 percent inflation.  At this rate, in fifty years — the working life of many — the real, inflation-adjusted average monthly wage in America will be $13,000 instead of the current approximate $5,000.  In other words, the average standard of living will be 2.6 times greater than it is today.  It’s not necessary to be highly educated or unusually talented to take advantage of this wage growth.  An everyday job in retail, construction, or teaching will produce affluence and security.

What is remarkable, in fact, is that America has such a large middle class in comparison with countries like China and Cuba that claim to be workers’ paradises.  Socialism does not produce a worker’s paradise.  It produces both economic and personal enslavement — an existence with no guarantee of personal freedoms and very little opportunity.  The amazing thing about America is that for 250 years, not only have we kept our democracy, but we have so consistently afforded opportunity to nearly all our citizens.  America is unique in this respect, and we should be proud of having done so.

I believe that the future of America is brighter than almost anyone can imagine — certainly brighter than the liberal commentators in the mainstream media suggest.  (How will they be celebrating our 250th birthday, and what will they say about our next 250 years?)  Few could have predicted the rise of the internet and its contribution to the everyday life of Americans.  One used to have to thumb through heavy tomes to double-check basic facts; now one can do so in a few seconds online.  No one can really predict what the contribution of A.I. will be, and no one can predict what other, even greater technologies lie ahead.

Americans should be celebrating with real joy on our 250th birthday, because what we are celebrating is the rise of the greatest, most compassionate, most equitable society ever seen.  America is indeed a great democracy, if only we can keep it.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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After 250 Years, Our American Republic Is Coming Apart

The crisis we face today is existential. Too many Americans, both native-born and naturalized, 

have been taught to despise their country.

The Federalist 

If it sometimes seems like the American cultural mainstream is ignorant of the role of Christianity in the founding of the United States, or even hostile towards it, that’s because it is.

The story told about America’s founding by the corporate media, book publishers, libraries and other institutions is one in which the Christian faith, so central to our history and founding, is almost wholly absent.

I don’t mean that anecdotally. A recent report by conservative book publisher Brave Books analyzed more than 300 books across 25 reading lists curated by children’s publishers, public libraries, and other institutions for our country’s upcoming 250th anniversary. The report found that these lists contain zero titles that directly addressed religious liberty, faith, or the role of Christianity in the founding of the United States.

Instead, the books on these reading lists included titles like Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped for Kids and Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Born on the Water, a picture book that’s part of the discredited and ahistorical 1619 Project. According to Brave Books, the central themes of these reading lists were the American Revolution, minority perspectives, Black history, civil rights and women’s history. But nothing about the Christian faith — or even about religious freedom, which is enshrined in our First Amendment.

In other words, the lists are nothing more than left-wing propaganda designed to erode patriotism and reframe American history as a catalogue of crimes rather than a noble endeavor in republican self-government. Their purpose is to destroy patriotism in the hearts and minds of young Americans and inculcate hatred and contempt for our history, our founders, and our people.

I mention this not because it will be news to anyone who has been paying attention to the drift of American culture over the past half-century, but because it illustrates what a fraught thing our 250th anniversary has become. Celebrating this milestone as a nation, together, is no longer possible because, practically speaking, we are no longer a single nation.

The simple yet shocking reality is that generations of Americans have been taught since early childhood to hate their country and despise their heritage. How can you celebrate a nation you have been taught is morally corrupt, hypocritical, and responsible for a legacy of oppression and violence? You can’t, which is why so many Americans are greeting our semiquincentennial with a shrug or an apology.

And that points to a deeper problem with the state of America in 2026, a problem that won’t be solved with better reading lists or institutional reform or a GOP victory in 2026 or 2028. The problem is this: too many people in this country either despise America or are completely indifferent to it.

Among these are the tens of millions of foreigners now living in the United States who don’t just reject the natural law principles upon which our form of government rests, but also have no intention of adopting American culture or an American way of life. Many of them have made little or no effort even to learn the English language. They are here, essentially, to make money, and have no real vested interest in America as such.

Many others are not just indifferent but actively hostile toward their adopted country. This tendency seems especially pronounced among the adult children of immigrants, who grew up in the United States but were taught by liberal public schools and the mainstream culture to despise their country and resent it. They essentially revived the Third World politics of their parents’ home countries and adopted the anti-colonialist mentality of their leftist teachers and professors.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. For a long time, open-borders advocates in academia and the media argued that the Third World politics of immigrants would get washed out through assimilation, and by the time second- and third-generation immigrant families gained real political power, they would have shed their Third World sensibilities. But what we have found out is that under conditions of mass immigration, that simply isn’t how it works. Instead of shedding their third-worldism, immigrants and their children are assimilated into an American mainstream that itself has been captured by Third World politics.

The predictable result is a growing category of Americans, both immigrant and native-born, who are not merely indifferent toward their country but actively despise it. Such people now account for something like half our population, including both the native-born and recent immigrants and the children of recent immigrants. These are the people who reliably vote Democrat, for candidates and agendas bent on remaking the U.S. into something other than what our founders created and intended. They follow Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi, placing the “true” American founding in 1619 because to them, America was founded on exploitation and violence — a legacy that continues to the present day.

Consider the cadre of candidates connected to the Democrats Socialists of America that are finding electoral success in deep-blue areas. In New York, self-described democratic socialist Aber Kwas, an American-born daughter of Palestinian refugees, just won the Democratic primary for State Senate in District 12 (Queens). Kwas has said publicly that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were America’s fault, brought on by our supposed “system of capitalism, racism, white supremacy and Islamophobia.”

As the DSA continues its takeover of the Democratic Party establishment, this kind of anti-American rhetoric hardly stands out anymore. It is regularly espoused by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Reps. Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and others. And those who hold such views appear to be ascendent within the party. All three of the New York candidates Mamdani endorsed won their primaries this week; all three of them are avowed socialists with virulently anti-American views. One of them, Darializa Avila Chevalier, was a founder of was a founder of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an anti-American, antisemitic organization with the stated goal to “undermine and eradicate America,” and achieve “the total eradication of Western civilization” through the use of violence.

Such people cannot celebrate 250 years of American history because they are ashamed of that history and they are opposed to the very existence of America as it is today. And it’s not just radical socialist candidates in New York. Just last week an Economist/YouGov survey found that 38 percent of Democrats admitted they are ashamed to be Americans. Another recent survey found less than half of Democrats agreed with the statement, “I am proud to be an American.” And a new NBC News poll found that overall, 56 percent of Americans are proud of their country, but only 29 of Democrats.

The message, injected into our cultural mainstream for decades now, that America is fundamentally imperialistic and exploitative, has gotten through. We now have large numbers of Americans that might at times pay lip service to things like free speech, separation of powers, and civil rights, but they don’t really believe in these things because they don’t really believe in America. They will gladly cheat in elections, for example, if they can get away with it, or pack the courts if the judiciary impedes their agenda. They don’t really believe in equal treatment under the law, and have no real interest in preserving the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They think these things were just cynical ploys to oppress women and blacks, or to expand American empire, and they hope to amass enough raw political power to stage a revolution, jettison all of it, and institute a new form of government that treats citizens differently based on which group they belong to.

This is an existential crisis for our country. The conditions for the crisis were created by both Democrats and Republicans over the course of decades. Both parties supported open borders and multiculturalism, and demonized anyone who objected that radically changing the ethnic makeup of the country through mass immigration would imperil the republic. But those who objected were right. Mass immigration and multiculturalism are a fatal combination, and here on the eve of our 250th anniversary, they have brought forth their poisoned fruit.

What can be done about it? One immediate step that could be taken, if the Trump administration and the GOP had the political will (which they don’t seem to right now) would be mass deportations coupled with mass denaturalization. Get the people who have come here only to make money, or stage a revolution, out of the country. Mobilize the National Guard, if that’s what it takes. If American cities riot, as they did in Minneapolis, send the National Guard into those places and declare martial law. If Democrat mayors and governors impede these operations, arrest them.

If that were accomplished, the native-born Americans who hate our country could probably be managed and contained. Removing illegal immigrants and anti-American naturalized citizens would deprive them of a crucial voting bloc and support. It is still the case, even at this late hour, that most Americans love their country and don’t want to see it fundamentally transformed. But time is running out, and if patriotic leaders don’t act decisively, there’s a good chance America as we know it today won’t be around to celebrate the 275th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Greenspan Was The Perfect Fed Chair. That Is Not a Compliment

Greenspan Was The Perfect Fed Chair. That Is Not a Compliment

Connor O’Keefe for Mises.org

On Monday, Alan Greenspan died at age 100. The former Federal Reserve Chair spent eighteen and a half years at the helm of the central bank from 1987 to 2006—a total of five terms under four presidents.

As with any death of a prominent figure, the news led many to reflect on Greenspan’s legacy and, in this case, debate how he stacks up with other Federal Reserve chairs. And, although there was plenty of respect for Greenspan as a person from more establishment-friendly sources, broadly, the consensus on his performance as Fed Chair ran from mixed to negative.

Even the tributes and obituaries that leaned the most into the narrative that Greenspan was the so-called “Maestro”—or the brilliant, steady, data-driven, almost priestly public servant who helped engineer a long period of durable growth and low inflation—admitted that the collapse of the housing bubble and “Great Recession” that kicked off shortly after Greenspan left the Fed greatly tarnished his image.

The critics who understand that Greenspan did not merely miss the signs of that impending economic catastrophe but actively created and fueled it were much more scathing in their judgments of his time at the Fed.

However, this entire discussion is flawed. Because it rests on the false assumption that the Federal Reserve and all its intellectual backers in the political class can be taken at their word: that the Fed is an institution that is genuinely capable of and interested in bringing about a stable, growing economy, and, therefore, that a good Fed Chair is someone who simply manages the economy well. That is all a lie.

The Federal Reserve, like every other central bank in history, exists to enrich the political class at the expense of everyone else. It is, and has always been, a state-backed banking cartel that uses the government’s perceived power over the monetary and banking system to remove the limits that market competition places on banks that deceptively create and loan out extra claims to the money deposited in their customers’ accounts. That is, in effect, a major subsidy for state-chartered banks. But it means our money is far less secure than it would be if banks were forced to face that market pressure.

On top of that, in the five decades since the federal government “temporarily” suspended the dollar’s tie to gold—which was a complete political takeover of money—the Fed has allowed the political class to transcend previous fiscal limits and fund their various ballooning federal programs through inflation (or money printing). That has allowed the government to unilaterally impose heavy taxes on the population that are barely noticeable at first, only manifesting later as this accelerating decline in the value of our money.

It has also given government officials the means to artificially lower interest rates. Doing so creates an artificial boom and makes the economy look strong. But it also warps production—decoupling what’s being produced from the wants of end consumers and tricking investors into ignoring the material constraints that make some projects impossible to finish. It is that so-called malinvestment that necessitates painful periods of correction, which we call recessions. So it is the Fed artificially lowering interest rates that traps us in this recurring nightmare known as the boom-bust cycle.

In other words, the Fed is not some wise economic priesthood protecting us from economic trouble. It is the political class’s primary tool for economically ripping everyday Americans off to the benefit of themselves and their well-connected friends in the “private” sector. And, once that is understood, it’s hard to conclude that Alan Greenspan was anything other than the perfect Fed Chair. Because his job was not to bring about lasting economic stability. It was to carry out or even accelerate the Fed’s extortion while keeping the public blind to what was actually going on.

Greenspan was in a uniquely good position to do this well for several reasons.

First, as Frederick Sheehan laid out in his excellent 2010 biography of the man, Greenspan was primarily a social climber. His priority throughout his career was not advancing a specific economic vision or engaging in serious economic scholarship, it was advancing his own personal status. And, as a result, he was happy to adopt or discard economic beliefs as needed to achieve that.

In the world of professional, establishment-friendly economists, there is no position as prestigious as Fed Chair. Greenspan’s willingness to pivot to any doctrine and abandon any previously-proclaimed principle to attain and maintain the prestige that comes with the position gave him a level of flexibility that made him perfect for the role.

Even better, from the Fed-dependent establishment’s perspective, Greenspan had a reputation from his early career for being an advocate of the free market and a proponent of the gold standard. Regardless of whether those beliefs were genuine or a calculated attempt to gain clout in his social circles at a time when Keynesianism was falling a bit out of fashion, Greenspan entirely abandoned that supposed commitment to laissez-faire and sound money as Fed Chair. However, that reputation gave him credibility with people who might otherwise have been suspicious, or even opposed to central banking.

Finally, the other attribute that made Greenspan an ideal Fed Chair was how remarkably boring and unclear he was when speaking about economics. Even before he was in government, when he worked as an economic consultant for Wall Street firms, Greenspan was known to give talks that nobody would understand and few would attend if given the choice.

That, however, is an excellent attribute for a Fed Chair. The political class does not want a lot of public interest in the Fed or dramatic reactions to what Fed officials are saying. Greenspan’s inability to speak in anything but uninteresting and unclear technical jargon helped keep traders from panicking at an offhand comment, and it fed the impression that monetary policy is closer to engineering than it is to politics. And further, that the Fed board was navigating those important but boring engineering problems in ways few could even understand.

Together, Greenspan’s willingness to adopt and abandon economic beliefs and principles on a whim, his reputation as a proponent of sound money, and his ability to say nothing of substance in the most unexciting way possible gave the Fed the room it needed to dramatically accelerate its inflationary monetary policy. The Fed was able to keep interest rates artificially low for years under Greenspan. And it was during the Greenspan years that the central bank had the room to bring about our current era of “financialization,” where asset markets are primarily driven by expectations of future Fed policy and financial firms enjoy access to a level of government bailouts not seen anywhere else in the economy.

However, the party can never last forever. When the economic house of cards built up by decades of low interest rates collapsed in 2008, Greenspan’s public reputation suffered. But even that was useful. It made him a convenient scapegoat for those who wouldn’t buy the argument that the Fed played no role in the crash. So now, if the Fed deserved any blame for the recession, it was, at most, because Greenspan made a few mistakes as Chair rather than being the predictable result of decades of escalating inflationism that had started long before his term.

That meant that, while Greenspan the man faced some vague personal blame for the downturn from some corners, the philosophy that drove the Fed during his tenure survived the Great Recession and continues to drive the Federal Reserve to this day. He served his true role perfectly.

Supreme Court Affirms Temporary Status For Foreign Migrants Is Temporary

The Federalist 

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s efforts to revoke temporary status for foreign nationals in the United States on Thursday. The decision was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the dissent.

The ruling in the consolidated cases Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot dates back to Trump’s bid to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from large swaths of Syrian and Haitian nationals residing in America under the program. As The Federalist previously reported, the challengers contesting the president’s decision argued that the statutory provisions governing TPS “do not bar courts from reviewing an administration’s actions on the program and that the government is required to undertake certain steps (ex. consultation and assessment of a country’s conditions) before implementing such policies.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito determined that the TPS statute does, in fact, bar federal courts from reviewing “non-constitutional claims” like those brought by the challengers. He further noted that the “sole constitutional claim” brought in the Miot case — that the Trump administration’s revocation of TPS for Haitians was racially motivated — “will likely fail.”

“Viewing all the relevant evidence, we conclude that Miot respondents are unlikely to prove that race was a motivating factor in the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation,” Alito wrote. “It follows that they are not entitled to interim relief on their equal protection claim.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s opinion in full. Meanwhile, Alito and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined all parts except as to a section that argued, “In [Miot], we need not resolve whether the TPS statute meets that clear-statement rule because we conclude that Miot respondents’ constitutional claim is unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

While joining Alito’s opinion in full, Thomas authored a concurrence laying out “two more fundamental problems” with the lawsuit brought by challengers to Trump’s TPS revocation for Haitians.

The Bush 41 appointee noted that, in addition to being “meritless” under Supreme Court precedent, the Miot respondents’ equal protection claim “was also beyond the District Court’s jurisdiction.” He further argued that, “even assuming jurisdiction, the equal protection claim fails for the additional reason that aliens have no equal protection rights against the Federal Government.”

Writing for the dissent, Kagan argued that the TPS statute does permit federal courts to review “whether the Secretary adhered to the procedures it mandates” and that “the evidence is there, plain to see” to support the Miot respondents’ claim that Trump’s TPS revocation for Haitians is racially motivated.

“Once that much is established, the case for interim relief is made: There is no dispute that the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm absent postponement of the TPS decisions,” Kagan wrote. “So the plaintiffs are entitled to stay in this country while these suits go forward. Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”

The high court’s decision reverses the district courts’ rulings against the president and remands the cases back to those courts for further proceedings consistent with the majority opinion.

The Tenets Of Islam: License To Kill

The Tenets Of Islam: License To Kill

Because the religion’s clearly stated rules are hostile to Western norms and our Constitution, Western governments fail their citizens by refusing to address it.

Shari Goodman for American Thinker 

Since Islam’s arrival upon the world stage 1,400 years ago, when an illiterate Arab by the name of Mohammad, born in Mecca, claimed to be a messenger sent by God (whom he called “Allah”) to spread Allah’s word, approximately 270 million human beings have been slaughtered in Islam’s and Allah’s name, according to the Center for the Study of Political Islam. (Approximately 120 million Africans, 80 million Hindus, 60 million Christians, and 10 million Buddhists.)

Until fairly recently, Westerners were unfamiliar with Islam or its practitioners. However, since Congress enacted America’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, our doors have been flung wide open to a Third World, non-Western population whose values and norms are the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian principles that form the basis for our national foundation as outlined in our Constitution.

Unlike any other designated religion, Islam commands its followers not only to spread Islam throughout the globe but, in addition, to create a global Islamic Caliphate where no other religion but Islam reigns supreme. It explicitly commands adherents to “slay the unbelievers until all of dominion is for Allah” (Quran: Sura 9.5).

Muslims, when confronted with the above verse, will beg to differ and reply that the above verse is referenced only when in battle. However, while some genuinely believe that, it’s equally likely that they will proceed to use taqiyya (the right to lie when used to advance Islam).

From the pages of Reliance of the Traveler (p. 746 - 8.2), we learn that, while speaking the truth is appropriate when it achieves its purpose, lying is equally appropriate when the truth is unavailable:

Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N: i.e., when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory... it is religiously precautionary in all cases to employ words that give a misleading impression...

Furthermore, Muslims fail to inform the public that Islam is dualistic. Islam divides the world into Dar Al Islam (the house of Islam, where all Muslims reside) and Dar Al Harb (the House of War, where all non-Muslims reside).

The laws of Sharia (Islamic law) do not apply to non-believers in the House of War. So yes, while Islam forbids the murder of Muslims, it does not forbid the murder of non-Muslims. Furthermore, Islam is in a perpetual war with Dar Al Harb until there is no other God but Allah, and all other religions are required to be erased from the face of the earth. (“Fight them so that there is no more rebellion, and religion, all of it, is for Allah only. Allah must have no rivals.” (Ishaq: 324))

Since Mohammad attracted few followers in Mecca, he fled to Medina, where he became a warlord by pillaging nearby villages, raping the women, and enslaving the people he captured, rather than being put to death. While there, he married a six-year-old girl named Aisha and consummated the marriage when she was only nine. In this way, pedophilia and child marriages are practices found and encouraged throughout Islamic countries where Mohammad is considered the “perfect man.”

To entice his followers, Mohammed declared that all captured female slaves are spoils of war to be at their mercy and to be used as their captor sees fit. This means that, within Sharia law, it’s legal, not criminal, to rape non-Muslim women. Sexual exploitation is a right accorded to Muslims in Mohammad’s teachings and the Quran.

This is precisely why a quarter of a million British girls and women have been identified as rape victims by Muslim grooming gangs since the importation of Muslims onto the shores of Great Britain:

 When confronted by British law enforcement, they will often claim ignorance of British laws and reiterate that the rape of non-Muslims is permitted under Sharia law:

To up the ante, Mohammad promised those who die as martyrs (a designation bestowed upon those who die in the name of Islam) will be welcomed to a paradise in which 72 beautiful young virgins will fulfill their every pleasure and desire. To die in the name of Islam is to reach the highest honor, and it is precisely why every act of terrorism is preceded by the battle cry “Allahu Akbar!” (Our God is greater!)

Few Americans have read the Quran or the translation of Sharia Law as outlined in The Reliance of the Traveler, a sanctified English version of Sharia by the leading Sunni university, Al-Azhar, in Cairo, Egypt. However, since the exponential influx of large numbers of Muslims onto our shores after 9/11, the increase in mosques now numbering over 3,000 littering our cityscapes, and the Islamic call to prayer heard five times throughout the day in some American cities, Americans are becoming aware of the danger Islam poses not only to our Constitutional Republic but to our very security and safety.

Clearly, the Quran, unlike any other religious doctrine, affords Muslims the license to kill, maim, rape, and steal from non-Muslims. The question every American must ask is why Islam has not been designated as a foreign political movement that poses a threat to each one of us. Those who are given a license to kill by following a text that permits and encourages them to kill in the name of Islam pose an existential threat from within and a much greater threat than those from without.

Every nation’s duty and priority must be to safeguard the security and safety of its citizens. Thus, it is imperative for the Trump administration to address this threat by redesignating Islam as a foreign terrorist organization, closing all mosques, and designating the Muslim Brotherhood and its many front groups, such as CAIR, as terrorist organizations to be outlawed within the United States.

Our Republic and our very lives depend on it!

Image created using AI.