Communism Hasn't Been Done Right. (Yeah, That’s The Ticket.)

American Thinker 

An admission: I am not a fan of communism, socialism, fascism, or Nazism.

So, I have a bias.

That said, I also have an open mind.

And there seem to be lots of people who are fan-boys/girls/trans of the Democratic Socialists of America (“DSA”) who think that having the conglomerate known as the Democrats/Progressive/Liberals (DPLs) embrace them is the right move.

I am willing to accept, with sufficient proof (whenever that comes), that the problem with communism/socialism is one of poor implementation.

After all, great minds such as Noam Chomsky, Richard D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick, and Owen Jones seem to suggest that.

So, I got to thinking about other brilliant ideas that simply have been poorly implemented, but for that would succeed, as would communism/socialism.

Many of these persons have won Darwin Awards.

Some possess skills in their respective areas:

Like the owner of Segway, who, while riding around his estate, learned that scootering along a narrow cliffside path actually can send you plummeting into a river, if not done right.

Or the nutrition fanatic who, for years, was a carrot-eater and set out to show that drinking a gallon of carrot juice every single day to “purify your body” does not cause fatal Vitamin A toxicity and total liver failure. Well, when his liver failed, it proved that he just did not do it right.

Then there are the social media Einsteins trying to demonstrate that:

Holding your urine will not cause damage to the bladder. It doesn’t have to. It just has not been done right.

Eating a tablespoonful of dry cinnamon does not choke you. It doesn’t have to. It just has not been done right.

What is most encouraging about the near-guaranteed success of the upcoming implementation of communism/socialism, i.e., it being done right? The cast of characters:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14): Armed with an overpriced Boston University international relations degree, her pre-political résumé boils down to slinging cocktails and a pathetic home-based children’s book startup that died instantly.

Rashida Tlaib (MI-12): Textbook career grifter who leveraged her law degree into instant taxpayer-funded state gigs and cozy progressive nonprofit sinecures.

Ilhan Omar (MN-05): Glided from a political science degree straight into municipal nutrition busywork and policy aide handouts—a lifelong parasite on government institutions. Though, to her credit, she prepped for her Feeding Our Future fraud by having a background in nutrition.

Ayanna Pressley (MA-07): Dropped out of college to latch onto congressional staff gigs and city council, scoring a flawless lifetime on the government teat with zero private-sector contamination.

Greg Casar (TX-35): Vaulted from elite campus activism into a decade of cushy municipal/federal paychecks, utterly unburdened by anything resembling private-sector reality.

Summer Lee (PA-12): Weaponized her law degree exclusively for pro-protest organizing and activist directing before sliding into legislative luxury

Delia Ramirez (IL-03): Spent her whole adult life paddling in the subsidized kiddie pool of social-service nonprofits and foundations before claiming a permanent legislative throne.

Claire Valdez (NY-07): Effortless pivot from university customer service to UAW union organizer, then straight to a sweet six-figure federal teat.

Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13): Columbia sociology PhD drifter, public defender investigator, and full-time agitator before parachuting into federal office

Melat Kiros (CO-01): Brief, disastrous corporate law firm flameout (fired after a year), then scampering back to doctoral academia and activism to unseat a 30-year incumbent.

Adam Hisham Hamawy (NJ-12): A plastic surgeon and veteran who, as a bright-eyed young medical student, played eager character witness and travel companion for the Blind Sheik—Omar Abdel-Rahman, the convicted terrorist mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and seditious conspiracy—even volunteering with a Bosnia charity later exposed as an al-Qaeda front. Nothing says “serious national security judgment” like vouching for a jihadist cleric.

Zohran Mamdani (NYC Mayor): Ultimate nepo spawn of a wealthy filmmaker mommy and Marxist professor daddy; résumé padded with housing counseling and failed semi-pro hip-hop rapping

Julia Salazar (NY Senate): Early-20s anti-abortion Christian conservative campus zealot who magically rebranded as a fire-breathing Marxist—100% identity cosplay, zero actual workplace grit.

Jabari Brisport (NY Senate): Morphed from public school drama teacher/actor to suddenly pretending he can author multi-billion-dollar state budgets.

Kristen Gonzalez (NY Senate): Climbed the Amex tech product manager ladder while simultaneously rallying to burn down the capitalist machine that cut her paychecks.

Aber Kawas (NY Senate): Youth wasted exclusively as a so-called Palestinian community organizer/admin before presuming to dictate transit budgets for millions. (There has never been a county called Palestine, hence, so-called.)

Phara Souffrant Forrest (NY Assembly): Actual paramedic/nurse experience, but strictly confined to heavily unionized public healthcare grift before legislative lifetime.

Tiffany Cabán (NYC Council): Elite law degree funneled into public defender role before permanent taxpayer-funded council teat, blissfully insulated from real markets.

Alexa Avilés (NYC Council): 20-year comfy ride on private foundation grants and nonprofit advocacy salaries before hopping aboard the municipal payroll.

Diana Moreno (NY Assembly): Non-profit immigrant worker advocate straight to inheriting a legislative seat—eternally tethered to subsidized grievance work.

David Orkin (NY Assembly): Progressive labor attorney filing endless grievances against businesses, then legislating rules for the private sector he’s never dirtied his hands in.

Eon Huntley (NY Assembly): PTA president and boutique retail drone now lecturing the state on macro urban real estate development.

Illapa Sairitupac (NY Assembly): Morphed from a professional tenant organizer and climate warrior to rewriting complex housing tax codes.

Samantha Kattan (NY Assembly): Decade as professional community tenant/parent organizer before stepping into an assembly seat to boss around state housing policy.

Janeese Lewis George (D.C. Mayor): Straight city council ladder to mayor after assistant AG/progressive activist gigs—zero private financial oversight on the résumé.

Alex Lee (CA Assembly): Youngest legislator fresh out of legislative staffer drudgery and gig-economy driving; all economic wisdom forged in a college dorm.

Zaynab Mohamed (MN Senate): Civil rights advocate/municipal policy aide to the state senate at 27—professional worldview that never escaped the public sector bubble.

Nikil Saval (PA Senate): Architecture critic, literary book editor, and labor organizer now pretending to craft Pennsylvania’s infrastructure and housing budgets.

Abdul El-Sayed (US Senate MI): That oh-so-earnest Muslim unlicensed physician, DSA-adjacent grifter and failed gubernatorial also-ran who’s now auditioning for U.S. Senate by crooning in a vomit-inducing “Blue’s Clues” parody ad about getting money out of politics, all while pushing Medicare for All and full-throated Israel-bashing like it’s his personal jihad.

Admittedly, I did not include arrest and criminal records due to space constraints, but let’s face it, the Founders were considered lawbreakers and/or were arrestees.

Though, with apologies to Lloyd Bentsen, “I have studied the Founders, and these people are no Founders.”

Still, they do seem to ooze the experiences, backgrounds, slither, and skills one would expect are desired by the DPLs to remake the USA in the image of the communists/socialists/fascists/Nazis/Muslims. So, for DPLs, if anyone can do it right, the aforementioned can.

We will see how well they do.

Podcast thread for July 17

 

Blehhhh. :(

As AG, Todd Blanche Will Finally Seek Justice for Dems' Dirty Lawfare

Townhall 

It's easy to forget, but from 2022 through 2024, Democrats engaged in some of the most reckless, republic-destabilizing actions since their partisan forebears fired on Fort Sumter in 1861. In colluding to prosecute then-former (and future) President Donald Trump on sham legal grounds across four different jurisdictions and three separate prosecutors, Democrats' lawfare complex thugs acted in a manner more befitting tribal warlords of a third-world hellhole than elected officials in the greatest country on earth. They crossed a line that never should have been crossed, effectuating the old Stalinist creed, attributed to Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria: "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

Many have conveniently forgotten or moved on, but we are still learning more about the Democrats' depths of lawfare depravity.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have learned more about so-called special counsel Jack Smith, the one-man wrecking ball who brought the twin federal probes against Trump in Washington, D.C. (the 2020 election case), and Florida (the classified documents case). Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed that Smith's own henchmen may, ironically, have committed the same classified documents offenses for which Smith prosecuted Trump. Grassley also revealed Smith obtained text messages from 44 Republican members of Congress—despite the fact Smith has explicitly denied doing exactly that.

That looks an awful lot like perjury. And perjury is actually just the tip of the iceberg. There are myriad other crimes that Smith and his primary colluders—namely, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis—likely committed. For instance, federal law criminalizes conspiring to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person ... in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States." That is an awfully good match for the lawfare cabal's coordinated assault on Trump and the rule of law.

There has thus far been no accountability for Democrats' debilitating lawfare. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, to her credit, oversaw the indictment of scandal-plagued former FBI Director James Comey, but the case was dismissed on bogus procedural grounds. The same thing happened to the Bondi Justice Department's indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who in 2018 had sought statewide office in the Empire State on a Beria-esque platform: James said her run for office was motivated by a desire to hold "that man in the White House" accountable. Forget about securing the blessings of liberty or meting out justice. For some, it's just "orange man bad" all day long.

Enough already. These scoundrels must pay for the havoc they unleashed upon the American people and the torch they took to our rule of law. Democrats drone on endlessly about "norms," but their lawfare cabal blew up countless norms and laughed about it—and then conveniently forgot it all ever happened.

But that's not how it works. Only with real accountability and justice for those who acted so wrongly can we ensure this lawfare never happens again. And in light of the new Grassley revelations, Rabbi Hillel's famous question comes to mind: "If not now, when?"

Fortunately, Todd Blanche, Trump's acting attorney general who just had his confirmation hearing to take the job permanently, is the perfect man to secure real lawfare justice for the American people.

Blanche has a sterling resume for the nation's top law enforcement job. As legal eagle Jonathan Turley said on Fox News, Blanche is one of the most qualified attorney general nominees in the history of the Justice Department. He prosecuted violent crimes for eight years in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. More recently, he served as Bondi's deputy attorney general, which means he ran the department on a day-to-day basis.

Even more significant is what Blanche did between those stints at S.D.N.Y. and Main Justice: He represented Trump as the president's lead criminal defense attorney at the very height of the Biden-era lawfare. That shows Blanche is principled. That shows he has moral courage—far more, frankly, than the crusty barnacles of the conservative legal establishment.

But even more important, it means Blanche lived firsthand through the Democrats' lawfare hell on earth. If anyone wants accountability now, it's Blanche. And he knows where the bodies are buried.

Americans deserve justice for the Democrat lawfare that almost destroyed the republic. Todd Blanche will help us get it. He should be swiftly confirmed.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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After Birthplace Citizenship Case, The Conservative Legal Movement Needs To Raise Its Standards

In the post-judicial-filibuster world, intellectual adherence to textualism, in and of itself, is no longer sufficient for Republican Supreme Court nominees.

The Federalist 

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last month in Trump v. Barbara declaring birthplace citizenship a constitutional right — authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and supported by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberals — elicited a wave of pointed conservative criticism.

The critiques began in the case’s dissents. Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling “a serious mistake.” Justice Clarence Thomas said it “devalues” citizenship. Even conservative legal scholars who admire Roberts and Barrett acknowledge that Thomas’ historical analysis of the 14th Amendment was far more compelling than the thin originalism of the chief’s opinion. Movement conservatives, for their part, are outraged by the decision, which they feel was not only wrong, but wrong in the peculiarly Roe-ish way of extra-constitutionally placing a legitimate political question outside the reach of the nation’s elected lawmakers.

The Republican legal establishment has tried to defend — or at least downplay — Roberts’ ruling and Barrett’s vote. Their arguments — that Barbara only upholds the status quo or that the ruling is #akshually Donald Trump’s fault — have utterly failed to assuage conservatives’ frustration. Indeed, they seem only to be exacerbating the MAGA right’s sense of elite legalistic betrayal. It is urgently important for Republican decision-makers — on Capitol Hill, in the Trump administration, and especially in the originalist/textualist conservative legal movement — to understand why — and what to do about it.

The heart of the dispute is the question of what the Supreme Court is. In the intellectual fantasies of many originalist, textualist lawyers, the court is an apolitical, judicial umpire — merely calling balls and strikes, in Roberts’ famous framing. In the real world, however, the court (very much including the Roberts Court) is America’s unelected super-legislature, redrawing the strike zone however and whenever they please.

The judiciary’s arrogation of legislative power in recent decades is evidenced by its decisions — Obergefell, Bostock, NFIB v. Sebelius, and now Barbara — and also by the intensifying partisanship of the Supreme Court confirmation process in the U.S. Senate. When the court was really just a court, judges were mostly vetted for temperament and competence. Today, Supreme Court nominations are rightly understood as the most politically consequential votes senators take.

The left understands this. That’s why they turned “Bork” into a verb, organized the “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas, and tried to frame Brett Kavanaugh for sexual assault. It’s why they took the unprecedented step, while in the minority in the early 2000s, of filibustering Republican judicial nominees. And why, while in the majority in 2013, they triggered the Senate “nuclear option” so they could confirm judges with 51 votes instead of the 60 required under the rules.

The right was always one step behind in this partisan escalation. It was Republicans who got borked, filibustered, and nuked first. We also endured decades of letdowns from supposedly “conservative” judges who drifted leftward during their lifetime tenure on the bench. And so, when President Trump and a Republican Senate came to power in 2017, they followed Democrats’ precedent, nuked the filibuster, and confirmed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and then Amy Coney Barrett at the new 51-vote threshold.

This is the real source of conservative anger over Barbara. Before the “nuclear option,” confirming Republican judges required a nontrivial number of Democrat senators’ votes. That forced conservatives to lower expectations, especially for nominees to the Supreme Court. Whenever a vacancy opened, we hoped for another Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but glumly understood that we might have to live with another “moderate” like Anthony Kennedy or John Roberts.

Once Senate Republicans nuked the filibuster, those expectations changed.

The days of hoping were supposed to be over. A nominee confirmable with 51 votes no longer has to satisfy Democrats. Under the new rules, a full-fledged commitment to originalism and textualism no longer needs to be tempered or constrained to appeal to the left. All of a sudden, Republican presidents and Republican Senates didn’t need “stealth” nominees. We could appoint and confirm proven, reliable sure things — just like Democrats always have.

Unfortunately, the conservative legal establishment has not adapted accordingly. They are still operating with a Filibuster Era mindset, focused on textual analysis for its own sake.

To be clear, textualism and originalism are and should remain the intellectual bedrock of the conservative legal movement. But a doctrine meant to end judicial free-wheeling should not swing into the opposite extreme: reducing conservative judicial analysis to parsing words on a page, going into a partisan gunfight armed only with an 18th-century dictionary. True originalism seeks to recover what the founders understood, and — crucially — must assume they were acting rationally and within a moral framework aimed at human and national flourishing.

If a hyper-literal reading of 160-year-old legalese leads you to conclude that the children of Chinese spies, criminal migrants, and jihadist terrorists — who cross our borders 38 weeks pregnant so they can give birth on our soil — are entitled to full U.S. citizenship, you are reading so closely that your eyes have crossed.

As Justice Alito noted recently, “A conscientious judge has no choice but to do what the law requires. But we do not have an asinine or idiotic constitution, so an originalist judge should not cavalierly or happily embrace results that defy common sense.”

In Trump v. Barbara, Roberts and Barrett failed that test.

Pulling back from the textual trees to the political and constitutional forest, there is no remotely plausible argument that the people who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment believed they were enshrining illegal-migrant birth tourism in the Constitution. The Republican legal establishment can parse and rationalize Roberts’ Barbara decision and Barrett’s vote all they want. But in the real world, it remains the judicial equivalent of “suicidal empathy.”

What grassroots conservatives insist Republican legal elites internalize is that Trump v. Barbara is not just about textual analysis. It is about whether American citizens are still free under our Constitution to govern ourselves, according to our values and interests, through our elected legislators. And like it or not, so will every major case going forward, now that the woke left has made anti-Americanism its organizing principle.

In the post-judicial-filibuster world, intellectual adherence to textualism, in and of itself, is no longer sufficient for Republican Supreme Court nominees. Broader constitutional principles of citizenship, sovereignty, and the threat the woke left poses to both must be elevated to judicial first principles. The GOP legal establishment — from the Federalist Society on down — must adapt to this new reality and, in doing so, adopt a new conservative judicial realism.

Like it or not, we are governed today by a post-filibuster, party-line Supreme Court. If conservatives don’t start acting like it, Barbara will soon be the least of our problems.

If Congress Won’t Stop Rogue Judges, The DOJ Should Prosecute Them

Any successful means of getting rid of or reducing the power of the judges will require breaking precedents and norms.

The Federalist 

It is increasingly clear that judges are a significant bottleneck within the current legal system, with the potential to obstruct many of the most urgently needed reforms in our country.

In an egregious example, former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was recently convicted of felony obstruction after she actually attempted to aid an illegal alien (charged with battery) to escape ICE agents. Thankfully, her efforts were thwarted, and she was prosecuted for obstruction of justice. Despite being convicted, the federal judge presiding over the cases, Lynn Adelman, only sentenced Dugan to a $5,000 fine and no prison time. Dugan has resigned from her judicial office, but it is frustrating that so little repercussion has followed her gross abuse of judicial office.

Or consider how, after being repeatedly released by local judges, DeCarlos Brown brutally murdered Iryna Zarutska in August 2025, but is now determined by a federal judge to be “incompetent to stand trial.” Such examples of judges corrupting justice could be multiplied endlessly.

At every turn, the abuse of the judicial office is one of the most flagrant injustices and one of the most stalwart impediments to necessary reforms. Almost every problem runs through the bottleneck of the judges, given that in our current system, we elect the executive to enforce the laws, but the actual trials and sentencing will be presided over by state or federal judges.

Unless we can control or change the judges, we will not be able to truly restore our communities with much-needed law enforcement, criminal punishments, and accountability.

The Problem with Impeachment

It is a common refrain among right-wing figures in media to talk about the need to “impeach the judges.” In an encouraging step, Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier recently led the way by filing articles of impeachment against Miami Judge Miguel De La O, who let a black woman walk free because of an alleged “psychotic break,” despite her having drowned her baby and stabbed other family members.

As is the case in most states, the impeachment process involves articles of impeachment being filed in the House of the state legislature. Impeachment (essentially an indictment for “misdemeanor in office”) requires simply a majority vote, but typically the other house (i.e., Senate) must vote to actually achieve removal, which usually requires a two-thirds majority. This is why impeachment will prove such a difficult path to take, given that most state legislatures do not possess such overwhelming Republican majorities in the upper house. In blue states, it will not be possible to impeach the judges, and even in red states, it will be very difficult to actually get corrupt judges removed this way.

The same problem applies to federal judges, who could be impeached by Congress. Despite federal judges grossly abusing their offices by making up all kinds of illogical, inconsistent, and unconstitutional justifications to stop actions taken by the Trump administration — and despite these judges’ rulings often being overturned by the higher courts — it will prove very difficult to remove them. It would require a majority vote in the House to impeach, which would require all the Republicans voting together, and a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, which is effectively impossible any time soon.

What Can Be Done?

One measure at the federal level would be to use Republican congressional majorities to ram through reforms to the courts. The Constitution leaves the entire structure of the federal judiciary — includinfg the makeup and composition of the Supreme Court — to Congress. With a determined Republican majority and the president’s signature, Congress could reorganize the judiciary, create more judicial offices, and confirm a plethora of new conservative judges.

Even if they could not get rid of existing federal judges, it would be possible to “dilute” their influence by appointing and confirming more right-wing judges, requiring district courts to hear cases in multi-judge panels instead of by single judges, controlling the kind of relief the lower courts can issue, and so on. All of this is possible if the Republicans in Congress were willing to fight with the same aggressive tactics that the left has been using for decades. Prominent Democrats routinely call for packing the Supreme Court and other courts if they can retake national power, and Republicans would be foolish to bind themselves by procedures which our existential opponents will not hesitate to employ against us for our destruction.

At the state level, red states have many options if they are willing to fight. In cases where judges are elected, Republicans should pour money, time, and effort into unseating corrupt judges and replacing them with better candidates. Even if the judges are insulated from easy removal, the red state legislatures could use the same tactics I outlined above to control their state judiciaries, pack the courts if needed, or even amend their state constitutions to otherwise control the judiciary.

One more possibility, which would certainly upset the establishment and the left, would be for President Trump’s DOJ to find ways to creatively charge and prosecute corrupt judges under existing laws. Would this be radical? Yes, but not arguably any more radical than the subversion of America we have witnessed by a leftist judiciary.

A major obstacle here, though, is that — barring extraordinary measures like special military tribunals — any attempt to prosecute corrupt judges will be presided over by other judges in the courts. Judicial obstruction is a real challenge at every turn, as was demonstrated when Trump’s DOJ attempted to bring James Comey or Letitia James to justice.

Any successful means of getting rid of or reducing the power of the judges will require breaking precedents and norms. Of course, it is unfortunate that we are in this situation, but this is the result of decades of aggressive leftist judicial activism to achieve their desired political ends. It is better to resort to extraordinary measures to preserve the ends of government than to let the ends of government fail by blindly maintaining procedures and formalism, no matter the consequences. Given a decade of lawfare against Trump and his supporters, the inevitable cries of the left against any extraordinary measures from the right should ring hollow.

While the seemingly ubiquitous travesties of the judicial office are to be lamented, it can actually be useful since it removes any hint of their objectivity or legitimacy, showcasing rather just how corrupt and nakedly partisan the judiciary is. The out-of-control judiciary has provided much occasion for President Trump and other key admin figures like J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller to launch a nonstop campaign to delegitimize the judiciary before the audience of the American electorate.

Corrupt judges maintain their power because the perceived weight of the establishment upholds them. We must delegitimize them in the eyes of the public. Their judicial office does not make them sacred, especially if they routinely perpetrate injustices and trample the rights of American citizens to be protected in their life, liberty, and property.

If the right can ultimately resort to extraordinary measures to break the power of the corrupt judges, that will only be achieved upon a broad base of popular support from conservative voters who staunchly back President Trump and his agenda and are incensed by the nonstop judicial interference. It is long past time to break the power of these judges to save America.

The DOJ Has A ‘Duty’ To Prosecute The President’s ‘Political Enemies’ If They Broke The Law

The Federalist 

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft ripped apart Democrats’ narrative that the Trump administration is using the Department of Justice as a personal office to prosecute “political enemies.”

Ashcroft was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of the nomination of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the permanent position when Democrats like Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., attempted to project their party’s Justice Department weaponization onto the Trump administration.

Schiff asked Ashcroft about Blanche allegedly stating “he believes the president has both the right and the duty to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.” While Blanche disputed that characterization of his comments Wednesday, Schiff asked Ashcroft if he agreed with Blanche.

“I believe that the Attorney General of the United States has the right and responsibility to enforce the law uniformly, and if the law has been broken by the president’s enemies, he has a duty,” Ashcroft said. “They do not become exempt from following the law merely by their enmity to the President of the United States. As a matter of fact, the people who break the law are in enmity with the people of the United States, whose expression of what is the law has been developed in this body in the Congress of the United States — we used to call people who break the law public enemies.”

“So my view is that whether a person has been a political supporter or not of the President of the United States is not the determining factor regarding prosecution,” he continued. “It’s whether a person has violated the law, and in enforcing the law. The attorney general is carrying out the will expressed in the Congress.”

Schiff seemed surprised by his response, but tried to press further. Ashcroft doubled down.

“The President of the United States is the executive branch of the United States with whose charge it is to enforce the laws of the United States,” he added. “When the President of the United States asks that the laws be enforced, I don’t see that as consistent with his duties or responsibilities.”

The rebuke of Schiff was not the only time Ashcroft countered the left-wing narratives about the Trump administration’s personal use of the Justice Department.

Welch tried to trap Ashcroft into commenting on the Anti-Weaponization Fund, the now-defunct fund that was meant to provide some restitution to victims of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.

“Can you imagine serving as attorney general and having President Bush come to you and say — by the way, who paid you $9 million before you got to be attorney general to represent him in criminal actions … but then he said, ‘I’ve got an idea: We’re going to sue the federal government for $10 billion and you’re going to represent the IRS, and then why don’t you work out a settlement where there’s a $1.7 billion fund that I control?'” he said. “Would you see anything, like, odd about that?”

Ashcroft did not take the bait, simply stating, “I didn’t have that situation. I didn’t have a president that had been the subject of illegal disclosure of his activities — criminal disclosure.”

Fighting over Welch attempting to interrupt him, Ashcroft continued, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth that’s that’s a big challenge in an oath, and so I want to give my answer and not your answer.”

DHS: More Than 250,000 Noncitizens Are Registered To Vote In Four States

The Federalist 

There are more than 250,000 noncitizens illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, according to newly released data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

President Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday night, announcing the release of a tranche of election material, including how China carried out “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.”

It was also announced that the DHS reviewed public voter files in “states that have not utilized the SAVE system” and found “over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote.” The DHS says that “election officials in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada have been notified” and that the department is expanding its investigation into other states as well.

DHS also pointed out states that have been “proactive” and “utilized” the SAVE database, which allows local, state, and federal government agencies to verify an individual’s immigration status. The Trump administration granted states free and direct access to the database. Those states include Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, and Kansas — all of which found both noncitizens and deceased persons on their voter rolls, according to DHS. In those states deceased registrants numbered more than 400,000, and nearly 30,000 noncitizens were illegally registered, according to DHS.

Noncitizens registering to vote and voting in federal elections is already illegal, though there is no real enforcement mechanism. Currently, prospective voters check off a small square box on a federal registration form attesting under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. In other words, the honor system. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — which Trump urged Congress to pass in his Thursday night speech — would add teeth to this largely toothless law by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Notably, noncitizen voting is not actually “rare” and does happen often. Forty-one noncitizens cast a ballot in North Carolina in 2016. Pennsylvania discovered 11,198 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2019, according to The Washington Times. A Chinese college student cast an illegal vote in Michigan in 2024 despite being a noncitizen. (His vote was ultimately counted since ballots are secret; once a vote is cast and tabulated, it is impossible to determine who cast the ballot.) A 2024 Georgia audit found 20 noncitizens registered to vote — nearly half of whom cast ballots in past elections, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Oregon’s secretary of state similarly found nine noncitizens who had voted in past elections after discovering “more than 300 noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote,” The Federalist previously reported.

Without the SAVE America Act, the mechanisms available that could be used to check for citizenship status aren’t reliable. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to check information about newly registered voters in federal elections against information stored in the state’s motor vehicle administration database. Individuals can provide either the last four digits of their Social Security number or their driver’s license number. But neither of those documents necessarily confirms citizenship since noncitizens can obtain both driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers. In fact, in California, prospective voters who lack both of those forms of identification can slip through HAVA and instead provide low-security proof of identity — not citizenship — like a gym membership or utility bill to register to vote.

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

Welcome to the W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

Post whatever you got in the comments section below.

This feature will post every day at 6:30am Mountain time.