Category Archives: Federalist

Have you noticed the social contagion destroying our private lives? Consider these toxic but all-too-common scenarios:

A 19-year-old college student comes home and trashes her parents for their whiteness.

A 33-year-old son tells his mother, Youre dead to me, because she supports the U.S. Constitution with its guarantee of free speech.

A Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist tells readers of his New York Times editorial that they must prove their support by disowning any loved one who doesnt actively or financially support BLM.

Why would otherwise normal people act this way? I think such behavior can be traced to fear of being socially rejected by members of a reference group who signal what to say, how to act, whom to hate, and what to think. The fear is coupled with a strong need for acceptance by those peers.

But who informs those peers? The individuals in such groups arent really evil. Rather, theyve been conditioned and nudged along by massive propaganda narratives. Social contagion spreads as people are canceled for disagreeing with the narrative. Under such conditions, more people become misguided, ignorant, and manipulated by institutions overrun with elites who are convinced they know best.

The technical term for tyrants who seek to break bonds of kinship is predatory alienation. The attack on free speech through the censorship-industrial complex today speeds up that alienation, feeding an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation. It also serves our fear of social isolation, which causes a vicious cycle of mean-spirited interactions like the examples above. The only antidote to this toxic process is to talk to one another more, not less.

The human fear of social rejection is so hard-wired that it can be harnessed to direct our speech, our behavior, our relationships, and our thoughts. Exploiting that fear is easiest when people have little awareness of the disturbing process which I describe in my book The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.

The need for talking to each other more is also why Ive launched a book club project. The idea is to promote casual discussion groups to help ordinary people build the inner strength to resist isolation. This endeavor is in the spirit of Vaclav Havels famous essay The Power of the Powerless. People need to gather in small friendly groups parallel polises to share ideas about our social isolation and build the strength to overcome it.

Lets face it. The corporate media certainly wont offer a solution. Neither will Big Tech or academia or any other corrupt institution. It must come from within each of us speaking one-on-one and face-to-face.

As renowned sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote: Propaganda ends where simple dialogue begins. To that purpose, I hope my website can help promote sincere discussion on the theme of weaponized loneliness and to build new bonds of friendship.

Every tyrant knows that isolation is the first key to controlling people. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt made that point when she wrote that all tyrannical governments seek first to isolate people to terrorize them into compliance.

The Covid mandates made Arendts view abundantly clear. In the wake of Covid, the World Economic Forum (WEF) declared misinformation and disinformation as the greatest short-term risk to progress. The WEF declaration looks like cover for more immediate punishment of free speech and top-down surveillance of our conversations, on a global scale.

Such criminalization of speech naturally cultivates the fear of speaking openly. Its demoralizing and causes more dependence upon those who seek to manipulate and control us. In such conditions of dependency, we tend to bond with our captors, as in Stockholm syndrome. Of course, thats the main idea behind political censorship: cut off open communication and thereby sow the distrust that cuts us off from one another.

Todays propaganda and censorship are so pervasive and hostile that the situation seems hopeless. Especially when we consider the cultivation of ignorance in our schools and the information overload of Big Tech and so much family brokenness all of which weaken us further.

But theres great hope for a breakthrough because the ripple effect of truth is vastly more powerful than all of that. The proof of this fact is that the thought police work constantly to shut up even the tiniest voice of dissent.

In the face of this seemingly overwhelming onslaught, we need first to protect and revitalize the private sphere of life. As Havel noted, its only from this hidden sphere of parallel polises that the power of our ideas can flow outward to others and make it possible once again to live within the truth.

Second, within that sphere, we can build a more clinical awareness of the tactics and techniques tyrants use to psychologically manipulate us into conformity and compliance. More people can learn how the demonization of a person as a white supremacist or other media smears are really meant to control whom we talk to, and thereby cut us off from potential friendships. As we discuss counterstrategies, we also gain the inner strength that emboldens us when we know we are not alone.

I see no other alternative. Without building sane spaces to talk through the weaponization of loneliness, we end up feeding the illusion that everyone is on board with gagging our speech. As more people self-silence, we become even more atomized and at the mercy of the very authorities who hope to punish our open conversations under the guise of eliminating misinformation.

My book club project is designed for ordinary people who want to break free from this vicious cycle. I envision discussion groups of maybe four to 10 people each. Theyd be friendly places where sincere and curious people could speak openly about how the fear of social rejection causes people to do things that seem unlikely and even cruel. Meetings like this would also strengthen bonds of social trust.

Ive done my best to provide on http://www.stellasbookclub.com what youd need to get started in this first step of liberation: a portal where you can initiate a book club on the theme of the weaponization of loneliness; a syllabus of sessions with summaries and study questions for each session; a select bibliography that includes classics such as Joost Meerloos The Rape of the Mind, Margaret Thaler Singers Cults in Our Midst, and Jacques Elluls Propaganda: The Formation of Mens Attitudes. There are also hard-hitting articles, video clips, documentaries, and movies. In one session I suggest readers view the loyalty dance scene from the 1987 film The Last Emperor, in which a mob of Mao Zedongs Red Guard youth justifies their brutal treatment of anyone they deem enemies of the revolution.

I hope this mission can offer interested folks an outlet to overcome the influence of such mobs. That will happen if more normal people are emboldened to speak more freely and build bonds of friendship in the process. In the end, defeating the weaponization of loneliness means working towards Havels goal of the rehabilitation of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, and love.

Excerpt from:

Speaking Openly About Isolation Can Help Us Resist Tyranny - The Federalist

Gender ideology has a reality problem. Just look at the latest cover story for New York Magazine, in which the trans-identified writer Andrea Long Chu denounced reality itself, writing that the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.

Well, that is a novel philosophical assertion.

It is tempting to dismiss Chus denunciation of reality as an insane gambit by a flailing ideology, but declaring war against reality might just be crazy enough to work. This approach provides the collapsing gender ideology movement a way out of myriad difficulties instead of relying on shoddy science to support medical transition, including for children, gender ideologues can instead appeal to a supposed right to physical self-determination and modification, even for children. Liberals like the idea of liberating mankind from the limits of our humanity, and so even as Chu retreats from the usual arguments of gender ideology, he invites the left to join in this more radical vision.

This effort to find a better justification for gender ideology pushes Chu to argue that it was a mistake for the left to hang trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity. This approach won some victories, but it failed to form a coherent moral account of why someones gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.

The radical bodily alterations of gender-affirming care have been justified by elevating gender identity to the status of a persons essence, deeper and more real than the body itself. But people are realizing that a gender identity is metaphysical conjecture, not medicine or biology. Thus, Chu sees reliance on gender identity as a trap for transgender advocates. It is superstitious to imagine that there is something like gendered souls that sometimes, somehow, get stuck in the wrong bodies.

He also sees that searching for reasons and explanations for transgenderism may prove deadly to the cause of gender ideology. By making the case for transition (again, especially for children) contingent on generating favorable evidence (medical, sociological, psychological) for it, the transgender movement has become more vulnerable as that evidence has failed to materialize. Furthermore, requiring reasons for transition tends to establish some form of gatekeeping, in which transition is doled out only to those determined to be truly transgender.

Chu fears that subjecting the transgender movement, and especially its medical wing, to rational, evidence-based scrutiny will restrict and ultimately destroy it. Instead, he wants transgender activists and their allies to:

[S]top relying on the increasingly metaphysical concept of gender identity to justify sex-changing care, as if such care were only permissible when ones biological sex does not match the serial number engraved on ones soul. [W]e must rid ourselves of the idea that any necessary relationship exists between sex and gender; this prepares us to claim that the freedom to bring sex and gender into whatever relation one chooses is a basic human right.

He thereby makes explicit what has always been the position of gender ideologues, which is that there should be medical transition on demand for everyone. He writes, We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history. This is not about medical need, but about a subjective desire to flee from the reality of ones embodied self.

As the recent release of the WPATH files demonstrates, so-called gender-affirming care is not rigorous and evidence-based, but being made up on the fly and administered to children who cannot give informed consent to it. The medical case for transition is crumbling (and other nations are pulling back from it), but for those who are in too deep to back out, Chus articulation of a more radical alternative may be appealing. It is, after all, what the activists already believe.

Thus, they may now be drawn to Chus assertion that We will never be able to defend the rights of transgender kids until we understand them purely on their own terms: as full members of society who would like to change their sex.It does not matter where this desire comes from. Chus own so-called transition was sparked by the fetishes he developed from a porn addiction, so he has a personal reason to deny that there is any significance to why someone wants to transition.

Instead of justifying transition as medically necessary based on the supposed psychological distress of not transitioning, Chu insists upon a right to bodily modification for whatever reason and without regard for the results. He acknowledges that the biology of sex is real, but he just regards it as an enemy to be subdued and made subject to our whims. He writes that any comprehensive movement for trans rights must be able to make political demands at the level of biology itself.

Chu admits that this approach does not promise happiness. Nor should it. It is good and right for advocates to fight back against the liberal fixation on the health risks of sex-changing care or the looming possibility of detransition. But it is also true that where there is freedom, there will always be regret. He continues, insisting, If we are to recognize the rights of trans kids, we will also have to accept that, like us, they have a right to the hazards of their own free will.

That proclamation might sound reasonable to Chu and his editors, but it is madness to anyone who actually cares about children and their well-being. Good parenting requires a great deal of limiting childrens free will and the hazards it exposes them to.

Ominously, Chu is not the first to prominently insist that children should be transitioned without regard for the risks. Lydia Polgreen made a similar argument in The New York Times last December, arguing that children should be transitioned regardless of whether they might regret it later. This argument absolves gender ideologues of all responsibility, even toward children who are incapable of understanding the consequences of their decisions. According to Chu and Polgreens doctrine, there is no need to prove that transition helps mental health or to worry about the side effects, complications, and regrets it may produce. All there is to do is cheer while enabling troubled children to make war against their natural, healthy bodies.

In this, Chu is simply extending to children an argument he has made for years about adults. In a 2018 Times piece shortly before he got genital surgery, he wrote, This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I dont expect it to. That shouldnt disqualify me from getting it. Chu claimed that the surgerys only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want and that no amount of pain, anticipated or continuing, justifies its withholding.

As Ryan T. Anderson observed at the time, Chu regards doctors as mere technicians, paid to deliver the services the customer demands, regardless of whether the procedures help the patient. This idea of medicine is unconcerned with health, happiness, or any idea of human well-being it doesnt even care if transition increases the risk of suicide. All that matters, in this view, is that someone wants to transition. This argument is toxic even if applied only to adults, but Chu is now explicitly arguing that it should extend to children, whose health, well-being, and lives he is willing to sacrifice to justify his choices and ideology.

He concludes that trans kids do not owe us an explanation. They are busy taking charge of their own creation. They may not change the world, but they will certainly changethemselves. This proclamation reveals the real heart of gender ideology, which is not medicine, but revolt. Gender ideology is rooted in a hatred for the givenness of our existence. It longs for the god-like but unattainable power of self-creation. Thus, it readily abdicates all responsibility toward children, for it sees guidance, instruction, and discipline as oppression.

This is an inhuman ideology. The sudden prominence of Chus radicalism may signal the imminent collapse of the gender ideology house of cards, especially regarding children. But this is not certain. Some people will embrace even the most radical and repulsive ideas if the alternative is admitting they were wrong. That Chus ideas are being published in influential places shows that elite liberals are at least considering them.

It is difficult to reason with a revolt against reality itself. What can be done is to demonstrate that it is immiserating. A way of life that rejects happiness, health, and well-being in pursuit of an impossible rebellion against existence itself is self-refuting. We might even call it nihilistic.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Trans Zealots Revolt Against Reality Rather Than Admit They're Wrong - The Federalist

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. But if it involves Donald Trump, the news media for various reasons insist its definitely a penis.

Were in the middle of another round of gravely serious media analysis about what Trump meant when he said something in public, this time that there would be a bloodbath if he didnt win the election. Anyone who saw the remarks at a campaign rally Saturday in Ohio knew Trump was talking about the economic fallout of a second Biden term. But Washington journalists and commentators, equal parts lazy and dishonest, have spent the days since attributing every other hysterical meaning they can dream up.

The unintentionally funniest was NBC Newss presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who with great originality drew a direct link between Trump and the Holocaust.

When he uses the word bloodbath, yes, it was in the context of an automobile industry speech, he said Monday on MSNBCs Morning. Joe. But he knew exactly what he was saying.

Beschloss went on to say that what Trump meant was the opposite of what he actually said: A major-party candidate is saying, You elect me, theres going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies that equals what we saw in Germany and Italy and other places.

So, by Trump saying, Now, if I dont get elected, its gonna be a bloodbath, what he really meant was that if he does get elected, there will be violence. Fascinating. (By fascinating, I do mean Beschloss is a deceitful dope.)

This is a plot corporate media have been pushing for nearly a decade: that everything Trump says comes with innuendo and its always, always, always nefarious.

The New York Times in December 2015 ran an article headlined, 95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trumps Tongue. Reporters Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman, with no discernible sense of embarrassment, declared they had analyzed every public utterance by Mr. Trump over one week and found several powerful patterns, demonstrating how Mr. Trump has built one of the most surprising political movements in decades and, historians say, echoing the appeals of some demagogues of the past century.

To fully grasp the severity and magnitude of the matter at hand, the Times noted that among Trumps most frequently used words is guy.'

In 2019, CNNs bespectacled geek Daniel Dale similarly bragged that he had fact-checked every word Trump has uttered since his inauguration. (Ladies, calm down. Theres enough of Daniel to go around.) His stunning conclusion: I can tell you that if this president relays an anecdote in which he has someone referring to him as sir,' he wrote, then some major component of the anecdote is very likely to be wrong.

Democracy, saved.

Yes, were still doing this. Just on Sunday, Politico ran an exhausting article about people who find Trump funny. Naturally, it wasnt to acknowledge the former president as an engaging speaker, but, again, to describe him as an existential threat. Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini, wrote Michael Kruse. But they share a rhetorical style, experts say.

Well, if theres one thing we know about experts, its that if they say it, who are we to say otherwise? Now close your eyes and do your part to flatten the curve. Its just 15 days. This will only hurt for a second

The media have been pseudo-analyzing Trump to impart dark meaning to his every word forever. But sometimes, a bloodbath is, sadly, just a tired metaphor.

Read more:

Trump's 'Bloodbath' Is The Fake Media's New 'Guy' And 'Sir' - The Federalist

Last week, Judge Scott McAfee issued his opinion on the potential disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her subordinate-slash-romantic partner Nathan Wade from Fulton Countys prosecution of Donald Trump and some 18 other Republicans relating to the 2020 election. McAfee found that there was no actual conflict of interest but did find that there was an appearance of impropriety, and held that Wade, but not Willis, had to resign from the prosecution.

The opinion was wrong on the facts and the law. But Trump and his co-defendants have strong grounds for appeal, and Fani Willis isnt out of the woods yet. Moreover, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr need to do their job, get over whatever animus they have toward Trump, and indict Willis and Wade on perjury charges.

There were two core factual issues Judge McAfee was charged with resolving. The first was whether Willis and Wades romantic relationship began before November 2021, when Willis hired Wade as a special prosecutor. The second was whether Willis had a conflict of interest resulting from Wade paying for vacations for the two of them while he was contracting with Willis office.

The first question should have been straightforwardly resolved against Willis and Wade. Willis former best friend and landlord, Robin Yeartie, reluctantly testified that the relationship did in fact begin back in 2019.

Judge McAfee dismissed Yearties testimony as lack[ing] context and detail. Perhaps Judge McAfee didnt bother to reread the transcript of the proceedings that happened in his own courtroom. Yeartie didnt merely testify to the fact that Willis and Wades relationship began in 2019; she testified that she had multiple conversations with Willis about the relationship prior to 2022, and that she observed Willis and Wade hugging and kissing prior to 2022. Its hard to understand what further detail McAfee expected Yeartie to provide.

Judge McAfee also completely brushed aside cell phone data showing that Wade often spent the night at Willis residence prior to November 2021, and that they exchanged thousands of phone calls and more than 10,000 text messages prior to when they claim their relationship began. Its clear he had no desire to affirmatively find that Willis perjured herself.

Judge McAfees factual findings, though bizarre and untethered to the evidence, are unlikely to be disturbed on appeal, as appellate courts must give a lot of deference to the factfinder. But there were also several suspect legal holdings in Judge McAfees opinion that are ripe for appeal.

Judge McAfee said that the evidence did not establish the District Attorneys receipt of a material financial benefit as a result of her decision to hire and engage in a romantic relationship with Wade and that the Defendants [did] not present[] sufficient evidence indicating that the expenses were not roughly divided evenly.

As Professor Alan Dershowitz pointed out, McAfee misapplied the law on this question. Defendants presented straightforward evidence that Willis benefited from hiring Wade: Wades credit card receipts showing that he paid for their joint vacations. Given the existence of these receipts, the burden should have been on Willis and Wade to prove that these expenses were reimbursed.

They could not do this, of course. Willis and Wade testified that the expenses were reimbursed in cash and provided no ATM receipts or bank deposit receipts to corroborate their clearly improvised story.

McAfee held that the burden was on the defense to prove that the expenses were not reimbursed. Thats improper as a matter of law, and as Dershowitz explained, its also grounds for reversal on appeal.

Further, Judge McAfee found that neither side was able to conclusively establish by a preponderance of the evidence when the [Willis/Wade] relationship evolved into a romantic one. This sentence is legally incoherent. If a prosecutor or the defense can conclusively prove a fact, that is equivalent to saying that they have proved that fact beyond a reasonable doubt. The point of a preponderance of the evidence standard is that the fact does not have to be conclusively proved by the evidence; rather, there just needs to be more evidence supporting one side than the other.

If Judge McAfee had applied the preponderance of the evidence standard properly, there is no way he could have found it for Willis. On the side of finding that the relationship began in 2019, we have the disinterested testimony of Robin Yeartie, the text messages of Terrence Bradley, and the cell phone tower evidence showing that Wade was regularly in the vicinity of Willis residence in the early morning hours. On the other side of the ledger, he has the self-serving testimony of Willis and Wade denying the existence of the relationship. This shouldnt have been a close question, but by subtly shifting the burden of proof and requiring the defendants to conclusively prove the existence of the relationship, McAfee avoided disqualifying Willis.

McAfee also held that an appearance of impropriety can warrant disqualification of individual prosecutors but not the whole prosecutors office, and further held that removing Wade would cure the appearance of impropriety.

This last legal holding is unlikely to survive appellate scrutiny. The appearance of impropriety implicates both Willis and Wade. As Jonathan Turley put it, its as though the police discovered two thieves in a bank vault and arrested only one. There are reasonable questions about whether Willis testified truthfully and about whether she financially gained from the prosecution. Those questions dont just go away because Wade withdrew.

Even though Judge McAfee bent over backward to avoid disqualifying Willis and her office, the opinion created a ton of problems for Willis going forward. Judge McAfee described how an odor of mendacity permeates the case and acknowledged that reasonable questions about whether [Willis and Wade] testified untruthfully further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety.

These factual findings provide fertile ground for a successful appeal by the defendants. Ashleigh Merchant, Steve Sadow, and the rest of the lawyers working for the defense are certainly going to ask Judge McAfee for a certificate of immediate appeal, so they can go straight to the court of appeals without waiting for the trial to conclude. That said, no one can force Judge McAfee to certify the issue for appeal, or the court of appeals to subsequently take the case. One hopes that both will exercise their discretion to remedy this injustice.

Moreover, Judge McAfee also found that Willis speech to a local Atlanta church, where she accused defendant Mike Roman and his lawyer Ashleigh Merchant of playing the race card, was, in McAfees words, legally improper. Hes right about that.

Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 3.8(g) mandates that prosecutors refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused. McAfee declined to dismiss the indictment because of these comments, but Willis is still going to have issues with the Georgia Bar over what is a very straightforward violation of ethics rules.

Remember: Fani Willis is trying to put Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others in jail for allegedly attempting to deceive Georgia courts three years ago. She cant credibly continue to prosecute this case when there are reasonable questions about whether she attempted to deceive a Georgia court three weeks ago.

The reasonable questions about DA Willis truthfulness are already the subject of complaints to the Georgia Bar about Willis and Wades conduct. They should also serve as the predicate for an investigation by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr into potential perjury charges against Willis and Wade. Carr, and his boss Brian Kemp, need to get off the sidelines. A partisan Democrat prosecutor has just lied under oath so that she can continue prosecuting Republicans for objecting to election results.

That cannot stand.

See the original post:

It's Time For Georgia's AG To Indict Fani Willis For Perjury - The Federalist

Former President Donald Trump will avoid a New York City courthouse for at least another month in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs lawfare against him for alleged hush money payments, after a last-minute document dump dropped shortly before the scheduled trial.

The trial was originally set to begin March 25 but was pushed back at least 30 days until mid-April after tens of thousands of additional pages of discovery were added.

Trumps legal team subpoenaed the Manhattan U.S. attorneys office in January for documents related to its 2017 investigation into Michael Cohen, Trumps former lawyer. The U.S. attorneys office has turned over roughly 73,000 pages of documents since March 4 in response to that subpoena, but on March 13, the office produced approximately 31,000 pages of additional records and represented that there will be another production of documents. Trump initially requested a 90-day delay to review the new discovery.

Bragg acknowledged the new document dump appear[s] to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case. Trumps lawyers claim the evidence from the federal case was unfairly withheld from them until the 11th hour as they prepared their defense, The Washington Post noted.

Trump also requested that Cohen and Stormy Daniels, the pornographer whom Cohen paid not to publicize her claims about having an alleged affair with Trump, be blocked from testifying in the trial against him.

Judge Juan MerchanruledMonday, however, that prosecutors may call both Cohen and Daniels to testify, along with former Trump World Tower doorman Dino Sajudin and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom claim they were paid off to withhold salacious accusations about Trump. Merchan did rule that Sajudin and McDougals testimony would be limitedto the fact of and may not explore the underlying details of what allegedly transpired between those individuals and the Defendant.

Trump has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

[READ NEXT: Majority Of Voters Recognize Democrat Lawfare Against Trump Is Political Election Interference]

During its investigation which led to a 2018 guilty plea by Cohen, the Department of Justice and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted not to charge Trump. But Bragg, whose campaign reportedly received $500,000 from a PAC backed by billionaire mega-donor George Soros, indicted Trump on 34 charges last April. Bragg is accusing Trump of falsifying business records when he allegedly paid Cohen back for the hush-money payments to Daniels.

The district attorney suggested Trump concealed the alleged payments to boost his chances in the 2016 election. (Of course, no one is prosecuting the Biden campaign for allegedly helping shut down the New York Posts Hunter Biden laptop story on the eve of the 2020 election.)

Bragg also alleged that Trump orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendants electoral prospects. But as The Federalists Margot Cleveland noted, there is nothing unlawful about purchasing negative information to suppress its publication.

Bragg also failed to identify what crime Trump intended to conceal by supposedly falsifying business records, which Bragg must do for the charges to qualify as felonies, Cleveland explained.

Even notable Trump critics have called Braggs prosecution baseless.

When the indictment dropped, former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe admitted I think everyone was hoping we would see more.

New York Magazines Jonathan Chait wrote that the case was full of legal deficiencies and begins the criminalization of politics.

Trump is being prosecuted charged because he paid hush money to a mistress, something its inconcievable he would have been charged over if he were never a candidate for office, Chait posted on X.

Even Trumps former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Bragg is wrong on the applicability of the New York statute.

Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, Im extraordinarily distressed by this document, Bolton said on CNN. I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be and I think its easily subject to being dismissed or a quick acquittal for Trump.

Braggs get Trump crusade is also staffed in part by Biden-linked attorneys.

Braggs predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, hired three outside lawyers from a firm that hosted a $2,800 per-plate fundraiser for Bidens presidential bid in 2020 and whose chair helped Biden raise $100,000.

One of the three attorneys, Mark Pomerantz, was brought on to be a special assistant district attorney for the office where his role, according to The New York Times, would be to focus solely on the Trump investigation.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

Read more:

What's New In Bragg's 'Get Trump' Hush Money Lawfare In NY - The Federalist

You dont need to be a fan of Donald Trump to concede that this weekends meltdown over the word bloodbath was cynical and dishonest. And you dont have to be Nostradamus to predict that were going to be inundated with a string of similar fabricated meltdowns this cycle.

Its not just the obvious hackery or unseriousness from the media thats the problem. No one trusts journalists anymore, anyway. Rather, like in 2020, it is also surely the case that were not going to see anything approaching a genuine presidential contest or debate. Its going to be one insufferably stupid ginned-up controversy after the next. Were living in an idiocracy.

And these events go down basically the same way every time: Trump throws some off-the-cuff populist red meat to a crowd. Sometimes his comments are worth criticizing. Sometimes they are misconstrued. Sometimes they are hyperbole. Most of the time, theyre predictable campaign fodder.

But some mendacious Ruparian social-media type will dishonestly clip a quote, and that quote will go viral. The media, rather than keeping the mob honest, run with it because reporters are largely incurious or propagandists or both, and they know well that Trump-is-a-Nazis content sells. If the Russia-collusion hoax taught us anything, its that there is no repercussion for being wrong about Republicans.

Then pundits sit on media panels incredulously wow-ing the quote and pondering when the MAGA Sturmabteilung will finally mass at the Mason Dixon.

Trump says country faces bloodbath if Biden wins in November, reads the Politico headline, though numerous outlets framed the comment in the same way which is to say, so stratospherically out of context, it amounts to a lie.

The New York Times, as often is the case, is probably the worst offender: Trump says some migrants are not people and predicts a blood bath if he loses. placing the migrant comment right next to blood bath creates the impression that Trump was promising violence toward migrants.

Here is the full context of Trumps remarks:

Let me tell you something, to China, if youre listening, President Xi those big, monster car manufacturing plants that youre building in Mexico right now, and you think youre going to get that, youre going to not hire Americans and youre going to sell the cars to us?

No, were going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and youre not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if I dont get elected, its going to be a bloodbath for the whole Thats going to be the least of it. Its going to be a bloodbath for the country. Thatll be the least of it. But theyre not going to sell those cars, theyre building massive factories.

A friend of mine, all he does is build car manufacturing plants. Hes the biggest in the world, I mean honestly, I joke about it, he cant walk across the street in that way hes like Biden but for building a plant, he can do the greatest plants in the world, right? Thats all he cares about.

Though I dont much care for what Trump is saying, any good-faith reader can see theres nothing in his sprawling rhetoric that suggests a call for violence. Trump, in fact, is suggesting that Bidens policies will lead to bloodbaths, not that he will call for it. Watching the Sunday morning political shows, one might have been under the impression that Trump had threatened to march on Dupont Circle.

More specifically, Trump is talking about the automotive industry. He mentions cars before and after the bloodbath comment. Me, Im all for more affordable imported cars, and Im opposed to tariffs that hurt Americans more than help. But Trump is staking out a position that is well within the norm of American political rhetoric. It is a position that probably appeals to a majority of voters.

If Democrats had any kind of coherent message beyond blurting out Jan. 6 every few minutes, they would argue about trade with Trump rather than concocting nonexistent threats.

On ABC, Susan Glasser claimed that the media had inured to the extraordinary, remarkable, and very at times, un-American, and threatening things that the former President is saying.

OK, then. Google the word bloodbath in conjunction with political coverage, and you will likely find tens of thousands of instances. There is nothing extraordinary or remarkable about it. Politicians, including Biden, have used the phrase. The phrase often describes blowouts in sports and layoffs in corporate America as in, Look at all the layoffs in news media, its a bloodbath. Every publication that misled the public on Trumps bloodbath comments over the weekend has used it metaphorically tons of times.

Even when forced to concede that the comment may have been taken out of context, the Trump-obsessed will rationalize treating words differently to suit their purpose. Its a classic trait and technique of authoritarian demagogues, George Conway explained in a long thread. He catastrophizes everything to rile up his cultish supporters, and to bind them to him, and to make them willing to do his bidding.

Project much?

Politicians always catastrophize events. Modern Democrats, though, act like they are the last Jewish holdouts at Masada. Joe Biden gives angry prime-time speeches contending that one-party rule is the only way to preserve our liberties from the semi-fascists. The entirety of the Democrat Partys message is predicated on scaremongering about apocalypses and fascism and the dystopian Handmaids Tale. Everything, from tax cuts to internet deregulation to limits on abortion to porn being banned in schools, becomes an existential threat to democracy.

Meanwhile, here in reality, the American left continues to corrode the constitutional order and norms to save democracy. The self-destruction of the media is merely one of the ways.

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Clutch Your Pearls, This Isn't The Last Trump 'Bloodbath' - The Federalist

When corporations and people misallocate capital, they tend to suffer. Of course, whether capital is misallocated is sometimes only fully understood after the fullness of time.

The Peoples Republic of China is rapidly modernizing its military, expanding its fleet, and building up its nuclear arsenal. China has also embarked on a costly effort to ensure its energy resilience by reducing its reliance on imported oil while cloaking the initiative as somehow being green a mere talking point to assuage Western elites.

It wasnt always such in China, where for decades, first under Deng Xiaoping and then Jiang Zemin, Chinese applied capitalist-mercantilist economic reforms culminating in Chinas accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. China appeared to be following the path charted by post-war Japan through the late 1980s.

But under paramount leader Xi Jinping, the emphasis on growth aided by capitalistic principles gave way to central planning and a massive military buildup. China is boosting its open defense budget by 7.2 percent this year. Total defense spending increases are likely far higher. Whether this effort ends up producing a massive inventory of expensive and hard-to-maintain equipment or weapons soon to be used in war will determine whether future analysts view the spending as a misallocation of resources.

America has flirted off and on with industrial planning of varying levels of specific control. From the republics very beginning, there were arguments between those who favored internal improvements and industry (Alexander Hamilton) versus those who thought the government should stay out of the way (Thomas Jefferson).

In the 1970s and 80s, some pointed to Japan as the model to be followed, with highly trained bureaucracy seemingly adept at picking winners and losers. But Japan Inc.s bubble burst in the late 80s, followed by decades of sluggish growth, suggesting that Japans considerable capital reserves were misallocated.

Today, the argument regarding picking winners and losers is more likely to boil down to just how specific you want to get and who decides politicians, bureaucrats, or business executives?

Of course, the risk of misallocating capital grows when those putting the capital at risk use other peoples money and when the decisions are concentrated and politicalized.

America provides two recent examples, the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors(CHIPS) and Science Act, passed in 2022, and the Inflation Reduction Act, passed a week later.

The CHIPS Act sought to counter Chinas rise as a microchip manufacturer by directly supporting the construction of chip fabrication plants in America with $39 billion in subsidies for manufacturing, investment tax credits of 25 percent for purchasing manufacturing equipment, and billions more dollars for workforce training and research.

In practice, the CHIPS rollout has been less than stellar. Critics claim that the effort to reshore chip manufacturing to the U.S. is not going well because U.S. workers are skilled in chip design, (but America) lacks workers with the desire or skills necessary for chip manufacturing. Workers must be meticulous, attentive to detail, and dedicated to consistency, perfection, and timely production. As a result, the push to shower dollars on moving chip fabrication to America has run into the reality of operating uncompetitive facilities with production costs some 50 percent higher than in Taiwan.

President Joe Bidens signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers another example. This mammoth spending bill, with some $663 billion in climate action spending, was approved on Aug. 7, 2022, on a partisan 5150 vote with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie. Five days later, it passed the house on a partisan vote as well, with no Democrats or Republicans crossing the aisle.

The bill unleashed a flood of spending on electric vehicles (EVs) just as consumers started growing cooler on them due to their limitations. It also extended spending to support wind and solar power.

In addition to the likely misallocation of capital, there are other unintended consequences that come with the legislation.

For instance, the addition of wind power to the energy mix necessarily entails higher costs for reliability for batteries or back-up power plants with higher costs passed along to consumers. Wind farms are voracious consumers of land and material steel, cement, and unrecyclable fiberglass. Wind powers claimed net benefits rarely look at whole system costs. And wind power even affects local and continental scale climate in ways we dont yet fully understand.

In the case of EVs, much of the material is sourced from overseas, often with deplorable working conditions and child labor. The vehicles are 10-40 percent heavier than vehicles in a similar class, resulting in significantly more road wear and greater amounts of rubber particle pollution and noise from the tires. Further, EV charging in residential areas may eventually require hundreds of billions of dollars of electricity infrastructure upgrades, as four EVs charging at once with a Tesla supercharger draw as much power as a 40,000-square-foot supermarket.

And then there are the truly head-scratching results of the IRA bill. Between the IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, theres some $50 billion for carbon reduction, $85 billion for clean (meaning low-CO2, rather than low pollution) electricity, and $93 billion for batteries and renewables. Some companies have responded lustily to these incentives while others view the government largesse with suspicion, knowing that what the government has given, it can take away, and that the fundamental business case generally remains unaltered.

There are two great (bad?) examples of how corporations are responding to federal money, in Texas and Louisiana.

The first is Occidental Petroleums partnership with the Department of Energy and BlackRock to build two direct air capture plants to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and then sequester it deep underground.

If you think this sounds like boiling the ocean or trying to empty the ocean with a spoon, youre only half right.

One of the facilities is designed to take about 500,000 tonnes of CO2 out of the air. Americas 242 coal plants in 2022 each generated an average of 3.6 million tonnes of CO2, meaning that more than seven of these costly facilities would be needed to remove the CO2 from one operating coal plant. Thus, some 1,736 direct air capture installations would be required to suck the CO2 generated by Americas coal fleet out of the atmosphere. The federal government and BlackRock are putting $1.75 billion into building two of these facilities. Occidental plans on building 100 of the plants.

China is building or planning to build more than the entire existing American coal fleet.

In the southeast Texas town of La Porte, another high-tech effort is underway, this one using pure oxygen and natural gas in a complicated process to generate electricity while separating the CO2 and burying it deep underground. Led by NET Power Inc., this effort would not even be considered without the push from Washington and global elites to treat CO2 as a deadly pollutant, rather than a natural trace constituent in our atmosphere. This policy push attaches an artificially high value to the CO2 generated by the plant, thus allowing it to theoretically compete with a traditional combined cycle natural gas generator.

In both cases, the effort represents a diversion from the core mission in Occidentals case, finding and producing oil and gas, and in NET Powers case, generating competitively priced electricity not dependent on government support. Thus, the chase for the unsustainable sugar high of government money that might evaporate with shifting political priorities replaces the effort to build and manage a profitable business.

And, as with EVs and wind farms, there are likely unintended consequences to removing some of the 0.04 percent of the atmosphere made up by CO2. In this case, observations show that as the column of air moves generally from the west to east across America, vegetation consumes the CO2, thus reducing levels of the gas by the time the mass of air hits the East Coast. In all likelihood, a hugely costly effort massive enough to reduce CO2 in Texas would reduce the amount of CO2 absorbed by terrestrial plants to the east, thus lessening to a degree the claimed benefit of the energy-intensive endeavor.

Ask yourself this: As China rapidly arms, Russia labors to pound Ukraine into submission, and Iran plots to wipe Israel off the face of the map, can you imagine China, Russia, Iran or even India for that matter spending what will amount to trillions of dollars to remove any fraction of the carbon dioxide theyre pumping into the air?

No? Then why are we misallocating capital? Why are we wasting money on things that will make no measurable difference?

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DC Doesn't Just Spend Too Much, It Spends On The Wrong Things - The Federalist

Image CreditScreenshot/X/Ian Miles Cheong

CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem said the Biden Department of Justices lawfare against former President Donald Trump is not enough to defeat him and called on the Department of Homeland Security to meddle in the election to stop Trump from winning.

On Saturday, Trump warned Americans of an economic bloodbath in the auto industry if Biden wins a second term.

China now is building a couple of massive plants where theyre going to build the cars in Mexico, Trump said during an Ohio rally. [China thinks] that theyre going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border.

Were going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and youre not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected, the former president continued. Now, if I dont get elected, its going to be a bloodbath.

Democrats and the media, however, cut the clip to suggest the former president was simply saying there would be a bloodbath if he lost. All over TV screens and social media last weekend, they spread the deliberately false disinformation narrative that Trump had called for a violent bloodbath if he loses.

Kayyem fired off an alarming yet telling post on X in which she admitted the DOJs unrelenting campaign to jail Trump is failing to influence the election enough to make Trump lose. Kayyem is a former Obama administration DHS official, a current advisor to an Israeli surveillance company, and a former DOJ official.

It is good Biden is talking about the threat to our democracy coming from the violence Trump promises. We have a whole department created to address terrorism. And it would be nice to hear a plan about protecting our homeland security. DOJ is not built for this, the Arab-American daughter of Lebanese immigrants wrote.

Kayyem then proposed a very transparent planning process that engages local and state governments who manage elections.

This plan would provide transparency on threats, a crisis response capacity, recommended rules of deployment for public safety resources, a civilian strike type team that can address violence in real time and provide information to the public and media, etc., she wrote.

Kayyem continued to argue that states and localities cannot be trusted to handle this on their own and called for the DHS to immediately begin planning.

These would be additional measures to the multiple layers of election interference already in place. While DHS is already actively working to undermine the election on behalf of Democrats, the media is also deliberately perpetuating the bloodbath lie to meddle in the election.

MSNBC disingenuously headlined an article: Trump says there will be a bloodbath if he loses the election while NPR ran a piece: Trump says some migrants are not people, and warns of bloodbath if he loses, with The New York Times running a near identical headline. The Rolling Stone published Trump Says There Will Be a Bloodbath and Elections Will End If He Isnt Reelected.

Left-wing legacy media deceptively edited a clip to accuse Trump of political violence and make an immediate determination of guilt in the court of public opinion. That meets the definition of disinformation: deliberately spreading false information to mislead the public. This is the type of press Benjamin Franklin warned about, one in which the accused is allowed no grand jury of the truth of the accusation before it is publicly made.

Franklin, writing an analysis of the press entitled An Account of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz. The Court of the Press, continued: The proceedings are also sometimes so rapid, that an honest good citizen may find himself suddenly and unexpectedly accused, and in the same morning judges and condemned, and sentence pronounced against him, That he is a rogue and a villain.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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CNN Analyst Asks Feds To Meddle In Elections To Defeat Trump - The Federalist

Because both men involved in the harrowing New York City subway shooting that took place this week are nonwhite, the pro-crime left is going to have to think very hard about how to frame this story without acknowledging the skin color of either the perpetrator or the victim.

Actually, never mind. Its apparently already decided theyre going with the tried and true its the damn guns! line.

During a press conference immediately following the incident, subway system CEO and Chairman Janno Lieber rushed to get ahead of any obvious questions about how and why this happened. When you bring a gun on the train and you start a fight, its just its not right and its absolutely outrageous, he said. Thats what happened here. Someone brought a gun on the train and started a fight. Thats why we need to keep fighting against guns.

Suffice it to say, that is not what happened here.

At the start of rush hour on Thursday, according to New York police, a 36-year-old black man, identified by reports as Dajuan Robinson, approached a 32-year-old male passenger in a provocative and aggressive manner. Bystander video, which circulated on social media, shows Robinson yelling at the man, whom he apparently believed to be of Latin descent, Ill beat you up, F-ck your kind, and F-ck your race.

Police said that at some point, Robinson had displayed either a knife or blade. The 32-year-old, who had been seated, then stood to square up against his aggressor. The two circled each other for a moment before a brawl broke out. Shortly into the fight, a woman approached Robinson from behind and stabbed his lower back at least once. In the video, Robinsons shirt visibly turned red with blood, and after the two men were separated by yet another male passenger, Robinson struggled to maintain balance. You stabbed me, he said, adding, Im bleeding, and, I got you.

Robinson then started fumbling through a jacket he took off at the start of the altercation, pulled out a gun, and cocked it. Passengers scrambled to the other end of the train car, and eventually, four fired shots can be heard on the video. According to police, the 32-year-old man was able to take the gun from Robinson and shoot him in the head, landing him in the hospital in critical condition as of Friday.

In his remarks at the press conference, Lieber lamented the disruption the incident brought to what he described as the worlds greatest experiment in tolerance and diversity (aka New Yorks sewage-level mass transit system).

As of mid-February, crime was up more than 20 percent on the subway compared to the same time in 2023. Its gotten so violent, exacerbated in large part by the unabated influx of migrants, that last week, New Yorks Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered some 1,000 additional state policemen and National Guard members to patrol the system. This is on top of the extra 1,000 law enforcement officers New York City Mayor Eric Adams dispatched to the subways in February.

The collapse of law and order isnt an unfortunate coincidence to that great experiment in tolerance and diversity. Its a direct consequence of it. The city and states Democrat leaders believe the public should tolerate the crime, violence, and blight. Thats why theyve legalized so much of it and prosecuted so little of it. They believe hordes of penniless, criminal migrants only add to the citys diversity. Thats why they house, feed, and clothe so many of them and turn away none of them.

If they didnt believe it, Lieber would have said something about it. Instead, he prattled about guns. [T]he real victims are the people I saw in those videos who are having a harrowing time because they are on the train with somebody with a gun, he said. Even if hes fighting somebody else, theyre afraid for their lives. Theyre just trying to go about their lives. So get rid of the guns. People want to have disagreements, thats going to happen in life. But when a guns involved, we cant live with it.

In other words, if not for the gun, it was all just a happy display of tolerance and diversity. Just something thats going to happen in life. Only a racist bigot would say otherwise.

Enjoy that great experiment, New York.

Excerpt from:

NYC Subway Shooting Is A Result Of 'Tolerance And Diversity' - The Federalist

Former President Donald Trump spent Thursday sitting in a Florida courtroom while his opponent, President Joe Biden, hit the campaign trail a reminder that Democrats 2024 campaign strategy of get Trump lawfare is dangerous election interference regardless of the outcomes of particular prosecutions.

Biden spoke to voters in Michigan and Wisconsin this week and is slated to visit North Carolina soon as he tries to patch potential holes in the blue wall. Meanwhile, Trump appeared in court to defend himself from special prosecutor Jack Smiths relentless campaign to jail the former president.

After the hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon denied one of Trumps motions to dismiss the Biden Justice Departments classified documents case against him. Cannon argued in a two-page ruling it would be premature to decide now whether the Espionage Acts applicability to a former president is unconstitutionally vague, as Trumps team argues. (Cannon has not yet ruled on another motion to dismiss, which argues Trump had unreviewable discretion to designate documents as personal under the Presidential Records Act.)

But in doing so, Cannon gave Trumps team the opportunity to raise the issues during the trial.

Although the Motion raises various arguments warranting serious consideration, the Court ultimately determines that resolution of the overall question presented depends too greatly on contested instructional questions about still-fluctuating definitions of statutory terms/phrases as charged, along with at least some disputed factual issues, Cannon wrote. She opted to deny the Motion without prejudice, to be raised as appropriate in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions.

Some leftists, including former U.S. attorney and MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance, fretted Friday that the decision could end up bolstering Trumps chances of having his case tossed entirely should Cannon side with Trump at trial something she called a nightmare scenario.

Vance explained to Salon that if Cannon had ruled in Trumps favor, special counsel Jack Smith could have then appealed her ruling.

But thats not the case if, after todays ruling in the governments favor, she permits Trump to resurrect the motion at trial. She could grant the motion to dismiss the case then, at which point the Biden DOJ likely cant appeal, Vance said. Thats because once a jury has been empaneled, double jeopardy attaches and prevents the government from retrying the defendant on the same charges if hes acquitted.

Cannon did express skepticism at Trumps argument that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague, telling the defense at the hearing Im not seeing how any of that gets you to the dismissal of the indictment, according to Courthouse News. Still, her decision leaves the door open for Trumps team to argue the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act later down the road.

But even if Trump succeeds everywhere in court, Democrats lawfare is achieving its goal of costing him time and money in a busy campaign season. And its being led by the Justice Department of Trumps main opponent.

Smith, of course, was appointed by Bidens attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has weaponized the Justice Department against political enemies before. Furthermore, Jay Bratt, a prosecutor on Smiths team, had a meeting in the White House with then-deputy chief of staff for the White House counsels office Carolina Saba and FBI agent Danielle Ray in March of 2023, according to the New York Post, which cited visitor logs. Trump was indicted by Smith weeks later for what the DOJ claimed was improper retention of classified document at Mar-a-Lago.

Bratt had two prior meetings at the White House in 2021 around the same time Trump was working with the National Archives to return requested records, according to The Post.

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said the meeting raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said there was no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if its coordinated by the highest levels, according to The Post.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78, an individual can only unjustly lose his liberty at the hands of the judicial system if the judicial system is in cahoots with the executive or legislative branch.

The courts will not endanger the general liberty of the people so long as the Judiciary remains truly distinct from both the Legislature and the Executive, Hamilton wrote. Liberty can have nothing to fear from the Judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments.

By weaponizing the justice system against Trump, who is beating Biden slightly in most polls, Jack Smith and the rest of the get Trump gang are attempting to achieve just that.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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Keeping Trump In Court While Biden Campaigns Is Election Interference - The Federalist