The gun-control movement is driven by raw emotion. Facts are irrelevant. Logic is spurned. Utter nonsense is solemnly intoned.
— Don Feder
March 23, 2025
Since “Judge” Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare. https://t.co/CNrl252Irs
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 22, 2025
For what reason are we funding universities of nations that are perfectly able to do so themselves?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been urged to call an "emergency meeting" after the Trump administration cut grants to seven Australian universities.https://t.co/07ETiIE3jy
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 22, 2025
Dad spent nearly 2 years stationed on Guam between WW2 and the Korean War.
AG: Self-defense is ‘inherent right’
There are many scenarios that can justify the use of deadly force, for instance, a home invasion or a person carrying a machete while aggressively approaching you on your property. Both could be arguments for the castle doctrine law on Guam, but as Attorney General Douglas Moylan stressed, the facts must support that an imminent threat of death or serious injury was present.
On Saturday, the Francisco C. Chargualaf Gymnasium filled with residents of Malesso’ and the surrounding southern villages. All wanted to learn more about the laws in place that allow them to protect themselves and others through deadly force on their property and curtilage.
Moylan explained that through the castle doctrine, Guam law provides homeowners the right to use deadly force to defend their homes or vehicles with protection from prosecution when acting against threats such as home invaders and burglars.
“This isn’t just about firearms, OK? This is about any weapon that you use. The focus of the law is a right to self-defense and the right to use deadly force, and there is a presumption that if, in certain areas, that you’re threatened, you have a right to use deadly force. Whether you’re using a machete, a knife, a bow and arrow, anything that causes the potential injury or death to another person, that is what the castle doctrine speaks to,” Moylan told the audience in attendance.
Moylan referenced the recent amendment to the castle doctrine, which extends those “certain areas” to curtilage.
Curtilage legally refers to the immediate land and buildings surrounding a home. An example would be the yard between the front door and public easement, where children may play or an area where one can expect to have reasonable privacy from government intrusion, like a shed at the back of a home.
“There is an inherent right for everybody to be able to protect themselves and to protect their loved ones and to protect one another,” Moylan said.
Several southern residents who spoke presented scenarios like a homeowner catching a thief stealing a lawn mower as the suspect turns to get away. Or an individual trespassing on property and taking produce and firing a warning shot. They all questioned how to know if the requirements of the castle doctrine are met in different scenarios.
“No. 1 is, whenever you’re confronted with a situation, always try to think when is the last moment can I use deadly force? If you do that, and … if you have the presence of mind to be able to think, I’m not going to, for instance, if you have a gun, I’m not going to immediately shoot what I’m seeing in my house, which the castle doctrine, I think, was originally designed for. But I (the homeowner) want to figure out (how) not to harm somebody as much as possible until they become that clear and present danger to you. Because if you use that type of rule, you’re probably going to be able to get through our AG’s office analysis when the police come there and do the police report and then send it up to our office so that we don’t charge you,” Moylan said.
However, Moylan cautioned against pulling the trigger on a retreating culprit.
“And just to jump to the front of the line here, if you guys see the guy that came into your house at 2 o’clock at night, turn around and then try to get out of the house because he saw you, you guys made eye contact. Please don’t shoot him,” Moylan said.
While Moylan was not advocating for shooting another person, recognizing that many crimes committed in Guam are fueled by methamphetamine addiction, he did support the right to defend oneself as allowed in the castle doctrine law.
“You can use deadly force if the person is using a weapon against you. You have to use nondeadly force if the person is coming to just fight you,” Moylan said. “You can’t just pull out the firearm and shoot him in the street.”
Application of the castle doctrine law comes down to the “fact patterns” of the case and whether the AG green lights the prosecution.
“So, you literally can have somebody killed by you, the police officer would put together the report, what they’re seeing, different statements, and then it would come up to the AG’s office. My first group would be looking at it and, especially if it caught my attention, it would be brought to me, or they would have the sense of mind to bring it to me, and then I would sit down with them and then go over the facts on what happened,” Moylan said noting the need for the facts to justify the use of deadly force.
Moylan referenced the Dave Barber Shop shooting, where the shop owner shot a burglar in the leg as the suspect entered their private living quarters. He noted the shop owner was afforded criminal and civil protections of the castle doctrine law and not charged.
Moylan encouraged residents, if faced with the need to use deadly force against an aggressor at home or in a vehicle, to aim for the leg or fire a warning shot.
“When you shoot somebody, you don’t need to hit them between the eyes. You don’t need to hit them necessarily in the heart. You can hit him in the leg. You can hit him in the kneecap,” Moylan said.
Moylan repeatedly stressed that castle doctrine law does not protect one’s property from theft or damage. For the doctrine to apply, the threat of imminent loss of life or serious bodily injury must be present to respond with deadly force.
The Unitary Executive Meets the Unitary Judiciary
The Use of Nationwide Injunctions by U.S. District Courts
Authors
Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow
Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Center
Federal courts may—and should—supply complete relief to a victorious party, but that can be done without granting strangers the same judicially enforceable rights that a judgment provides to a successful litigant. Nationwide injunctions not only cross that line, but also prevent the federal government from enforcing an act of Congress, executive order, or agency rule against nonparties. Unless and until Congress endorses that practice, the federal courts should limit the reach of their judgments to the parties to a lawsuit. The Supreme Court would need to overrule its unanimous decisions in Zbaraz and Mendoza to uphold a nationwide injunction like the ones that have been entered against the government. That is as unlikely as it would be unwise.
Key Takeaways
- Supplying complete relief to a victorious party can be done without granting strangers the same judicially enforceable rights that a successful litigant enjoys.
- Nationwide injunctions both cross that line and prevent the federal government from enforcing an act of Congress, executive order, or agency rule against nonparties.
- Unless and until Congress endorses that practice, the federal courts should limit the reach of their judgments to only the parties to a lawsuit.
[FYI; It’s l-o-n-g, and like all legal treatises by lawyers, they interject the source of citation directly after a cite, breaking up the text and making it difficult to read.]
So:
Introduction: The Practice of Issuing Nationwide Injunctions
The Unitary Executive Theory1
Judge includes new USAID head in order against dismantling the agency
Days after a federal judge blocked billionaire Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service from taking further actions to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, he made clear in a separate ruling this week that the prohibition also applied to the agency’s new chief operating officer — a former DOGE team leader inside USAID who started his new role on the day of the first order.
Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old Harvard Law School grad on DOGE’s team dismantling USAID, joined the humanitarian agency Tuesday as its chief operating officer and deputy administrator for policy and programming, according to a court filing Wednesday by the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice asked the Maryland federal judge to clarify or modify his order so that it wouldn’t apply to Lewin.
U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, in declining the request Thursday, added that he reserves the right to modify the preliminary injunction to expand who it applies to if “additional personnel actions have the effect of circumventing” it.
On Friday, the Department of Justice filed notice that it will appeal Chuang’s original ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
“It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club.
It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration.
It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.
Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing ‘compassion’ for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.”
– Thomas Sowell
March 22, 2025
Supreme Court Second Amendment Update 3-20-2025
Given that the Supreme Court has scheduled a “large capacity” magazine ban cert petition to tomorrow’s conference for the ninth time (plus two reschedules), the timing of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals en banc panel upholding California’s ban on magazines that hold more than ten rounds is interesting.
“[T]he en banc court concluded that California’s law comported with the Second Amendment for two independent reasons. First, the text of the Second Amendment does not encompass the right to possess large-capacity magazines because large-capacity magazines are neither “arms” nor protected accessories. Second, even assuming that the text of the Second Amendment encompasses the possession of optional accessories like large-capacity magazines, California’s ban on large-capacity magazines falls within the Nation’s tradition of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm.” Here is a link to the decision.
In any event, there are other Second Amendment cert petitions scheduled for the conference. I’ve listed them below, along with the questions presented. Clicking on the docket number will take you to the SCOTUS docket, where you can take a deep dive into the petitions.
Space Force General: Chinese Satellites ‘Dogfighting’ in Orbit.
The vice chief of the U.S. Space Force said Chinese satellites have been observed rehearsing “dogfighting” maneuvers in low Earth orbit, a display of the communist nation’s ability to perform complex maneuvers in orbit.
The maneuvers, referred to as rendezvous and proximity operations, involve not only navigating around other objects but also inspecting them, the Air Force Times reported Tuesday.
“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Tuesday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington, D.C.
“That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”
A Space Force spokesperson told the Air Force Times the observation occurred in 2024 and involved three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two other Chinese experimental spacecraft, the Shijian-605 A and B. The Shijian-6 systems were believed to be on a signals intelligence mission, which could be used to determine the geolocation of a signal’s origin, which helps in identifying the location and movements of adversaries, according to the American Military Institute.
Guetlein’s comments came as the Space Force intensifies efforts to establish dominance in space, both by defending its satellites from enemy attacks and through offensive measures of its own, according to the Air Force Times.
“The purpose of the Space Force is to guarantee space superiority for the joint force — not space for space’s sake,” Guetlein said. “Space [operations] guarantee that, just like all the other domains, we can fight as a joint force, and we can depend on those capabilities.”
Guetlein used the satellite dogfighting demonstration among other concerning activities from “near-peer” U.S. adversaries. That included Russia’s 2019 demonstration of a “nesting doll,” during which a satellite released a smaller spacecraft that then performed several stalking maneuvers near a U.S. satellite.
Such operations indicate the space capability gap between the U.S. military and its closest adversaries is shrinking, a concern Space Force leaders have been raising for years, the Air Force Times reported.
“That capability gap used to be massive,” Guetlein said. “We’ve got to change the way we look at space or that capability gap may reverse and not be in our favor anymore.”
I’m actually shocked.
New York’s Top Court Rules Noncitizen Voting in NYC Elections Is Unconstitutional.
New York’s highest court struck down NYC’s controversial law allowing non-citizens to vote in a 6-to-1 decision, limiting voting only to citizens after a three-year legal battle.
In a blow to Democrats, liberal judges on the New York State Court of Appeals sided with their conservative colleagues on March 20 to reject the law as unconstitutional in a major victory for voter integrity.
The law, which was passed by the Democrat-run New York City Council in December 2021, would have enabled nearly 800,000 “lawful permanent residents” with green cards, work authorization and DACA status, and who have lived in the city for at least a month, to vote to vote in local elections.
Non-citizens under those categories would have been entitled to vote in city elections for mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and the City Council, thus giving the Democrats an even larger majority of votes.
Ninth Circuit Upholds California Mag Ban, But Not Without Epic Dissent From Trump-Appointed Judge
Thursday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding California’s ban on “large capacity” magazines wasn’t exactly unexpected, but the video dissent from Judge Lawrence Van Dyke was a curveball that I doubt anyone saw coming.
An en banc panel had previously ruled the state’s magazine ban in line with the Second Amendment, but SCOTUS vacated that decision and remanded the case back to the appellate court after Bruen in 2022. In turn, the Ninth Circuit sent the case back down to U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who’d previously declared the ban unconstitutional. Benitez reached the same conclusion the second time around, and just like before an en banc panel has now overruled the West Coast “saint” of the Second Amendment.
“First, the Founders protected the right to keep and bear ‘Arms,’ not a right to keep and bear ‘Arms and Accoutrements,’ a common expression at the time of the Founding,” the opinion said. “Large-capacity magazines are optional accessories to firearms, and firearms operate as intended without a large-capacity magazine. A large-capacity magazine is thus an accessory or accoutrement, not an ‘Arm’ in itself. Possession of a large-capacity magazine therefore falls outside the text of the Second Amendment.”
The judges wrote that even if large-capacity magazines were covered by the Second Amendment, “California’s law falls neatly within the Nation’s traditions of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm.”
Under the Ninth Circuit’s argument, virtually all detachable magazines, regardless of their capacity, would fall beyond the Second Amendment’s protections because they’re “accoutrements” and not arms. The Court tried to get around that absurdity with its argument about a national tradition of prohibiting “especially dangerous uses of weapons”; establishing a whole new test that flies in the face of existing Supreme Court precedent. Going back to Heller the Court has held that arms that are in common use for lawful purposes are, prima facie, protected by the right to keep and bear arms. Magazines that can hold more than ten rounds aren’t just common, they’re ubiquitous, and they are possessed and used by far more lawful gun owners than violent criminals or mass shooters.
Three judges appointed during President Donald Trump’s first term authored dissenting opinions. Judge Ryan Nelson wrote that his colleagues flouted the standard set by the Bruen ruling and in so doing “(butchered) the Second Amendment and (gave) a judicial middle finger to the Supreme Court.”
Judge Lawrence VanDyke included in his dissent a video of himself operating firearms in his chambers. Seven of the eight judges who were part of the majority opinion joined in an opinion calling the video “wildly improper,” both because the video introduced facts that were not part of the record and because VanDyke appeared to be attempting to offer expert testimony.
It may be wildly improper in the eyes of VanDyke’s gun-controlling colleagues, but frankly I’d like to see more of this. Most folks aren’t going to read through more than 100 pages of legal arguments, but they’d be much more inclined to watch an 18-minute video on YouTube.
Well, I did too, so…….
The Left Knew They Were Lying to Us All Along
Victor Davis Hanson
For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.
They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.
A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak about a lab origin of the deadly virus.
The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.
The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”
Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.
Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.
Indeed, that was the point.
Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.
His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.
Gun maker closes up shop in N.J., taking 146 jobs with it to the Midwest
Gun manufacturer Henry Repeating Arms says it is making a strategic move to relocate its operations out of New Jersey and into the Midwest, according to a statement released by the company.
The manufacturer will close its Bayonne operations and move jobs to its newly expanded headquarters in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. It will also move jobs to two additional facilities in nearby Ladysmith, Wisconsin.
The closure affects 146 workers at the Bayonne operation according to WARN notices filed March 13. Henry employs more than 800 people, according to its website.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, Henry’s New Jersey facility manufactured 35,069 firearms in 2022. This included 25,012 rifles, 1,433 shotguns, and 8,624 handguns.
The company said in the statement that the move out of New Jersey accommodates the need for increased production capacity and better supports the company’s future growth driven by innovative firearms design.
“We are putting all of our eggs in one basket, the Wisconsin basket, because it makes us more efficient, more productive, and allows for more collaboration amongst our design and engineering teams, all while sustaining and enhancing Henry’s solid reputation for quality,” said Anthony Imperato, Founder and CEO of Henry Repeating Arms.
“With about 400,000 square feet of cutting-edge manufacturing operations in four facilities within minutes of each other, Henry Repeating Arms is well positioned for its next chapter.”
Andrew Wickstrom, president of Henry Repeating Arms, said the new phase will help the company grow.
“This transition allows us to double down on what we do best — making world-class rifles, shotguns, and revolvers right here in the heart of America,” said Wickstrom. “Our Wisconsin operations have been essential to our success for a long time, and now it is the cornerstone of our bright future.”
