Category: Goobermint

Senate Bill 3: Gun licensing scheme much broader than claimed

The Colorado legislature is close to final passage of Senate Bill 25-003, to impose one of the most restrictive licensing systems in the nation on many, but not all firearms. Legislators and the public should understand that the bill would apply to all semiautomatic centerfire handguns. The kinds of handguns that Coloradans typically choose—from companies such as Glock, Ruger, or Smith & Wesson—would become much more onerous to purchase.

Senate Bill 3 seems cunningly written. It purports to apply only to the “gas-operated semiautomatic handgun.” (p. 4). The bill then provides five types of gas operation. Cumulatively, the definitions cover almost every centerfire semiautomatic handgun.

The bill does not apply to semiautomatics that fire the puny .22 rimfire cartridge.

There is only one centerfire semiautomatic handgun model that does not fall within the bill’s definitions. That unique item is the Benelli B-80, a collector’s item last manufactured in 1990. The identical gun was produced in six different calibers, model numbers 76 through 82.

As for every other model of semiautomatic pistol, Coloradans will be forced to navigate their way through one of the most onerous systems in the nation, far exceeding even California’s.

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Manhattan DA calls on 3D printing companies to deter creation of ghost guns

With crimes involving ghost guns on the rise, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., is calling on a 3D printer manufacturer to put more safeguards in place to prevent the spread of 3D-printed guns and gun parts.

Bragg penned a letter to Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Co., Ltd. (Creality), which produces 3D printers available to individual consumers, to install their printers with an available 3D-printing software program that detects the shapes of common gun parts and blocks their printing. Bragg also called on Creality to take down any online blueprints, also known as CAD files, from its cloud platform, and to ban the creation of illicit weapons in the company’s user agreement.

The letter comes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold federal regulations, which the DA’s office filed an amicus brief in support of last summer, requiring ghost gun parts to have serial numbers and compelling background checks for prospective buyers of ghost gun home-assembly kits.
“We are calling on companies that sell 3D-printers to work with us to stem the flow of dangerous weapons into our communities by implementing targeted, commonsense fixes. Too often, gun violence tragically takes innocent lives and tears at the fabric of our communities. Over the past several years, the number of illegal, 3D-printed firearms and ghost guns has increased significantly. We have an aggressive and holistic approach to combatting gun violence alongside our law enforcement partners but we cannot do it alone. We are hopeful that we can partner with these companies and make a meaningful impact on public safety,” said District Attorney Bragg.

Creality printers have been previously seized during searches by law enforcement in New York City, including recent cases; the DA’s office cites the cases against Luigi Mangione and Robert Guerrero, which are still in progress, as well as Cory Davis and Cliffie Thomspon, both of whom plead guilty to manufacturing ghost guns.

Since 2020, the DA’s Office has been cracking down on use and possession of ghost guns and illegal firearms, creating the Ghost Gun Initiative with the NYPD. Between 2021 and 2024, homicides decreased by 20%, and shootings decreased by 45% in Manhattan.

In 2023, Bragg introduced legislation to close loopholes in New York’s gun laws to make manufacturing 3D-printed and ghost guns and gun parts a felony. The legislation would also make it a misdemeanor to share, sell or distribute files containing blueprints for 3D-printed firearms components.

Bragg will be sending similar letters to other leading consumer brands of 3D printers in the coming weeks. Click here to read the full letter.

We got rid of this here in Missouri 18 years ago, and the Sheriffs who administered it were thankful they didn’t have to deal with the annoyance of it anymore and it wasn’t anywhere near as restrictive as what this proposed legislation is. This is nothing more than goobermint harassment.

Permit-to-Purchase Measure Advancing in Washington

Washington State already has a “universal” background check law that requires everyone who purchases a firearm to go through a background check, but now Democrats in Olympia want to add a second check, along with training mandates, for every would-be gun owner in the state.

E2SHB 1163 has already passed out of the House of Representatives, and last Thursday cleared the Senate Law and Justice Committee on its way to the Senate floor.

Republicans, according to The Center Square, argue the bill violates gun rights protected by the Constitution. Critics also believe the bill will cost hundreds of dollars and take weeks before someone can buy a gun.

“To be rather blunt about this, I think this is another imprudent piece of legislation that probably will pass out of committee today, but I want to be real clear about it — I don’t think this will survive the brewing historical analog test,” Senator Jeff Holy, R-Cheney, said during Thursday’s Senate Law and Justice Committee meeting. “I could pretty much guarantee litigation is going to immediately come forward once this bill does pass both Chambers.”

Holy, added the media outlet, believes the cost of buying a firearm and taking a safety course is too much of a burden.

“The cost of the permit we’re talking about here is, we’re guessing, maybe $200,” Holy said, as reported by The Center Square. “It’s going to disproportionately impact lower and middle-income people. The last thing we’re going to want to have is people with a need for self-protection to have to go off-market and buy guns from inappropriate sources.”

It’s not only the cost that will send some people to the illicit market. The state currently has a 10-day waiting period on all firearm sales, which is already bad enough. But under the permit-to-purchase scheme making its way through the legislature, the Washington State Patrol would have an additional 30 days to approve or deny a permit application, which can’t be dropped off until after someone has passed the approved firearms safety course. The WSP has already indicated they’d have to hire or more staff or re-allocate existing personnel to process the applications, so you know there’s not going to be a quick turnaround.

What happens when a woman leaves her abusive partner and wants a handgun to protect herself? As things stand, she already has to hope and pray that he doesn’t come after her in the ten days she has to wait between buying a gun and picking it up, even if it only takes a matter of seconds for her background check to come back clean. Under Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 1163 she could easily be forced to remain defenseless for over a month, at least if she wants to remain in compliance with the law.

There is simply no way for someone who’s not already a gun owner to be able to take possession of one in a timely manner, even if they have reason to believe that their life is in danger. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown claims this bill will save lives. The truth is that it puts the most vulnerable Washingtonians at risk, either of losing their life or being charged with a crime for daring to exercise their Second Amendment rights without a state-issued permission slip.

Actually I have no problem at all believing this

You Won’t Believe What Insanity HHS Was Funding

Do you want your taxpayer dollars funding studies on preventing pregnancy in “transgender boys” or HIV stigma in Thailand? Fortunately, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary also considers that a waste, so he’s cutting numerous idiotic woke studies.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Trump’s new agency heads have uncovered billions of dollars of egregious fraud and waste, including the previously unknown agency whose employees lived “like kings” and the Social Security funding for 150+ year olds. Now HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to streamline the massive, unwieldy, unconstitutional, and harmful federal healthcare agencies. It’s time to cure the woke mind virus. Read on for mind-blowing craziness.

First reported on Fox News, the woke HHS grants — presumably Biden-era, though there’s been deep government corruption for decades — included one for over $5 million to study “Harnessing the power of text messaging to reduce HIV incidence in adolescent males across the United States.” A Stanford University study, “Sex hormone effects on neurodevelopment: Controlled puberty in transgender adolescents,” received over $3.6 million from HHS.

A whopping 61 grants from HHS subsidiary NIH for California DEI and “gender” studies were also slashed, per Fox. The scale of federal fraud and waste is so vast it is difficult to comprehend. No wonder the Deep State was panicked at the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House and at the appointment of Kennedy as HHS secretary.

“#TranscendentHealth – Adapting an LGB+ inclusive teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys,” reads another $1,319,024 grant awarded to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research.

The University of California, San Francisco’s $2,554,402 grant for “Structural Racism and Discrimination in Older Men’s Health Inequities” also was canceled, Fox Digital learned, as was a $822,539 grant to UCLA called “Buddhism and HIV Stigma in Thailand: An Intervention Study.”

Meanwhile, Americans are more chronically unhealthy than ever. What a joke the federal bureaucracy is.

Altogether, hundreds of NIH grants on “gender” or DEI topics have already been canceled, including research on “multilevel and multidimensional structural racism” (whatever that means), “gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice”, and “microaggressions.” I think I lost brain cells just reading those inanities, and yet supposedly serious researchers were receiving taxpayer money for this.

Kennedy has already announced a reduction of some 20,000 HHS employees, as multiple of HHS’s subsidiary departments and agencies will be “merging… into a new organization called the Administration for Healthy America or AHA.” Imagine healthcare agencies actually working to make people healthy! Now if only we could have some major accountability for the former HHS leaders who ruined so many lives with their disastrous COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates…

Civilian gun club wins lawsuit against Fort Devens for violating their rights
Gun club had to file a lawsuit against the Fort in 2022.

A small civilian gun club located just 50 miles northwest of Boston has won a “landmark” lawsuit against nearby Fort Devens for violating their rights and federal law by denying them access to military rifle ranges at reasonable rates.

The Ft. Devens Rifle & Pistol Club, Inc., filed suit in 2022 claiming that Fort officials were charging range fees in violation of federal law, according to club treasurer Jim Gettens, a retired attorney who assisted with the legal fight.

Gettens said Monday that his club’s victory was a major “David vs. Goliath” event.

“They were running an illegal profiteering racket,” he said. “That’s the best way to describe it. This was a landmark case.”

Gettens and other club members noticed that their problems with the range began only three days after Joe Biden took office in 2022, which they said would never have happened under President Donald Trump’s Administration.

At issue was a little-known section of U.S. code that requires the Army to make rifle and pistol ranges available for civilian use as long as it does not interfere with military training, and it prohibits officials from charging exorbitant fees for range access.

Another federal statute requires the Army to provide logistical support to the Civilian Marksmanship Program. The Fort Devens Rifle & Pistol Club, Inc., is an affiliate of both the Civilian Marksmanship Program and the National Rifle Association.

For decades prior to the 2020 election, club members had been using a wide array of rifle and pistol ranges at Fort Devens free of charge. Club members supplied their own targets, ammunition, Range Safety Officers and other supplies. They even policed their own brass. Most of the club members are veterans, so they are intimately familiar with range safety protocols and other best practices. To be clear, in terms of taxpayer dollars, the club cost the Fort very little, which is why club member were so surprised when the Fort began charging them.

Just days after the 2020 election, the club was notified in writing that they would have to start paying a minimum of $250 per range, and that the fees would increase based upon the total number of shooters.

The bottom line was that Fort Devens tried to charge personnel costs for Range Safety Officers and technicians who were never there. In addition, a range staff member admitted in a memorandum that the range was unable to prove maintenance, supply and repair costs because the Fort never kept any such records.

“The odds were certainly stacked against us,” Getten said Monday. “As it turned out, the U.S. Army Garrison at Fort Devens croaked themselves with their own administrative records. A range officer filed a memo for the record admitting they kept no maintenance, supply or repair records—one of the most egregious abuses. We detailed all of this stuff in a memorandum in support for summary judgement. We just destroyed them.”

While the gun club won and can stop paying fraudulent fees, hundreds of civilian police officers are still charged for their time at the range, which Getten said is a legal problem for their agencies.

“Non-DoD law enforcement officers, state police and municipal police departments are still paying out the wazoo for all of those costs,” Getten said. “Non-DoD law enforcement agencies should not be getting hosed the way they are. Also, ICE, FBI, U.S. Customs and other federal law enforcement agencies pay out the wazoo for their range time and pass the costs onto taxpayers.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julian N. Canzoneri, who defended the government against the gun club’s lawsuit, did not return phone calls or emails seeking his comments for this story.

Sometimes reasonable people must do unreasonable things.

The title is a paraphrase of something Marv Heemeyer said. If you’re unfamiliar with that name, it’s the guy who built and used the “Killdozer” to go after people who kept screwing him over in Granby, Colorado. The Lore Lodge on YouTube did a great video on some of what’s been missing from the popular narrative you should check out.

In the heart of things, though, you’ve got a guy who wanted to be part of the community; to contribute and be treated fairly as any person has a right to expect. The problem was, he wasn’t. The “good old boy” system there took issue with him because he bought property that someone else, someone connected, wanted and things went downhill from there until Heemeyer engaged in his rampage.

Which hurt no one, by the way. The only fatality was himself.

But the truth is that you can only push people so far before they start pushing back, and if you push them long enough, their pushback won’t be for just one thing, but a long history of abuses. I’ve touched on how the attacks on Christians could go, but it doesn’t stop there.

See, I came across this bit from Hot Air today, and I found something interesting, but not surprising. See, an auto repair shop called Popular Mechanix has a problem. An arsonist who has been arrested numerous times but keeps coming back to cause problems with the shop. And, frankly, enough is enough.

It’s not that the city is doing nothing. They do arrest and charge Perez Perez every few months, it’s just that the city isn’t stopping him or even discouraging him. He’s committing many more crimes than he’s being punished for and the city can’t deal with it. So dealing with Perez Perez has fallen on shop manager DJ Meisner:

“It feels like the Wild West,” said Meisner about the city. “I try not to give into the doom spiral narrative. But they are doing nothing to dissuade me of that notion.”…

In 2022, Meisner said he was putting out blazes weekly and even installed a ladder he bought from a hunting website to get a better vantage point from the fence line. He placed extinguisher devices on the fence, but they have proven useless and have been swallowed up in the fires.

In October, an early morning fire broke out in Popular Mechanix’s backyard, growing into a large blaze that destroyed two of the shop’s cars and scarred surrounding trees. One of the cars exploded because it was full of gasoline.

In January the police recommended charges against Perez Perez for the November arson (the one caught on video). Supposedly the DA reached out to the company this week, but does anyone think it will matter? Perez Perez might go to prison for another six months. Then he’ll be back on the street and Popular Mechanix will be left to do its best to protect itself from him. And of course, he’s not the only agent of chaos in the city.

The shop’s owner, Andrew Gescheidt, says it feels like he’s being pushed toward becoming a vigilante. “I feel like I don’t want to become a vigilante, but the universe is saying you have to do it yourself,” he said. He vowed he wouldn’t go out and hit Perez Perez with a wrench but added, “Bureaucracy is not helping us.”

Again, the police show up, arrest him, he goes to court, gets a sentence, then comes out and does it all over again. There’s a restraining order against him, but that’s just a piece of paper when all else is considered.

What Gescheidt is articulating here is that he, a reasonable man, is starting to feel like he needs to do unreasonable things.

Let’s understand that you cannot use lethal force in a situation that isn’t reasonably perceived as a life-or-death situation. Bottles of urine and rocks should qualify—both can kill people, after all—but California’s prosecutors would likely disagree. That means Gescheidt attacking Perez Perez in any way, even when you and I might believe there was a threat of grievous bodily harm or even death, he’s likely to be the one to go to prison.

But unless something is done, you’re going to see some kind of vigilantism in San Francisco. Writer John Sexton teases that you have to become Batman to live in San Fran, and he’s not entirely wrong to do so.

The thing is, though, anyone can be pushed far enough. There’s a point where anyone stops being docile and law-abiding. Sure, you can push them pretty far if you’re gentle about it to start with, but even then, sooner or later, you risk crossing the Rubicon and that person unleashing hell.

In a civilized nation, we expect criminals to be punished. We expect at least some response that looks like justice. Since the system is run by people, we can accept that mistakes are made so long as they’re rectified as quickly as possible, but we still expect meaningful action.

Someone revolving through the jails to return and continue to unleash havoc isn’t justice. It’s not remotely like justice, and if it keeps up, someone will decide justice has to come from somewhere else.

Clearly, the police can’t do it.

But it’s not limited here, either.

Right now, the left is, once again, losing their freaking minds. They’re firebombing Tesla dealerships because they don’t like Elon Musk. They’re acting as if they’ve been pushed too far when no one has pushed them anywhere. They’re the ones doing the pushing.

At some point, someone is going to say enough is enough and take action.

Should that happen, it’s entirely possible it will inspire others to act. Reasonable men and women must do unreasonable things, and it’s usually unreasonable men and women who push them to do them.

Stop being unreasonable and things will settle. Fail to do that, and, well…consider yourself warned.

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.

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So it’s now obvious, SCOTUS woman judges, even supposedly ‘conservative ones’ are problematic when it comes to goobermint power.
Roberts is just his squishy self.

Supreme Court Rules Against Trump’s Bid to Stop $2 Billion in USAID Funding.

On Wednesday morning, in a 5-4 emergency decision, the Supreme Court upheld a decision from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali that essentially says that Donald Trump can’t withhold $2 billion in USAID money from existing contractors. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three liberal members of the court. From the ruling:

On February 13, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order enjoining the Government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of foreign development assistance funds. The present application does not challenge the Government’s obligation to follow that order.

On February 25, the District Court ordered the Government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements—those owed for work already completed before the issuance of the District Court’s temporary restraining order—by 11:59 p.m. on February 26.

Several hours before that deadline, the Government filed this application to vacate the District Court’s February 25 order and requested an immediate administrative stay. THE CHIEF JUSTICE entered an administrative stay shortly before the 11:59 p.m. deadline and subsequently referred the application to the Court. The application is denied.

Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. The order heretofore entered by THE CHIEF JUSTICE is vacated.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh voted in favor of Trump, with Justice Alito writing the lengthy dissent that begins with:

Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.

So, what exactly does this mean? Judge Ali, who was appointed by the Biden administration, ruled that the Trump administration must maintain USAID agreements that were in place before Trump officially took office on January 20. According to The Hill, Ali “found the Trump administration wasn’t complying with his order to resume the unpaid USAID contracts and grants. Last week, Ali demanded the funds be released by the end of the following day.”

Red State’s Susie Moore writes, “SCOTUS temporarily paused that order, but now, since the deadline is past (and moot), rather than vacate it altogether, they’re lifting the pause and sending things back to the district court to sort out further.”

According to NBC, “Specific projects affected by the payment freeze include the installation of new irrigation and water pumping stations in Ukraine; waterworks upgrades in Lagos, Nigeria; the supply of medical equipment in Vietnam and Nepal; and measures to combat malaria in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Ethiopia.”

While it’s not great news for Trump, as Moore says, “This isn’t the end of the story on this case — not by a long shot.”

Well, they can demand all they want, but I think they’ll get nothing

Dems demand details from AG Bondi on Trump’s directive to review gun regulations
The White House last month ordered the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of federal firearms regulations, a move which appeared aimed at walking back Biden-era gun control measures.

WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats on Sunday demanded that the Justice Department explain how it plans to implement President Donald Trump’s recent executive order for a whole-of-government review of federal firearms regulations.

And, writing in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers sought to reaffirm Congress’ role in writing — and changing — the country’s gun control laws.

The Trump administration last month directed the Justice Department to undertake a sweeping review of existing regulations, which it said was designed to determine whether there were any “ongoing infringements” of Second Amendment rights. The president instructed the agency in the executive order to sift through federal rules, guidance and international agreements, as well as other actions taken by the White House and executive agencies.

But in their letter to Bondi, obtained by Courthouse News, Democrats told the attorney general they were “confident” that the Justice Department’s survey would confirm that existing firearms regulations are constitutionally sound, so long as the review was conducted “objectively and in good faith.”

“There is plainly no need for any new plan of action to, in the words of the executive order, ‘protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,’” read the letter, penned by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Georgia Representative Lucy McBath, who serves as the No. 1 Democrat on the panel’s crime and government surveillance subcommittee.

In the order, the Trump administration specifically directed the Justice Department to examine firearms regulations promulgated by the president and federal agencies between January 2021 and January 2025, a provision which put the Biden administration’s gun control efforts squarely in the crosshairs.

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So, That’s Why We Know So Little About Trump’s Assassin

The observation was well-warranted: We know more about Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, than we do about Thomas Matthew Crooks, who tried to assassinate President Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Crooks was shot and killed during the attempt, but not after a slew of security breaches and all-around ineptitude from the Secret Service was exposed.

It was one of the few times where Democrats and Republicans found the Secret Service’s initial reasoning and demeanor after the attempt to be wholly unacceptable. Well, there seems to be a reason why Crooks has evaporated into the ether: the FBI is allegedly suppressing all information about the Trump assassin, which reportedly contains a possible lead on an accomplice.

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More Woke Craziness Uncovered by DOGE.

The Trump Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to uncover shameless misuse of our taxpayer dollars for insider payoffs and woke activism.

It really is stunning what our elected officials and unelected bureaucrats believe they have the right to spend our money on. Besides the Taliban condoms, European DEI musicals, and Iraqi muppets already exposed by DOGE, the new department led by Elon Musk has found yet more leftist nonsense and grift to cancel.

DOGE on Thursday revealed the following initiatives on which our money was set to be spent, but which fortunately have been shut down:

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Aging Members of Congress Refuse to Disclose Details of Their Top Secret Hospital
The Office of the Attending Physician gives politicians nearly unlimited medical care for about $54 a month.

After a presidential election that saw an 82-year-old commander in chief unable to complete sentences in a debate or instill confidence in the public that he could carry out his duties, elected leaders in Congress are faring no better.

In the past two months alone,
82-year-old Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) was discovered to be living in an assisted-living facility with a dementia ward in her final months in office;
74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) won a high-profile leadership position on the House Oversight Committee after revealing he is battling highly terminal esophageal cancer;
82-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) fell twice on Capitol Hill just months after blacking out during a press conference;
84-year-old former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) fell and broke her hip in Luxembourg;
and 76-year-old Rep. John Larson (D-CT) appeared to suffer a stroke on the House floor. (Larson’s staff has said it was a bad reaction to a new medication.)

What has eluded attention is the highly secretive hospital, housed on Capitol Hill and funded by taxpayers, that provides both emergency and primary care to an aging political class, which some have come to describe as a gerontocracy. It also runs classified programs known only to some members of Congress.

In 2023, Congress designated $4.2 million to the Office of the Attending Physician (OAP), a Navy-staffed hospital with multiple branches spread across Capitol Hill. The current attending physician, Dr. Brian Monahan, who serves as a rear admiral in the Navy, oversees a staff of dozens of Navy doctors, nurses, and technicians whose primary responsibility is providing care to members of Congress and the Supreme Court.

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Almost like the lab manufactured pathogen ‘getting loose’ wasn’t a bug, but a feature

Social Security Gets Major $205-Billion Boost After COVID Deaths

So many Americans died of COVID-19 during the pandemic that the Social Security program received a boost of $205 billion, according to a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Why It Matters

The new report from NBER sheds light on the way the pandemic affected the Social Security program, which is currently facing a looming insolvency crisis.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which President Donald Trump has put in charge of shrinking the size of the federal government, has promised to pursue a trillion dollars in cuts across many programs and departments of the federal government, with a specific focus on uncovering fraud and wasteful spending.

This operation, Trump said, will include the Social Security program, which sends benefit payments to more than 70 million Americans.

What To Know

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NBER—a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization—found that excess deaths among individuals aged 25 and older between 2020 and 2023 led to a reduction in Social Security future retirement payments of $294 billion.

Excess deaths refers to those in a given time frame over the number that might have been expected considering historic data in a so-called average year. According to the CDC, the U.S. reported over 1.7 million excess deaths between 2020 and 2023.

The reduction in future Social Security benefits caused by these excess deaths was then recalculated by NBER to $205 billion considering the consequent decrease in future payroll tax flows and higher payments to surviving spouses and children.

“Our analysis suggests a slight improvement in Social Security’s financial health due to excess deaths, driven primarily by the premature death of people who would have received retirement benefits,” reads the NBER report.

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Massachusetts vs. the Second Amendment

In Massachusetts, a legal battle is unfolding that should resonate with every conservative who values the sanctity of the Second Amendment. Escher v. Mason isn’t just about firearms; it’s a litmus test for how we view adulthood, responsibility, and constitutional rights in contemporary America.

The Massachusetts law in question, House Bill 4885, strips legal adults aged 18 to 20 of their right to purchase, possess, or carry semiautomatic firearms and handguns. This isn’t merely overreach; it’s a direct assault on the clear text of the Second Amendment, which does not discriminate by age among “the people.” If we are to take our Constitution seriously, we must defend the rights of all citizens, not just those deemed “mature enough” by the state’s paternalistic gaze.

At the heart of this legal challenge lies a fundamental conservative principle: the inviolability of individual rights. The Founders did not carve exceptions into the Second Amendment for age. They understood that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, which is why 18-year-olds have been historically recognized as adults — capable of voting, joining the military, and, yes, bearing arms. The Militia Act of 1792, enacted shortly after the ratification of the Second Amendment, explicitly included 18-year-olds in the national defense, expecting them to be armed like their elders.

This historical precedent is not just a footnote but the bedrock upon which the plaintiffs in Escher v. Mason stand. They argue that there is no traditional basis for denying these rights to young adults. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Heller and Bruen have made it abundantly clear that firearms “in common use” are constitutionally protected. Semiautomatic firearms and handguns are the dominant tools of self-defense in modern America. To deny these to a segment of the adult population is not only anachronistic but egregiously unconstitutional.

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