Category: Government

Cynical Publius
@CynicalPublius

To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.

I’ll illustrate.

Traditional Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper.
6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

Trump Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
5. Winning.

See the difference? It’s called LEADERSHIP.

GOP Senators Introduce Bill Prohibiting Gov’t. Contracts with Anti-2A Groups

A group of 22 Republican U.S. Senators have signed onto legislation which weeks to prohibit the federal government from using taxpayer money to enter into contracts with known anti-Second Amendment corporations.

Led by Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the group is sponsoring the Firearm Industry Non-Discrimination (FIND) Act.

According to an announcement from Daines’ office, he is joined by Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

In a statement released to the press, Daines explained, “Democrats and woke corporations have proven over and over again that they want to carry out an unconstitutional, overreaching gun-grabbing agenda, and under no circumstances should our federal government use taxpayer dollars for these efforts. Doing business with anti-Second Amendment corporations erodes Americans’ trust and infringes on law-abiding citizens’ Constitutional rights. It must stop.”

One of the most infuriating and alarming moves by the Biden-Harris administration was the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by people from the gun control movement. This office should immediately disappear when Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President Jan. 20.

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, announced support for the measure.

“This legislation is critical to ensuring ‘woke’ corporations don’t use their financial might, funded by taxpayers, to deny essential services to the firearm industry,” Keane said. “Corporations, in particular financial institutions, have been dictating public policies from boardrooms that throttle firearm businesses, which are Constitutionally protected. This bill will no longer allow those corporations to benefit from taxpayer dollars while at the same time using those funds to deny Americans their Second Amendment rights. We thank Senator Daines for his leadership to ensure fairness in business, reasserting Congress’s role in ensuring the federal government isn’t picking winners and losers in the marketplace based on politics, and protecting the ability of a lawful industry to compete for services without artificial and agenda-driven barriers.”

Daines introduced the seven-page bill twice before, explaining that the FIND Act “ensures that corporations cannot benefit from taxpayer-funded contracts and subcontracts while discriminating against firearm trade associations or businesses that deal in firearms, ammunition, or related products.”

Lawmakers Introduce Measure Outlawing Federal Gun Registry

The threat of gun registration has long been a concern for U.S. gun owners, and for a very good reason: registration always leads to confiscation. Now, two U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation to prevent any potential gun registration schemes in the future.

On January 16, U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, introduced the “No Retaining Every Gun In a System that Restricts Your (REGISTRY) Rights Act.” Although its name is somewhat awkward, this legislation is commendable as it would prevent the U.S. government from establishing a federal firearms registry.

Among other things, the act would require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to eliminate all existing firearm transaction records, permit federal firearms licensees (FFLs) to destroy transaction records upon going out of business and prevent the ATF from establishing or maintaining a firearms registry in the future.

The weaponized ATF’s overreach in implementing several new final rules under the Biden Administration was the impetus for the introduction of the measure.

“The ATF’s excessive overreach has gone unchecked for too long,” Sen. Risch said in a press release announcing the legislation. “Idaho’s law-abiding gun owners should not be subject to an already illegal federal firearms registry. The Second Amendment is not conditional to a list of guns in circulation and their owners. All law-abiding Americans have the undeniable right to keep and bear arms. My No REGISTRY Rights Act will safeguard this essential liberty for generations to come.”

Rep. Cloud, the measure’s sponsor in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that Americans’ right to keep and bear arms should not be subject to a government inventory.

“The Second Amendment is a cornerstone of individual liberty, and no administration—Republican or Democrat—should have the ability to compile a list of law-abiding gun owners,” Cloud said. “The Biden administration’s backdoor attempts to create a federal firearms registry are a clear threat to Americans’ privacy and constitutional freedoms. The No REGISTRY Rights Act will dismantle the ATF’s existing database and ensure such a registry can never be implemented.”

In April 2022, the Biden Administration issued a final rule requiring that FFLs retain all firearm transaction records indefinitely. Since 1984, federal regulations have permitted FFLs to discard records older than 20 years, as the “time-to-crime”—the interval between a firearm’s last known legal sale and its use in a crime—rarely exceeds two decades.

Risch and Cloud were joined in introducing the No REGISTRY Rights Act by Republican U.S. senators Mike Crapo of Idaho, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana, Roger Marshall of Kansas), Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi and 47 members of the House of Representatives.

Without a repeal of, or a court finding that, the underpinning laws that empower the bureaucraps, another agency will simply take over enforcement. A new director, like a Brandon Herrera or Blake Masters would have the opportunity to gut the bureau from the inside out.

President Trump should help destroy the ATF
It’s time to end the ATF before they kill another law-abiding American.

by Lee Williams

President Donald Trump’s election victory was made possible by millions of gun owners who are still angry about the treatment they received from Joe Biden and his antigun ilk in the ATF.

Biden and whoever was actually calling the shots targeted legitimate gun owners and gun dealers like it was cool—like it was a game. Biden even allowed these illegitimate forces to establish an antigun office right inside his White House. They met regularly with senior members of the antigun industry.

This civil rights abuse was totally ignored by the mainstream media because the “journalists” themselves were all antigun and totally on board with Team Biden.

The ATF has a long and blood-soaked history. In addition to the more than 80 lives lost at Waco—which includes 20 children—a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Randy Weaver’s wife and son were killed during ATF’s Ruby Ridge fiasco. The ATF’s “Fast and Furious” scheme resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican nationals, who were killed by the weapons ATF allowed to walk straight into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. The ATF has never fully addressed or apologized for these needless deaths that its agents caused.

Nowadays, there are scores of examples of ATF crews laughing and joking with each other as they tear apart the homes of law-abiding folks who had done nothing wrong. The latest was Mark “Choppa” Manley, who along with his wife and children is lucky to have survived an early morning ATF search warrant that found nothing wrong. All of Manly’s firearms were legal and complied with both state and federal law.

Thankfully, Manley recognized that armed ATF agents were taking tactical positions outside his home and put down his handgun right before they beat down his front door, threw two flashbang grenades and stormed inside. Bryan Malinowski never had that opportunity. The Arkansas airport director assumed that criminals had entered his home during the early morning hours of March 19, 2024. Malinowski grabbed a pistol and fired several rounds. ATF shot and killed the 53-year-old, who had absolutely zero prior criminal history.

For decades, the gun community has talked about dumping the ATF, but the agency still exists, and its unlawful and deadly actions continue to this day. Under Biden, the agency actually got much worse.

Their deadly and loathsome raids add further proof that the ATF can never be trusted again. It has become more dangerous than the criminals it allegedly tries to target. Thankfully, Congress has a bill in the works to dump the agency. Representatives Eric Burlison (R-MO-07) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO-04) recently introduced H.R. 221, legislation that is simple and succinct: “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is hereby abolished.”

According to its FY2022 budget, the ATF had around 5,000 employees, a little more than half were armed special agents. The rest were Industry Operations Investigators, who make life hell for gun shop owners, and other clerical and professional staff. They operated on a budget of $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars.

Years ago, there were ATF agents who supported guns and our gun rights—older agents who didn’t let their administrators push them into breaking the law. But after four years of Biden and his chosen joke of an ATF director, these agents are mostly gone. They were replaced by younger antigun bureaucrats.

If President Trump truly wants to take historic action, he will help end the ATF immediately, before another American is needlessly shot and killed, which is guaranteed to happen.

Governor signs 2 BFA-backed bills to prohibit firearms liability insurance, sales tracking, registries.

On Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 58, which prohibits requiring firearm liability insurance or being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife.

Senate Bill 148, which was amended into SB 58, prohibits financial institutions from tracking firearms purchases and prohibits government entities from maintaining a registry of firearms or firearm owners.

Both SB 58, sponsored by Sens. Terry Johnson (R-McDermott) and Theresa Gavarone (R-Huron), and SB 148, sponsored by Sen. Terry Johnson, fight recent efforts by gun control advocates to make gun ownership more expensive and less private for law-abiding gun owners instead of cracking down on the actual criminal misuse of firearms.

Buckeye Firearms Association strongly backed both bills and thanks the governor for signing these vital pieces of legislation. These new laws go into effect in 90 days.

You can read BFA’s testimony for these bills here.

Mike Waltz to Clean Out Deep Staters from National Security Council: ‘We’re Taking Resignations at 12:01’ on January 20.

ncoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told Breitbart News exclusively that every intelligence official from the various departments and agencies across the federal government currently detailed to the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House under outgoing President Joe Biden will be expected to vacate the premises by 12:01 p.m. Eastern on Inauguration Day when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated again.

Waltz, in a phone interview earlier this week, told Breitbart News that he is making sure everyone understands that it’s “crystal clear what the agenda is.”

“Everybody is going to resign at 12:01 on January 20,” Waltz said. “We’re working through our process to get everybody their clearances and through the transition process now. Our folks know who we want out in the agencies, we’re putting those requests in, and in terms of the detailees they’re all going to go back.”

The way the NSC works is the National Security Advisor oversees a team of political appointees from the president who oversee a wide range of what are called “detailees”—people who work at the various agencies and departments across the federal government who are assigned, or detailed, to work at the White House for a period of time on the NSC in a portfolio in which they demonstrate expertise. These career intelligence officials come from places as wide-ranging as the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and report up to the political appointees atop each major portfolio in the NSC. The NSC has various issue-specific portfolios like counterterrorism and cyber policy as well as regional portfolios focused on things like the western hemisphere or the Middle East or Europe or Asia. The detailees then help coordinate back to the various agencies and departments so the whole federal government executes on the decisions that the president makes.

One of the major problems Trump faced in his first term came from inside the NSC with some of these detailees, as the person who spearheaded the first impeachment of Trump—Alexander Vindman—was one such person. Waltz told Breitbart News that he is taking very serious steps to ensure that there are no more Vindmans. From this point forward, he said, anyone who gets a detailee position on the NSC will be on board with the president’s agenda.

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Appeals court makes ruling on St. Louis County prosecuting attorney appointment

An appeals court sided with Missouri Gov. Mike Parson over St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page on who can appoint the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, ending a month-long legal battle.

In a ruling Thursday, the circuit court’s judgment was affirmed.

Parson’s pick for prosecuting attorney, Melissa Price Smith, a St. Louis County assistant prosecuting attorney and supervisor for the office’s Sexual Assault and Child Abuse team, will replace outgoing prosecutor and Congressman-elect Wesley Bell.

Price Smith will be sworn in as St. Louis County prosecuting attorney and Bell will be sworn into Congress on Jan. 3.

On Dec. 20, a St. Louis County judge ruled that Parson had the power to replace the prosecuting attorney. The court order barred Page from “taking any further steps to fill the anticipated vacancy.”

Page had filed an appeal on Dec. 27 against the ruling.

State Preemption Laws Hold Anti-Gunners In Check…For Now

Mentioned prominently in the second paragraph of a report in the Altoona, Pennsylvania Mirror about gun control in the Keystone State is the notation that 42 states have what is commonly known as a firearms preemption statute.

Such laws, which place sole authority for firearms regulations in the hands of state legislatures, are the most important roadblock to anti-gun local governments; blue cities in otherwise red or purple states. Possibly the best example of how local politicians dislike preemption laws is Seattle, Washington, where a string of liberal mayors including current Mayor Bruce Harrell, have lobbied the legislature to repeal the law. Not long after Harrell took office in early 2022, he complained that Washington was “one of a few” states with such statutes. He was immediately—and publicly—corrected by Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

“Harrell and other anti-gunners would have us roll back the calendar to a time when a literal state of confusion existed in Washington,” Gottlieb said at the time. “Before preemption was wisely adopted by the State Legislature, we had a checkerboard of often conflicting local gun regulations. State lawmakers properly took control of this mess and cleaned it up with a single set of regulations that apply equally from the Canada border to the Columbia River.”

The same situation applies to Pennsylvania, and every other state where preemption laws provide uniformity from one state border to the other.

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BLUF
Learn and memorize your rights, exercise them, and protect them every single day.
If you truly want politics and government to leave you alone to live your life in peace, you have to pay attention. That is your ultimate responsibility.

Citizen Responsibilities

As far back as elementary school, I remember teachers telling kids that we, as citizens of the United States, had responsibilities to ourselves and the country. I know that a lot of people would prefer to avoid politics and political topics altogether. I get it. Politics is frustrating, angering, annoying, and at times boring (ever try to read a policy proposal? I highly recommend them if you have insomnia and don’t want to take any drugs). But we as adult citizens have a responsibility to keep this country running as well as possible, oppose bad policies, and most importantly, we have a responsibility to pay attention so that we are fully aware of what is going on with our politicians and institutions. It’s our responsibility to pay attention and stop them from going off the rails.

I don’t care that you don’t want to pay attention to politics. YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SO. Especially if you want everything to become or remain “normal.”

I will discuss equality of opportunity versus equity of outcomes in a future post. That is not the topic for today.

Responsibilities of citizenship go beyond simply turning up to vote every couple of years. Although that is one of the most important activities you can do. HOWEVER, if you are an uninformed voter, you are not helping anyone. Uninformed voters simply go along to get along and vote as they’re told or as they always have without regard to any changes in party platforms, policies, candidates, funding sources, anything. All of those things should inform you, the voter, as to whether or not your preferred party is engaging in business as usual or has changed course. Or no longer matches your values and preferred outcomes.

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Well, we need to eliminate NFA-34, FFA-38, GCA-68 & 18 U.S. Code  Chapter 44, as well, or some other bunch of bureaucraps will simply start enforcing those laws & regulations.

As Trump Heads to White House Rep. Burlison Pushes Plan to Abolish ATF

With President-elect Donald Trump heading to the White House and Congress under Republican control, Rep. Eric Burlison (R) is pushing ahead with plans to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF.

FOX News quoted Burlison describing the ATF as “a disaster.”

He said, “For several decades they’ve been a disaster agency [which has] been violating the Second Amendment.”

Burlison wants a scenario in which states handle their gun law enforcement without federal agencies breathing down their necks.

He re-posted an X post from Ted Nugent on Friday:

The ATF issued numerous rules during the Biden/Harris administration, one of which criminalized owners of legally purchased AR-pistol stabilizer braces. Another one of the ATF’s rules declared that 80 percent complete firearm frames are firearms and therefore can only be acquired via background checks.

The ATF also issued a rule instituting, for all intents and purposes, universal background checks.

Lawsuits filed by Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation, have rendered many of these and other ATF rules unenforceable or otherwise moot. Legal action on some of the rules continues and Rep. Burlison wants an America in which the lawsuits would not be necessary because the ATF would not exist.

STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

I am pleased to announce that Alex Wong will be appointed Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, and Dr. Sebastian Gorka as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism.

Alex served during my First Term as the Deputy Special Representative for North Korea, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State. He was also my Nominee in the First Term to be U.S. Ambassador for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations. As Deputy Special Representative for North Korea, he helped negotiate my Summit with North Korean Leader, Kim Jong Un. Alex also led the State Department’s efforts to implement the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy.

Alex received his JD with High Honors from Harvard Law School, where he was the Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and an Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating Summa Cum Laude. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and served as Chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a Congressionally appointed panel. Alex previously served as the Foreign Policy Advisor and General Counsel to Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark). He also served for the State Department in Iraq as a Judicial and Anticorruption Advisor. Alex also spent years in private Legal practice, counseling Fortune 100 clients on International Trade and Governmental Investigations matters. He began his Legal career as a clerk for the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka will be returning to the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism. Since 2015, Dr. Gorka has been a tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement, serving previously as Strategist to the President in the first Trump Administration.

Dr. Gorka is a legal immigrant to the United States, with more than 30 years of National Security experience. In 2015, he was one of my Advisors for the GOP Primary Debates on National Security. At the time, he held the Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at the Marine University Foundation, and was a Guest Instructor at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg. Prior to that, he was Associate Dean for Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community at National Defense University, and Kokkalis Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a Recipient of the DoD Joint Civilian Service Commendation awarded by USSOCOM for his work in Counterterrorism.

Dr. Gorka lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Katharine, who was a Presidential Appointee at the Department of Homeland Security, and Press Secretary for Customs and Border Protection in the first Trump Administration.