Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

New Mexico Supreme Court Upholds Governor’s ‘Emergency’ Carry Ban

The U.S. Constitution declares that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but on Thursday a divided New Mexico Supreme Court gave its stamp of approval to an egregious infringement on the right to carry when it upheld Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s emergency public health declaration that included the creation of new “gun-free zones” by executive fiat.

Grisham’s original public health order suspended the right to carry in all of Albuquerque and across Bernalillo County, but after a federal judge issued an injunction barring enforcement Grisham revised her order limiting the carry ban to parks and playgrounds. That was the declaration challenged in state court by a host of citizens, lawmakers, and both the Republican and Libertarian parties, and in a 3-2 decision the state’s highest court declared that Grisham’s orders were within her authority.

At the heart of the case, the 3-2 ruling by the Supreme Court found Lujan Grisham’s orders did not overstep a state law that grants governors broad powers in response to the “occurrence or immediate threat” of serious public emergencies.

Justices Brianna Zamora and Michael Vigil dissented with the court’s other three justices in the ruling, with Zamora saying the ratification of broad emergency executive powers could lead to misuse.

“While the governor’s desire to combat gun violence and drug abuse appears to be well-intended, there is nothing in the majority’s opinion that would restrict a future governor from taking actions that would be substantively more troubling,” Zamora wrote in her dissent.

However, Lujan Grisham spokesman Michael Coleman said the ruling affirmed the governor’s administration had acted within its legal authority in declaring gun violence and drug abuse as public health emergencies.

“The court has provided important clarity on the executive branch’s responsibilities during public health crises,” Coleman said in a Thursday statement.

“We appreciate the court’s thorough consideration of these important constitutional questions, and we remain focused on building safer, healthier communities across New Mexico,” he added.

Now, it’s important to note (as the justices on the state Supreme Court did in the majority opinion) that the plaintiffs did not “challenge Section 1 of the first Amended PHEO under the state or federal right to bear arms,” so the court largely bystepped any real investigation about whether Grisham’s carry ban violated the Second Amendment rights of New Mexicans who were suddenly barred from bearing arms while watching their kids at a park or playground; places the governor indicated were so incredibly dangerous that all firearms needed to be banned from their premises.

Instead, the majority simply noted that a federal judge rejected a request for a temporary restraining order against Grisham’s revised carry ban, saying they “read the federal district court’s ruling as supporting that the firearm restrictions in the first Amended PHEO are not unreasonable.”

Even though the plaintiffs didn’t really mount a Second Amendment argument in their bid to take down the governor’s emergency orders, Thursday’s decision could have an enormous impact on the right to carry going forward. Grisham has allowed her declared “emergency” over gun violence to expire, but there’s nothing stopping her from now re-imposing a carry ban that once again goes far beyond the scope of her amended order that was limited to parks and playgrounds.

There have been half-hearted attempts to curb the governor’s emergency powers over the past couple of years, but Grisham’s threat of a veto has sidelined those efforts. I doubt we’re going to see her fellow Democrats in charge of the statehouse in Santa Fe try to buck her authority now, but this should be a primary issue for Republican legislators and candidates in 2026. We can only hope that the governor doesn’t give them another court-sanctioned egregious violation of our Second Amendment rights to point to between now and then.

Thomas Jefferson had some things to say about goobermint gone tyrant:

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.

When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

and last, but not in anyway least:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,

Rep. Jamie Rankin Beclowned Himself in Opening Remarks at Gun Hearing

Rep. Jamie Rankin isn’t going to be on the Christmas card list of any gun rights group you care to name. He’s a vehement anti-gunner and that’s where his bread is buttered. That’s not going to change.

Which is fine, I suppose. He’s in the minority right now, so all he can do is bloviate and then sit there and be impotent in his gun rights animosity.

But bloviate he shall, and he did.

In opening remarks in a subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, Rankin decided to display his burning stupid for the entire world to see, then sent out a press release with his remarks.

Awfully swell of him, really.

The problem is that my Republican colleagues have completely deformed the Second Amendment. They say it gives you the right to overthrow the government. Our former colleague, Matt Gaetz often claimed that the Second Amendment “is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary.”

This purported right to overthrow the government means that the people must enjoy access to munitions equivalent to that of the government’s arsenal. As our colleague, Representative Chip Roy, argues, the Second Amendment was “designed purposefully to empower the people to resist the force of tyranny used against them.” And my friend Representative Lauren Boebert says that the Second Amendment has “nothing to do with hunting, unless you’re talking about hunting tyrants, maybe.”

Despite all of this pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric about how the Constitution provides a right of civil insurrection, the actual Constitution, in a half-dozen different places, treats “insurrection” and “rebellion” not as protected rights but as serious and dangerous offenses against our government and our people.

And yet, our Founding Fathers also made it very clear that when the government became tyrannical, it was the duty of the people to throw off the chains of oppression and fight back, not just with words but with weapons.

I mean, they’d just engaged in their own rebellion, their own insurrection, and thrown off those precise chains. They knew that no government could be created that couldn’t, in time, come to oppress the people. They wanted to prevent that, which includes the right to keep and bear arms.

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No, Mr. Secretary, generals do not have civil service protection or tenure. They serve at the pleasure of the president.
And if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.

Five of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense ratcheted up the warfare against President Trump when they signed what they called an “Appeal to Congress.” The gist of their complaint is that they want to veto the President’s choice of his principal military advisor and other senior officers who serve at the pleasure of the President. They like their guys, and they don’t like the President’s choices. The conclusion that the five signers seek to foist on the American public is in their third paragraph: “We, like many Americans — including many troops — are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons.”

Their “Appeal” is nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. It combines historical ignorance with their own partisan attempt to attack President Trump in a way that would weaken civilian control. If their “Appeal” were granted, it also would further the politicization of the military by plunging Congress into disputes relating to military matters that the Constitution entrusts to the President.

Five Resistors’ “Appeal to Congress”

“The Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.”

I shall begin at the end — with the rebellious former secretaries’ conclusion: They sum up by charging the members of Congress to “do their jobs” by “urging them to take George Washington’s warning to heart.”

I wonder how many of the signers knew the historical background and significance of George Washington’s advice which they quote to close their Appeal: “The Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.” When he wrote that in February 1783, Washington was warning Hamilton against trying to use the military to further political ends and undercut civilian control of the military. It was one of Washington’s many affirmations of the necessity for civilian control of the military.

And if the President — any president — does not have the sole power to relieve senior military officials, and if he is required to report to both the House and the Senate to “justify each firing” as the Appeal advocates, then the president no longer has full control of his senior military officers or of the Army.

Washington’s warning fully supports civilian control over the military, including — especially — over those whom the signers refer to as “senior U.S. military leaders.” And our Constitution reposes that civilian control in only one man — the President. By trying to usurp this presidential control of the military, these former secretaries are attempting to weaken the bedrock principal that the military must be controlled by its civilian masters.

Thus, General Washington’s warning most certainly does not support these rebellious signers’ efforts to hamper civilian control over the military. Just the opposite; Washington refutes them.

Aside from this example of historical ignorance, there are many other reasons to repudiate the rebellious signers’ “Appeal.” Let us consider some of them.

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Mollie Hemingway

 

Yesterday, [February 28]Susan Rice said of the Trump-Zelensky meeting, “There is no question this was a set up.” She revealed full knowledge of the mineral agreement, complained that it didn’t include “concrete” security agrees (meaning, apparently, commitment of US troops on the ground if conditions merit), and then mischaracterized Trump’s behavior, counting on most Americans to not have watched what transpired over the entire hour in the Oval Office.

You can look at this and dismiss it as typical Democrat talking points, but you could also view it as almost a confession, one that includes details about the current “Get Trump” effort. Yes, Trump won the popular vote against unbelievable odds, but if you think Team Obama is being any less involved in quiet insurrections than they were during the first Trump administration (Russia collusion, Ukraine impeachment, etc.), you’re clueless.

I’ll remind you that Susan Rice was in the small Jan. 5, 2017 meeting in the WH with other key Russia collusion hoax perpetrators. Zelensky repeatedly declined opportunities to sign the deal in Kyiv and Munich, and requested the meeting at the White House. It later came out that Rice and Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Alexander Vindman may have been personally advising Zelensky to do this meeting in the way he did — that they recommended him to be hostile and to try to goad Trump into blowing up. Even though he didn’t, and even though Zelensky’s actions horrified many normal Americans, the Obama team went on the airwaves to falsely characterize what happened.

I think their goal was to have a wonderful performance by Zelensky, an angry Trump appearing to scuttle the deal, and the support of the neocon portion of the GOP to start applying pressure on Trump to have US Troop commitments as part of the “security guarantee.” It was a set-up, in Susan Rice’s interesting choice of words. Instead, Zelensky had one of the worst stage performances of his acting career, and Trump was statesmanlike (against all odds) throughout.

Zelensky followed Team Obama’s advice to be hostile to a tee, but it didn’t land how they thought it would. Surprisingly, one of the most important aspects of it not working out might have been Lindsay Graham’s reaction. Had he and other neocons thought Zelensky was being reasonable, Trump would be having to fight (even moreso) the neocon portion of the GOP in addition to Team Obama’s dirty tricks.

Even the “conservative” neocon pundits on TV last night were admitting Zelensky had royally messed up. As you can see from the hostility of the bureaucracy to any Republican oversight, no matter how reasonable or minor it may be, the entrenched bureaucracy and permanent DC apparatus is quite active. That goes quadruple for the deep state in the Intelligence Community. I’d expect more and more shenanigans and to be prepared so that you don’t fall for the next information operation.

The post-WWII architecture in Europe and the US needs this war to continue or be settled on “US troops on the ground” type guarantees, even though that’s not what Americans want. Things will heat up here, and it’s a very dangerous time.

Also, the immediate and near-identical reaction of leaders of various European countries in support of Zelensky’s temper tantrum yesterday also suggests a high-level of coordination and indicates a set-up. All very interesting.

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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Kostas Moros

Moms demand recently published a defense of AB 1333, saying its “right wing extremists” attacking it. Wrong. No rational person wants some antigun prosecutor second-guessing whether you “could have run away” when you are attacked by some criminal and are forced to shoot.
If I am out with my toddler and a lunatic comes at us with a knife or other imminent deadly threat, I should not have to waste several moments (while under an adrenaline rush) calculating if I have a chance to escape before shooting to defend my little girl and myself.
That’s what “duty to retreat” does. It is outright evil. California has always had a Stand Your Ground defense and it’s never been a problem. California’s Stand Your Ground jury instruction already doesn’t allow for a viable self-defense claim if you provoked the attack. The antigunner’s claimed fear is not a thing. They just hate the right to bear arms and hate that more people in California can now exercise it thanks to Bruen.
@Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur have the decency to scrap this monstrous bill. Haven’t California’s voters made it clear they are done with you catering to criminals? If this passes, I say we get a proposition submitted to enshrine SYG into the CA constitution. I think that would pass even in this blue state.
This is already true under current law! SYG still requires that you reasonably bellieve you are facing an imminent deadly threat. All the legal elements of self-defense must still be there, or its criminal homicide. It just makes it so you arent obligated to try and flee first. And again, you don’t want Soros-backed prosecutors second-guessing what was “truly necessary”.
Read all of the Moms Demand’s nonsense here if you want. 

One more goobermint disaster to lay right at the feet of the demoncraps

National Security NIGHTMARE: How Radical Trans Activists Hijacked America’s Spy Agencies

Everything you suspected might be going on in the Federal Government these past fours years is turning out to be true.

For instance, if you thought radical transgenderism was being pushed on agencies and employees to the detriment of the government’s core mission, it looks like you can take off the tin foil hat. One whistleblower says it’s all true, and it’s probably worse than you imagined.

RedState’s Bonchie reported earlier this week how the National Security Agency’s Intelink messaging program was used by federal employees to engage in debauched conversations about transgender fetishes and transitioning. From Bonchie:

While the mainstream press screams bloody murder over the Trump administration’s trimming back of the bureaucratic state, shocking new details have emerged about how government resources were being misused. A new report from City Journal has obtained chat logs showing NSA representatives, including from the CIA and FBI, used the NSA’s government interlink program to discuss various transgender fetishes and aspects of “transitioning.”…..

On Wednesday, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and conservative commentator, pulled back the curtain even more by sharing what an NSA whistleblower revealed to him in an interview: “It’s going to get people killed in the field.” And that’s because, as Rufo noted in the interview prologue, the shenanigans at the NSA are high stakes: “The agency is responsible for overseeing America’s digital intelligence-gathering and is, in theory, a key part of our national security apparatus.” The stakes can’t get much higher than that.

 

The whistleblower explained that things started out on a small scale about a decade ago — a meeting here, a potluck there. Couched as “employee resource groups,” staffers were gathered to discuss things like racism, veterans issues and, of course, gay pride. Said the whistleblower: “Then it started to get more and more. Instead of just one day a month, it was one week a month, or the whole month.”

Things got really out of hand.

And then everything became Pride. You would go to a training, and it would be about “privilege” and “how to be a better ally.” A lady would give classes on how to talk “gender-neutral” to people.

You had analysts that didn’t want to do the reporting they were supposed to be doing because they were going to have to report on somebody’s “dead name.”

They were having this crisis of conscience about reporting the adversary’s actual name because they thought it was their “dead name,” and they didn’t want to disrespect the person. It was like a cult that was hellbent on pushing gender ideology.

When asked by Rufo about the role a “clique” of male-to-female transitioners played in spreading the trans propaganda throughout the agency, the whistleblower responded:

There is a very small number of them, but they wield an enormous amount of power. And outside of the sick stuff, you also see a prevalent Marxist philosophy going on with these people in their chat rooms. They hate capitalism. They hate Christians. They’re always espousing socialist and Marxist beliefs.

The new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, oversees the NSA and has acted quickly to root out the radicals in the agency, giving a Friday deadline for identifying the participants in the smutty chats. They can all expect to get pink slips.

It’s a good start, but, as the whistleblower told Rufo, it won’t be easy to root them all out. “I wish I could say I see it playing out well, with them following the orders and doing it. But after the last four years, I just don’t know.”

CNN: Deep State Bureaucrats Threaten To Sell State Secrets If Trump Isn’t Nice To Them

CNN warns that intelligence employees who get the axe are valuable — and that those same employees will sell national secrets if fired. Which is it?

Brace yourself as the propaganda press tries to stop President Donald Trump from culling corruption from the deep state. Expect “news” stories screaming about ordinary budget and staff cuts that would happen in any bloated private business but under Trump will be described as unfair or even dangerous.

Take, for example, the Feb. 24 number from CNN, “How Trump’s government-cutting moves risk exposing the CIA’s secrets.” The short report required four CNN writers, Katie Bo Lillis (who was involved in a story that led to a defamation trial in which a jury found that CNN was literally fake news), Phil Mattingly, Natasha Bertrand, and Zachary Cohen.

Exposing CIA secrets? That sounds pretty dangerous. Just how much danger are we in?

In the piece, CNN warned, “As the CIA weighs staff cuts, current and former intelligence officials say that mass firings could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services — like China or Russia — who may seek to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees.”

The piece goes on.

“… on the CIA’s 7th floor — home to top leadership — some officers are also quietly discussing how mass firings and the buyouts already offered to staff risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees who might be motivated to take what they know to a foreign intelligence service.” (So “quietly,” apparently, that CNN could hear them, as Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway pointed out.)

Is that a threat from the CIA? Is CNN reporting that Trump should keep everyone employed because, if he doesn’t, former CIA agents will spill U.S. secrets to our enemies? Apparently so.

But if that’s the case, these are exactly the employees who should be fired. Those with too little integrity to exit with grace should not be employed in jobs with access to sensitive information. The CIA employees CNN describes should not be trusted with any more secrets.

Within the same piece, CNN ridiculously makes it sound as if valued, model intelligence employees will get the axe — and that those same employees have loose lips and are ripe for the picking. Which is it, CNN?

The media want you to be worried because they are worried. If Trump cleans house, it will destroy their business model. CNN and other propagandists have exploited unethical leaking of deep state sources, treating their whispers as gospel, and amplifying their aims through high-profile “news” stories.

If Trump fires their sources, it will be harder for the media to collude with the intelligence community to craft propaganda to sell to the public. The connection between CNN and the deep state has been too cozy for too long.

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May they  go into permanent vapor-lock.

Anti-Gunners Clutching Pearls Over Trump’s 2A Executive Order

The results of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s investigation into the Biden administration’s executive actions on guns and its defense of federal gn laws won’t be in for another couple of weeks, but anti-gun activists are already putting their own spin on what’s likely to emerge from her findings.

Brady’s Kris Brown spoke to to WGN-TV about the potential impact of Trump’s executive action, as well as some of the other moves we’ve seen from his administration, including the shuttering of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

“There is no possible rationale for closing that office, unless what you want to do is simply ignore that gun violence is the number one killer of our kids, and to me, that is horrific because it doesn’t,” Brown claimed, adding, “Not having the office does not change that. It only worsens it.”

Brown’s comments are, of course, absolute nonsense. The biggest rationale for ending the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is that it never really about reducing “gun violence”, but promoting gun control (and providing cushy federal jobs to anti-2A activists).

It’s silly for Brown to claim that scrapping the office means that either “gun violence” or violent crime will increase. Reported homicides were already trending down when Biden created the office in the fall of 2023, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that anything Biden did through executive actions led to a further drop in reported homicides around the country last year.

In addition to her bluster on Biden’s gun control office, Brown also tried to put her spin on the likely undoing of Biden’s executive actions on guns.

[Brown] said Biden-era reforms like background checks and restrictions on who can purchase weapons, helped to strengthen public safety. Undoing them, she said, has the potential to endanger public safety.

“We’re not a lawless nation, so there should be no reason, not to have laws that actually save lives,” Brown said. “In fact, laws like the Brady background check, which stands for a proposition that something like 97% of Americans agree with, that. If you go in to buy a firearm and you’re a convicted felon, you should be denied that firearm, right?”

Background checks on retail purchase of firearms won’t be going away as a result of Bondi’s examination of Biden’s EO’s, though we’ll hopefully see the formal rescinding of the ATF rule expanding who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, which was put in place with the goal of requiring almost every gun owner who offered a single firearm from their collection for sale to obtain a federal firearms license.

Brown failed to inform WGN or its viewers that the rule in question was already in legal jeopardy before Trump’s EO, along with the other attempts by ATF and the Biden administration to bypass Congress and enact new gun control laws in the guise of regulations. The Supreme Court has already struck down the bump stock ban imposed by the Trump administration, and they’re set to issue their ruling on the agency’s regulation treating unfinished frames and receivers as fully functional firearms later this spring. Legal challenges to the ATF’s rules on pistol stabilizing braces and forced reset triggers have also been largely successful in the lower courts, but those rules will hopefully be undone by Trump and Bondi in the months ahead.

I’m sure that Brown is legitimately bothered by the likely demise of the Biden-era regulations foisted on gun owners and the firearms industry, but I suspect that what really frosts her cookies is the fact that the gun control lobby has lost its influence on the White House. Gun control groups like Brady, Everytown, and Giffords had no better friend in Washington, D.C. than Biden himself, while Trump has promised to protect our Second Amendment rights while using the DOJ to target violent offenders. The anti-gunners no longer have their perch inside the executive branch, but that’s cause for celebration, not consternation, for those of us who reject the idea that fighting “gun violence” has to stop and end with targeting lawful gun owners and our right to keep and bear arms.

Yes, it’s nothing but Kabuki Theater Grandstanding that will go nowhere, but it still confirms who is who.

Wyden introduces bill raising age limits to buy assault weapons

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a bill on Wednesday that aims to decrease gun violence by raising the age limit to purchase assault weapons, handguns, and high-capacity magazines.

The Age 21 Act increases the minimum age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21, which is already the age limit for handgun purchases from federally licensed dealers. This bill would expand that requirement to assault weapons, and large-capacity ammunition devices.

The legislation would also bar most people under 21 from possessing assault weapons with exceptions in certain circumstances, such as service in law enforcement or the armed forces.

“If you’re not old enough to purchase alcohol, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy an assault weapon either,” Wyden said. “We need to be doing everything we can to stop America’s gun violence epidemic, including raising the legal age of purchase to 21. I am proud to support this bill that will help keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of teenagers.”

In a press release announcing his support for the bill, Wyden’s office explained that assault weapons – which were originally made for military combat – are often used in mass shootings “because of their ability to inflict catastrophic harm in mere seconds,” noting people under 21 years of age have used these guns in some of the most devastating school shootings in U.S. history, including shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The bill is led by Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), with several co-sponsors including, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT.)

Multiple organizations have also endorsed the bill, including Brady: United Against Gun Violence, March for Our Lives, Giffords, Newtown Action Alliance, and Everytown for Gun Safety.

The bill comes as the Centers for Disease and Prevention reported more than 48,000 gun-related deaths in the United States in 2022, which is similar to about 132 people dying every day from firearm-related injuries.

According to the CDC, more than half of those gun-related deaths were in cases involving suicide and four out of every 10 deaths were identified as firearm homicide.

Mr Keane is one of the top 3 men put forth to be the new ATF director

Gun Control Lawmaker Makes Actual Threats of Public Violence in Congress

By Larry Keane
Congressman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) reminded the country last week why the Second Amendment is so vital to the United States.

The former Long Beach mayor called on the Democratic Party to “bring actual weapons” in the “fight for democracy.”

Those are chilling and dangerous words coming from a lawmaker who wants to strip every law-abiding citizen of their rights to keep and bear arms. Rep. Garcia made the call-to-action at the same time he used derogatory language to belittle Elon Musk, who has been heading up President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The remarks weren’t the product of heated and passionate debate. He planned them. Rep Garcia brought a poster-sized photo of Musk to the hearing, referring to the image as a “d— pic.”

After that, he doubled down. On both his foul language and his call to arms.

“I think [Musk is] also harming the American public in an enormous way,” Rep. Garcia told CNN’s host Brianna Keilar, according to Fox News. “And what I think is really important and what the American public want is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country.”

‘Incite Violence’

The row is rooted in President Trump’s slashing of the federal workforce, a promise he made on the campaign trail. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) wasn’t standing for it. She quickly introduced a censure resolution saying “violence, threats of violence, or attempts to incite violence against Federal employees should not be tolerated in the House of Representatives.”

“The Left is running like roaches with the light on over @DOGE,” Rep. Mace posted on X. “@RepRobertGarcia went far beyond the pale last night, calling for weapons to be used against @ElonMusk. This won’t be ignored. We’re making an example out of him.”

Rep. Garcia dismissed anyone considering taking him at his word for American citizens to heed his call and take up arms for his agenda.

“Obviously, I was using a figure of speech,” Rep. Garcia told The Long Beach Post.

Except he wasn’t. And he didn’t. Rep. Garcia said he wanted the Democratic Party to “bring actual weapons.” Then, he doubled down on it.

This might be the first time Rep. Garcia has indicated any support for private firearm ownership. He’s in favor of banning Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and banning adults under 21 from possessing a firearm. He also wants so-called “universal background checks” which would require a national firearm registry to work and would be very convenient that Rep. Garcia would know exactly who owned what firearms and where they are stored. Rep. Garcia wants to institute a federal licensing system. That would be even more convenient because he could ensure only those who support his political agenda would be approved.

Sound Orwellian enough? Not for Rep. Garcia. He wants people to “bring actual weapons” in his fight against President Trump and those carrying out his agenda. That’s an actual threat of war. Pitting Americans against a duly-elected president and the administration carrying out that president’s agenda – and the duly-elected Congress and the judiciary – isn’t only maniacal. It’s the very definition of tyranny.

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Gun Control Orgs Doing Battlefield Prep As Trump Administration Zeroes In On Biden Gun Control Policies.

sheldon big bang paper bag panic

“Gun owners fought hard to elect a president who would take a sledgehammer to Biden’s unconstitutional gun control policies, and today, President Trump proved he’s serious about that fight,” Aidan Johnston, a director for Gun Owners of America, said in a statement. “We hope that this executive order is just the first of many victories reestablishing our Second Amendment rights during the Trump administration.”

Gun safety advocates are sounding the alarm, including those galvanized by the devastating high school massacre that took place seven years ago Friday in Parkland, Florida.

“Trump’s priorities couldn’t be more clear. Spoiler: it’s not protecting kids. Gun deaths finally went down last year, and Trump just moved to undo the rules and laws that helped make that happen,” said Natalie Fall, Executive Director of March For Our Lives, in a statement. “He is going to get Americans killed in his thirst for vengeance and eagerness to please the gun lobby and rally armed extremists. Remember the next time that a mass shooting happens, Trump did everything in his power to enable it, not prevent it.”

— Mark Follman in Trump Prepares to Wipe Out Years of Progress on Gun Violence

Europeans Don’t Get Free Speech, and Neither Does CBS News, Apparently.
The network had a true banner weekend.

JD Vance spoke over the weekend at the Munich security conference on behalf of the United States — the primary topic was Ukraine, for obvious reasons — but instead of discussing the immediate geopolitical matter, he took his time at the rostrum to deliver a harsh message to the European grandees gathered there about the enemy “within.” And he wasn’t subtle in identifying that threat as the overreaction of Europeans to dissident populist parties:

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy.

But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. . . .

Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.

You may be outraged or shocked to see Vance speaking so bluntly to our European allies, but I, for one, am not. I wrote about the canceled Romanian elections last December with shocked disbelief at the casual annulment of democracy on the flimsiest of pretexts — and in truth, merely for going unexpectedly wrong for the establishment party in power — by people who constantly scream about “democracy.” Near as I can tell, NR was one of just five serious outlets in all of American political media to even bother with a commentary about what was otherwise a completely ignored and blandly reported travesty of democracy. (“Nothing to see here, move along.” And always, the paper-thin excuse: “Why are you complaining? You don’t want the Russians to win, do you?” No, but I don’t like being transparently condescended to, either.)

My only disagreement with Vance is that I suspect he is either making an intellectual category error or — more disingenuously but intelligently — arguing like a Straussian, subtly undermining his nominal point to demonstrate the hypocrisy of everyone he’s speaking to in the audience.

Let me explain rather simply: The Europeans do not believe in “free speech” in the same way Americans do, and never really have. Anyone who has spent even a moment’s worth of study on the differences between Continental, British, and American speech laws — and how they have historically evolved — knows that Europe as a whole knows no legally defined conception of true freedom of speech and that England once had it but, without a written constitution to turn tradition into fundamental law, has seen it eroded in recent decades.

Only in the United States, with its First Amendment, are such principles codified — and foregrounded — in a way that has not only shaped our culture from its earliest days but preserved that untamable expressive freedom that is most essentially American within us. (I say for the better; Nina Jankowicz would argue for the worse.)

Vance’s entire speech is 20 minutes long and worth reading in full — he is the Trump administration’s most effective advocate by far — but allow me one further excerpt from what must have landed in the room like a rhetorical punch in the face. (You rarely see this sort of schoolmasterly rhetoric deployed by United States diplomacy to properly scold Europe — it is usually instead deployed by Europeans to lecture us.)

I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges.

But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making.

If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.

No wonder the Germans were weeping by the end of it all. Vance had called everybody in the audience on their bluff. “You’re not afraid of your own people, are you?” Of course they are. (And also, let’s not kid ourselves, either: They have their reasons, especially if they’re Germans.)

You know who also is terrified of the people? CBS News. Yes, CBS had a true banner Sunday for itself this weekend by tagging along with Vance to Munich. And they made it clear they were on the side of the Europeans weeping about having to listen to the angry voices of their constituents.

Margaret Brennan made headlines pontificating about the origins of the Holocaust from too much “free speech” — a topic for tomorrow’s Carnival of Fools because few in the media have more willingly donned clown makeup in recent weeks — but really it was 60 Minutes’ remarkable praise of Germany’s anti-free-speech laws that took the cake for me.

Now, 60 Minutes has had a pretty rough go of it lately, to be fair. I don’t think Donald Trump has a leg to stand on in his lawsuit against them (for editing a Kamala Harris interview), and I refuse to dignify the matter with serious comment — everything I said about that was already said when I discussed his equally repulsive “revenge lawsuit” against Ann Selzer.

But watching 60 Minutes’ hosts nod sympathetically along with German state prosecutors and investigators as they calmly explained that every random racist internet insult in their country was a prosecutable crime was both mildly horrifying — they presented this to America as a preferable alternative — and perfectly explanatory as to their current position at the bottom-most tier of American public respect: They fear us and think we, as citizens, deserve to be informationally “managed.” Why shouldn’t we hold them in equal contempt? They’re as post-democratic in their impulses as Elon Musk, the man they hate, who happily avers they should be sent to prison. Musk, whatever his other qualities, is clearly a megalomaniac with zero respect for anything except the gratification of his own impulses. CBS theoretically aspires to something more.

Scott Jennings Baits CNN Analyst Into Making a Damning Admission

Scott Jennings, aka the voice of reason on CNN, managed to extract a damning admission from one of the network’s analysts on Tuesday night. Appearing at a roundtable during Abby Phillip’s show, the conservative commentator faced off against former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman.

What was said by the latter was stunning, not insofar as it is a revelation (we already know what Democrats think of American voters) but that someone would be brazen enough to say it out loud. Here’s how Jennings set things up.

JENNINGS: Here’s what I think is a joke, that you have these partisan hack Democrat attorney generals, they get together, and the only thing they know how to do is try to nullify the results of the last election by venue-shopping these district court judges. They find the most lunatic liberals they can. They file lawsuits knowing full well they’re going to try to usurp the president’s authority, tie this up in court for years…

Akerman then responded by describing the bureaucratic state as “sacrosanct.”

AKERMAN: That stuff is sacrosanct, and you’ve got people going in there who don’t know anything about…(crosstalk)…Elon Musk doing this, he knows nothing about it.

The word “sacrosanct” means something is too important to be interfered with. In other words, a former government hanger-on believes that bureaucracies are simply above being controlled and reformed by pesky elected officials. They are, in effect, an untouchable fourth branch of government.

It only got worse from there because Akerman then said the following.

JENNINGS: What you just said is so profound. You said these people don’t know anything and they don’t know what they’re doing.

AKERMAN: That’s right. I’m talking about Elon Musk.

JENNINGS: I understand, but they are appointees of the duly elected president so your view, you’re here as our legal expert, but your view is because you don’t personally believe they know enough, that the duly-elected president who appointed a treasury secretary and who appoints special appointees like Elon Musk shouldn’t be able to act as the president because you don’t personally believe they know enough? Is that how it works? Do elections mean anything to you?

AKERMAN: It’s got nothing to do with elections.

That last line is the money quote that perfectly illustrates the left wing of democratic governance. While they love to toss around the word “democracy” while pretending they are defenders of it, they do not believe in representative government. What they believe in is an unaccountable bureaucratic system that allows them to thumb their noses at American voters. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” setup, and it has been the basis of Democratic Party power stretching back to the Woodrow Wilson era.

Akerman and those like him truly think their grip on power has “nothing to do with elections.” They want to be able to dictate their policy wants regardless of who wins. It is a tyrannical mindset wrapped up in a high-minded facade. It’s also abject nonsense in a technical sense. How efficient has the government been while being run by those Akerman would call qualified? How effective has it been at managing your taxpayer money? Meaningless credentialism is how the nation ended up with a nightmarish bureaucratic system that wouldn’t last five minutes in the private sector without major reforms or outright dismissal.

Democrats can continue their lawfare games if they’d like (and they’ll eventually lose), but all it’s doing is postponing the inevitable while continuing to turn Americans against them.

Anti-Gun Fury over Trump 2A Exec. Order; Dem States Could Double Down

Washington gun owners expect Democrats who control the state legislature to double down on gun control in response to President Trump’s executive order protecting the Second Amendment.

While the reaction from gun prohibition lobbying groups to President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect the Second Amendment was predictable fury, grassroots gun rights activists in the Pacific Northwest—where Democrats are in control—expect them to “double-down” in retaliation.

The question was raised on Facebook, and remarks posted in response to this question—As Trump dismantles Biden’s gun control agenda, will Washington Democrats double down out of spite?—tell the tale. More about this in a minute.

Trump’s 451-word executive order met with immediate resistance from gun control groups, exemplified by Common Dreams, “An executive order issued Friday by President Donald Trump that aims to rollback gun control measures instituted by his predecessor received a swift rebuke from critics who said the order should be seen as a giveaway to the profit-hungry gun industry at the expense of a society ruthlessly harmed by gun violence year after year after year.”

Trump’s order covers all actions during the period from January 2021 through January 2025 focusing on rules promulgated by the Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives during that time period. It also directs the Attorney General to review reports and related documents issued by the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which President Trump has abolished.

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ANALYSIS: Is Anti-Gun Sen. Chuck Schumer Headed for Trouble?

The Western Journal is reporting that New York Senator Chuck Schumer—the veteran anti-gunner whose Capitol Hill career dating back to his days in the U.S. House invariably gravitated toward increasingly restrictive gun control schemes—could be in trouble with the Justice Department.

Writing at the Western Journal, Ben Zeisloft, editor of the Republic Sentinel, says Schumer, Democrat minority leader in the Senate, has been sent a letter by Edward R. Martin, Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District Of Columbia, asking the senator about remarks he made five years ago at a media event in which he seemed to be threatening Supreme Court Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch in relation to abortion rights cases.

On March 4, 2020, Schumer was filmed declaring, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch! I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” He was standing in front of a banner for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

In his letter, Martin wrote, “I respectfully request that you clarify your comments from March 4, 2020…We take threats against public officials very seriously. I look forward to your cooperation with my letter of inquiry after request.”

The Journal story appears at the same time another report about quick actions taken by newly-sworn Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to the Western Journal’s Samantha Chang, Bondi “issued a barrage of directives aimed at restoring the ‘integrity and credibility’ of the Department of Justice by eradicating the weaponization of the agency to target political opponents and push left-wing agendas.”
Long story short: With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and the installation of a new attorney general, the day of reckoning for far-left politicians and bureaucrats could be on the horizon.

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