Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Trump Vows to Hunt Down, Jail Leaker Who Endangered Missing F-15 Pilot By Tipping Off Iran

President Trump vowed to hunt down and jail the leaker who revealed that U.S. forces could not initially reach the second American crew member of an F-15 fighter jet shot down over Iran.

Speaking in the White House briefing room on Monday, a clearly perturbed Commander in Chief declared that the media’s disclosure tipped off Tehran and directly endangered the airman’s life. Not to mention the lives of hundreds of troops searching for the missing crew member.

“We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” he said. “They basically said that we have one, and there’s somebody missing. Well, [Iran] didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.”

The President indicated he would pressure the media outlet that published the story to reveal their sources.

“We think we’ll be able to find it out,” Trump continued. “Because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Give it up or go to jail.’”

The leak, first reported by Israel’s Channel 12 and quickly picked up by U.S. outlets including Axios and the Washington Post, came as the wounded second crew member was fighting for his life behind enemy lines.

The information prompted a race between our military heroes and the terrorist regime.

Iran’s state television, you may recall, quickly urged civilians in the area to hunt down the American airman, placing a bounty on his head. An anchor told residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to the police with the promise of a “precious prize” if they do so.

“Those who succeed in capturing or killing hostile enemy forces will be specially commended by the Governor’s office,” the governor of Iran’s southern Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province announced, according to the BBC at the time.

“All of a sudden, they know that there’s somebody out there,” Trump told reporters at the briefing. “They see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked that we have one, we’ve rescued one, but there’s another one out there that we’re trying to get.”

“So actually, the country Iran, put out a major notice — you all saw it — offering a very big award for anybody that captures the pilot,” he added. “So in addition to a hostile, very talented, very good, very evil military, we had millions of people trying to get an award, so when you add that to it, but we have to find that leaker, because that’s a sick person.”

This wasn’t just a leak — it was a direct assist to the enemy that turned every member of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps), not to mention every civilian looking for a quick payday, into a bounty hunter gunning for our airman.

Anti-Gunner Offers Cartoonish Version of U.S. History to Demand Civilian Disarmament

At one of the two No Kings protests held in Richmond, Virginia this past weekend, one of the speakers urged attendees to go out and buy a gun and exercise their Second Amendment rights. There was no call to violence in his statement, just a call to arms.

I’m not sure how well that comment went over with those in attendance, but I’m pretty sure that if California writer Matt Stone had been in the audience he would have turned tomato-faced with rage. In a diatribe for the Davis Vanguard, Stone has taken aim at “the gun,’ which, in his mind, has primarily (and perhaps only) been a tool of oppression for hundreds of years.

To understand the American obsession with firearms, you have to strip away the nostalgia and look at the ledger. The gun was the specific technology required to seize a continent and build an economy. It was the instrument that turned “uninhabited” land into private property and human beings into chattel.

The Second Amendment was not drafted in a vacuum of philosophical abstraction. It was drafted to protect the state militias, whose primary function, explicitly cited in the text, was to execute the “Law of the Union” and suppress “Insurrections.” In the language of the time, that meant one thing: killing Native Americans to clear the land and terrorizing enslaved Africans to keep the labor force in check.

I could devote this entire post to debunking just this paragraph, but I’ll settle for the Cliff’s Notes version since there’s so much more stupidity to cover. Chattel slavery existed long before the musket ever came into existence, and the African slavers who were the source of the millions of souls trapped in bondage weren’t dependent on firearms.

The Second Amendment was drafted, in part, to ensure that militias, which were comprised of every able-bodied male from young adulthood to old age, would not be destroyed by an act of Congress, but it was also meant to ensure that the people’s right to keep and bear arms outside of those militia purposes would not be infringed. Stone is simply off his rocker when he claims that “insurrections” only meant targeting Native Americans and “terrorizing” slaves. Even if Stone had referred to putting down slave revolts (which did fall under “insurrections”), it’s just flat out false to say those were the only “insurrections” in the colonies where the militia was used to stop the disorder.

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Demoncrap lawmakers seek data on US gun exports linked to cartels, criminal violence

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) – Two Democratic members of Congress are pressing the Commerce Department for detailed data on U.S. exports of semi-automatic weapons, citing concerns that ​legally exported American firearms are fueling criminal violence and arming cartels ‌across the Western Hemisphere.
Reuters reviewed the letter sent on Sunday by Senator Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Gregory Meeks of New York to Under Secretary of Commerce Jeffrey Kessler.
Warren and ​Meeks, the top Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee and House Foreign ​Affairs Committee, respectively, invoked their oversight authority under the Export Control ⁠Reform Act of 2018 to demand a sweeping accounting of semi-automatic firearm export ​licenses approved since January 2025.

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Virginia Illustrates Insidious Anti-Gun Threat

I’ve joked before that Virginia’s politics swing back and forth like an unlatched screen door in a hurricane. From red to blue to red to blue, all so fast it makes your head spin.

But last year’s elections opened the door for a lot of troubling things in Virginia, up to and including their redistricting plan that seeks to essentially wipe out Republican representation from the state, and with it, support for gun rights. Sure, there’s one district, but only because there was no way to gerrymander the state badly enough to make it solid blue.

However, Virginia reveals an insidious threat because the state is too purple to suddenly swing this far left.

Progressive groups are behind a wave of tougher restrictions on firearms, wielding a quiet power that Second Amendment proponents worry could unravel gun rights in friendly territory.

Earlier this month, Virginia lawmakers sent a spate of gun bills tightening firearms restrictions to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-VA) desk. It’s a development fueled by Moms Demand Action, and one that one of the country’s most prominent pro-gun rights organizations fears foreshadows things to come in other purple states.

“Virginia is a purple state, and so having this sweeping, massive gun control package in the state that’s got a lot of gun owners, to see that happen and happen so rapidly should really be alarming to everybody in this country,” National Rifle Association’s Director of Public Affairs, Justin Davis, told the Washington Examiner.

“It’s really just a blueprint of what’s to come in this country. This is a trial balloon for the midterm elections,” he said. “They’re seeing what they can pass in a purple state? What is the backlash from that? And how do people react?”…

Davis said many such state races can be “so easily” flipped with small “injections“ of cash. Due to progressive activism, every state is “ripe for flipping at any time,” he said.

“To think that the stuff they’re pushing here is happening in Virginia should wake up every single purple state in the country, any place that is, it was in the realm of what a ‘moderate state’ is that there’s a very well-trained, very concerted effort to get progressives elected positions,” Davis said. “There are people who literally look at these races, race by race, and say, ‘How do we make sure that we can flip this for a broader scale, to flip this state to pass these same leftist laws?’”

Groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety are specifically named for injecting a significant amount of cash into the race, and the truth of the matter is that these groups will run ads that feature policies other than gun control, usually pretty progressive ones.

So what happens is that for a few million dollars, they can push a candidate who might not appear all that bad in the grand scheme of things–remember, Spanberger tried to position herself as a moderate, and a lot of people listened–only to take office and start trying to run the table with things like gun control.

Virginia is a purple state, but the current agenda in Richmond looks like something you’d expect in California.

No, it doesn’t help that Virginia governors can only serve a single term at a time, thus meaning they never have to worry about re-election. That means they can trot out their agenda on day one, and other than the midterms, there’s nothing stopping them from going as far left or right as they’d like. In this case, it means trotting out the most ridiculous anti-gun agenda you’re ever going to see in any part of the South.

This is something we need to be on guard against and work to counter if we don’t want to see our rights destroyed at the state level.

GOA:
WV: Setting the Record Straight on SB 1071

In recent days, West Virginia Senate President Randy Smith released a public statement regarding SB 1071, the Public Defense and Provisioning Act. His comments have created confusion about the bill’s drafting, legality, and level of expert review.

It is essential that West Virginians have the full and accurate factual record. Many of the claims made about SB 1071 do not reflect the truth, and the following information provides a clear, fact-driven response based on verifiable legal authorities and documented expert analysis.

A Bill with Momentum — and an Unexpected Intervention

The fight for modern firearms equality began in early February. West Virginia made national history when it became the first state in America to introduce legislation authorizing the lawful sale of post-1986 machine guns under the federal carve-out in 18 U.S.C.922(o)(2)(A).

SB 1071 immediately ignited excitement among legislators, industry leaders, and grassroots supporters. Other states quickly took notice—several have already copied West Virginia’s language, and more are preparing to introduce their own versions.

A flash poll conducted by Gun Owners of America showed overwhelming enthusiasm among West Virginians, with 94 percent saying their out-of-state family and friends would be more likely to move to West Virginia if this bill became law. The momentum was real, and the nation was watching.

SB 1071 was introduced by Senator Chris Rose, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the committee advanced the bill with overwhelming support. But immediately after that vote, the bill seemed to vanish.

Chairman Tom Willis, who had reported the bill out of Judiciary, was himself confused about why it had not moved to the Finance Committee as expected. This unusual stall prompted West Virginians across the state to begin calling their Senators, demanding Sen. Chris Rose (left), sponsor of SB 1071, stands with Senate President Randy Smith.
answers about what had happened to a bill that had just passed committee with overwhelming support.

In response to the growing public concern, Senate President Randy Smith publicly stated that he personally made the decision to halt SB 1071, clarifying that the choice did not come from Chairman Willis or the Judiciary Committee. This admission dramatically shifted the understanding of events. What many initially believed to be procedural delay within Judiciary now appeared to be a direct intervention from Senate leadership.

Additionally, several advocates and legal experts have raised serious concerns that President Smith may have been relying on information provided by an outside individual who strongly opposed SB 1071 and may have misrepresented key legal facts about the bill.

According to these observers, this misinformation appears to have played a significant role in shaping the Senate President’s decision—ultimately stopping a bill that had strong public support, clear legislative interest, and validation from some of the most respected constitutional attorneys in the country.

This context is essential for understanding how SB 1071 was derailed and why an accurate factual record matters as West Virginians evaluate what happened and determine the path forward.

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BLUF
Mexico’s attempt to sway U.S. courts with an opinion from IACHR runs into the problems that, unfortunately, have plagued Mexico. NSSF is sympathetic to the victims in Mexico who have suffered under the criminal violence wrought by narco-terrorist drug cartels. However, until Mexico addresses corruption and crime on their side of the border, this won’t be resolved.
The problem isn’t from U.S. firearm manufacturers or retailers

Mexico Tries to Use International Courts to Attack American Gun Makers and It Doesn’t Go Well.

Mexico’s hope to appropriate a human rights court to bolster its chances in frivolous lawsuits against U.S. firearm manufacturers and retailers is disappearing like a vapor in breeze.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights published an advisory opinion at the request of Mexico’s government. NSSF filed an amicus brief with the IACHR arguing that Mexico was attempting to improperly influence sovereign U.S. courts by co-opting an international human rights court that has no jurisdiction on pending decisions. Predictably, the IACHR leaned into the opinion anyway.

But if this was the boost for which Mexico was searching in its pending lawsuits, authorities there will be disappointed. They got platform shoes, not a platform with which they can walk in when they press their claims.

There are a couple reasons for that. First, U.S. courts are sovereign. Courts in the United States answer to the U.S. Constitution, from which all U.S. law stems. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court already dismissed one of their flagship and erroneous claims that U.S. firearm manufacturers are somehow responsible for the criminal violence and harms caused by narco-terrorists in Mexico. Lastly, there are growing and continuing reports of widespread corruption and arms smuggling within Mexico.

What the IACHR Said

The IACHR wrote in its opinion that companies have an obligation to supervise distribution of firearms to avoid “human rights violations,” but it didn’t name specific companies. In fact, it didn’t list U.S. firearm manufacturers at all. The IACHR also held that governments must guarantee effective judicial remedies for violations of human rights but, despite Mexico’s demand that the IACHR reject laws like the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the IACHR did not even criticize, much less reject, these sensible procedural protections for the firearms industry.

The most egregious portion of the opinion noted that the IACHR takes pains to observe that human rights obligations are “transnational.” That means that companies in one country should be responsible for human rights violations that occur further down the chain. That can’t be interpreted as anything other than a swipe at U.S. companies.  However, here again, no companies are named.

The IACHR’s opinion will obviously have no bearing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. In that case the Court held that the PLCAA bars Mexico’s claims that firearm manufacturers “aided and abetted” illegal firearms trafficking to narco-terrorist drug cartels in Mexico. NSSF filed an amicus brief supporting U.S. firearm manufacturers in that case. The Supreme Court rejected Mexico’s theory of liability in a 9-0 decision written by Justice Elena Kagan. It explained that the lawsuit is barred by the PLCAA because “Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers.”

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Virginia’s Democrat Senate Majority Leader on Why Their ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban and Magazine Capcity Limit Really Isn’t a Big Deal

If you have an assault rifle, you can keep it. If you have an assault pistol, if you have one of these pistols with a silencer on it and a pistol grip in the front. A really big, big pistol…you want to have one with a telescope on it or lasers or whatever else you want, that’s okay. You just can’t buy a new one and you can’t sell it to anybody. If you want to have a magazine with more than 15 bullets, you can keep that, too. You just can’t buy a new one.

— Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell

Senate President Responds To Criticism Of Bill Killed ‘In The Dark’

Senate President Randy Smith, R-Preston, responded Friday to criticism from the chamber floor about the lack of action on legislation loosely referred to as “the machine gun bill.”

Senate Bill 1071 would have created the state’s Office of Public Defense, to require the West Virginia State Police to sell machine guns to qualified citizens of the state. There was no fiscal note attached to the bill and it stipulated that the state police would have to take on this responsibility with no additional staff. The bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but never made it to the chamber floor.

Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, was openly angered.

“It was killed without transparency and without consensus,” Chapman said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The decision was made in the dark, despite the fact that this bill had overwhelming support by this body. This is exactly why the public doesn’t trust politicians.” 

Smith said in a statement Friday that he alone decided not to take the bill up and said he did so without reservation. He called it a “poorly drafted piece of legislation” that was unlikely to pass the House of Delegates and would face numerous legal challenges if it did.

“With an issue as critical as the protection of our Second Amendment rights, we must ensure the legislation we pass will survive legal challenge. This would not have,” Smith said.

“My record with the NRA (National Rifle Association) and WVCDL (West Virginia Citizens Defense League) is unquestioned, and West Virginians unquestionably trust the judgment of these groups on Second Amendment issues. And, further, I trust them,” he added.

He said the behavior of an out-of-state group behind the bill had been disappointing but welcomed the Gun Owners of America to consider legislation next year – preferably earlier in the session.

California’s Anti-Gun AG Wants to Dictate Law to Rest of Nation

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is a piece of work. We thought Kamala Harris was bad in that role, but the truth is that Harris was always going to be held back by her inability to form actual sentences.

Bonta, though, can. Unfortunately, he uses those actual sentences to repeatedly attack the rights of law-abiding Americans.

His latest target, though, isn’t someone within his own state. He’s going after people who engage in perfectly legal activity elsewhere, all because some Californians break the law.

A lawsuit filed by Calif. Att. Gen. Rob Bonta and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu is targeting the Gatalog Foundation Inc. and CTRLPEW LLC.

California claims that Gatalog and CTRLPEW are providing prohibited persons with plans to make “ghost guns” (3D printed firearms without serial numbers).

Matthew Larosiere, who is an attorney in Florida and is loosely connected to hobby gunsmiths via Gatalog, is one of the people California is suing. He explains in this video interview that what they call “Gatalog” is just hobbyists who found each other on the internet. They are not selling guns. They are talking about and toying with concepts for guns digitally.

“If California can regulate access to the instructions,” said Larosiere. “Not just by California, but with this lawsuit, [then] what they’re saying is they want to regulate the entire internet worldwide. That would mean that you’d be cut off at the heels from making a gun at home. And I think most of us can agree that if you have a right to keep and bear something, it necessarily subsumes the right to acquire it.”

When asked about Gatalog, Larosiere explained that it is not a group “like the NRA. There’s no member that has a card; there’s no board of directors; there’s no nothing. It’s kind of just a group of hobbyists associating around an idea. And the idea is home gunsmithing.”

In other words, Bonta wants to shut down access to this information, not just for people in California, but throughout the nation. If we can’t share the information freely, then it might as well not exist from a lawful perspective.

But it should be remembered that files are just computer code, and computer code has long been ruled as a form of speech.

As I wrote about on Wednesday, we don’t stifle access to The Anarchist Cookbook or P.A. Luty’s book on making your own submachine gun with things you can get from Home Depot. Those books contain information every bit as deadly as what one might find in 3D printing files, if not more so, and yet, as books, you cannot lawfully ban them.

Bonta is taking it a step further, though, by attacking everyone who he can who shares this information via the internet.

He’s trying to use his authority as the attorney general of California to dictate to the rest of the nation what it can and cannot do with regard to 3D printing guns.

As it is, California has a long history of trying to dictate to the country what it should and shouldn’t do. They create standards that industries are obliged to follow, even if the rest of us want nothing to do with them, and we’ve accepted it because the companies are the ones making the decision to use those standards throughout the nation.

We don’t want it, but it’s easier for them.

This is different. This is them attacking our rights because they don’t want the American people to be able to do something they’ve already forbidden the small percentage of the population living there from doing.

If ever there were an example of statehood being a mistake…

New Coalition Claims It’s Found Common Ground on Gun Laws

Not every gun owner is a Second Amendment advocate; a fact that major anti-gun groups like Giffords, Brady, Everytown and smaller outfits like 97 Percent know very well. The gun control lobby doesn’t approve of too many gun owners, but those who are willing to endorse restrictions on their right to keep and bear arms are what the Communist Party used to call “useful idiots”; naive people working against their own interests while believing they are fighting for a righteous cause.

Now there’s a new group on the scene claiming to have found common ground between gun owners, Second Amendment advocates, and gun control activists… and they’re viewing Wisconsin as a laboratory for their experiment.

 The result is a package of eight proposals that, when taken together, would reduce firearms injuries and deaths while protecting gun owners’ rights, the group asserts.

“We are here to deliver a message of hope,” said Dr. Michael Siegel of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who launched the coalition, during an online news conference on Feb. 26.

“It is possible to break through polarization and achieve a consensus on contentious policy issues,” he said.

The group’s policies include extreme risk protection orders, also called ‘Red Flag Laws,’ gun storage laws, background checks, firearms education in schools, gun dealer oversight, and suicide prevention.

It’s noteworthy what’s not included. There’s no effort to limit the sale of certain guns, such as assault-style rifles or higher-capacity ammunition magazines.

Well, gee, how big of them. Is there anything that actually strengthens the right to keep and bear arms in their proposals, other than perhaps firearms education in schools? It doesn’t sound like it. Instead, the group seems to be offering a smattering of non-objectionable ideas (at least in theory) along with a much longer list of restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.

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The Graveyard of Destructive Ideas.

Elite fashions harden into dogma, dissent becomes taboo, institutions fall in line—and only when reality intrudes does yesterday’s madness begin its overdue collapse.

How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed?

There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity.

The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding, and public awareness of the impending danger.

So out of nowhere, the public is warned that the scorching planet will be inundated by rising seas in a mere decade. Or that millions of transgender youth are our next civil rights frontier, given that they suffer in silence without political advocacy, new laws, programs, and the chance for “life-saving,” powerful hormonal treatments and radical sex-reassignment surgeries. Indeed, the travel time from an outlandish idea by the faculty lounge to liberal status quo is a mere few years.

Next, the media, hand-in-glove with academia, springs into action to persuade the skeptical public to “follow the science” and “trust the experts.” It castigates any doubters as cranks or “conspiracy theorists” who spread “disinformation” and “misinformation”; or as racists, nativists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes who must be silenced.

Hollywood and sports celebrities often piggyback on the frenzy, hijacking awards ceremonies and pre-game national anthems to out-virtue-signal each other, warning the public that they must adapt and change—or else!

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The Riot Beat
Everyone’s debating what happened in Minnesota. Few are talking about the real problem: what these “protests” are really like

Two people are dead in Minneapolis.

The nation is now locked in a familiar and dark debate: Were the killings justified? Who’s to blame? The arguments will simmer for weeks, undoubtedly along partisan lines, litigated on cable news and social media until the next crisis distracts us.

But lost in the back-and-forth is a more basic question that almost no one is asking: What is actually going on at these protests?

The left has its answer ready. New York magazine put a masked protester on its cover under the headline “Your Friendly Neighborhood Resistance.” The image is striking, the title heroic. The subhead promises a story about everyday people “watching out for ICE at every corner, crosswalk, church, and school.”

It’s a compelling piece of mythmaking.

The truth is something much less glamorous. I’ve spent years covering left-wing protests and riots across America, from 2020 through the present. What I’ve witnessed on the ground looks nothing like the noble resistance portrayed in legacy media.

The reality: Chaos. Violence. Dishonesty. Truly, the street activists are among the most dishonest people I’ve encountered.

If you rely solely on their videos (the ones that feed the outrage machine on social media) you will be systematically and intentionally misinformed. Whether through misleading captions or selectively edited footage, left-wing activists are masters at manipulating sympathetic national media. This, in turn, feeds mainstream outlets more than happy to take their material and craft their preferred narratives.

The recent unrest in Minneapolis is a textbook example. Claims of “legal observers” being “brutalized” by federal agents are routinely disproven when other video evidence from the same scenes emerges. But by then, the narrative has already been set.

Of course, much has been made in recent weeks about the insurgent behavior of these groups: the “terror cell” comparisons, the accusations of organized resistance networks.

There is truth to that.

Unlike 2020, the dynamics of covering leftist violence have changed. I’ve raised my profile since covering those riots for my book. The downside of notoriety: Antifa knows exactly who I am, and it doesn’t take long for their networks to spread the word when I arrive.

I experienced this recently after covering Jake Lang’s rally in Minneapolis. Lang was chased out of the area, and the Antifa crowd started hunting for anyone who might have supported him. Minneapolis police had already left when someone in the crowd spotted me.

“Turning Point is here!”

The shout cut through the noise. In that moment, you’re presented with a few options.

You can run, but that instantly draws more attention. You can walk, but that gives people more time to notice the commotion. Or you can stand your ground, hit record on your phone, and roll the dice.

Getting surrounded by leftists on camera makes for compelling content. But I’d just watched this crowd attack Lang and others. I was alone. If I needed help, it would be tough luck.

I decided the best thing to do was to continue my work another day. I managed to separate from most of the crowd before the shouting spread. A few people followed, but they lost interest when I told them I wasn’t there for Turning Point. They eventually wandered off.

Later, I learned that Antifa networks on Bluesky had already notified their followers of my presence in Minnesota. The coordination is real. The infrastructure is real. These aren’t spontaneous gatherings of friendly concerned citizens, they’re organized operations with communication networks, reconnaissance, and target lists. I’m on the target lists.

So why do it? Why keep showing up to places where people want to hurt you?

Because the debate America is having right now is the wrong one.

We’re arguing over whether two deaths were justified—poring over body camera footage like sports referees watching the instant replay, assigning blame, sorting ourselves into teams. That argument will never be resolved. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a distraction.

The real question isn’t whether federal agents were justified in Minneapolis. The real question is what kind of organized resistance has taken root in American cities and what it will take to uproot it.

These aren’t protesters. They’re not even rioters, not in the traditional sense. What I’ve witnessed over the past five years is the emergence of something else entirely: networked, coordinated, ideologically committed groups that operate more like cells than citizens. They have communication infrastructure, reconnaissance capabilities, and target lists. They can mobilize in hours and coordinate across state lines.

The New York cover wants you to see a friendly neighbor in a gas mask. What I see is something the country isn’t ready to confront.

The justified-or-not debate is comfortable. It lets us stay in familiar left versus right, cops versus protesters territory, the same worn-out arguments we’ve been having for decades.

But that debate is a luxury we may not be able to afford much longer. What’s building in Minneapolis, in Portland, Austin, Chicago, in cities across the country, isn’t going away after the news cycle moves on.

The only question is whether we’re willing to see it clearly.

Julio Rosas is an acclaimed journalist who has worked at The Blaze, Townhall, Washington Examiner, Mediaite, and the Independent Journal Review

We’ve been able to do online sales for the past 40 years. (FOPA ’86)
At least for the time being, this is standard operational grandstanding that’ll go nowhere.

More Restrictions: Democrat Reps. Push Bill to Limit Online Ammo Sales

Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) announced Friday their re-introduction of legislation to limit the online sale of ammunition.
A press release from Mfume’s office indicates the bill, called the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, “would require federally licensed ammunition dealers to confirm the identity of individuals who arrange to purchase ammunition over the internet by verifying a photo I.D. in person.”

The legislation would “also require ammunition vendors to report any sales of more than 1,000 rounds within five consecutive days to the U.S. Attorney General, if the person purchasing ammunition is not a licensed dealer.”

Rep. Mfume commented on the legislation, saying, “Since we last introduced this bill, the crisis of mass shootings has continued unabated. We’ve been living with this scourge of violence for so many years as assault weapons and enormous amounts of ammunition continue to fall into the hands of diabolical people.”

He added, “Mass shootings are not going to stop on their own, and we cannot keep waiting for the next one to occur.”

Rep. Coleman said:

Regulating online ammunition sales is a commonsense step to countering the number of mass shootings we see every year. This legislation closes the loophole that makes tragedies like these so unfortunately common. Public safety must come before convenience for an unregulated market: Americans send us to Washington because it is our job to protect them, not mourn them.

The online ammo sales gun control bill has 17 co-sponsors.

Anti-ICE Signal Chats: Walz Administration Implicated, Foreign Funding Revealed

We’re learning a lot more about the people who were in the anti-ICE Signal chat groups that independent journalist Cam Higby infiltrated in Minnesota, the organization of the group, its donors, and the significance of the address at which Alex Pretti was obstructing federal officers. There’s far too much information to detail completely in this piece, but even just from an overview, it’s clear that there is an organized insurrection underway, led by several elected officials in Minnesota and aided by alleged journalists.

Let’s hit the highlights:

Organization

The groups are highly sophisticated. They’re set up geographically; within the City of Minneapolis, they’re generally divided by City Council district, but also cover St. Paul, Bloomington, and other suburbs. They start a new chat every day and delete the prior day’s chat. Because of Signal’s encryption, it would be exceedingly difficult for the deleted messages to be recovered unless, say, participants were recording those messages prior to deletion. Signal also has a “no screenshots” function, which undoubtedly was enabled on these chats, so the messages would have to be recorded the way Higby did – by recording using a separate phone.

They have a set of emojis that each user puts around their name when they’re on shift, to indicate what position they’re working that shift. For example:

Funding

On Sunday evening, Data Republican published a spreadsheet of 4000+ donors to the effort and their possible identities, and made that publicly downloadable. She also sent a non-redacted spreadsheet to the FBI and other federal authorities.

The first donation to the effort was made by Jonny Soppotiuk, a Canadian who helps run the crowdfunding site, Chuffed, which hosts the fundraiser.

She wrote:

BREAKING: SIGNALGATE DONORS LIST AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD; POLITICIANS + FOREIGN LEADERSHIP CONFIRMED?

In one of the files revealed by @camhigby, a resources file directs people with money to a website, Stand with Minnesota, which in turns directs donors to a campaign ran by Tending the Soil on Chuffed.

More about Tending the Soil later. What to know: the campaign is hosted by Chuffed and the first donation came from Jonny Soppotiuk, a Canada-based community organizer who is part of Chuffed leadership and specializes in fundraising. He is most likely a central figure in raising money.

So, yeah. Starting to look like foreigners are playing a key role in all of this.

That’s not all. I’ve put together a spreadsheet of 4000+ donors and their possible identities.

Politicians & Journalists

Even bigger: The names of the people involved. As Streiff wrote in an excellent piece on Sunday, “It is obvious that a non-trivial number of judges and elected officials are affiliated with the current insurrection.”

Not surprisingly, Alex Pretti, the man who was killed Saturday, was a member of the group; one of his neighbors confirmed that. And, so was Renee Good.

Then we have some Minneapolis elected officials.

Rep. Brad Tabke

Minnesota state Rep. Brad Tabke coordinates the Scott County ICE Watch Signal chat. Scott County is just outside Minneapolis.

This is not some vague third-party thing. This is Rep. Brad Tabke himself running/organizing/coordinating the Scott County ICE Watch program, including recruiting people for patrol, dispatch, training, and even food receiving/packing/delivery shifts at the New Creation Church location in Shakopee.

Minnesota state Rep. Alex Falconer

In a campaign stop, Falconer both admitted that he’s part of the chat and recruited participants. He said, in part:

I’m a community organizer at heart, and that’s part of what I’m trying to bring to the table.

I’m helping to lead the community response, rapid response network that we have, given any ICE situations…

We’ve got a couple of groups on the app Signal that we would love for you to join.

We know that Tabke was involved because people who signed up for that chat received a welcome message from him containing his personal cell phone number, and, obviously, Falconer admitted his role. For the rest of the people mentioned in this article, their involvement is not 100 percent confirmed; for many, their involvement is presumed because of the username in the chat and leadership position, but a definitive determination would need to be made by law enforcement or their own admission.

Aurin Chowdhury

One username is Aurin Chowdhury. An admin with the same name is on the Minneapolis City Council, representing Ward 12.

Prior to her post announcing Pretti’s shooting, the last thing Chowdhury posted was a video of a local pizzeria owner refusing to serve federal agents.

MPR’s Ben Hovland, NPR’s Sergio Martinez-Beltrán

Ben Hovland, with Minnesota Public Radio (shocker) seems to be part of the group. He covers immigration for the formerly publicly-funded outlet, and his profession is listed in the group chat. He has now locked his X profile. NPR’s Sergio Martinez-Beltrán is also listed as a participant, and his profession is also listed with his contact.

Hovland just happened to be “on-scene covering” the “protests” when Renee Good was shot.

Amanda Koehler, former Walz staffer, MN State Senate candidate Anita Smithson, and Minneapolis politician David Snyder were all listed, with Koehler and Smithson serving as admins and Snyder as a dispatcher.

Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan (?)

This is the biggest name of all. An independent journalist working with Higby to determine the identities of the anti-ICE signal chat participants believes that Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is an admin in the chat going by the username Flan Southside.

Despite the Irish last name, which is her mother’s, Flanagan is the first female Native American to serve in that position. She is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe.

As of a few hours ago, Higby stated that he’s not 100 percent certain that the username belongs to Flanagan, but there’s a bit of circumstantial evidence showing that might just be her:

Regardless, Flanagan is involved in stirring up local activists. She recently instructed leftists to put their bodies on the line to protest.

It’s clear that Walz, Frey, and Flanagan want this insurrection to continue because it takes the focus off the massive fraud that’s been occurring in that state, much of it with Walz’s knowledge. Related to that, it’s interesting that the address where the shooting occurred, 2614 Nicollet, an 1100 square foot building that’s home to eight businesses: Smart Therapy Center, New American Development Center, Nicollet Senior Center, United Wellness Center, African American Family Services, Millenium Health Services, Bloom Home Health, and Global Interpreting Innovations.

Do you notice a common theme with those businesses?

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