Trump Kills an Intrusive Housing Rule, Again

This past week, Scott Turner, President Trump’s new secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced that HUD would be terminating the notoriously intrusive Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. By attaching strings to billions of dollars in community development block grants from HUD, AFFH gives the feds the ability to control zoning regulations and many other aspects of local government.

AFFH severely undermines our federalist system, not only by expanding central control but by turning suburban municipalities into helpless satellites of neighboring urban centers. Over and above engineering residential patterns by race, ethnicity, English proficiency, country of origin, and more, AFFH is designed to urbanize suburbs — forcing dense development to cluster around public transit hubs with the goal of coercing suburbanites out of their cars.

Supposedly, AFFH carries out provisions of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In reality, the rule is classic regulatory activism. It reads contemporary policy goals back into a law that mandated no such thing. AFFH, for example, slyly imposes a principle of “economic integration” on the suburbs, although nowhere does U.S. law recognize or demand economic integration.

In sum, AFFH is a systematic attack on America’s suburbs, an attempt to undercut their economic and political independence, urbanize them, and ultimately to absorb them into their greater metropolitan regions as if they never existed to begin with. The rule was the brainchild and longtime dream of President Obama’s Alinskyite community organizing mentors, who hated the suburbs, dismissed them as products of racism and greed, and blamed them for urban decay. AFFH is federal overreach on stilts, very arguably the most radical policy initiative of Obama’s presidency. Truly, the rule was designed to fundamentally transform the United States of America.

Thanks to President Trump, AFFH failed to do so. Trump, in fact, has uprooted AFFH twice. He killed off the Obama version in 2020, while running for reelection. Now Trump has moved to terminate the only very slightly revised Biden version of AFFH.

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THPD investigating shots fired at O’Reilly Auto Parts

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV)— UPDATE: The Terre Haute Police Department has released new information regarding a shots fired incident Thursday night.

THPD released a statement saying that officers responded to the 1900 block of south 3rd Street at O’Reilly Auto Parts just after 8:00 PM on Thursday night for a report of shots fired.

Upon investigation, officers learned that the suspect arrived at O’Reilly Auto Parts to dispute a recent trespass order. THPD says the suspect was told to leave and refused which led to a brief physical altercation. Police say, the suspect then returned to their vehicle, retrieving what was believed to be a handgun and pointed it at an employee.

THPD says a nearby customer who was working on his vehicle and was legally carrying a firearm, intervened to defend the employee and shot the suspect multiple times. Police say, the suspect then fled in a vehicle driven by a family member. Officers later found the vehicle and the suspect at a local hospital. The suspect was transferred to an Indianapolis-area hospital and is currently in stable condition.

Upon further investigation, it was determined that the handgun used by the suspect was an airsoft pistol.

THPD detectives and the Vigo County Prosecutor’s Office are still actively investigating the incident. We will keep you updated as further information is released.

Senators Send Letter Urging Repeal of Biden-era Rule Damaging the Firearms Industry

On March 5th U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging him to rescind an interim final rule (IFR) that the Biden Administration promulgated in an effort to hamstring the domestic firearms industry.

In October 2023, President Biden ordered a 90 day “pause” on firearm exports licenses issued by the Department of Commerce.

This order was in lock-step with other actions taken by the Biden Administration to hinder the U.S. domestic firearms industry in any way possible. And unsurprisingly, at the end of this “pause” the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued an IFR in April 2024. This IFR placed much tighter restrictions on semi-automatic firearms exports, listed dozens of countries as “high risk” countries which would be subject to a “presumption of denial” for export permits, removed a “presumption of approval” for licenses to many countries that had helped to expedite the process previously, and a number of other restrictions. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an organization that represents firearms manufacturers, stated that this decision would cost the industry nearly $500 million annually.

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They’re spies.
Put them in front of a firing squad and broadcast it live on TikTok
That way they can’t be traded next time the demoncraps are in power.
If they got these, there must be others. Shoot them too.
There’s a war going on, and we’re not fighting it.

“You don’t expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don’t, those who aren’t shot will be hanged.”
– Michael Shirley

Shocker: Bloomberg-funded gun control center prescribes more gun control

By Salam Fatohi

A recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report came out with several recommendations to reduce “gun violence.” The five-point plan, constructed by the school’s “Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy,” promotes the idea that gun ownership would be better treated as a privilege and not as a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for all law-abiding citizens.

That consortium is part of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which views “gun violence” as a “public health emergency.” That’s the same sort of language that foisted disproven mask mandates and vaccinations to prevent COVID-19, which were later revealed to do nothing to stop the pandemic’s spread and the vaccine regimen didn’t actually vaccinate at all. NSSF has said it before. Criminal misuse of firearms isn’t a disease. It’s a crime issue. Treating crime as a public health crisis that can be “cured” is, and will always be, ineffective. Stopping crime means enforcing criminal laws against criminals that commit crimes.

This is the same “gun control in a lab coat” approach that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took in the waning days of the Biden administration, after he promised Congress he wouldn’t. Of course, the Johns Hopkins consortium report doesn’t recommend locking up criminals that break the law. It recommends new restrictive gun licensing laws that only create barriers to lawful firearm ownership by those who don’t break the law.

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Trump Is Right to Deport Hamas Supporters:

Federal law authorizes denying or revoking the visa of anyone who supports terrorist activity.

Six weeks into the second Trump administration, and days after President Trump vowed to push back on “illegal protests” on college campuses, the State Department has pulled the first visa of a foreign student who engaged in pro-Hamas disruptions. That’s the right thing to do if we want to fix campus cultures. And contrary to disingenuous critics, such a move poses no First Amendment problems.

Indeed, it’s a basic application of U.S. immigration law, which says that people here on a visa (tourist, student, employment, or otherwise) who reveal themselves to be ineligible for that visa—“inadmissible,” in the parlance of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA)—can have their visa revoked. As I wrote in a broader analysis of campus-related civil rights issues after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, “The Immigration and Nationality Act allows the denial or revocation of a visa of ‘any alien who . . . endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.’” Biden’s State Department also told then-Senator Marco Rubio that it could revoke the visas of Hamas supporters.

But that’s not all Trump can do. The INA’s inadmissibility provision also empowers the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whom he determines to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States” or to impose on them “any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” During Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court upheld that broad grant of presidential discretion to vet, restrict, and even ban immigrants—and thus to direct executive-agency action in that regard—at the culmination of the high-profile “travel ban” litigation. In Trump v. Hawaii, the Court okayed an executive order restricting travel from various countries, with Chief Justice John Roberts affirming that the only statutory requirement is that the president “find” the entry of the affected aliens to be “detrimental to the national interest.”

That’s exactly what’s happening now. In one of the first executive orders Trump signed, he directed federal agencies to strengthen vetting and screening of those seeking admission and those already in the country, because “the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” Then, as part of the “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” he ordered the use of “all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

All of this makes eminent sense: it’s the government’s duty to screen out visitors and migrants who would be harmful to our country, including those who reject our values or are hostile to our way of life, such as Communists, Nazis, or Islamists. When I got my green card, and again when I naturalized, I had to affirm that I wasn’t affiliated with these groups “or any other totalitarian party.” To give another example in a different context, in 2020, 1,000 Chinese nationals had their visas revoked for being national security risks—and the Biden administration successfully defended that Trump action in court.

These core government functions are supported by law. As the INA says, “The admission to the United States of any alien as a nonimmigrant shall be for such time and under such conditions as the Attorney General may by regulations prescribe.” Other provisions of the law cover “travel controls of citizens and aliens,” “issuance of visas,” and “deportable aliens.”

While the government can’t send foreigners to jail for saying things it doesn’t like, it can and should deny or pull visas for those who advocate for causes inimical to the United States. There’s nothing objectional or controversial about removing those who harass, intimidate, vandalize, and otherwise interfere with an educational institution’s core mission. More, please.

EPA’s $20B ‘Slush Fund’ Zeldin and DOGE Discovered Looking Really Dodgy

Well, well, well,’ as the old-time movie detectives always say when they surprise the culprits with their hands in the cookie jars.

WHAT HAVE WE HERE?

Three short weeks ago, a newly confirmed Lee Zeldin got to his office at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and hit the broom closet to start sweeping.

Thanks to the previous braggadocious occupants and their already well-documented pre-exit shoveling of cash and grants out the door, he had an inkling there might be plenty of questionable transactions to uncover that hadn’t exactly been notated ‘on the books’ or done ‘by the book’ either.

I mean, what were the odds?

It didn’t take long for Zeldin to find himself a whopper of a honeypot hidden away that made quite a splash when he announced it, particularly as it was tied to an infamous Project Veritas video from December boasting about its very surreptitious creation.

David covered the reveal.

Project Veritas dropped a shocker of a video back in December, in which an EPA manager was bragging that the Biden administration was metaphorically ‘dropping gold bars off the Titanic.’ They were shoving every dime they could out to their NGO buddies so they could harass the Trump administration and continue to suck off the taxpayers’ teat for years to come. 

We all know such things happen, but to have it so vividly described was revealing. 
Well, Lee Zeldin is retrieving those gold bars, and it turns out to be a lot of them. $20 billion, all sitting in the equivalent of a bank vault. 

The massive scale of this scam–which as with so many things is SOP at government agencies–blows your mind. Pushing $20 billion out the door to friends of the administration with little to no financial controls, zero accountability, and lots of malice aforethought is only different in scale and not in kind.

…Zeldin has referred the matter to the Inspector General & Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA. This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rushed job with reduced oversight.

Even further. This pot of $20 billion was awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion, with far less transparency. Just under $7 billion was sent to one entity called the Climate United Fund.”

As if $20B squirreled away in a Citibank account wasn’t insult enough, when the dollar sleuths started digging into who the money was earmarked for – because surely someone had a bead on those bucks – one of the names that popped up for a two billion dollar payday was an organization associated with none other than the cranky claimant to the governorship of Georgia and President of Earth, Stacey Abrams.

Her organization – Power Forward Communities – was only a few months old and had a whopping $100 in the bank at the time of the $2B with a “B” award.

But they sure had good deeds planned – oh, you betcha. That’s what they needed the money for.

…How did Biden’s EPA even know who they were, less mind that they were worthy of a couple of billion of federal largesse aka Green grift?

One can only assume it was because the President of Earth was connected to the enterprise.

…Power Forward Communities was established in October 2023 as a coalition of groupsled by Rewiring America, a left-wing group that advocates for electrification policies and a transition away from fossil fuel dependence. Abrams, who serves as Rewiring America’s senior counsel, said at the time that she was “thrilled” to be part of the Power Forward Communities coalition. “This is how we expand access to clean energy—by prioritizing housing, equity and resilience,” she wrotein an X post.

…In itsonly press releaseto date, Power Forward Communities said that, in addition to induction stoves, it would use the $2 billion received from the EPA to help install heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, solar panels, home battery systems, EV chargers, and weatherization upgrades.

Not suspicious at all.

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Man killed by resident in Lake City home invasion identified by friends as MMA fighter

LAKE CITY, Fla. — Police have released the identity of the man killed Tuesday while breaking into a home on SW Leslie Glen.

Langston Sykes, 31, forced his way into the home just before 11 a.m. before being shot to death by a resident “acting in self-defense,” a Lake City police news release states.

“This is a tragic incident, and our thoughts are with everyone affected,” Police Chief Gerald Butler stated in a news release Thursday. “Based on the investigation, it appears this may be a case of a resident acting in self-defense during a home invasion.”

Distraught family and members of the MMA community took to social media grieving Sykes’ death.

People inside of the home Sykes is accused of breaking into told police that multiple adults and children were inside. “One of the adults fired multiple shots at the intruder when he rushed toward them,” A Lake City police news release said.

Officers arrived at the home and found the Sykes shot and unresponsive. They unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate him, police said.

“Victims of the home invasion reported that the individual, who was known to the victims, attempted to break into the home and was successful,” the news release states.

“Our detectives are working diligently to gather all the facts to ensure a thorough and complete investigation,” Chief Butler said. “We encourage anyone with information to come forward.”

Impact of Trump ‘Gender Ideology’ Order on Firearm Transactions to Be Determined

“Trans star of hit HBO series says renewed passport now says male after Trump order,” Fox News reported in late February. “Hunter Schafer, a transgender actor and star of the HBO series ‘Euphoria,’ revealed that her new passport was issued with a male gender marker because of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.”

The Executive Order Schafer referred to, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” signed by Trump on Feb. 20, asserts:

“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.”

OK, but this is AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, and while all peaceable human beings are encouraged here to recognize and claim their right to keep and bear arms, it’s fair to wonder what any of this has to do with that. Trump’s order offers a tangentially related clue:

“Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages.”

Gun owners will recall that in 2020, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive revised the ATF Form 4473 “Firearm Transaction Record,” required when purchasing a firearm from a federally licensed dealer. Among other changes,  ATF added a box under “Sex” for prospective gun purchasers to check if they self-identify as “non-binary.”

What this means is the Form 4473 will need to be revised again if ATF is to comply with the executive order. As Orchid Advisors reported on AmmoLand in 2019:

“[A] 60-day notice seeking public comment … is required in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (“PRA”). In essence, the PRA requires government agencies to seek approval every three years for continued use of forms utilized by government agencies and to seek public comment on the form or its new revision, if applicable.”

As far as form changes go, it’s hardly a big one, although some on either side of the issue would argue the sociological implications actually are a big deal. In 2019, the “libertarian” CATO Institute took issue with “ATF’s rigid and unreasoned stated policy” of insisting on selecting “male” or “female” for transfers before the “non-binary” option was added in. They presumably will make the same arguments if it’s revised back out.

As long as “gun rights advocates” are picking things to get upset about, I’d suggest that’s a bit of a red herring argument, and the true outrage ought to be reserved for a prior restraint that presumes a delegated federal override of “shall not be infringed.” Imagine explaining the 4473 to Tench Coxe or Samuel Adams, and what their reaction would be if you told them that before the national government would allow them to own a gun, they’d have to – among other things and under penalty of perjury – disclose who they were, where they lived, what they were buying, and what was or is now between their legs.