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The Intelligence Community Needs To Be Dismantled

At the direction of President Barack Obama in late 2016, our intelligence agencies pulled off what can only be described as a coup and a treasonous conspiracy against President-elect Donald Trump — a conspiracy that continued throughout his entire first term in office, hobbling his presidency and thwarting the will of the American electorate.

That’s what the bombshell documents released this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal: a criminal scheme, at the highest levels of the federal government, to deprive Trump the fruits of his electoral victory and, by extension, the American people of meaningful self-government.

At the center of this scheme was President Obama and his intelligence chiefs, who in December 2016 launched a conspiracy to prevent Trump from taking office or, failing that, to hamstring his presidency. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” Gabbard said Wednesday, adding that her office has forwarded all documents to the Justice Department and FBI “to investigate the criminal implications of this.”

It’s possible that those responsible for this long-running coup will face some kind of criminal prosecution and possibly conviction, but it’s highly unlikely. No one should hold their breath waiting for an Obama mugshot, as well-deserved as that might be given what he and his top officials did.

However, that doesn’t mean that nothing at all can be done. The conspiracy that these documents reveal should lead to a thorough reform of our intelligence agencies — not for the sake of political retribution, but for the survival of our republic. Simply put, our intelligence agencies as currently constituted are incompatible with republican self-government and the rule of law. They now function here in America much as they have functioned abroad for decades: as coup machines, undermining national sovereignty and imposing their will over and against the will of the electorate.

If nothing else comes of this scandal, it should be this: the complete dismantling of the intelligence community and its total reconstitution into agencies that can be held accountable to democratically-elected leaders. Right now, it’s accountable to no one, as the recent revelations demonstrate.

What makes such reform difficult isn’t just the power and insularity of these agencies, but that in this particular case they were weaponized by an outgoing president, Obama, who gave his intel chiefs a directive to push out a narrative, backed by official intelligence assessments, that Moscow stole the election for Trump. If a corrupt president is able to use the intel agencies like this, then reform of the agencies is necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

The ins and outs of how all this happened, and what exactly Obama and his intelligence chiefs did in November and December of 2016, is admittedly a bit confusing, especially for those who never followed or perhaps have forgotten what happened back then and why we should care now, more than eight years later.

My colleagues here at The Federalist have in recent days done the heavy lifting of laying it all out in clear and unmistakable terms: Mollie Hemingway explained how top intelligence officials were overruled by Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who insisted on the “key judgment” in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russia had interfered in the election because Moscow “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” The intelligence officials knew there was no evidence to substantiate that claim, which became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative that Trump conspired with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election.

Shawn Fleetwood wrote about newly declassified records showing that “the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.” That report, the above-mentioned ICA, relied on the infamous Steele dossier as evidence that Trump colluded with Moscow. Why? Because that was the only evidence they had to substantiate the explosive claim. The Steele dossier was of course an outlandish piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, and everything in it was fabricated.

Keep in mind the key part of all this is that after Trump won the 2016 election, but before he took office, Obama, Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, along with other top intel officials, deliberately manipulated the ICA so they could claim that Moscow had helped Trump steal the election. Russia has for a long time meddled in our elections, seeking to sow chaos and undermine the democratic process. But in 2016, Obama and his intel chiefs decided to manufacture a narrative that this time Russia didn’t just want to sow chaos, it wanted to help Trump win and then intervened to make that happen. That’s the central claim of the Russia collusion hoax, and what we learned this week is that it was all based on totally bogus evidence — evidence that was cobbled together at the behest of Obama himself.

But the Obama team didn’t stop there. As my colleague Sean Davis has explained, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body. The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA.”

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President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn’t even know what it was — ‘What the hell is Nvidia? I’ve never heard of it before’

During a speech to mark the unveiling of his new AI Action Plan, President Donald Trump revealed that he suggested simply breaking up Nvidia, despite appearing to have never heard of the company or its CEO, Jensen Huang.

Trump made the remarks on stage at an AI summit in Washington, D.C., as he unveiled the United States’ new AI Action Plan.

The President made reference and gave thanks to some of AI’s top industry leaders, “And a very special thanks to some of the top industry leaders here, including somebody that’s amazing,” he said, alluding to Huang.

“I said, look, we’ll break this guy up — this is before I learned the facts of life — I said we’ll break ’em up,” he continued. “They said ‘very hard’, I said ‘Why?’ I said, what percentages of the market does he have? ‘Sir, he has 100%.'”

Trump continued, “I said, ‘Who the hell is he? What’s his name?’ ‘His name is Jensen Huang, Nvidia, ‘ I said, ‘What the hell is Nvidia?’ I’ve never heard of it before.

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New Docs Contradict Top Obama Officials’ Claims Steele Dossier Wasn’t Included In Critical Russiagate Report

Newly declassified records show the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.

The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Approved for release by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the unsealed records paint a damning picture of how high-ranking Obama administration officials included unsubstantiated dirt about Trump in its 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest.

That ICA, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, included a “‘key judgment’ … that Russia had interfered in the election specifically because Putin and the Russian government ‘aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.’”

The declassified report released Wednesday not only significantly undermines the ICA’s “key judgement,” but it also contradicts claims made by top Obama officials that salacious information from the infamous Steele dossier were not incorporated into the main body of the 2017 ICA.

As a quick refresher, the allegations that ultimately became the dossier were compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn had been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign’s law firm (Perkins Coie) to dig up dirt on Trump ahead of the 2016 election. The dossier was ultimately shopped by Steele to the FBI in early July 2016 and later used by the agency to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The report unsealed by Gabbard reveals that the dossier’s “most significant claims — that Russia launched cyber activities to leak political emails — were little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets prior to the creation of the dossier.” It further disclosed that dossier reports containing salacious allegations about Trump’s character and alleged collusion with Moscow “were either proven false or unsubstantiated.”

Equally significant, however, are the report’s following paragraphs, which detail how the dossier was “referenced in the ICA main body text and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex” — “[c]ontradicting public claims by [then-CIA Director John Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way‘ incorporated into the ICA.”

“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” the 2020 HPSCI analysis reads. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow’s influence operations.”

As summarized by Federalist CEO Sean Davis, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body.”

“The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA,” Davis added.

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Trump’s EPA Continues Biden Admin Appeal of Historic Fluoride Ruling

While claiming to support the MAHA movement, the EPA under Trump has now taken steps to undo last year’s historic ruling which found that fluoride poses a risk to the neurodevelopment of children.

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency officially appealed a federal court ruling which ordered the agency to take action against the risks posed by fluoridation chemicals.

The EPA staked their appeal on three main arguments, including a belief that the plaintiffs’ lack standing, the judge improperly considered new evidence, and the district court went beyond its authority in its management of the case.

The EPA’s appeal is the latest development in a nearly decade-long legal saga between the EPA, and parents of children impacted by water fluoridation, as well as the Fluoride Action Network (FAN). The lawsuit began following the EPA’s 2016 decision to deny the plaintiff’s petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In September 2024, Judge Edward Chen found that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligram per liter “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children”.

Chen said the risk is sufficient to require the EPA to enact a regulatory response. However, he said that TSCA only granted him the authority to direct the EPA to take action against the risk, but not to prescribe the specifics of its response, which could range from a national warning to an outright ban.

In the final days of the Biden administration the EPA filed their appeal, and now, under leadership appointed by President Donald Trump, the EPA has decided to continue fighting the judge’s ruling.

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Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Obama May be Guilty of Treason – “The Expressed Intent and What Followed Afterward Can Only be Described as a Years-Long Coup and Treasonous Conspiracy”

Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday told reporters at the White House that she believes Obama and members of his administration are guilty of a “treasonous conspiracy” to overthrow then-President-elect Donald Trump in 2016.

Gabbard made a surprise appearance during yesterday’s White House press briefing after releasing the second batch of previously undisclosed documents that include more proof that Barack Obama directly gave the order to push the falsified Russia Collusion hoax.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Gabbard told reporters that the DOJ is investigating all of the documents, including criminal acts by Barack Obama.

“I’m leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice,” Gabbard said when asked if Obama was guilty of treason.

“I am not an attorney, but as I’ve said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake, manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assesments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our Republic, in an attempt to undermine President Trump’s administration.”

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State of Maryland is Quietly Modifying COMAR with Emergency Regulations to Usurp Local School Boards

Imagine being a pro basketball player that follows every rule of the game and makes a clean shot destined to go in with a swish. While the ball is midair, the referee immediately conspires to change the rules with the NBA and extends the court and the basket to be 3X further than where it was at the time of the shot. Impossible right? It’s not impossible in Maryland.

Did you know that the State of Maryland has a system to bypass the legislature in order to create and change COMAR regulations on the fly, and without the entire General Assembly or a legislative bill?

This is done through a committee of the General Assembly called the JOINT COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE, EXECUTIVE, AND LEGISLATIVE REVIEW (AELR).

Establishment

The Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review (AELR Committee) was originally created in 1964 as a joint standing committee known as the Committee on Legislative Review. It was reconstituted as a statutory committee and renamed in Chapters 400 and 699 of 1972.

Membership

The AELR Committee is composed of 20 members – 10 senators appointed by the President of the Senate and 10 delegates appointed by the Speaker of the House. Each political party is represented in approximately the same proportion as its membership in each house, and each major standing committee of the General Assembly is represented on the committee. There is a Senate chair and a House chair of the committee who alternate each calendar year as the presiding chair.

Principal Function – Generally

The AELR Committee functions as the watchdog of the General Assembly in overseeing the activities of State agencies as they relate to regulations. The committee’s primary function is to review any regulations that are proposed for adoption by a unit of the Executive Branch of State government to determine whether the regulations conform both with the statutory authority of the unit and the legislative intent of the statute under which the regulations are proposed.

You can read more about the AELR here:

Although a governor can execute regulation without the AELR, their existence is an illusion of formality. The abuse comes when a proposed regulation is declared as an EMERGENCY when there is no emergency.

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Bank Branches are the Latest Creative Destruction Casualty

Over 8,000 bank branches are expected to close worldwide in 2025. Approximately 3,200 of those closures will take place in the United States. Q1 experienced 148 net branch closures in the US, with all major banks slated to close branches throughout the year.

These are merely bank closures and not bank failures, although two smaller US banks did fail this year. People simply prefer online banking as we have made the switch from relational to transactional banking.

Bankrate conducted a survey that found 77% of Americans prefer online digital banking, yet other surveys believe the figure is closer to 89%. Digital banking has been rising in popularity in recent years, up from 203 million domestic users in 2022 to the 216.8 million projected users in 2025. The survey found that 34% of consumers use online banking on a daily basis, consistently checking their account and transactions. There has even been a 19% increase in use among the 65+ crowd who is least likely to use digital services.

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Will An Iran Cyber Attack Panic Usher In A New Patriot Act?

In a 2007 interview, retired General Wesley Clark revealed that the Pentagon had a plan to “take out seven countries in five years”—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Over the following two decades, the first six were bombed, destabilized, or collapsed into civil war. Only Iran remains standing—resistant to Western central banking, culturally hostile to global usury, and guarding some of the world’s most ancient archeological sites.

Now, major media outlets such as Fox News and the Independent warn of a looming cyberwar, and we’re told to brace for a potential Iranian cyberattack on the US or its allies, aimed at critical infrastructure such as power and water systems. But rather than ask how to defend against it, we should ask something more: Is Iran really the culprit? Or is it the designated scapegoat for an event designed to advance elite control both abroad and at home?

Recent history provides a clear pattern: When crises erupt, state and corporate power rapidly consolidate. After 9/11, the US government ushered in the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance, and indefinite detention, all in the name of security. The 2008 financial collapse delivered historic bank bailouts and accelerated economic consolidation. In 2020, the covid pandemic normalized lockdowns, QR-code health passes, and calls for digital identity systems tied to medical records. In the wake of the Capitol riot, proposals exploded for increased censorship, AI-powered surveillance, and policing of online speech. As the author Naomi Klein outlined in her seminal work, The Shock Doctrine, elites routinely exploit crises to fast-track policies that populations would otherwise reject.

The current cyber panic fits the mold. If a catastrophic digital event were to hit—disabling hospitals, banks, or energy systems—the solution being quietly preloaded into public discourse is the rollout of global “Digital ID” infrastructure. The World Economic Forum has explicitly highlighted how global digital IDs for people and objects are essential for trade digitization and establishing a global digital economy. In its Digital Identity Blueprint, the WEF outlines a framework linking online activity, financial services, travel permissions, and even behavioral data to a single identity. But what’s sold as “security” is, in fact, the foundation of a technocratic control grid.

If implemented, Digital ID would function as a master key to everything: your money, health records, online access, and even your ability to travel. In time, it could merge with carbon quotas and social credit scoring systems like those piloted in China. An algorithm, not a constitution, would govern your rights. One wrong opinion, and you risk being shut out of society, not by police, but by code. In a world where social media mobs enforce ideological purity, public humiliation becomes the new policing mechanism. You self-censor, you self-surveil, and eventually, you self-govern—on someone else’s terms.

But there’s a core problem with the “Iran did it” cyberattack narrative: Iran lacks the capability. Iran’s cyber warfare infrastructure is far less sophisticated than that of the US, Israel, Russia, or China. The Harvard Belfer Center’s National Cyber Power Index places Iran low in its global rankings. While Iran may be able to execute nuisance-level hacks, it is not in a position to disable critical US infrastructure. So if a major cyberattack does occur, blaming Iran may serve a political purpose—not reflect reality.

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Scientists in Maryland Are Developing Artificial Blood

Scientists in Maryland believe they are on the verge of creating artificial blood that could save thousands of lives.

Researchers and scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore are creating artificial blood by extracting hemoglobin from expired blood and then enclosing the protein in a bubble of fat, which replicates red blood cells.

Dr. Allan Doctor shared that the artificial blood is “designed so that at the moment it’s needed, a medic can mix it with water, and within a minute, you have blood.”

Currently, the team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine is using artificial blood in tests with rabbits.

Per NPR:

Tens of thousands of people bleed to death each year in the United States before they can get to a hospital. That’s because ambulances, medical helicopters and military medics can’t routinely carry blood, which would go bad too fast without adequate refrigeration.

So scientists have been on a quest to develop artificial blood that could be stored in powdered form and reconstituted by medics on the spot to save lives.

At the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, where some of this research is being conducted, a white rabbit lies on the floor of a cage. It’s in a “special intensive care unit that we’ve created for our rabbit resuscitation,” says Dr. Allan Doctor, a scientist at the school.

Doctor’s team just drained blood from the animal to simulate what happens to a person who’s hemorrhaging from an injury, such as from a car crash or battlefield wound. “This rabbit is still in shock. You can see he’s lying very still. It’s as if he was at the scene of an accident,” says Doctor. “If we didn’t do anything, it would die.”

But Doctor and his team are going to save this rabbit today. They’re going to fill his veins with something they hope will finally enable them to achieve a goal that has stymied researchers for decades: developing safe and effective artificial blood. “Good bunny,” says Danielle Waters, a technician on Doctor’s team, as she gently lifts the rabbit and starts infusing him with three big syringes of artificial blood.

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Calls Grow For Journal To Retract Danish Study After Corrected Data Show Link Between Aluminum And Vaccines

The authors of a recent Danish study widely reported on by mainstream media claimed they found no link between the aluminum in vaccines and autism.

However, corrected data added after the study’s original July 15 publication date show the authors got it wrong — in fact, the data in the study of 1.2 million children clearly indicate a link between aluminum in vaccines and autism, according to scientists with Children’s Health Defense (CHD) who reviewed the study and the corrected data.

On July 17, the Annals of Internal Medicine, which published the Danish study, added a disclaimer stating that it “included an incorrect version of the Supplementary Material at the time of initial publication.”

The updated materials are available with the link to the study at “Correction: Aluminum-Adsorbed Vaccines and Chronic Diseases in Childhood.”

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski broke the news of the buried autism link on Monday’s episode of “Good Morning, CHD.” Today, Jablonowski told The Defender:

“According to the corrected data, nearly 10 (9.7) of every 10,000 children who were vaccinated with a higher dose of aluminum (compared to a moderate dose) developed a neurodevelopmental disorder — mostly autism — between ages 2 and 5.”

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