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The Deep State Wins Again: All the Ways ‘We the People’ Keep Losing Our Freedoms

Almost one month into the Trump presidency, and the Constitution and the entire section on the various branches of government and how they work together are still missing from the White House website.

This is no small thing.

This omission, deliberate or inadvertent, speaks volumes about the priorities of this current administration. It also explains a lot about the legal mindset that is driving the Trump train, which continues to push forward with a theory of unitary executive power.

You know what is not driving the Trump government? Any sense that it is bound by the rule of law, i.e, the US Constitution. As Trump recently declared, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Then again, Trump has never made any pretense of his aspirations to rule as a strongman. As the Washington Post reports:

In 2017, he claimed “an absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department.” In 2019, he claimed that Article II of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” In 2020, he said he could override state and local public health orders related to the coronavirus pandemic by saying: “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.” In 2022, he said that purported voter fraud in the 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” In 2023, he mused that he would be a dictator, but only on Day One of his presidency. And a year ago, he argued that presidents should have total immunity from criminal prosecution, even for “EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE.’ ”

Listen, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Then again, maybe the majority of Americans just don’t care about the Constitution anymore.

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Oops! I Think the NYT Just Said the Quiet Part About Deportation Out Loud

Tell me you’re out of touch without telling me you’re out of touch. 

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today as I’m knee-deep in a house cleaning project, but I took a little break to peruse the news and saw an article in the New York Times that had me wondering if I’d accidentally stumbled upon a satire site like the Babylon Bee. It was about how deporting illegal migrants would have a negative impact on the wealthy people who have homes in the Hamptons. You know, the real victims in all of this.  

The article is entitled “They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear.” The subtitle reads “Latino immigrants care for some of America’s most lavish beachside mansions. Their disappearance would affect the wealthy, too.” But wait, it gets better. The article begins: 

The party dresses must be double-pressed, the hedges shaved into sharp rectangles. The hand soap and lotion dispensers must be formed into neat lines along bathroom sinks. Caterers need to slip out of view as soon as the oysters and cocktails are served.

Wealthy residents of the Hamptons demand perfection. Now, many of the people who make it so — Latino immigrants, some of them undocumented — are panicking about President Trump’s deportation orders.

It goes on with great quotes like this one: “Some of the wealthy are quietly beginning to make calculations about what it would mean if their undocumented workers were deported. Who would mow the lawn?”

(Note: their undocumented workers)

Or this one from Marit Molan, director of Hamptons Community Outreach: “Everyone relies on housekeepers and carpenters and tree cutters and grass cutters. People come to the Hamptons to enjoy their houses, and who is going to take care of their houses?”

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What Are Realistic Expectations for Peace in Ukraine?

I was born in a Jewish family in Leningrad – Russia and lived in Kharkiv – Ukraine for 30 years before emigrating to the United States 40 years ago. Back then, the war between Russia and Ukraine was unimaginable. Today, after hundreds of thousands on both sides are dead and memorable places of my youth have been reduced to rubble, I am trying to make sense of it and wonder how it is going to end.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine developed a desire to join the European Union rather than remain Russia’s little sister. The West and NATO saw it as an opportunity to strengthen its Eastern flank, which was the case with the Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. However, Ukraine’s strong ethnic, cultural, economic, and historic ties to Russia made it more problematic. Watching the U.S. effort to convert Ukraine into an anti-Russian state through millions of dollars injected into Ukrainian politics by organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, Russia developed a strong mistrust of the U.S. intentions. Unfulfilled promises of the U.S. leaders that NATO would not be expanding to the East made Russians think that Ukraine was next on the list, and this was where Russia drew the red line.

The coup d’etat orchestrated in 2014 by Ukrainian nationalists with guidance from the Obama-Biden administration led to the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Russia was worried that with an anti-Russian government in Kyiv, Sevastopol – the home to the Russian Navy would become a NATO base. Crimea was crucial to Russia’s historic naval dominance in the Black Sea and its influence in the Middle East and Africa. From that time on, Russia’s relations with Ukraine and NATO countries went downhill. They were exacerbated by Ukraine’s effort to subdue militarily the Russian-speaking population of Donbas that refused to recognize the insurrectionist government in Kyiv. Following the 2014 coup d’etat, an estimated fourteen thousand people were killed in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Glorification of Nazi collaborators who fought against Russia in the Second World War, and the expulsion of Russian literature, music, and art from Ukrainian schools and cultural institutions deepened the divide between the two countries.

Meantime the U.S. and NATO began to openly pour weapons into Ukraine and train paramilitary units like the Azov battalion. These efforts were assisted by Ukrainian oligarchs who pocketed significant sums of Western money. In late 2021, Russia amassed troops on the Ukrainian border while Russian President Vladimir Putin desperately tried to obtain guarantees from U.S. President Joe Biden that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO. Had Biden made that promise the war could have been avoided but the Russian request fell on deaf ears — the U.S. foreign policy doctrine was to weaken Russia, and listening to Putin’s concerns was not on the table. Russia was told it was up to Ukraine to decide whether to join NATO. I wonder what would happen if during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. President John F. Kennedy that it was up to Cuba to place Russian missiles on its territory. Wouldn’t the U.S. have invaded Cuba?  Would it be considered unprovoked aggression? Isn’t that what happened in Ukraine? The result was death and destruction leading to the Russian annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson provinces of Ukraine. One can only wonder what has happened to the wisdom that world leaders exercised in the 1960s.

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Trump’s Cuts to USAID May Force Stonewall to Make Half its Staff Redundant, LGBT Organisation Claims. But Story Doesn’t Add Up

Trump’s foreign aid freeze has left Stonewall crumbling, with up to half its staff facing the axe. At least, that’s the story the organisation appears to have leaked to the Times. But it’s deeply fishy.

Workers at the LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.

Simon Blake, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, made the announcement in an office-wide Teams call, which was said to have left its 114 staff “shell-shocked”.

Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+ organisation able to deliver impactful campaigns and legislative change across the UK and further afield”.

Insiders believed the announcement was linked to decisions made by Trump over the provision of foreign aid. Blake had previously warned of the impact Trump’s move would have on Stonewall’s operations.

Funding from the US came to Stonewall through the Global Equality Fund (GEF), administered by the US State Department, which has given the charity more than half a million pounds in the past three years. The GEF focuses on “advancing LGBTI rights around the world” and is a pooled fund with contributions from numerous countries and private businesses, but it has not published accounts since 2015. …

Stonewall has also lost funding elsewhere. Its most recent accounts said it incurred a deficit of £858,000 in the 2023-24 financial year. This rose from £437,000 the previous year.

Income from fees, for example from its Diversity Champions workplace inclusion programme, fell between 2023 and 2024, as did income from other programmes.

Worth reading in full.

Why do I say it’s fishy? Well, making half the 114 staff redundant because Stonewall is no longer going to receive ~£166,000 a year from USAID only makes sense if its 114 staff are being paid, on average, £2,912 a year each (57 x 2,912 = ~166,000). So, the nasty orange man’s spiteful cuts to Stonewall’s funding must be an excuse, not the real reason for the redundancies.

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Should We Celebrate the Demise of USAID and NED?

The opening month of the second Donald Trump Presidency has produced a number of consensus-shattering executive actions that have upended the normal functioning in Washington. One of the most surprising is Trump’s attempt to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and defund the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

For decades, USAID and NED have presented themselves as wearing a white hat, helping other countries become more democratic and enlightened. However, much of the real work of the agencies was to foment dissent and at times, overthrow governments that do not comply with Washington’s dictates.

USAID and NED fund media outlets that repeat Washington’s propaganda, support political opposition factions that want to align more with the White House, and bolster NGOs that facilitate regime changes.

In the following excerpt from Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton discusses some of the many nefarious operations of USAID and NED in Europe. As Washington completed a series of political revolutions, regime change operations, and coups, it changed the balance of power in the region.

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Biden’s $475B student debt cancellation plan blocked as federal appeals court issues final decision

A federal appeals court delivered a crushing blow Tuesday to a more than $475 billion student debt cancellation program begun by former President Joe Biden, ordering the underlying regulation be blocked in its entirety.

The Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals had partially blocked the loan forgiveness effort last year — but a three-judge panel at the St. Louis-based court issued a final judgment to a lower court prohibiting any part of the initiative from taking effect.

Judge L. Steven Grasz in a 25-page opinion ruled that Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, had “gone well beyond” his constitutional authority in creating the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.

“Rather than implying by omission or other ambiguities, Congress has spoken clearly when creating a repayment plan with loan forgiveness or otherwise authorizing it — explicitly stating the Secretary should cancel, discharge, repay, or assume the remaining unpaid balance,” Grasz wrote, finding “no comparable language” in the SAVE Plan.

In 2023, the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated the so-called “repayment plan,” which Grasz said allowed for student debt to be “largely forgiven rather than repaid, would cost taxpayers $475 billion over the next decade.

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Trump vs. Zelensky: Fact-Checking the New Ukraine War

There may come a day when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regrets taking the bait and, at what may be the conclusion of three years of fighting Russia, being drawn into a verbal war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last few days, Trump has called Zelensky a dictator who started the war, and Zelensky has said that Trump is “caught in a web of disinformation.”

As negotiations are being prepared, and Zelensky needs more than ever to be in the shadow of Trump’s goodwill, this may be the worst time to become entrenched as an enemy of Trump. Vice President J.D. Vance said that Zelensky has been getting “bad advice,” adding “[t]he idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media… everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.”

The war of words began with Trump scolding Zelensky on his handling of the war, saying Ukraine “should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” Zelensky responded that he “would like to have more truth with the Trump team.”

Trump is wrong about the first point and right about the second. The beginning of the war in Ukraine is complex, and it roots go back many years before the Russian invasion. Despite Western claims of an unprovoked war, Russia was the recipient of multiple serious provocations. Request for their security concerns to be addressed in negotiations went ignored. NATO broke its promise and continued its expansion east to Russia’s borders even promising that Ukraine’s path to membership was irreversible. Ethnic Russians who were citizens of Ukraine were being threatened and their rights were being revoked. 60,000 elite Ukrainian troops massed on the eastern border with Donbas and Ukrainian artillery shelling into the Donbas had dramatically increased. There was genuine alarm in Russia that Ukraine was about to invade the Donbas. But it was Russia that illegally invaded Ukraine. The West provoked Russia, but Russia attacked Ukraine. On this, Trump is wrong.

But he is not wrong that Ukraine could have made a deal. He is wrong to ignore that before Ukraine could have made a deal, the U.S. and NATO could have made a deal instead of ignoring overtures by Putin on the eve of the war to negotiate a new security architecture and taking discussions of NATO membership for Ukraine off the table.

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Covid Shots Cause Immunodeficiency

Since 2020, long before the shots were even available, I have been warning that the spike-based vaccines would cause immunodeficiency. Given the fact that the virus itself had been engineered to include HIV proteins on the spike, it was all but a foregone conclusion. Of course, between the din of the progressive propaganda networks treating any criticism of them as heresy, and the lunatics and controlled opposition trying to tell you that viruses themselves don’t even exist, the truth has long been waiting for its day in the light.

Well, the science has caught up, and now that truth is finally coming out in a form that cannot be denied any longer. Specifically, progressively mounting deficiencies in CD4 T-cell counts have now been measured – alongside the persistence of spike proteins in the blood, now detected, in a new record, up to 709 days post-vaccination – in 66% of the Covid vaccinees studied here.

In light of this, the administration is – despite the attacks from a few of the people that found themselves, to their surprise and indignation, not to be part of it – now moving quickly to completely halt their availability. There’s a certain bittersweet quality to watching some of that drama; it cost me dearly, but I couldn’t be happier with some of the people that are, and are not, calling the shots now. It’s something of an open secret that just about everybody around him these days knows exactly what’s up with the shots – but when your entire public personality has been built around narrative self-promotion, some doors are closed for good. Some chose popularity. Some chose to get it done right. You’ll never hear from most of the latter.

I’ll tell you a secret – now that a little time has passed – Trump likes vaccines! Shocking, I know. The straight up anti-all-vaccines position is a crowd pleaser, it’ll get you the likes and the follows, the fame and the fortune and the Swiss mountain retreats – but it’s not going to get you anywhere under a President that remains to this day very proud of having brought those vaccines to market at “warp speed,” even as the signs mount that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. There will be accountability, and there will be justice, but it won’t be wrought by the glory hounds that care more for the fame and the accolades than they do for the fight. There also remains extremely broad support for vaccines in general, among older people and that silent majority that never spent enough time on social media to see what’s been happening; if that fight is to be won, it will be won by the hard science that can be understood by all, being presented by unimpeachably neutral scientists. It will take time, and it will take credibility, and RFK’s brilliant strategy – “vaccines are great actually, let’s just make sure they’re safe (they’re not)” – is absolutely incompatible with having pigeonholed oneself into complete inflexibility. I know they’re not, and you know they’re not; they tried to derail his nomination by calling him an anti-vaxxer, and seeing as he’s very well maintained that he’s not, they failed. With that degree of political acumen heading up HHS, we have a once-in-a-generation chance, and there’s no room for the showboaters.

But, for now – let’s dig into exactly what’s just been “discovered” here, five years of warnings and dismissals, and over a year after the study itself was concluded, later.

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Brown Medical School Puts DEI Ahead Of Clinical Skills

According to Campus Reform, “Brown University Medical School values a commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) over actual “clinical skills” when it comes to promoting faculty members.”

This is very frightening and disturbing to normal Americans.

The proof that this is going on is in the pudding. According to Campus Reform, ” The promotion guidelines classify a “[d]emonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a “Major Criterion” for promotion for several positions. More specifically, it entails pushing for DEI in “Research,” “Teaching,” “Clinical care,” and “Service.”

A surgeon actually told Washington Free Beacon, “DEI in medical schools is all about. And it’s not about clinical performance.”

Even more disturbing is that The Association of American Colleges organized a seminar promoting DEI in everything.

Fortunately, President Trump is taking a sledge hammer to DEI unfortunately however the schools continue in at least in some cases to defy this.

Brown University’s medical school’s website has an entire page dedicated to “Diversity,” which states that “multicultural perspectives” are “critical to the success” of the school.

DEI doesn’t belong anywhere especially not in the medical profession or medical schools.

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Kristi Noem Revokes Protected Status for 500,000 Haitians, Opens Them Up for Deportation

The Trump administration is moving to end deportation protections for about 520,000 Haitians.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security gave notice that temporary protected status would be ending for Haitians, according to The Hill.

The administration took similar action against Venezuelans who have used TPS to remain in the United States.

“Biden and Mayorkas attempted to tie the hands of the Trump administration by extending Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status by 18 months — far longer than justified or necessary,” a DHS representative said in a news release, referring to former President Joe Biden and former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“We are returning integrity to the TPS system, which has been abused and exploited by illegal aliens for decades. President Trump and Secretary Noem are returning TPS to its original status: temporary,” the representative said, referring to current DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who issued the order.

Some Haitians have been protected from deportation since 2010, when the Obama administration first authorized it for Haitians after a major earthquake there, according to The New York Times.

As noted by Politico, once Haitians in the U.S. under TPS lose their protected status, they could be eligible for deportation.

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