Blog

Trump’s DOJ Sues Washington, D.C. Police Department Over Unconstitutional Ban on Semi-Automatic Firearms

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department for enforcing a ban on semi-automatic firearms in violation of the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit alleges that D.C.’s gun laws require registration of all firearms with the MPD; however, the D.C. Code imposes a sweeping ban on numerous protected weapons, making it legally impossible for residents to own them for self-defense or other lawful purposes.

The DOJ said in a press release announcing the lawsuit:

“MPD’s current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.”

“Today’s action from the Department of Justice’s new Second Amendment Section underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Bondi continued, “Washington, DC’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation’s capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

Echoing this sentiment, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division added, “This Civil Rights Division will defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions of commonly used firearms, in violation of their Second Amendment rights. The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today — and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so.”

The case draws directly from the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to own semi-automatic weapons in their homes for self-defense.

Back in 2003, D.C. special policeman Richard Heller challenged the District’s handgun ban, leading to this pivotal ruling. Yet, nearly two decades later, D.C. continues to enforce similar unconstitutional restrictions, resulting in wrongful arrests and denials of basic rights.

Keep reading

Fulton County admits 315,000 votes were counted in 2020 election without legal certification in Georgia

Fulton County, Georgia officials have admitted that around 315,000 early votes were counted in the 2020 election despite lacking the proper certification. Less than 12,000 votes separated former President Joe Biden, the winner of the swing state that year, from President Donald Trump.

A Georgia State Election Board (SEB) hearing earlier in December regarding a challenge raised by local election integrity activist David Cross, per The Federalist. Cross had filed the challenge in March of 2022, alleging that Fulton County had violated state election rules in the handling of early voting during the 2020 election season, with hundreds of thousands of vote being counted despite poll workers not signing off on vote tabulation “tapes,” which are critical to the certification process.

Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections Ann Brumbaugh said during the hearing that while she has “not seen the tapes,” the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” She added, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and new standard operating procedures. And since then, the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.”

Under Georgia’s election rules, election officials are required to have each ballot scanner print three closing tapes at the end of each voting day, which poll workers must sign or include a documented reason for refusal. Poll workers are also required to start each voting day by printing and signing a “zero tape” that shows voting machines are starting the day with zero votes.

An investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office “sustained” findings that Fulton County “violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by SEB rules].” The investigation had also found that officials at 32 sites did not verify their zero tapes.

Cross said at the December hearing, “These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic. Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.” He said that he had obtained 77 megabytes of data from the county through an open records request, and that this included 134 tabulator tapes, representing 315,000 votes, none of which were signed.

He noted other irregularities in the election, including polling locations being open “impossibly late hours, like 2:09 am,” and that he had found “duplicated scanner serial numbers, where the memory devices were removed from one scanner and printed on an alternate scanner.”

Keep reading

Clinton Spox Releases Another Statement on Epstein File Dump

Clinton’s spokesperson called on the Justice Department to release the remaining photos of Bill Clinton buried in the Epstein files.

On Monday, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña accused the Trump Administration of protecting someone or something after the DOJ partially released Epstein files last week.

The Justice Department last Friday released a new batch of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases.

The trove of documents was released after a federal judge in New York recently ordered the release of Jeffrey Epstein documents related to a 2019 sex trafficking case.

Last month, President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law to release all files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

The new trove of documents includes never-before-seen photos of Bill Clinton in a hot tub, swimming with a mystery woman.

The individual’s face was redacted which means she is either a sex-trafficking victim and or a minor.

Keep reading

DOJ releases shocking fake video of Jeffrey Epstein suicide as part of file dump

The DOJ on Monday released shocking footage that appeared to be a recreation of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in his Manhattan jail cell — and it briefly set the Internet on fire until it was revealed to be fake.

The video was posted without explanation to the Justice Department’s website as part of its Epstein file dump — with the footage just the latest item among a trove of documents and images to be revealed after the complete horde was ordered released in November.

The grainy, 12-second, computer-generated clip showed a white-haired man in an orange jumpsuit struggling and jerking his head about while kneeling at the base of a jail-cell bunk bed.

The time stamp on the video was 4:29 a.m. Aug. 10, 2019 — two hours before the pedophile’s body was found in his cell that day at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility.

The scene in the video seemed to match Epstein’s cell, where officials determined he hung himself while awaiting trial for a litany of sex-trafficking charges.

But a closer examination of the clip showed things were not quite right – with a pile of orange prison clothes strewn about the ground looking like puddles without any texture, and the door to the jail cell not matching the one in Epstein’s behind-bars compartment.

It soon was revealed in another dumped document that the clip was in fact a fake video that circulated on 4chan and was flagged by investigators by a Florida conspiracy theorist.

A Trump administration official later confirmed to The Post that the video was bogus and has been on YouTube for years. It was eventually taken down from the DOJ’s site Monday.

But its appearance had already caused a flurry of interest online, with many viewers thinking footage of Epstein’s death had finally been revealed.

Keep reading

Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Repeal Section 230, Endangering Online Free Speech

A proposal in the US Senate titled the Sunset Section 230 Act seeks to dismantle one of the core protections that has shaped the modern internet.

Put forward by Senator Lindsey Graham with bipartisan backing from Senators Dick Durbin, Josh Hawley, Amy Klobuchar, and Richard Blumenthal, the bill would repeal Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, a provision that has, for nearly thirty years, shielded online platforms from liability for the actions of their users.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Under the plan, Section 230 would be fully repealed two years after the bill’s passage.

This short transition period would force websites, social platforms, and hosting services to rethink how they handle public interaction.

The current statute stops courts from holding online platforms legally responsible as the publishers of material shared by their users.

Its protection has been instrumental in allowing everything from local discussion boards to global platforms such as YouTube and Wikipedia to operate without being sued over every user comment or upload.

The legislation’s text removes Section 230 entirely and makes “conforming amendments” across multiple federal laws.

“I am extremely pleased that there is such wide and deep bipartisan support for repealing Section 230, which protects social media companies from being sued by the people whose lives they destroy.

Giant social media platforms are unregulated, immune from lawsuits, and are making billions of dollars in advertising revenue off some of the most unsavory content and criminal activity imaginable,” said Senator Graham.

“It is past time to allow those who have been harmed by these behemoths to have their day in court.”

Keep reading

DHS Says Recording or Following Law Enforcement ‘Sure Sounds Like Obstruction of Justice’

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says recording or following federal law enforcement “sure sounds like obstruction of justice,” despite federal circuit courts repeatedly ruling that such activity is core First Amendment speech.

In response to a question from Reason asking if the department considered following or recording a federal law enforcement officer to be obstruction of justice, the DHS Office of Public Affairs said in an emailed statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson: “That sure sounds like obstruction of justice. Our brave ICE law enforcement face a more than 1150% increase in assaults against them. If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

It’s one of the most direct public statements yet from DHS articulating a policy that treats following, recording, and revealing the identities of federal immigration officers as illegal activity. There have been months of news reports and viral showing federal immigration officers threatening, brandishing weapons, and violently detaining people for following and recording them in public. 

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, collected dozens of these instances in a report released earlier this month. Bier concluded that the amount of video evidence, in conjunction memos and public statements from DHS leadership, amounts to “an official, nationwide policy of intimidating and threatening people who attempt to observe and record [DHS] operations.”

Civil libertarians say it’s an unconstitutional policy. Although the Supreme Court has declined to address the issue, seven federal circuit courts have firmly upheld the right to record and monitor the police, as long as one doesn’t physically interfere with them. 

“Observing, following, and recording law enforcement are unambiguously protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Bier tells Reason. “They are not obstruction of justice. The right to record helps guarantee justice by ensuring accountability and an accurate record of events.”

For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded in 2017 that “First Amendment principles, controlling authority, and persuasive precedent demonstrate that a First Amendment right to record the police does exist, subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit joined the club in 2022, when it ruled that a Colorado man had presented a clear First Amendment retaliation claim against a police officer who prevented him from filming a traffic stop.

Likewise, courts have frequently ruled that the First Amendment protects the right to warn others of police activity, such as flashing one’s headlights to warn of a speed trap ahead. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that a Connecticut man’s First Amendment rights were violated when police arrested him for holding a sign warning drivers of police activity ahead.

“The right to record publicly visible law enforcement activity is a core First Amendment right,” says Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “It creates an independent record of what officers are doing, and it is no accident that some of the most high-profile cases of misconduct have involved video recordings. The burning question is why ICE officers feel the need to hide who they are and what they do from the public—masking their faces, lacking visible ID, driving unmarked vehicles, and now attacking those who document their activities.”

The guiding First Amendment principle behind these court decisions was most memorably expressed in the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Houston v. Hill, which struck down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote.

Keep reading

Top secret Air Force jet spotted on mysterious trip to Area 51

Flight tracking data has revealed the path of a top-secret Air Force jet landing at the highly classified Area 51 in the Nevada desert on Monday.

The plane is part of the military’s Janet fleet, which transports contractor employees, Department of Defense staff and military personnel to secure facilities housing classified information.

The Janet departed Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas’ main airport, at 8:25am PT and touched down at Area 51 at 8:42am.

While the purpose of the flight remains unclear, Area 51 is located within the US Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range, used for large-scale military exercises. 

The site has long been rumored to host crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and other mysterious technologies.

Designed by Boeing, Janet jets are white with a single red stripe running from nose to tail. 

They operate from a dedicated terminal and parking area in Las Vegas, as the remote facility does not support commuting by vehicle.

Monday’s light was just one of six Janet flights to Area 51 over the past week. 

Keep reading

A Bipartisan Push to Revive a 1930s Law Could Make Grocery Prices Even Higher

Groceries, like almost everything these days, are seeing prices rise. Millions of Americans have tempered some of these hikes by purchasing bulk goods at wholesale prices at warehouse club retail stores such as Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale Club. But these savings could soon cease. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is looking to crack down on wholesale prices by reviving a nearly 90-year-old antitrust statute.

In the weeks leading up to Congress’ winter recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa) solicited the signatures of fellow Senate Republicans on a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson asking them to investigate supply practices that hurt small businesses, particularly grocers. Reason has acquired a copy of the letter, which calls on Bondi and Ferguson “to utilize all federal laws…to bring enforcement actions against any discriminatory conduct that you may discover in violation of…the Robinson-Patman Act.”

The Robinson-Patman Act (RPA) is a 1936 antitrust law that bans discrimination “in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality…where the effect of such discrimination may…tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce.” After a period of strong enforcement in the mid-20th century, recent decades have witnessed a marked decline in federal RPA cases: Before the FTC, under the leadership of Chairwoman Lina Kahn, sued Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits for selling alcohol to larger retailers at lower per-unit prices in December 2024, it had been more than 20 years since the federal government filed an RPA suit. Then–FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak dissented from Khan’s complaint, which she characterized as “elevating the interests of competitors over competition” in a way that was “at odds with the plain text” of the RPA.

Grassley argues that the statute recognizes certain forms of price discrimination as harming competition, but he doesn’t acknowledge that the RPA allows price differentials that reflect “differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered.”

Grassley claims that a lack of competition is forcing independent grocers “to accept increasingly discriminatory terms and conditions for their products, including less favorable…price terms”—even as he rightly describes the grocery business as “experienc[ing] high turnover and low margins.” Such phenomena are textbook indicators of a competitive industry, not a monopolized one.

Grassley also claims that “independent businesses are often the only source of groceries, consumer goods, or pharmaceuticals in many small towns and urban centers.” If this were true, such small businesses needn’t worry about larger firms receiving bulk price discounts; they wouldn’t be competing with them at all.

Of course, the opposite is true. Local businesses face intense competition from Amazon, Walmart, Target, FreshDirect, CVS, Walgreens, and the myriad other firms that ship groceries, goods, and drugs directly to consumers. These large firms enjoy bulk discounts and attract customers by passing on part of their savings to them in the form of lower prices.

Keep reading

Shein Can’t Sell Sex Toys Unless It Checks IDs, French Court Says

Shein, a cheap-stuff superstore based in China that is popular worldwide, cannot sell sex toys unless it checks purchaser IDs, a French court has ruled. The case comes after the French government tried to shut down Shein for three months.

International attention on the case has focused on the fact that Shein—through its third-party vendor marketplace—was temporarily selling what’s been described as “childlike sex dolls.” That’s appalling, of course. But understandable disgust and anger about that aspect has overshadowed a bigger story.

According to the BBC, the court ordered age verification measures to be enacted for the sale of all “adult” items, with a potential fine of €10,000 (about $11,700) for each breach.

Sex Toys: Age Verification’s Next Frontier?

“I don’t live in France and I don’t shop at Shein,” you might be thinking. “Why should I care?”

Because, my friends, this is another sign about where online age verification is going.

Politicians and activists—in the U.S. and around the world—initially pushed age verification measures as a requirement for porn websites. Who could be against stopping kids from watching hardcore pornography? they asked anyone who objected (conveniently eluding the facts that these bans are often broad enough to cover all sorts of sexuality-related material, and that they won’t affect just children but will invade the privacy of countless adults trying to access protected speech).

Then we started hearing about the need to implement age verification measures—checking IDs or requiring facial scans and so on—on all social media platforms. Now we’re hearing about age verification for video games, age verification for vibrators, age verification for everything.

Texas lawmakers earlier this year introduced a measure that would have mandated age verification for sex toy sales online. It failed to advance, but at the rate things are going I don’t think that will be the last we hear of it.

Measures like these could mean anyone who wants to purchase sex toys or sexual wellness devices online will have to attach their identity to the purchase—opening them up to surveillance, hackers, and so on.

Keep reading

The Swalwell Files: Fake News Reuters Scrambles to Save Swalwell, Still No California Address, Still Dead Broke

California Congressman Eric Swalwell has accumulated an extraordinary record of controversy: his well-documented association with the Chinese intelligence asset known as “Fang Fang,” his removal from the House Intelligence Committee over national-security concerns, and his unforgettable on-air incident during a 2019 Hardball with Chris Matthews interview.

These episodes alone raise questions about judgment. But recent disclosures expose something even more fundamental.

Eric Swalwell appears unable to meet the basic legal, financial, and residency requirements of the office he now seeks, Governor of California.

As I reported in The Gateway Pundit (‘DISQUALIFIED! – Congressman Eric Swalwell Names Washington DC Home as ‘Principal Residence’), Swalwell’s own mortgage filings designate his Washington, D.C. property as his principal residence.

Under Article V, Section 2 of the California Constitution and California and Elections Code §349, that admission alone disqualifies him from running for governor.

Five years of residency prior to an election is a constitutional requirement, and Swalwell’s Deed of Trust in D.C. and lack of any California address disqualify him.

The situation escalated when Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte referred Swalwell to the Department of Justice for potential mortgage fraud.

Swalwell responded by filing a civil lawsuit against Pulte and FHFA, absurdly claiming in the lawsuit that his mortgage listed on the public database mytax.dc.gov was private, while falsely claiming he included an affidavit with his mortgage claiming it was only his wife’s home.

Keep reading