Tag Archives: Power Line Blog

What Our Children Are Learning In School

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At an extended family gathering in Connecticut, we went on a tour in the East Windsor area. We learned about the fort that the English settlers had built there. It was an enclosure to protect them from a particularly vicious tribe of Indians that lived in the area. After a while, some of the neighboring Indian tribes were staying inside the fort to be protected from the one tribe of particularly vicious Indians. The American Indians did not necessarily get along with each other before or after the arrival of American settlers. However, that is not the story our children are being taught.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog. The article includes the following X Post:

The article notes:

It is no surprise that those who trust our education establishment are the most ignorant. But the idea that one-half or more of Americans believe that Indians were peaceful until the white man came along is astonishing. It means that they know absolutely nothing about pre-Colombian American history, and they ascribe to natives virtues that the Indians never would have claimed for themselves.

Tribes like the Iroquois, to name only one, were in warfare among the most vicious peoples in history, ranking perhaps even worse than the Assyrians and the Mongols. Indian tribes were pretty much all proud of their martial prowess, and would be horrified to learn that, several hundred years after the fact, they are regarded as having lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors, whom they despised.

Just for the record, the Pilgrims settled in land that was not claimed by any Indian tribe. The tribe that had lived on the land had been wiped out by a flu epidemic a few years before the Pilgrims got there, and the other tribes were superstitious and did not want to settle there.

The Need To Change The Protocol

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Obviously a lot has been written and will be written about the attempted assassination of President Trump on Saturday night. However, I think the best accounts and suggestions for improvement will come from the people who were there. Stephen Moore was one of the people who were there.

On Monday, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

On Saturday night I (Steve Moore) attended the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Every time I enter this hotel, I recall that this was the same Hilton where Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed 45 years ago. I walked through the same entrance where that assassin’s bullet came within an inch of killing Reagan.

This is an event for the self-absorbed and self-important Washington DC glitterati to see and be seen.

I had anticipated a very long security line and about an hour wait to enter the hotel. I brought my paper ticket and my passport identification.

To my surprise the security was lax, to put it lightly. Wearing my tux, I walked in the front door by flashing the paper ticket. There was no code to be scanned and I never once was asked for my ID.

The room was packed at 7pm when President Trump entered to shallow applause. What shocked me was that, after the National Anthem and military color guard, Trump and the First Lady sat for dinner front and center in front of 2500 people. That didn’t strike me as safe or advisable. For a sniper, God forbid, it seemed he was a sitting duck.

It also struck me that the President, the VP and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were all in attendance. I am told five of the six in succession to the presidency were there.

About 15 minutes into the dinner, I was chatting with the Wall Street Journal reporters at my table when all hell broke loose. The Secret Service suddenly charged in with pistols and assault rifles and all of a sudden I heard two loud booms, like a bomb going off. There was screaming and we all ducked down and many ducked under their tables.

I looked toward the President and he was surrounded by the Secret Service. They pulled him out of his seat and shoved him toward the exit. My heart sank and I panicked when I saw Trump appear to stumble to the ground. You can see that on the video. Oh my God, I gasped, in horror. Trump has been hit.

I was seated at the table next to Speaker Johnson when the Secret Service agents began yelling: “Where is the Speaker?” His seatmates had pulled him under the table. He was ushered out.

The article concludes:

But this was clearly a major security breakdown on multiple levels. It was easier to get into the Hilton to see the president and to get 30 feet from him than to attend a Wizards basketball game down the street.

Obviously, these protocols need to be fixed.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the report.

These Are The Refugees We Need

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the refugees from South Africa who came to America because of the violence against white farmers in that country.

The article includes an X post about the refugees. It states:

Known a few South Africans recently arrived in America, Afrikaner and English. Uniformly, they’ve said, what a joy just to be able to walk around freely. Without fear of attack. One young South African guy, when I raised the security issue, just blurted out, “I had a gun put to my head.”

A South African woman said an American told her, we have home invasions in this country, too. She asked, how many people do you know who have been home invaded? None, he said. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a home invasion, she told him. Her elderly parents were tied up at gunpoint. She was grateful they were only robbed.

My Afrikaner exGF carried a gun as a young woman out on the town. Explained cheerfully, you don’t stop for red lights in South Africa. That’s where they’re waiting for you.

Welcome to America. More immigration like this please. Afrikaners just want to work. Contribute. And you can rely on them in all things. Especially should it come to a fight.

They have settled in and begun farming and contributing to American life. This is what happens when you bring in immigrants who are compatible with American culture and are willing to assimilate.

It’s Amazing That Anyone Actually Believes The Mainstream Media

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We are currently living in a very strange world. An overwhelming majority of Americans want voter ID for elections, and Congress can’t seem to pass it. The Democrats are campaigning on the policy of impeaching President Trump as soon as they gain control of Congress, and many Democrats are saying that we shouldn’t even sell Israel defensive weapons. Other than anti-Israel and anti-Trump, what are their policies? Meanwhile, the press keeps telling us that President Trump’s popularity has sunk to a new low. So what is the truth?

On Thursday, Power Line Blog reported:

Every day I see a headline like these: from The Hill newspaper this morning,

Trump approval rating hits new low as Iran war squeezes economy.

“New low.” The Hill headline from yesterday read,

Trump losing support from core supporters as approval drops to record low in new polling.

“Record low.” The Tuesday headline in The Hill reads,

Nate Silver on recent polling: Trump has ‘profound problems’

On Monday, The Hill told us,

Donald Trump approval rating dipped to a new low.

“New low.” Every day a new poll. Every day a new low, or a record low. Based on this trend, I would expect to find Trump’s approval rating to be hovering between negative 300 percent and negative 400 percent.

So I looked at today’s Rasmussen Reports, daily approval poll: 46-52. Not great, a little underwater, but a record low? A new low?

In Rasmussen, Trump has stayed in a fairly narrow approval range of 44 to 48 percent since the beginning of the first government shutdown last October.

The article concludes:

Other services, like Morning Consult, have Trump numbers steady or the Daily Mail actually improving during March.

But you are supposed to take the daily drumbeat as proof that no one approves of Trump.

Why does anyone believe these people?

Listen To What Your Candidates Are Saying

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On Monday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article about a recent statement by Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

The article reports:

The story of the day is uncomfortably close to a literal “bomshell.” Alana Goodman has obtained a copy of what I call the Sad in Dearborn tapes. They derive from Michigan’s radical left-wing Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Alana’s story is “‘There Are a Lot of People in Dearborn Who Are Sad’: Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Said He Needed To Stay Silent on Khamenei Killing Because Many of Michigan’s Muslim Voters ‘Are Sad.’”

Alana reports:

Michigan’s left-wing Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, told staffers he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—or taking any public position on it at all—because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad” about his death, according to audio from a private campaign strategy call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

But, ah, the uses of Jeffrey Epstein:

If reporters pressed him to take a position, he said, he would change the subject to Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “I’m just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly,” El-Sayed said. “I’ll just be like, ‘Pedophile president decides that he doesn’t like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.’”

The article also notes that the El-Sayed campaign is trying to keep the recording suppressed.

The article concludes:

Here in one story we see the trouble with immigration that has transformed Dearborn into what it is today. We see the deep trouble with the Democratic Party today. We also see the Democrats’ use of Jeffrey Epstein for pretextual purposes. Cry Jeffrey Epstein!

Note the real purpose of mentioning Jeffrey Epstein.

Read the whole thing here.

Quotable quote: “‘I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today. So, like, I just don’t want to comment on Khamenei at all. Like, I don’t think it’s worth even touching that,’ El-Sayed told his campaign team.”

Because assimilation is no longer a part of immigration, Dearborn would have no problem electing a candidate that supported Khamenei. It’s time to send people who choose not to assimilate to a country where they are more compatible with the local culture.

This Is Going To Get Interesting

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On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the American attack on Kharg Island, a small coral island in Iran in the northern Persian Gulf.

The article reports:

Kharg Island is a small coral island in Iran in the northern Persian Gulf. It is 34 miles (55 km) northwest of the port of Bushehr and vital to Iran’s oil industry.

The oil processing facilities at Kharg Island are a foundational component of Iran’s economy. Roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude is processed at Kharg Island, and any disruption to its oil processing could cripple Iran’s economy.

All military targets on the Island were destroyed in the attack, but the oil infrastructure on the Island was left intact.

The article includes President Trump’s statement:

“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

“During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Also on Saturday, John Hinderaker reported at Power Line Blog that the Strait of Hormuz is now open.

The statement from Iran says:

It is only closed to the tankers and ships belong[ing] to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass,” Araghchi (Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi) told MS NOW.

I don’t think that is going to be acceptable.

Was It Legal?

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On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the legality of President Trump’s attack on Iran. John Hinderaker is one of the founders of Power Line Blog. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He worked as a lawyer in Minnesota before he retired. He is currently President of the Center of the American Experiment, a think tank headquartered in Minnesota.

The article at Power Line Blog states:

Seemingly with one voice, Democrats have denounced the administration’s attack on Iran as “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” But the Democrats’ views on legality vary wildly, depending on who is in the White House. My friend Ilan Wurman, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, points out the obvious parallel between Iran and Libya:

The article includes excerpts from the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel that concluded Obama’s air strikes on Libya were legal. Please follow the above link to the article for further details.

The article concludes:

The Democrats’ assertions about the law–they don’t actually make arguments–are frivolous.

Unlike Ilan, I don’t take “international law” seriously, and I give zero credence to the United Nations. The job of the President is to defend American national security, period. And I would add that Iran posed approximately a million times more danger to our security than did Libya.

Iran has been at war with us since 1979. It was time for us to return the favor.

Breaking The Rules For Political Purposes

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the recent news that the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland secretly subpoenaed phone records of both Kash Patel–now, ironically, the Director of the FBI–and Susie Wiles, now the President’s Chief of Staff. At the time, they were both private citizens–not working for President Trump (source here).

The article includes an X post by Hugh Hewitt:

The article concludes:

Hugh is being charitable. It is inconceivable to me that any lawyer would permit the FBI, or anyone else, to record an attorney-client conversation without the knowledge of his client. That is a grotesque betrayal of a lawyer’s most basic duty, and it is hard to imagine how a lawyer who did such a thing could keep his license.

It is almost impossible to fathom how deep the corruption ran during the Joe Biden/Merrick Garland years.

On Thursday, Just the News reported:

At least 10 FBI employees were fired after working on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, according to a news report Friday.

The firings occurred after news broke on Wednesday that the FBI obtained phone records for now-director Kash Patel during the Biden administration in 2022, and current White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phone records in 2023, while they were both private citizens.

The subpoenas for the phone records were issued as part of then-special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Patel told Reuters that the bureau’s subpoenas were an example of federal overreach by unelected officials.

There should be more serious consequences than firing. Otherwise, the next time the Democrats are in charge, it will happen again.

Looking Beyond The Hype To Find The Reason

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On Wednesday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog detailing the reason for 2023 being one of the warmest years on record. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the result of anything people did!

The article reports:

Warmists were ecstatic over the 2023 increase, which they attributed to “climate change.” (It makes no sense to say that a change was caused by change, but put that aside for the moment.) As to the subsequent decline, they were almost entirely silent.

It seemed obvious to me that the most likely explanation was the extraordinary eruption of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano in January 2022. That eruption, unprecedented in recorded history, sent vast quantities of water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor is, of course, the principal greenhouse gas.

The article quotes an article posted at WattsUpWithThat on December 30:

We have been fortunate to witness the largest climate event to occur on the planet since the advent of global satellite records, and possibly the largest event since the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. It is clearly a naturally occurring, externally forced climate event. However, mainstream climate scientists are not treating it appropriately. This is because climate science does not function like other sciences and is subject to strong confirmation bias. The first step to learning from the 2023 event is accepting its exceptional nature, which many fail to do.
***
According to Occam’s razor, a climatic event of unparalleled magnitude in modern records requires an exceptional cause. The factors responsible for normal climate variability are insufficient. The only extraordinary factor preceding the 2023 event was the explosion of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano.
***
For anyone who is not committed to the explanation of climate change due to the radiative properties of greenhouse gases, the Hunga Tonga eruption is currently the best explanation for the 2023 climate event. In July 2025, I analyzed that “if Hunga Tonga is responsible for the 2023-24 warming event, a clear prediction is that we should observe most of this warming disappear in 3-5 years.“[21] This projection does not arise from any of the other considered causes. By December 2025, four years after the eruption, this prediction had come true: the ocean temperature anomaly in November was only 0.05°C higher than in November 2021, before the eruption. 90 % of the ocean warming from the 2023 climate event has disappeared.

Sorry to disappoint, but man is simply not important enough in the grand scheme of things to change the earth’s climate. We have a responsibility to take care of the earth, but we also have a responsibility to do what we can to create civilized societies. Balance is the key.

One Person Can Make A Difference

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The Minnesota government fraud case has been in the headlines nationally recently. Power Line Blog has been reporting the story for years, but one young journalist is partially responsible for getting the story to the public.

On December 29, Scott Johnson posted an article at Power Line Blog about the corruption.

The article reports:

Bill Glahn, Lou Raguse, and other members of the local Twin Cities press have been covering the massive public-programs fraud committed by a large cast of almost exclusively Somali perpetrators for a while now. For those just tuning in, Bill points out — to take one example — that KSTP’s Jay Kolls knocked on alleged daycare doors in this January 2025 story.

YouTuber Nick Shirley has brought the daycare story to a national audience with the video he posted last week. Bill posted the video here on Power Line. The delayed detonation of this story represents another rendition of the Rufo effect. Like Chris Rufo’s linked City Journal column, the Shirley video implies that something must be done. An investigation must be conducted. Perpetrators must be held to account. This implication does a disservice to what has been done by the federal authorities to date. I tried to add this perspective to the story in “Minnesota’s Somali fraud problem.”

Shirley has a local guide named David. David alludes to frauds centered on St. Paul’s Grigg’s-Midway Building. One wouldn’t know from the video that the FBI executed search warrants and the United States Attorney brought an initial set of charges arising from the Griggs-Midway Building. I wrote about the searches here in July (“Another massive Minnesota fraud”) and the charges here in September (“The fraud this time”). The linked September post includes a video of the press conference announcing the charges.

Shirley acknowledges a recent FBI raid on an Eagan or Minneapolis office building at about 26:10 of the video. You can see the FBI at work lugging boxes of evidence removed from the building. Shirley also checks out the Griggs-Midway Building itself at 29:20 of the video.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Now that the reporting of the fraud has gone national, those responsible need to be held to account. I think all of us are tired of hearing about massive government fraud, and then the story goes away. I am looking for orange jumpsuits!

A Positive Move To End A Mental Health Epidemic

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about a rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will prevent hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding—i.e., all of them–from performing “sex-rejecting procedures on children.

The article reports:

While the proposed rules do not appear to be public yet, Kennedy’s Declaration in support of the rules is here. And this process implements President Trump’s Executive Order directing HHS to take such actions, among other things.

The principal legal authority for the proposed rules appears to be Sec. 1861 of the Social Security Act, (e)(9), which defines an eligible hospital, inter alia, as one that ” meets such other requirements as the Secretary finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services in the institution.” On the basis of this and other statutory provisions, 42 CFR § 1001.2 provides that “when the Department has declared a treatment modality not to be safe and effective, practitioners who employ such a treatment modality will be deemed not to meet professionally recognized standards of health care.”

This is a welcome development. It can, of course, be reversed by a future Democratic administration, but it will put the brakes on pediatric sex-change procedures for at least the next few years, by which time the entire “trans” enterprise may be so discredited internationally that the issue will become moot.

Sex-change procedures in children provide patients for life for the medical community. After a young person is given medical treatment to create the illusion of a sex change, they are a patient for life. The body keeps trying to go back to what it was created to be, so the necessity of drugs never stops. All of the medical procedures and hormones do not change the person’s DNA.

Leaving Out Important Information For Political Purposes

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President Trump has been in office for less than a year. When he stepped into office, the economy was not gaining jobs at the rate that had been previously reported, and inflation was going through the roof. The Biden administration’s push for green energy had sent energy prices soaring, and the killing of massive numbers of chickens resulted in a dramatic increase in the price of eggs. Overall, the American worker was getting squeezed by rising energy and food costs. Things have gotten better under the Trump administration–the price at the gas pump is down, egg prices are down, and the rate of inflation has slowed. Unfortunately, once prices go up, they rarely come down, but we have seen some prices actually come down.

On Thursday, Power Line Blog posted an article about one approach the Democrats are attempting to use to win voters. If the voters are paying attention, there is no way this will work.

The article includes a screenshot of an X post by the senior United States senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobucher:

Note that X posted additional context to her post.

The article at Power Line Blog also included the following screenshot:

Note that these are past due balances. How long have these balances been past due, and how many of those balances have actually been created since President Trump took office?

Just another day in sleazy Democrat politics. It’s easier to blame President Trump for everything that is currently wrong than it is to take responsibility for your own bad policies.

Another Step Away From The Constitution

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article reporting that a Minnesota judge has thrown out a jury’s guilty verdict.

The article reports:

We’ve told you quite a bit about Minnesota’s ongoing fraud problems, the vast majority of them stemming from the large Somali population in and around Minneapolis. The state has paused Medicaid payments over fraud concerns (and that fraud has led to at least one death), and millions of dollars were laundered through the Feeding Our Future program and state housing programs, too. A lot of that money ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab, the largest terrorist group in Somalia.

Despite all the evidence of fraud, a Minnesota judge has just overturned a jury’s guilty verdict in one Medicare fraud case, paving the way for all the other fraud convictions to be overturned as well.

The jury heard that Yusuf and his wife were charged and the jury learned his “home health company” was operated out of a mailbox at an address where multiple other “home health companies” als operated. The state showed they spent tens of thousands of dollars on luxury items.

The jury quickly found the couple guilty. Now, a judge in Hennepin County, Sarah West, has overturned that verdict.

“It’s reversing or overturning a jury’s verdict,” said defense attorney Joe Tamburino. Tamburino was not affiliated with Yusuf’s case but looked at the judge’s decision.

According to Tamburino, Judge West said the state’s cased relied “heavily on circumstantial evidence” and that the state did not “exclude other reasonable, rational inferences.”

“That, in fact, there could’ve been other reasonable theories other than guilt in this case. That’s what it comes down to,” Tamburino said.

Remind me again why we have juries.

There are a number of legal cases working their way through the courts involving Feeding Our Future. The writers at Power Line Blog have followed these cases (some recent examples here and here). The amount of fraud is unbelievable and people need to be held accountable.

About That Affordability Thing…

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Affordability is the new buzz word of the day. The attempt is being made to use it as a hammer to bludgeon President Trump. Interesting, since he hasn’t even been in office for a year yet.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported:

Normally I wouldn’t do anything so facile as to blame inflation on a particular politician, but given that the Democrats are pinning their hopes on hanging the “affordability crisis” around President Trump’s neck, a little historical perspective is in order. Thus, from the Unleash Prosperity Hotline:

We went back to January 2020 when the pandemic started. We found that 13.5% of cumulative inflation (prices are 24% higher today) has happened under Trump, while 86.5 percent of cumulative inflation happened under Biden.

So the “affordability crisis” is the hangover effect of Bidenomics when the White House dumped some $4 trillion of helicopter money out the windows.

The article includes the following chart:

Obviously prices are still rising, but there are a few good things in the future economically–the price of gasoline at the pump is trending down–that impacts everyone and everything. The price of energy should come down in the near future as America increases its energy independence, although some states may not experience the downward turn due to excessive regulation. Most food prices are also stabilizing or moving downward.

Affordability is improving, but it is going to take a while. Two things that will help with the cost of housing are to lower the demand by removing the illegals and to lower the interest rates. Overall, I am optimistic about the future, but there will be a price paid at some point for the excesses of the Biden administration.

One Phone Company Pushed Back

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There is a lot of information coming out lately about the government operation Arctic Frost. I am not sure any of the actions involved in this operation were in line with the U.S. Constitution, but there is one area that violated the Constitution that is very troubling.

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

Arctic Frost was the FBI investigation that tried to associate Donald Trump and many other Republicans with the January 6, 2021, Capitol protest. It was the basis for one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump. That indictment was dismissed. Senator Chuck Grassley has been on this case for a long time; whistleblowers approached him long ago to explain the corruption of the FBI and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.

Arctic Frost can best be seen as a continuation of the Russia Collusion Hoax and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which sought to prevent Trump from being elected, and then to cripple his administration after he won the 2016 election. Also the Dirty 51 scandal, which sought, successfully, to swing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Arctic Frost included service of 197 subpoenas in which Special Counsel Jack Smith sought incriminating information about hundreds of Republicans, including ten Republican senators and one House member. There was no basis for suspecting any of these individuals of criminal actions, and in fact, no criminality was found. Smith subpoenaed telephone records of those Republicans from various telecom vendors, and rogue Democrat Judge James Boasberg entered a gag order, directing the phone companies not to disclose the subpoenas to their customers–United States Senators–for one year. There is precedent for such orders in organized crime investigations.

The article quotes Fox News:

Verizon justified complying with the subpoenas, saying they were “facially valid” and contained only phone numbers, not names. Verizon said that with the “benefit of hindsight” and recent discussions with the Senate Sergeant at Arms, which handles congressional phone services, it has modified its policies so that it puts up more of a challenge to law enforcement requests pertaining to Congress members.

…AT&T, meanwhile, did not comply with the subpoenas.

“When AT&T raised questions with Special Counsel Smith’s office concerning the legal basis for seeking records of members of Congress, the Special Counsel did not pursue the subpoena further, and no records were produced,” David Chorzempa, general counsel for AT&T, wrote.

The article at Power Line Blog notes:

Taken together, these Democratic Party scandals, from the Russian Collusion Hoax to Crossfire Hurricane to the Dirty 51 to Arctic Frost–and likely others that have not yet come to light–represent by far the worst political corruption in American history. There has never been anything like it.

The Republican voters have been patient, but when will the Republicans hold someone accountable?

It’s Time For A Change

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term expires in May 2026. It’s a shame that he will be in charge until then. He claims to be apolitical, but his actions tell another story. On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term.

The article reports:

We hear constantly about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve. Fine: but what if the Fed isn’t independent of politics, it is just independent of, and hostile to, the administration that is in power?

Some think that is the situation now before us. Stephen Moore comments on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s most recent pronouncements:

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was full of doom and gloom yesterday [Wednesday], forecasting 1.6% growth for this year and closer to 1.5% next year.

Was he talking about Afghanistan or the United States?

In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. economy grew by 3.3%, and with a few weeks to go in the third quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is forecasting above 3% growth – twice Powell’s anemic rate.

…Powell never mentioned that real household incomes are up $1,100 for the first seven months of 2025.

He attacks Trump’s tariffs and more restrictive immigration policies as restricting growth – and he’s right on that. But he never mentions the Trump tax cut, the immediate expensing for capital purchases (which has spurred an investment boom), the deregulations that could save up to $1 trillion this year, or that Trump’s pro-energy policies have increased U.S. production of oil and gas to record highs, or that the area where job growth is way down is in government employment – which is GOOD for the economy.

So Powell is hostile to the administration’s economic agenda, and–perhaps–has positioned the Fed in opposition to it.

Stephen Moore notes:

There’s also something almost comical of a Fed chair who let inflation soar by 21% and promised it was all “transitory” now terrified of an inflation rate of less than 3% this year.

The article notes:

Then, of course, there is the Fed’s Taj Majal, construction of which I believe President Trump has stopped. But that is a minor point, compared to the possibility that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is actively trying to undermine America’s economic policies. That isn’t independence, it is partisanship.

If you are unfamiliar with the history of the Federal Reserve, please watch the video below about the history and purpose of the organization.

The Federal Reserve is not what we were told it is.

Who Is Actually In Charge?

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article asking the question, “Who Runs the Executive Branch?” During the past four years, that was a very appropriate question, but it is still an appropriate question.

The article reports:

Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is the executive branch. But over the years, Congress has tried to limit the power of the President by establishing a number of “independent” agencies–the SEC, the FDIC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on. In many cases, Congress has purported to limit the President’s ability to fire employees of those “independent” agencies, even though they are part of the executive branch and nominally under his control.

Democrats like this arrangement, since the agencies are staffed overwhelmingly by Democrats. They have served to undermine every Republican president of the last generation. Until now, Republican Presidents have generally put up with the fact that they do not effectively control the executive branch, but President Trump has moved to assert his proper constitutional authority in several ways.

Most notably, in February he issued an executive order which we wrote about here. It asserted, in several ways, his authority over the “independent” agencies. He has also fired a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve for cause, and, more importantly, he has fired other executive branch officials without cause, as should be his prerogative under Article II.

This has given rise to the vitally important case of Slaughter v. Trump. Rebecca Slaughter was a Federal Trade Commissioner. President Trump fired her without asserting any “cause,” even though the Federal Trade Commission Act says that a Commissioner can be removed by the President only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The administration takes the position–correctly, I think–that this limitation on the President’s control of the executive branch is unconstitutional.

The article concludes:

What is being teed up here is, ultimately, an epic battle between Congress and the President. Democrats are on the side of Congress, mostly because Congress has, in turn, ceded power to the Administrative State, which is overwhelmingly Democratic but which, as Professor Philip Hamburger among others has persuasively argued, is essentially unconstitutional. Republicans are now mostly on the President’s side, because the current President is a Republican, and because they have seen how the Administrative State has become a permanent and unaccountable fourth branch of government.

Of all the battles to which the Trump administration has given rise, this one may, in the end, be the most important.

The decision on this matter will determine whether or not we go back to the Republic our Founding Fathers created–do the checks and balances put in place in our Constitution still apply?

What’s In A Name?

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The word of the day is “gerrymandering.” It is a technique long used by the Democrat party to ensure that Republicans don’t get elected to Congress. Lately, the Republicans have figured out that they can play that game too.

On Thursday, the Tilting At Windmills website on Substack reported:

The term “gerrymandering” has become a big part of the recent news cycle. Mostly, it’s been a yawn for me. Both sides do some degree of gerrymandering, but it’s only a problem when the other side does it.

Texas, however, was engaging in a little bit of it that would oust Rep. Jasmine Crockett and help Republicans snag a few more seats in the midterms, where the president’s party typically loses a bit of ground.

And people lost their minds over it, acting like this has never happened anywhere else, and that it’s somehow the most horrible thing in the world despite the pile of examples of Democrats doing it.

Politico, however, went a slightly different direction in their headline for a story about the situation that reads, “Democrats try to separate their tactical use of redistricting from that of Republicans.”

That’s right, it’s not gerrymandering that Democrats do. It’s “tactical use of redistricting.”

And understand, the word “tactical” isn’t anywhere else in the piece, so that’s Politico’s choice of words there, not a quote from someone like JB Pritzker or some other Democrat trying to deflect.

No, that’s their covering fire.

On August 6th, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted a chart showing the impact of gerrymandering:

The chart shows why gerrymandering is important and how it impacts Congress. Let’s end tactical use of redistricting!

Adding Insult To Injury–And It’s Beautiful

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On July 1st, The Hill reported:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the official end of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Tuesday, after rapidly dismantling the government’s foreign aid arm since President Trump’s return to the White House.

USAID’s official shutdown comes following a study published Monday in the Lancet Medical journal projecting that more than 14 million additional deaths could occur globally as a result of the U.S. aid reductions, including 4.5 million deaths among children. 

Wow! Millions of deaths could result around the world if America stops funding one supposedly non-governmental agency. How is it a non-governmental agency if the government is funding it? I didn’t realize our government was so powerful.

On June 30th, Power Line Blog noted:

There are something like 195 independent nations on the planet, and not a single one, other than America, is capable of helping any of the others. No one. Not a single Euro, Yen, pound, franc, peso, etc., can be freed up to prevent mass genocide on a biblical scale.

…America contains just over 4 percent of the world’s population and generates about 24 percent of the world’s economic output. Yet a single U.S. government agency that you hadn’t even heard of before January 2025 was providing 40 percent of global humanitarian aid and single-handedly sustaining life on earth.

…It also bears mentioning that the Lancet, once a respected medical journal, is now a left-wing rag that loves to publish specious “studies” like this one.

On July 1st (this is the icing on the cake) The Daily Caller reported:

The FBI will relocate its moth-eaten headquarters from the Hoover Building to the Ronald Reagan Building downtown after the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) vacated the complex, officials announced Tuesday.

The shuffle caps nearly 20 years of bureaucratic waffling over where to park the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. By opting for a ready-made federal property — freshly emptied when USAID officially shuttered operations Tuesday — the Trump administration says it will save taxpayers billions while giving agents a secure, modern workplace.

This is one of many reasons we elected a businessman as President!

Stating The Obvious

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War is a horrible thing, but sometimes it is necessary. The Bible notes that there is, “A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” I am not sure that this is the time for peace in the Middle East, and evidently I am not the only person feeling that way.

On June 16th, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

With respect to Israel and Iran, talk of peace is in the air. We are beset with calls from various quarters to “de-escalate” the situation there, lest wider war break out. President Trump, who partnered with Israel in deceiving Iran prior to Israel’s preemptive strike, is now talking about making another deal with Iran.

I hope he doesn’t mean it. The last thing Israel, or anyone else, should be thinking about is another agreement with the mullahs. Israel now controls the skies, has largely degraded Iran’s missile capability, and can do pretty much anything it wants, militarily. It was delightful to see that Israel wiped out the regime’s state broadcaster.

So this is a golden opportunity, almost certainly the best one Israel ever has had, or ever will have, to bring about regime change in Iran. The mullahocracy needs to go. Neither Israel nor the rest of the world will ever be safe, as long as Islamic extremists control Iran. Israel has already demolished Iran’s proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and, to a lesser extent, the Houthis. But if Iran’s regime is allowed to stay in place, it will readily rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, just as it will eventually rebuild its nuclear capability.

I agree with the idea of removing the Iranian theocracy, but I am concerned about what will replace it. First of all, America, covertly or openly, should not be involved in any regime change in Iran. Our track record there is not good–we installed the Shah, and that did not turn out well. I am not sure that we ever fomented a color revolution anywhere that actually turned out well. The Iranians need to be free to choose their own future without outside interference.

Common Sense Has Arrived

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Hamas has worked very hard to turn public opinion against Israel despite the horrific attack of October 7th of last year. The United Nations has worked very hard to ignore the role that some employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) played in that attack. Well, justice may be coming for the victims of that attack.

On April 25th, Power Line Blog reported:

It would be easy to miss today’s good news, which comes via the Trump Department of Justice. The headline of the Jewish Chronicle spells it out: “US scraps Unrwa’s legal immunity in major reversal of Biden-era policy.” Subhead: “The decision could see the UN agency, which has been accused of employing Hamas operatives, hit with significant claims from the relatives of terror victims.”

…The X feed of Professor Eugene Kontorovich has helpful background and reflection on this change of policy. He comments: “UNRWA’s funding from primary donors Germany, France, EU, Sweden, Norway is going to dry up fast when they understand every cent is going to be needed to pay damages to Jewish victims.” So let it be written, so let it be done.

Professor Kontorovich also cites his own September 2024 New York Post column (with Mark Goldfeder) “Outrage as US DOJ defends UN staffers who collaborated in Hamas’ terror.”

Let the lawsuits begin! My only concern is that America funds a large portion of the United Nation’s budget–in 2023, America paid $13 billion to the United Nations (in my mind, that is one place spending could be cut totally). I don’t want to see American taxpayers having to pay the lawsuits against the United Nations. It would be nice to see the United Nations’ funding dry up completely. The have never been the instrument of peace that they supposedly set out to be.

DOGE And The Cloward-Piven Strategy

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The Cloward-Piven strategy was developed by two sociologists and activists (Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven) in 1966. It aims to overload the US public welfare system and replace it with a national guaranteed income. This theory was the basis for a lot of policy changes that have taken place in recent years. We have all heard the cries that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all going broke. Some recent discoveries by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may explain some of the reasons for those programs having financial challenges.

On Monday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog quoted a post on X by Elon Musk reporting that in 2021, 270,000 non-citizens got social security numbers. In 2024, 2.1 million non-citizens got social security numbers. Human traffickers made $13-15 billion dollars during the time our southern border was open. Elon Musk has stated that DOGE is going to stop the Social Security payments that are going to illegals. Because these illegals have Social Security numbers, many of them have registered to vote and have voted. This is voter fraud.

I don’t know how the people responsible for this thought they were going to get away with this unless they planned on preventing any investigation of the fraud and keeping control of the Department of Justice indefinitely. Obviously, they have not been successful in either area.

The problem has now been identified. There are three steps that need to be taken. The first step is to stop any benefits being paid to people who are not American citizens. The second step is to identify the people behind the fraud and put them in jail. I don’t care how well-connected or powerful they are—they need to go to jail. The third step is to set up a system that will ensure that this never happens again. I have no idea how to do that, but I am sure that Elon Musk and his team of geniuses can find a way.

I suspect we may hear more about the discovery of this fraud in the near future.

The Impending End Of A Really Bad Idea

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about wind energy. The Trump administration is taking a good, hard look at the practicality and efficiency of wind energy.

The article reports:

One of the most felicitous aspects of the new Trump administration is its determination to drive a stake through the heart of the zombie wind industry. Because it is an absurdly inefficient and unreliable way to generate electricity, wind power was doomed from the start. But the Trump administration is seeing it off.

Robert Bryce, one of our top energy experts, has a long Substack post that is full of good news. You will have to follow the link to get it all, but here are some highlights:

A few days ago, Jason Grumet, the head of the American Clean Power Association (annual revenue: $62.3 million), told Heatmap News that “probably more than half” of all new wind projects under development in the US could be killed due to President Trump’s executive order requiring a “comprehensive assessment” of federal permitting. Heatmap explained that Trump’s policies pose “a potential existential threat to the industry’s future. Just don’t expect everyone to say it out loud.”

…[T]he offshore and onshore wind sectors are in full-blown panic mode. Trump’s executive orders, particularly the one requiring the federal government to assess the wind industry’s impact on wildlife — have had an immediate and chilling effect on wind projects onshore and offshore.

The article concludes:

I am not sure why solar energy is doing better than wind. It has the same defects that wind does: solar is ridiculously expensive, inherently unreliable since it can’t produce electricity at night, when it is cloudy, or when solar panels are covered with snow, and it is massively destructive of the environment.

So let’s drive the solar scam out of existence next. Or, rather, make it stand on its own two feet: no subsidies and no mandates. Let solar compete on even terms with nuclear, natural gas, coal and hydro power, and see who wins. Solar will die out, and the environment will only be better for it.

We have better, more efficient, and cheaper ways to produce energy. Let’s further develop them.

Looking Through The Lens Of History

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the Senate confirmation hearings. He notes that at the three hearings this week  the Democrats were hoping to stop the nominees, things did not necessarily move in that direction.

The article notes:

But now several of Trump’s most controversial nominees–controversial meaning that the New York Times and The Washington Post really, really hate them–have taken their turn. Today, Robert Kennedy, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard all testified in confirmation hearings. These are the nominees (along with Hegseth) that the Democrats are seriously determined to block, and you could see it in their hysterical, if sometimes hilarious, questioning.

I was able to watch only brief portions of today’s hearings and don’t have an opinion on how, in general, they went, other than the fact that the Democrats were in full howl-at-the-moon mode.

I hope all three nominees are confirmed, although I could go either way on Kennedy. Even here, though, Kennedy came across as I expected. He is walking away from some of his more out-there positions of years ago, and is focused on “making America healthy again.” I think there is room for him to do considerable good as an advocate for more healthy lifestyles.

But I really hope that Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed. From my own (admittedly minimal) experience with her, I have a great deal of respect for Gabbard’s patriotism, her intelligence–she is very, very smart–and her military bearing. And, to be honest, in my dealings with Gabbard I just liked her.

America’s “intelligence community” is sick and throughly politicized. Tulsi is, I think, a great choice to set it straight. I don’t agree with all of her opinions–my view of the Iraq war is more positive than hers, for instance–but I trust her to oversee an objective, competent and non-politicized intelligence operation. Which is what Trump wants, and a huge improvement.

The article notes a bit of history often overlooked:

The Democrats can’t block any of the President’s nominees, so their grandstanding is directed mostly at their own base. I suppose they also hope to persuade four Republicans to vote against Gabbard and the others. That shouldn’t happen. Of this group, the only one who isn’t plainly an excellent choice is the eccentric Robert Kennedy. But Kennedy, too, is President Trump’s choice, and there is a clear rationale for why he might be a very good Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Beginning with the Clinton administration and until this year, I believe there were only two occasions on which any senator of a president’s party voted against any of his Cabinet nominees. That number grew from two to three when three Republicans voted against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Let’s hope that Senate Republicans don’t continue to break with tradition.

If the Republicans are not willing to support their own President’s choices, why should they be considered Republicans? I am willing to support any primary opponent who runs against a Republican who opposes President Trump’s choices.