Most Americans believe that some rights including the right to vote are facing some level of threat, according to a new poll. In the AP-NORC Center poll, 66 percent of respondents said that the right to vote is either facing a “major threat” or “minor threat” in the U.S., while 33 percent said it is…
Racism, according to Merriam-Webster, includes "the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another." By that definition, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which by law could not protect Christians from religious discrimination and by practice deprioritized complaints from white students for decades, qualified as racism, funded with public monies.
The post Trump Administration Moves Biased Civil Rights Out of Department of Education appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The thing that liberals, Democrats, left-wing think tanks, and others on the Left say never happens, happened again: the scourge of left-wing political violence. Thankfully, the FBI and other law enforcement officials prevented a tragedy from happening on Sunday, uncovering a terrorist plot to cause death and destruction at the UFC Freedom 250 event. However, […]
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last week, and now a prominent economist is warning that his unprecedented wealth poses a grave threat to human freedom in the US and across the globe.In a column published by The Guardian on Tuesday, Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman argued that Musk’s enormous fortune is fundamentally at odds with a democratic system of governance because it gives him “the power to stifle competition, the power to shape public discourse, the power to influence policymaking, the power to buy elections, the power to stall social progress,” and much else.Zucman noted that wealth concentration is even greater now than it was during the original Gilded Age, as the top 0.00001% now have fortunes large enough to “buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.”The economist added that while Musk—whose infamous destruction of the US Agency for International Development is projected to kill millions of people in the coming years—makes a particularly compelling villain, trillionaires would be a major problem for democracy even if they were of a more benevolent variety.“No one should want to live in a society where one single individual can be worth $1 trillion, no matter their personal virtues,” Zucman emphasized. “Such levels invariably skew power, distort markets, and sap our democratic ideals.”The best solution to this crisis, Zucman said, is to “create an unavoidable minimum tax on their wealth” that will “make it impossible for the super-rich to pay less tax than middle-class workers—a matter of basic equality before the law.”“It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees, the poor, or immigrants are expected to balance the budget,” Zucman concluded, “while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. There cannot be a law more lenient for the rich and powerful than for the rest of us. If ever there was a time to act, it is now.”Zucman’s thoughts on extreme wealth and democracy were echoed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Tuesday published an essay on his Substack page where he likened President Donald Trump’s White House cage-fighting matches to the kinds of spectacles put on by Roman emperors before noting ominous similarities between the US today and the Roman Empire.“While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex,” Krugman wrote, “there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?”Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Yale School of Management, similarly warned that Musk’s newly minted trillionaire status was bad news for American self-governance.In a Monday column published by Bloomberg, Mukunda pointed to the vast sums of money being spent by billionaires in US elections, which he noted “dwarf what candidates can raise themselves.”And like Krugman, Mukunda saw disturbing parallels between the US today and Ancient Rome.“Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome,” he explained. “So rich that, by Plutarch’s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the Senate and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic.”
Nigel Farage privately vowed to overhaul the team that manages his Facebook account because they were under-performing Rupert Lowe, the leader of a rival right-wing party who boasts a huge following on social media.
Federal authorities stopped a potential attack targeting the UFC Freedom 250 event held on the White House lawn, with a multi-state law enforcement operation leading to multiple arrests, FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday. The FBI and law enforcement first became aware of the possible threat on June 10 through Signal chats, just days before…
President Donald Trump’s inability to guarantee America’s FISA Section 702 program, which it uses to fight terrorists and other national security threats, is a “nightmare,” according to a Fox News reporter.“There’s the World Cup,” wrote Fox News’ Chad Pergram on Monday. “America’s 250th birthday. And the conflict with Iran. It’s all a nightmare national security hat trick.”Pergram went on to quote Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s recent Fox News Sunday interview saying that the terrorism threat level is “the highest we’ve ever seen. When I say we arrest terrorists every single week, I’m not exaggerating. Those aren’t the individuals that are coming across our border, those are individuals that are still inside this country."FISA Section 702 expired over the weekend because Republicans linked it to the confirmation of Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence. Pulte had no experience in national security and frequently presented himself as a political fixer for Trump, so Democrats blocked the bill so that way it would not lead to Pulte’s confirmation."I hope and pray to God that nothing happens in this country where an American is killed," Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) said. Similarly Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) said, “We want to prevent the next 9/11 from happening.”Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), "This program goes dark at a time when there are literally hundreds of thousands of people coming to this country for the World Cup.”By contrast, some senators are arguing that the legislation creating FISA keeps the program functional even after its authorization expires."Data can still be collected for a year after it expires. So I don't think it's as dire as some think it is," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) argued. Similarly Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that “(FISA) will not lapse. I try to make this clear. The statute makes it clear that the authorities of FISA are going to be positive and enforceable for the remainder of this year. We think, until March of next year.” Likewise Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) said that "FISA is operative until next March. That's the legislation.”George Croner, a former National Security Agency counsel, said that "It's a very inopportune time to allow the authorizing statute for 702 to lapse. It has proven to be the most useful by far of any of the intelligence programs that the community has available to it."On Sunday, Axios journalist Andrew Pantazi reported that “Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is among the government's most contested surveillance authorities, long opposed by privacy advocates and supported by security hawks” and yet its future “hinges on Trump's unrelated demands for a voting bill.”"I'm against FISA if it doesn't come with The Save America Act (Full version!) firmly attached to it," Trump recently wrote in a social media post. He also defended choosing Pulte, although reports indicate he is searching for a replacement.“Congressional Republicans are largely leaving it to the administration to figure out a path forward after Trump’s decision to tap Pulte as Tulsi Gabbard’s temporary successor derailed an earlier agreement to extend the key spy authority for three years,” Politico reported on Monday. “But they are also nudging the administration to pick a different nominee to fill the role in a permanent capacity. Pulte is among the subjects Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to discuss with Trump at the White House Tuesday, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose plans for the private meeting.”
