Everybody is getting into the authoritarian business of giving themselves the power to decide something they don't like is terrorism so that they can suppress it

DeSantis signs Florida 'domestic terror' bill...

... Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure that gave him and other state officials the power to designate groups as "terrorist organizations" ‌and expel students who support them, with rights groups saying the law will chill free ‌speech.

The law empowers the state's chief of domestic security, governor and cabinet to designate any organization they determine engages in extremist ​acts as a "terrorist organization."

After such a designation, the group can be forcibly dissolved and face a freeze on state funding, according to the legislation. It also says that students shall be expelled from their institution if they "promoted a domestic terrorist organization or a foreign terrorist organization." ...

Your reminder that today's so-called conservatives look at US institutions and traditions as impediments, same as liberals do

I am sick of TSA's illegal searches and seizures, and of DHS' deadly incompetence in Minneapolis and at Barksdale AFB.

The author below lists four recent incidents of terrorism in the United States in support of funding DHS outside the filibuster so that this incompetence can continue!  

They're not keeping us safe!

Millions of illegals remain in America who were supposed to Remain in Mexico!

Fire them all! These post-911 innovations aren't working. 

 

Terrorism trumps America again:

Time for a Filibuster Carve-Out for Terrorism

J.T. Young, RealClearPolitics

Domestic terrorism is when all the credit card companies move to Kristi Noem's South Dakota so they can charge you 20-30%

 

ICE Minneapolis shooting: Noem calls Good’s actions ‘domestic terrorism’

 

 

 

Mad King Ludwig is literally suffering from hysteria, where everything he doesn't like becomes terrorism and fentanyl becomes a weapon of mass destruction

 

 Executive Order Labels Fentanyl "Weapon of Mass Destruction"

No you don't

 

White House: "If Narco-Terrorists Are Trafficking Illegal Drugs To the U.S., We Have The Authority To Kill Them"

 

If you let these people get away with this, anything they call terrorism can be murdered.

 

It's not terrorism, and it is murder. 

Seal Team 6 disgraces itself and the country it serves, obeys illegal Hegseth order to finish off survivors of already illegal September 2nd drug boat attack

One illegal act leads to another, and another, and another. 

Over 80 alleged criminals are now dead in such attacks, but we'll never know if they really were criminals.

 Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all: As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.

... The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. ... "the state using force is judge, jury and executioner," Huntley said. ...

If the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were made public, people would be horrified, said one person who watched the live feed. The Intercept first reported that the survivors were killed in a follow-up attack. ... There has been no public release of a subsequent strike video ...

Halloween terror case against two 20-year old and one 19-year old suspects in Michigan will center around protected free speech

 From the story here:

... Like other terrorism prosecutions, this case is expected to focus on protected free speech, with one side arguing the defendants were merely expressing their views, while the other maintains they were planning to do harm. So far, the government has not produced any anti-gay text messages, social media comments or conversations by the defendants, whose communications and movements were being monitored by undercover informants and agents. ...

The FBI, which started investigating the Dearborn men a year ago, used undercover informants and agents to monitor the defendants' communications. ...

To date, the government has charged eight individuals in this case: five from Michigan, including two juveniles who are being prosecuted in a confidential process because of their age; two from New Jersey, including one man who allegedly referred to himself as the biggest anti Semite in America, and said he wanted to kill his mother's Jewish friends; and one man from Washington, whose plans to travel overseas to join ISIS were cut short by the FBI raids in Michigan. He was arrested at his home in Seattle, one day before his plane was to leave, court records show.

The charging documents filed in all eight cases, so far, do not show how the New Jersey or Washington defendants were allegedly tied to the purported Michigan Halloween terror plot.

It sounds like the FBI worked pretty hard on these young fellas for a long time to get the statements they needed. 

Why isn't co-conspirator 1 charged in the crimes of Ali and Mahmoud? Why the discrepancy of 2 arrested in the one story, 3 in the other?

Is it because co-conspirator 1 is the FBI informant who suborned these two into plotting a terrorist act?

And how did these young men have all this money to buy, legally by the way, all the weapons and gear mentioned in the stories? 

2 US citizens arrested in alleged ISIS-inspired Halloween plot: DOJ

Two men were arrested on Friday for allegedly plotting an ISIS-inspired Halloween attack in Michigan, according to court records unsealed on Monday. ...

The FBI was first alerted to the men after a 2024 review of one of the unnamed co-conspirator's phones. When that person returned to the United States, a Customs and Border Protection officer searched the phone and found "Google searches related to 'ISIS' and the 'Islamic State,' and pictures of what appear to be Co-conspirator 1 in military-style clothing with weapons," documents said.

While the co-conspirator was traveling abroad, Ali and Mahmoud participated in a group call "discussed traveling overseas to join Co-conspirator 1 and then later traveling together to Syria to join ISIS," the documents said. ...

Michigan terrorism suspects were plotting to attack Ferndale, feds say

Three days after announcing their arrests on social media, the federal government brought criminal charges against two metro Detroit men, alleging they plotted to carry out a terror attack over Halloween weekend in Ferndale, except the FBI got to them first.

According to a criminal complaint filed on Monday, Nov. 3, Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, both 20, are charged with having AR-style rifles, shotguns and handguns that would be used in a conspiracy to commit a terror attack and provide material support to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organization. ...

According to the complaint, the investigation into the defendants goes back a year, and includes an undercover FBI informant who secretly recorded conversations involving a group of Michigan men who the government says planned and trained for months to carry out an attack in Michigan over the Halloween weekend. ...

Mahmoud and Ali are among five men initially encountered by law enforcement on Oct. 31. Three of the men were arrested and two were questioned and released. The men — ages 16-20 — were arrested in predawn raids in Dearborn and Inkster that drew praise from Michigan's governor, the state attorney general and the president of the United States. ... 

As usual with the fictions the FBI fabricates in Michigan and the Midwest, the so-called Halloween terror plot Kash Patel says the FBI stopped in Dearborn looks like another nothing burger

Reported by The Detroit Free Press: 

A lawyer representing one of five young men arrested in an alleged Halloween terrorism plot says the suspects are merely video gamers who engaged in tough talk online and recreational gun activities — not radicalized terrorists, as the FBI has claimed.

"These kids are gamers, gamers are weird in the way they talk to each other," attorney Amir Makled said to the Free Press following a jail visit with his client on Saturday, Nov. 1.

According to Makled, his client is one of five men ages 16 to 20, all born in the United States, who were arrested in separate FBI raids on Halloween, accused of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack over the weekend.

But none of it is true, protested Makled, who said there was never any plot to harm anyone, and that FBI Director Kash Patel jumped the gun in annoucing on "X" that the "FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack and arrested multiple subjects in Michigan who were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend."

"There is nothing here," Makled said. "What they did was jump the gun."

As for his 20-year-old client, who remains jailed without charges, Makled said:

"He says they got it all wrong. ... There's no plan. There was no plot, and there was no imminent threat of a terrorism event in the state of Michigan at all. And I believe him."

None of the five suspects have been charged. In federal cases, the government typically has 48 hours to charge someone before letting them go.

According to Makled, the five suspects landed on the FBI's radar over their recreational gun activity. ...

Makled said this case reminds him of the failed 2012 Hutaree terrorism trial, which involved a group of heavily armed militia members upset with the government, and talking about committing all sorts of violence while "playing army" in the woods.

The defense in that case argued that it was all just talk. The judge eventually agreed and acquitted seven of the Hutaree defendants, just as the jury was about to go into deliberations. The defendants were free to go and the jury was sent home.

"This is like Hutaree 101," Makled said of the current case, adding: "I don't know what the government has yet ... but it's giving me those Hutaree vibes."

Do you not see what's happening here? The Trump administration is declaring everything it doesn't like to be terrorism in order to justify autocratic repression of it using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force

The run of the mill narco smugglers from Venezuela suddenly are terrorists under Trump, so they blow them up.

Suddenly the left wing Charlie Kirk critics are being transformed into terrorists, too, so they say they will also destroy them.

Who's next? Where will it end? 

J. D. Vance once wanted to stop this underlying basis for neo-con adventurism. Now the chameleon is part of its expansion to include unconstitutional domestic repression.

These people must be stopped. 

Stephen Miller: We Will Dismantle And Destroy "Terrorist Networks" That Led To Charlie Kirk Assassination

 

 

 

Uniparty Trump hides behind the skirts of the 2001 anti-terror legislation to murder so-called terrorists near Venezuela after cutting and running from the Houthis in the Red Sea

<insert tough guy image here>

MEXICO CITY — U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers. ...

The action was a dramatic escalation for the U.S. in its fight against drug traffickers. Lawmakers and legal analysts questioned the legality of launching a lethal strike against civilians in international waters outside of an armed conflict.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the strike was “conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” an apparent reference to the 2001 authorization for the use of military force enacted by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that year. It authorizes the use of force against the perpetrators of the al-Qaeda attacks and to prevent “future acts of international terrorism.” Various lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to repeal the measure, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a senator in 2023 co-sponsored the End Endless Wars Act. ...

The U.S. Coast Guard sometimes shoots out the engines of go-fast boats during maritime interdictions, the former agent said, but killing the crew is new for the United States. ...

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said the strike violated international law. The U.S. is not in armed conflict with Venezuela or its criminal elements, she noted, which means it violated the suspects’ right to life. ...

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the attack “murder.”

“We have been capturing civilians transporting drugs for decades without killing them,” Petro said. “Those who transport drugs are not the big drug lords, but very poor young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific. ...

 More. 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump will stop at nothing in his quest for imperial power and will destroy the credibility of US Treasury debt

 

telegraph.co.uk

If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

8 April 2025

---

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

The Fed will indeed cut rates this year but not until it is able to see through the confusing blizzard of tariffs and the ricochet retaliation of an angry world.

Powell told Congress that the tariff shock is much bigger than expected and may set off “persistent” inflation rather than just a one-off jump in the price level. He came close to damning Trumponomics as a recipe for low-growth stagflation. That is a red flag to a bull.

The current debate over whether or not Trump has the legal power to fire Powell entirely misunderstands the character of the Maga revolution. America’s rule of law is for guidance only these days.

You could say it was ever thus. Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court after it blocked the New Deal. He failed, and unleashed tax investigations to settle scores, as did Richard Nixon. But Trump is an order of magnitude more outrageous.

Powell will not go without a fight. “I will never, ever, ever leave this job voluntarily until my term ends under any circumstances,” he said during Trump 1.0.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the administration could sideline Powell by appointing a “shadow” Fed chairman, who could steer the markets by issuing forward guidance. But this does not overcome resistance from the Fed board and the hawkish regional presidents.

A secretive team of Trump loyalists drew up a 10-page report before the election proposing more radical measures. These include forcing the Fed to “align policy with administration goals” or even to make the president an “acting” member of the Fed board.

Trump could purge members of the seven-strong Fed board one by one until they get the message. The law states that the president can terminate the 14-year term of a Fed governor “for cause”, usually meaning malfeasance or neglect.

But Trump has just abused his tariff powers on an heroic scale by invoking fictitious “emergencies”. He could no doubt stretch the meaning of “for cause” to anything he wants. The Supreme Court has the last say, but Trump-appointed justices have already shown a strong leaning towards an imperial presidency.

In any case, there are other methods to bring the Fed to heel.

Maga vigilantes are intimidating American judges by having pizzas delivered to their homes – a mob tactic to say “we know where you live”. So we can assume that recalcitrant members of the Federal Open Market Committee will face this sort of treatment.

The major US banks are raising their inflation forecasts to 4pc or higher this year. This inflation will hit before the last three price shocks – Covid, the Putin commodity spike and Biden’s overspending – have faded from immediate memory. It is exactly how inflation psychology becomes embedded.

A variant happened in the 1970s. Nixon bullied the Fed into expansionary policies, with some choice language on “the myth of the autonomous Fed” that later surfaced in the Oval Office tapes.

Loose money stoked inflation, so Nixon ordered a freeze on prices and wages in 1971, declaring war on “gougers”. It was very popular. Illiterate policies often are.

If Trump succeeds in extracting rate cuts from the Fed and tax cuts from Congress, the same problem is going to arise. So my assumption is that he will blame the symptoms and will resort to price controls.

The elephantine difference is that US federal debt was 34pc of GDP in 1971. Today it is 122pc on the Fed measure, and galloping upwards. The fiscal deficit is over 6pc as far as the eye can see.

The US does not have the domestic savings to fund this debt appetite. The savings rate has collapsed to 0.6pc of national income. It was 12pc in the 1960s.

Foreign investors have been plugging the gap. This soaks up a large part of the world’s savings – the underlying cause of America’s trade deficit.

If you think the stock market gyrations of the last few days are terrifying, just wait until Trump destroys the credibility of the Fed and of US treasury debt, the anchor of the global system.

He could order a captive Fed to relaunch quantitative easing and buy the bonds, but to do that when inflation is running hot would be seen by the whole world as naked fiscal dominance. It would set off a price spiral and a collapse of the currency – the sort of outcome seen over the decades in Latin America, or Erdoğan’s Turkey.

The end destination is a return to US capital controls to stop foreign funds and US investors from taking their money out of America. A man willing to impose 116pc tariffs – including pre-existing ones –  on Chinese goods and shut down the biggest bilateral trade relationship in the world as if it were a TV reality show will stop at nothing.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market/

Republicans under Trump lay the groundwork for the police state which Democrats could only wish for: AG Pam Bondi threatens US House Representative Crockett (TX-30) with terrorism charge

 

 In the future, everything wrong will be deemed "domestic terror" and suffer the draconian punishments for domestic terror.

 

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has nothing better to do than appear everyday on Fox News, has the temerity to threaten a Congresswoman. Wait until it's your free speech which is threatened.

 

On second thought, don't wait. It already is.

 

Pam Bondi warns Jasmine Crockett to ‘tread very carefully’ in what she says about Elon Musk

... “She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Bondi said during an appearance on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” ...     

If AG Merrick Garland had done this to a Republican, you would have never heard the end of it from the likes of Mark Levin and his ilk.

But hey, when Republicans do it it's OK!

 

Kamala Harris' confused messaging on fossil fuels, reported by Politico and given publicity by CNN's KFILE, continues to melt down lol

Camila Thorndike, a top Harris-Walz campaign climate adviser, abruptly walked back her recent comments stating that Vice President Kamala Harris would be hostile to future oil and gas drilling as president—effectively reversing her reversal of the candidate's position.

In a statement Monday, Thorndike lamented that she wasn't clear enough when she told Politico last week that Harris is not "promoting expansion" of oil drilling and suggested Harris was not fond of a provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act mandating fossil fuel leases. Thorndike serves as Harris's "climate engagement director."

"I didn't explain myself clearly here," Thorndike said Monday. "Contrary to Trump's claims, the VP has not banned fracking, doesn't support banning fracking, and in fact cast the tie-breaking vote on the biggest pro-climate law ever, which, yes, opened new fracking leases. People know that's her position." ...

It remains unclear how Thorndike's new statement clarifies her comments from last week. 

More. 

It's hard to run away from a former position which had no nuance.

Harris was, and remains, an extreme opponent of fossil fuels, a Kool-Aid drinker like Hillary Clinton who thought you could mandate solar panels on every home in the United States.

More importantly, her political support comes from the extreme opponents of fossil fuels, and they have to be assuaged as Harris runs away from them in order to win in pro-fracking Pennsylvania, at whom the Monday statement was aimed.

Harris' climate adviser is being forced by the campaign to say words she doesn't want to say.

 

 

But Jen Psaki assured us all the Afghans from the surrender debacle were thoroughly screened

 

According to prosecutors, Tawhedi entered the United States in September 2021 and is currently on parole status pending the adjudication of his immigration proceedings. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and child.

Story.

 

Stephen L. Miller isn't going to let the truth get in his way, no sir, he'll just shoot his way through

Of course Trump isn't responsible for what Biden did, only for giving him the opportunity to one-up Trump's own fuck-up.

Hey, how is the Taliban war on terrorism going anyway?

 

Trump's presidential immunity: Democrats want you to forget, for one, that Obama played the tyrant when he assassinated an American citizen in Yemen in 2011 by drone without due process of law

 

And it wasn't just Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico.

Obama assassinated three other American citizens, in the same and two other strikes.

Y'all just let that slide because you liked Obama.

 

 . . . the Obama administration never charged al-Awlaki with a crime or even presented concrete evidence of his guilt . . . his targeted killing left American citizens with little more than the proposition that we are supposed to simply trust the president and the executive branch when they use secret intelligence to accuse an American citizen of terrorism and then claim the right to kill that individual without judicial scrutiny. 

More.

 

The New York Times, May 2013, after Obama was safely re-elected:

In his letter to Congressional leaders, Mr. Holder confirmed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who died in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Mr. Holder also wrote that United States forces had killed three other Americans who “were not specifically targeted.” . . . Mr. Holder confirmed the government’s role in the deaths of Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike, and Mr. Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who died in another strike. The letter disclosed the death of a fourth American named Jude Kenan Mohammad but gave no further details.

Biden is insane: He not only paid Iran to attack Israel, he paid again to defend Israel from the attack and sacrificed American lives in the process

A complete farce brought to you by The Democrat Party:

 Israel says Iran's missile and drone attack largely thwarted, with "very little damage" caused

"The Iranian threat met the aerial and technological superiority of the IDF, along with a strong fighting coalition — which together intercepted the overwhelming majority of the threats. 99% of the threats launched towards Israeli territory were intercepted — a very significant strategic achievement," [IDF spokesman Daniel] Hagari said.

Biden continues Iran’s access to $10 billion just weeks after its proxy killed three American soldiers  Published March 14, 2024, 7:07 p.m. ET:

Just six weeks after an Iran-backed drone strike killed three American soldiers in Jordan, President Biden has approved a sanctions waiver giving Tehran continued access to more than $10 billion — money it can use to import goods and repay debts, freeing up $10 billion elsewhere to spend on terrorism, missiles, nuclear weapons and the repression of Iranian women. 

The Senate [controlled by the Jew Chucky Schumer] is sitting on a bill that would lock down the money . . ..

The international justice committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops can't bring itself to mention Hamas, let alone condemn it

 What a worthless lot they are.

"Launched from Gaza". By whom?

"On all sides" = moral equivalence for the animals of Hamas.

What's important is "the status quo of the holy places", not that defenceless Jews were literally butchered by the hundreds.

They want no war in response to war. All the Jews would die, then. Is that what Catholics really want?

“On October 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, the world watched the operation launched from Gaza and the rapid call to arms from Israel that ensued. Almost 50 years to the day of the launch of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, once again war is spilling out in the Holy Land. With it brings the mounting casualties and hostilities unfolding on all sides, and increased threats to the Status Quo of the Holy Places among Jews, Muslims, and Christians further dimming any hope for peace.

“The world is once again shocked and horrified by the outbreak of ferocious violence in the Holy Land. Reports have surfaced indicating large numbers of wounded and dead, including many civilians. 

“I join with Pope Francis in his call for peace and his condemnation of this widespread outbreak of violence. As he stated in his Sunday audience, ‘May the attacks and weaponry cease. Please! And let it be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but only to the death and suffering of so many innocent people.’

“May all who love the Holy Land seek to bring about among all the parties engaged in the fighting a cessation of violence, respect for civilian populations and the release of hostages.

“As we pray urgently for peace, we recall especially all the families and individuals suffering from these events.  We call on the faithful, and all people of good will to not grow weary and to continue to pray for peace in the land Our Lord, the Prince of Peace, called home.”     

Here.

Mark Levin had Senator Mike Lee on the show on Friday, called him a national treasure

 You remember Mike Lee, libertarian open borders squish.

He's the guy who shepherded through the Trump crime reform bill, otherwise known as the get out of jail free card, which Trump signed in December 2018, about 18 months before the country blew up in a wave of rioting, looting, and violent crime.

He's also the guy who proposed Merrick Garland for FBI Director, who as Attorney General is responsible for investigating moms and pops going to school board meetings for terrorism, among other excesses at the behest of demented Uncle Joe.

I turn on the show for the first time in weeks and that's what I get. It's like never playing darts but hitting the bullseye every time I do.

Levin is nothing if not consistently wrong.