26 Mar, 2025 08:55

Another Russian journalist killed in Ukrainian strike

A news correspondent for Channel One, Anna Prokofieva, died while on assignment in Belgorod Region

Anna Prokofieva, war correspondent for Russia’s Channel One, was killed on Wednesday while on assignment in Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine. The broadcaster confirmed her death and said that cameraman Dmitry Volkov had also been injured during the incident.

Prokofieva was reportedly working in the village of Demidovka, an area near active fighting. According to early reports, the 35-year-old journalistwas killed either by a drone strike or a fatal shrapnel wound, although accounts of the incident differ.

Earlier this week, three members of news crews were killed in Ukrainian attacks in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and in Kursk Region.

In recent days, Prokofieva had been reporting from therecently liberated town of Sudzha, where she helped evacuate civilians from the area.

“Channel One war correspondent Anna Prokofieva was killed in the line of duty. This happened in Belgorod Region on the border with Ukraine, where the Channel One news crew hit an enemy mine,” the broadcaster said in a statement.

Her death was first reported by military blogger Vladimir Romanov, who wrote that she was killed on Wednesday while carrying out an editorial assignment. Romanov relayed via his Telegram channel that Prokofieva had been working in the village of Demidovka, in Krasnoyaruzhsky District.

Channel One cameraman Dmitry Volkov has been seriously injured and is currently on a ventilator, according to Acting Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein. He is being urgently transported to the Kursk Regional Hospital for treatment.

The broadcaster had reported earlier that Volkov had been working alongside Prokofieva at the time of the incident.

Prokofieva held a journalism degree from the People’s Friendship University (RUDN) and was fluent in Spanish. Prior to joining Channel One, she worked in the Spanish-language division of Rossiya Segodnya news agency. In 2023, she became a war correspondent for Channel One, covering the Ukraine conflict.

Commenting on the reporter’s death, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswomanMaria Zakharova accused Kiev of deliberately targeting journalists and undermining international laws designed to protect members of the press.

Prokofieva covered the special military operation from some of its most intense fighting areas, often from Russian Armed Forces positions, according to TASS. She documented the demining of recently liberated territories, working closely with sappers and sometimes standing just meters from unexploded shells, the outlet said. While filming her reports alongside the troops, she reportedly came under fire on multiple occasions.

https://www.rt.com/russia/614788-russian-reporter-killed-one/

>>22822648 National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Breaks Silence on the “Embarrassing” Signal Chat Leak; Musk says he’ll find out how the leak happenedPN

BREAKING VIDEO – Mike Waltz says Elon Musk is going to help find out how Atlantic journo got into Signal group chat

Mar. 25, 2025 9:02 pm by The Right Scoop

Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz just told Laura Ingraham that he’s spoke with Elon Musk and he’s going to help find out how the Atlantic Chief Editor Jeffrey Goldberg got into the Signal group chat.

Watch below:

Just before this Waltz had emphasized how suspicious he is that, of all the people who got added to this group chat, it was a Trump-hating journalist who lies all the time about the president:

What’s ironic about all this is that we know who added Goldberg to the chat, and it was one of Waltz’s staffers. So why is there all of this suspicion?

President Donald Trump revealed that a staffer with national security advisor Mike Waltz’s office included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in a Signal group chat with senior Trump officials who were discussing plans for an upcoming strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,” Trump told NBC in a phone interview when asked how Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, was added to the high-profile chat.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Elon Musk determines on this,but it sounds to me like this staffer will have all the answers.

https://therightscoop.com/breaking-video-mike-waltz-says-elon-musk-is-going-to-help-find-out-how-atlantic-journo-got-into-signal-group-chat/

Trump executive order targets Jenner & Block, law firm in Chicago and D.C., attorney Andrew Weissman

By Sara Tenenbaum

Updated on: March 25, 2025 / 7

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday targeting Chicago law firm Jenner & Block. The firm also has an office in Washington, D.C.

Jenner and Block has been an active part of the legal challenges against Mr. Trump's executive orders, including successfully securing a preliminary injunction against an order from the administration that reduced health care access for transgender youth.

That case is still pending in a Maryland-based federal court.

This executive orderinstructs officials to review and revoke firm members' security clearance, identify any good, property, material and services provided by the federal government and stop providing them, terminate any government contracts that may exist with the law firm, and not hire any employees of the firm for any future federal government jobs.

The order also singles out attorney Andrew Weissman, who worked on Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The executive order says he was re-hired at Jenner & Block, ==but the firm clarified that Weissman hasn't worked there since 2021.=

The executive order specifies that Weissman is prohibited from being hired by or working for the federal government unless a waiver is issued.

The Trump administration has targeted a number of law firms that have been active in challenging or pausing executive orders and policies in the courts.

Previously, the president issued and then rescinded an executive order targeting international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Whartonafter it pledged to review its hiring practices and provide tens of millions of dollars in free legal services to support certain White House initiatives.

A spokesperson for Jenner & Block responded to the order in a statement, writing in part, "Today, we have been named in an Executive Order similar to one which has already been declared unconstitutional by a federal court. We remain focused on serving and safeguarding our clients' interests with the dedication, integrity, and expertise that has defined our firm for more than one hundred years and will pursue all appropriate remedies."

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/trump-executive-order-jenner-block-law-firm-chicago-dc-andrew-weissman/

PDJT is warning any law firm not to hire Weissman! Good it out there now.

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal - The Atlantic 1/2

By Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris

March 26, 2025, 8:19 AM ET

The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in that.

So, about that Signal chat.

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

These statements presented us with a dilemma. In The Atlantic’s initial story about the Signal chat—the “Houthi PC small group,” as it was named by Waltz—we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks.

The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.

Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face. The Trump administration is arguing that the military information contained in these texts was not classified—as it typically would be—although the president has not explained how he reached this conclusion.

Yesterday, we asked officials across the Trump administration if they objected to us publishing the full texts. In emails to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the White House, we wrote, in part: “In light of statements today from multiple administration officials, including before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the information in the Signal chain about the Houthi strike is not classified, and that it does not contain ‘war plans,’ The Atlantic is considering publishing the entirety of the Signal chain.”

We sent our first request for comment and feedback to national-security officials shortly after noon, and followed up in the evening after most failed to answer.

Late yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt emailed a response: “As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.” (The Leavitt statement did not address which elements of the texts the White House considered sensitive, or how, more than a week after the initial air strikes, their publication could have bearing on national security.)

https://archive.is/T4RTF

10 pics 5 attached

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A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was “completely appropriate” to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.

As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.

At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”

The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:

•“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”

•“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

The Hegseth text then continued:

•“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”

•“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”

•“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”

•“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”

•“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.

•“Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

At 1:48 p.m., Waltz sent the following text, containing real-time intelligence about conditions at an attack site, apparently in Sanaa: “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.” Waltz was referring here to Hegseth; General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command; and the intelligence community, or IC. The reference to “multiple positive ID” suggests that U.S. intelligence had ascertained the identities of the Houthi target, or targets, using either human or technical assets.

Six minutes later, the vice president, apparently confused by Waltz’s message, wrote, “What?”

At 2 p.m., Waltz responded: “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”

Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.

Later that afternoon, Hegseth posted: “CENTCOM was/is on point.” Notably, he then told the group that attacks would be continuing. “Great job all. More strikes ongoing for hours tonight, and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time, on target, and good readouts so far.”

It is still unclear why a journalist was added to the text exchange. Waltz, who invited Goldberg into the Signal chat, said yesterday that he was investigating “how the heck he got into this room.

(https://archive.is/T4RTF

Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges

Republican lawmakers are setting their sights on the judiciary following court rulings that have halted Trump's agenda.1/2

March 25, 2025, 1:47 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — Facing pressure from his right flank to take on judges who have ruled against President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday floated the possibility of Congress eliminating some federal courts.

It’s the latest attack from Republicans on the federal judiciary, as courts have blocked a series of actions taken by the Trump administration. In addition to funding threats, Trump and his conservative allies have called for the impeachment of certain federal judges who have ruled against him, most notably U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who attempted to halt Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants.

“We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

Johnson, a former constitutional attorney, later clarified that he was making a point about Congress’ “broad authority” over the “creation, maintenance and the governance” of the courts. Article III of the Constitution established the Supreme Court but gave Congress the power to “ordain and establish” lower federal courts.

Congress has eliminated courts in the past. In 1913, for example, Congress abolished the Commerce Court and its judges were redistributed to the federal appeals court, according to Congress.gov. And in 1982, Congress passed legislation abolishing the Article III Court of Claims and U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and established the Article I Court of Federal Claims and the Article III U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who plans to hold a hearing focused on Boasberg and district judges next week, said he’s speaking with GOP appropriators about what he called “legislative remedies.”

“We got money, spending, the appropriations process to help try to address some of this,” Jordan said, without adding further details.

Attempts to defund courts will be a major flashpoint in bipartisan funding negotiations for the next fiscal year. But Republicans are a long way from making good on these threats.

First, they would need to convince powerful senior appropriators to strip funding for certain courts in their funding bill, in this case the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill that funds the lower courts.

But the appropriations subcommittee that oversees that funding bill is chaired by Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, a former prosecutor, self-described pragmatist and one of the more moderate members of the House GOP conference.

On top of that, House Republicans would need near-unanimous agreement to pass a funding bill that defunded some courts on the floor, which would be a difficult feat given their narrow majority.

The Senate also would almost certainly reject any funding bill or package that defunded the courts. To pass it, Senate Republicans would need at least seven Democrats to join them to defeat a filibuster. And some Republicans might vote against such a proposal.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna197986

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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said eliminating a district court would create "massive, massive backlogs"

"My view is, I'd like to get more Republican judges on the bench," Hawley said. "If we take away seats, we can't do that."

House and Senate appropriators will be working to pass 12 funding bills before the next government shutdown deadline, at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Despite Tuesday's remarks, Johnson appears to be focused on a middle path to push back on federal rulings against Trump as some GOP hard-liners push for impeachment votes against some judges.

In addition to the House Judiciary Committee's upcoming hearing, Johnson said the House will vote next week on a bill from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that would bar district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions.

“The judges, especially we’re talking about district court judges, are overstepping their boundaries,” Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., a Johnson ally, told NBC News. “Absolutely, I appreciate” the Issa bill, he added, “and I may go for more, but right now, that’s where I stand.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna197986

A Third Of All DC District Judges Are Foreign Born

Beth Brelje1/23/25/25

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the source of many of the cases interfering with President Donald Trump’s authority, has 15 judges, (Counting Chief JudgeJames Boasberg) and five of them were born outside the United States.

While country of origin doesn’t come up in most jobs, it is worth asking if judgeswith ties to foreign nations and cultures are the right ones to make decisions affecting the U.S. military or immigration.

The concept of foreign-born judges is a newer phenomenon in this district. In addition to the 15 main judges, the D.C.District has 10 older, senior judgeswho still occasionally hear cases in the district. This group, nominated as far back as Ronald Reagan the 1980s, were all born in the U.S.

But starting in2014, former President Barack Obama appointed Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan,born in Kingston, Jamaica. She was in the U.S. by 1979, attending George Washington University. Before sitting on federal court,she had no experience as a judge. Chutkan is overseeing the legal challenge to DOGE’s work to slash excess government spending.

Obama also appointed Judge Amit P. Mehta to the D.C. court. Mehta also had no previous experience as a judge. Mehta was born in Patan, Gujarat, India. He and his parents came to the U.S. when he was a baby, age one. He was raised in Maryland.Mehta will oversee four January 6 civil cases that aim to blame Trumpfor injuries and squeeze money, court time, and political embarrassment out of him.

The other three foreign born judges werenominated by former President Joe Biden.

Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes was nominated in 2021, also with no prior experience as a judge. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and moved to Spain, and while still a child, moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where she grew up. She is the first openly LGBT Latina to be appointed to this court. Reyes presided over an objection to Trump’s executive order declaring “gender dysphoria” as “inconsistent” with the “high standards for troop readiness,” as The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood reported. Reyes blocked Trump’s order with a preliminary injunction.

The first Muslim and Arab American in the D.C. district court, Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Aliwas born and raised in Canada to Egyptian parents. According to his Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees, Ali was not required to register for the U.S. Selective Service.That is because he was not a citizen until 2019. He graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada with a software engineering degree in 2008 and then attended Harvard Law School in the U.S., graduating with alaw degree in 2011. He worked as a volunteer on Biden’s 2020 transition team and for a phone bank in support of Biden’s presidential campaign.He worked for some nonprofits but never served as a judgeuntil Biden appointed him in 2024. Amir has written extensively and negatively about Trump’s so-called “Travel ban,” a 2017 Executive Order which restricted travel to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.

In his writing, he said, “prejudice and intolerance” were “the very hallmark of [Trump’s] campaign against Muslims.”

Before he was a judge, Ali spoke at the National Press Foundation andgave tips to reporters about how to cover the courts.

When confirmed, Amir was a member of the Capital Area Muslim Bar Association; Muslim American Judicial Advisory Council; National Arab American Bar Association; National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; National Police Accountability Project; and the Native American Bar Association of D.C., among others.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/25/a-third-of-all-dc-district-judges-were-not-born-in-united-states/

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Ali single handedly restored $2 billion in USAID spending to foreign nonprofit contractorsthat the Trump Administration had paused for 90 days, in a stunning overreach of authority last month.

The newest judge on the D.C. District Court is also foreign born.

Before slinking out of office,Biden and his handlers got Judge Sparkle Sooknanan confirmed. She was sworn in Jan. 2, 2025. Born in the dual-island nation Trinidad and Tobago in 1983, she left her home country at age 16 to pursue college and graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 2010.

She was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and during the Biden Administration she was the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division for the Department of Justice before Biden tappedher for her first ever judge gig in the D.C. Court, according to her Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees.

Last week,Sooknanan dutifullydid her part to slow Trump’s agenda, ordering thereinstatement of Democrat Susan Grundmann to the Federal Labor RelationsAuthority, a move that keeps the board in a Democrat majority.

None of these cases have gone in front of conservative judges in conservative states, say in Missouri or South Dakota. They all happened to land in the laps of judges that have spoken out or ruled against Trump or his policies in the past.

Out of all the judges in the nation, all five foreign-born judges of the D.C. District court managed to get their fingerprints on a controversial Trump case.

The United States is in the midst of a soft coup. Not the violent kind that takes out a nation’s leader, but one orchestrated by judicial actions that choke off executive power before our eyes.

We have seen other obvious, corrupt schemes in plain sight before. The Biden basement presidential campaign of 2019; the “insurrection” that wasn’t; the mask and vaccine mandates; the Biden is mentally competent story; the “flawless” Afghan withdrawal; the “secure” borders; and the incompetent candidate swap to Kamala Harris, made Americans realize the best chance we have to stop corruption is to vote it out.

The public did its part by voting in a clear mandate for Trump’s agenda.But corruption is still visible, though court decisions by unelected activist judges.

The only remedy now is for the Supreme Court to step in and this time, get its hands dirty, deliberate, and make real decisions based on the Constitution.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/25/a-third-of-all-dc-district-judges-were-not-born-in-united-states/

Mollie Hemingway Delivers Masterclass Explainer On The ‘Government-Funded’ War On Free SpeechSHAWN FLEETWOOD

MAR 25, 20251/2

‘They know our voice is so powerful and influential that they can’t accomplish their goals unless they shut us down.They will not succeed.’

Americans’ constitutionally protected right to free speech “has been under worse attack in the last decade than at any other point in our nation’s history,” Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway told lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.

“The tentacles of the censorship-industrial complex are choking out freedom of expression, debate, and the right to criticize powerful institutionssuch as corporate media and the government,” Hemingway said.

Throughout her opening statement, The Federalist’s editor-in-chiefhighlighted how the federal and state governments have “fund[ed] and promote[d] censorship and blacklisting technology,” and have even gone as far asto “direct Big Tech companies to censorAmerican speech and debate.” She specifically cited how academic institutions “such asStanford University and the University of Texas are given large grants, not to defend free speech, but to conduct research on so-called ‘disinformation’ for use by the censorship regime.”

“Non-profit think tanks such as the Aspen Institutepost so-called ‘disinformation’ seminars to groom journalists to publish pro-censorship propaganda and to suppress important stories, such as the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell,” Hemingway said.“Non-profit censorship groupssuch as the Global Disinformation Index and for-profit censorship businesses such as NewsGuard produce widely used censorship tools and blacklists to favor left-wing media while working to silence media that fight false narratives.”

As described by Hemingway,censorship tools employed by groups such as GDI and NewsGuard “routinely rate leftwing newsoutlets, that are no threat to the permanent bureaucracy,higher than those that challenge prevailing orthodoxies.” These deceptively crafted lists are subsequently used by companies to “boycott some publications and reward others with advertising,” she explained.

“The Washington Post and New York Times routinely receive the highest marks. Those publications won Pulitzers for their role in the Russia collusion hoax, and we have some participants in that hoax here on this subcommittee,” Hemingway said. “My publication,The Federalist, exposed that hoaxthrough dogged reporting and investigation, as we did with themedia’s vicious lies against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. We exposed much of the censorship industrial complex, too,even suing the State Departmentafter discovering its role in promoting and marketing censorship tools that are being used against us even as we sit here today.”

As noted by Hemingway, TheFederalist is no strangerto being a target of the expansive censorship-industrial complex.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/25/mollie-hemingway-delivers-masterclass-explainer-on-the-government-funded-war-on-free-speech/

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During the summer of 2020, for example, theleft-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate colluded with NBC Newsto try andstrip The Federalist of its Google ad revenue. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, “NBC News reported that Google banned The Federalist due to a shoddy report from the network’s ‘verification unit,’ and theCenter for Countering Digital Hate took issuewith The Federalist’s reportingabout the race-motivated rioting and violencethat plagued the nation during the summer of rage.”

Hemingway also cited a 2023 reportby the House Select Subcommittee on theWeaponization of the Federal Government“documenting how Stanford University colluded with two governmental entities to pressure social media companies intocensoring true information, jokes, satire, political reporting, and analysis, all of which they claimed was ‘disinformation.'” The Federalist editor-in-chief noted how she and Federalist CEO Sean Davis were targeted by this censorship operation.

“One of the censored items was a storyabout a TV appearance in which I said of the media, ‘They lie, they lie, they lie, and then they lie.’Gallup reported in February that my view is held by 70 percent of Americans, who say they don’t trust corporate media to report news accurately, fairly, or fully,” Hemingway said.

Hemingwayconcluded her opening statement bynoting the difficulties in “facing” the vast censorship-industrial complex, and that while it “would have been easy to fold,” doing so is “exactly what censors want: to make it impossible to report the truth about their lies.”

“They know our voice is so powerful and influential that they can’t accomplish their goals unless they shut us down. They will not succeed,” Hemingway said. “We will never stop. The more they try to shut us down, the harder we’re going to work to stay open, because it’s not about us — it’s about whether we will have a civilization where people are allowed to say and think things tyrants don’t want us to.”

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/25/mollie-hemingway-delivers-masterclass-explainer-on-the-government-funded-war-on-free-speech/

Dick Durbin Has Walked The Earth For 80 Years And Never Heard The Word ‘Wrongthink’LOGAN WASHBURN 3/25/25

Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin claimed in a Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that in 80 years he has not once heard the term ‘wrongthink,’ a concept familiar to readers of George Orwell and a phrase increasingly common among conservatives who oppose the government’s censorship of free speech.

Durbin’s comments wereobviously in reference to an article written by Benjamin Weingarten in The Federalistearlier this year. Weingarten, a Federalist senior contributor, testified before the committee regarding government censorship on Tuesday.

“Anyone who wants to characterize that event of Jan. 6 as ‘the riot used to launch the war on wrongthink.’What in the hell is ‘wrongthink?’” Durbin said. “I can’t keep up with all these words that are coming at usas brand new terms.”

While discussing President Donald Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6, 2021 protesters in The Federalist, Weingarten noted earlier this year that the unrest at the U.S. Capitolwas “used to launch the war on wrongthink.”During the hearing, Durbin directly quoted Weingarten and said he did not know the meaning of “wrongthink.”

“Let me ask you what the word ‘wrongthink’ means.Did you make that up?”Durbin askedWeingarten. (Dementia?)

“If I did make it up, I’d be happy to take credit for it, and my definition ofit would be speech that flouts the orthodoxy of our political establishmentand cultural elites,” Weingarten replied.

Durbin was born in 1944, and,according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “wrongthink” was first used in the 1950s.In his highly acclaimed novel 1984 (published in 1949), George Orwellpenned the term “thoughtcrime” to denote thoughts and ideas that contradicted speech approved by the novel’s socialist state. The term “wrongthink” now carries a similar meaning.

According to Google, the use of the term “wrongthink” in writing spiked in the 1980s and has been on the rise again since 2013. The New York Times even employed the term in 1988 in a piece announcing the publication of Orwell’s 1984in Russia. The term has also been used varioustimes on the Senate floor and by legislators in recent years.

Durbin also askedWeingarten todefine the phrase “whole-of-society war on wrongthink,”also referencing Weingarten’s article in The Federalist.

“‘Whole-of-society’ means government working hand-in-hand with civil society to achieve some sort of outcome,” Weingarten said. “[It’s] potentially chilling when you have government and civil society working hand-in-glove because that blurring of the line between civil society and the state can cross into potentially draconian methods and outcomes.”

The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway also testified before the committee, outlining the ways the censorship-industrial complex has been targeting conservatives and free speech.

“[T]he right to free speech has been under worse attack in the last decade than at any other point in our nation’s history,” Hemingway said in her opening statement.“Attacking free speech and debate has become a massive industry, much of it government-funded, and all of it threatening a free society.”

https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/25/dick-durbin-has-walked-the-earth-for-80-years-and-never-heard-the-word-wrongthink/

Supreme Court upholds rules requiring background checks for ‘ghost guns’ 1/2

John Fritze, CNN Wed March 26, 2025

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Biden-era federal regulations on “ghost guns,” mail-order kits that allow people to build untraceable weapons at home –handing gun control groups a rare win at the conservative high court.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a 7-2 majority that included both liberal and conservative justices in one of the most closely watched Supreme Court cases of the year.

“Perhaps a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot,” Gorsuch wrote. “But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, andits intended function as instrument of combat is obvious. Really, the kit’s name says it all: ‘Buy Build Shoot.’

Individuals who had purchased the weapons and several manufacturers challenged regulations created by the Biden administration in 2022 that require ghost gun makers to include serial numbers on the kits and perform background checks on people who purchase them.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives=created the new regulations as police say the untraceable weapons are turning up much more frequently at crime scenes. In 2017, police submitted about 1,600 ghost guns recovered at crime scenes for tracing. Four years later, the number had grown to more than 19,000.

It’s not clear how President Donald Trump’s administration will handle the issue going forward. Trump signed an order on February 7 requiring the Attorney General to review gun regulations imposed during the Biden administration.

Gorsuch cites technological advances

Gorsuch noted in his opinion that the way Americans think about guns has changed dramatically since 1968 when Congress approved the Gun Control Act.

“Recent years, however, have witnessed profound changes in how guns are made and sold,” Gorsuch wrote.

In 1968, the milling equipment and materials needed to make a gun at home were far too expensive for most individuals.

“With the introduction of new technologies like 3D printing and reinforced polymers, that is no longer true,” Gorsuch said. “Today, companies are able to make and sell weapon parts kits that individuals can assemble into functional firearms in their own homes.”

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/26/politics/ghost-guns-supreme-court/index.html

>>22824189

2/2

Majority has moved to the right on gun laws

Though not a Second Amendment dispute, the case put guns on the high court’s docket at a time when its 6-3 conservative majority has tacked to the right on gun laws.

Last year, the conservative justices court struck down a ban on bump stocks, devicesthat convert semi-automatic rifles into a weapons that can fire hundreds of rounds a minute, for instance.

But there had been signs that some members of the court’s conservative majority saw this case differently than the one dealing with bump stocks. Even before the arguments were heard, the justices had hinted their thoughts by siding with the Biden administration on its emergency docket. On a 5-4 vote, the court allowed the regulation to remain in place while the litigation continued.

The 1968 law requires manufacturers and dealers to run background checks, keep sales records and include serial numbers on firearms. The ATF concluded during the Biden administration that the law covers the kits, which the agency said can quickly be built into functioning firearms.The rule does not prohibit the sale or possession of the kits but instead requires serial numbers and background checks on purchasers.

Ghost guns are kits that a user can purchase online to assemble a fully functional firearm at home. Critics say they are attractive to people who are otherwise prohibited from buying firearms because of the lack of requirement for background checks and serial numbers.

In his dissent Wednesday, Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that majority “blesses the Government’s overreach.”

Thomas said he reads the federal law at issue in a much narrower way that does not cover “the unfinished frames and receivers contained in weapon-parts kits.”

“Congress could have authorized ATF to regulate any part of a firearm or any object readily convertible into one. But, it did not. I would adhere to the words Congress enacted,” Thomas wrote.

During oral arguments in October, several of the court’s conservatives and all of its liberals appearedskeptical of the notion that the kits were geared toward a tradition of gunsmithing hobbyists. Chief Justice John Roberts, in particular, brushed off the idea that building the kind of gun kits at issue was equivalent to someone working on a classic car. In other words, he seemed to say,the kits aren’t designed with hobbyists in mind.

“Drilling a hole or two, I would think, doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends,” Roberts said to the lawyer representing the kit manufacturers. “My understanding is that it’s not terribly difficult for someone to do this.”

Advocacy groups and five companies that manufacture the kits sued, arguing that the regulation wasn’t permitted by the law.The kits aren’t weapons, they said, but rather parts. A US district court in Texas threw out the rule and the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld that decision.

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/26/politics/ghost-guns-supreme-court/index.html

Tucker Carlson

@TuckerCarlson

Obituary for my father.

Richard Warner Carlson died at 84 on March 24, 2025 at home in Boca Grande, Florida after six weeks of illness. He refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet.

He was born February 10, 1941 at Massachusetts General Hospital to a 15-year-old Swedish-speaking girl and placed in the Home for Little Wanderers in Boston, where he developed rickets from malnutrition. His legs were bent for the rest of his life. After years in foster homes, he was placed with the Carlson family in Norwood, Mass. His adoptive father, a tannery manager, died when he was 12 and he stopped attending school regularly. At 17, he was jailed for car theft, thrown out of high school for the second time, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1962, in search of adventure, he drove to California. He spent a year as a merchant seaman on the SS Washington Bear, transporting cargo to ports in the Orient, and then became a reporter. Over the next decade, he was a copy boy at the LA Times, a wire service reporter for UPI and an investigative reporter and anchor for ABC News, covering the upheaval of the period. He knew virtually every compelling figure of the time, including Jim Jones, Patty Hearst, Eric Hoffer, Jerry Garcia, as well as Mafia leaders and members of the Manson Family. In 1965, he was badly injured reporting from the Watts riots in Los Angeles.

By 1975, he was married with two small boys, when his wife departed for Europe and didn’t return. He threw himself into raising his boys, whom he often brought with him on reporting trips. At home, he educated them during three-hour dinners on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, PG Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people. He was a free thinker and a compulsive book reader, including at red lights. He left a library of thousands of books, most dog-eared and filled with marginalia. His reading and life experiences convinced him that God is real. He had an outlaw spirit tempered by decency.

In 1979, he married the love of his life, Patricia Swanson. They were together for 44 years, all of them happy. She died sixteen months before he did and he mourned her every day.

In 1985, he moved to Washington to work for the Reagan Administration. He spent five years as the director of the Voice of America, and then moved to the Seychelles as the US ambassador. In 1992, he became the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and later ran a division of King World television.

The last 25 years of his life were spent in work whose details were never completely clear to his family, but that was clearly interesting. He worked in dozens of countries and breakaway republics around the world, and was involved in countless intrigues. He knew a number of colorful national leaders, including Rafic Hariri of Lebanon, Aslan Abashidze of Adjara, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and whomever runs Somaliland. He was a fundamentally nonjudgmental person who was impossible to shock, and he described them all with amused affection.

He spoke to his sons every day and had lunch with them once a week for thirty years at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always prefaced by a dice game. Throughout his life he fervently loved dogs.

Richard W. Carlson is survived by his sons, Tucker and Buckley, his beloved daughter-in-law Susie, and five grandchildren. He was the toughest human being anyone in his family ever knew, and also the kindest and most loyal. RIP.

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1904895949136105814

26 Mar, 2025 13:07

Ukraine never had nuclear weapons – Trump aide

The nuclear weapons stationed in the country were always under Russian control, Richard Grenell has said, calling it an “uncomfortable fact”

The nuclear weapons that Ukraine transferred to Russia under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum in the 1990s =•were never under Kiev’s control, US Presidential Envoy for Special Assignments Richard Grenell has said.==

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited a significant portion of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, temporarily making it the third-largest nuclear power at the time.However, the weapons remained under Russian operational control and Kiev lacked the technical capability to launch them.

In 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum along with the US, Russia and the UK, under which Kiev agreed to transfer all of its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for security assurances.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Grenell wrote: “Let’s clarify the Budapest Memorandum situation: the nuclear weapons belonged to Russia and were leftovers.Ukraine returned the nuclear weapons back to Russia. They did not belong to Ukraine. That’s an inconvenient fact.”

Grenell’s comments come amid renewed statements by Ukrainian officials criticizing the country’s disarmament in the 1990s. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky recently told British journalist Piers Morgan that Ukraine was “forced” to give up its nuclear weapons and described the Budapest Memorandum as “stupid, illogical, and very irresponsible.” He argued that Kiev should now either be fast-tracked into NATO or given nuclear weapons and missile systems to counter Russia.

Retired US General Keith Kellogg, who serves as Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, dismissed the proposal. Speaking to Fox News Digital last month, Kellogg said, “The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none. Let’s be honest about it, we both know that’s not going to happen.”

Russia has repeatedly stated that Ukraine never possessed any nuclear weapons of its own, as the assets belonged to Moscow as the sole legal successor of the Soviet Union.

Russian officials also maintain that theBudapest Memorandum envisioned Ukraine’s neutral status, which has since been undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion and Kiev’s aspirations to join the bloc.

Moscow has cited Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO and its threat to obtain nuclear weapons as root causes for the Ukraine conflict. In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if Ukraine were to obtain nuclear weapons, Moscow would use “all the means of destruction at Russia’s disposal.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/614805-ukraine-never-had-nukes/