Trump’s Next Target In Dismantling The Censorship Complex Is CISA

By: Ben Weingarten April 23, 20251/2

The legislative branch must codify the administration’s policies to ensure a speech policing apparatus does not return under a future president.

In personnel and policy, the Trump administration has demonstrated a dogged devotion to dismantling and destroying the federal government-led censorship-industrial complex. One recent illustration is the State Department’s announcement that it has eliminated the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which censored The Federalist.

One week prior, the White House revealed another vital effort to disarm the speech police — targeting an arguably more pernicious actor than the GEC. In an April 9 memorandum, the president called on relevantofficials to revoke any active security clearance held by former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) chief Chris Krebsand toconsider suspending security clearances of those at his cybersecurity firm, SentinelOne.

Corporate media pounced on this development as part of a running feud between a president seeking vengeance and his virtuous insubordinate ex-subordinate,but there was far more significance to the memo.

President Donald Trump’s sanctions came in response to the former CISA director’s having “weaponized and abused his government authority” via his involvement in the censorship-industrial complex. Now he will be held to account by losing his access to America’s secrets.

But the president’s memo went still further. After detailing Krebs’ alleged malfeasance, Trump also tasked the attorney general and secretary of homeland securitywith investigating not only the ex-director for his activities as then-CISA chief, but CISA itself — going back six yearsand with a focus on “any instances where CISA’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149,” which prohibits the federal government from engaging in censorship efforts.

At the conclusion of that probe, the agency heads are to submit a report to the president “with recommendations for appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of Executive Order 14149.”

What makes this effort so significant?As the plaintiffs in the landmark Murthy v. Missouri case found, CISA was the “nerve center” of fed-led speech policing. In congressional testimony in part building on discovery in that case, I detailed how CISA had coordinated fed-led censorship efforts with Big Tech, flagged offending content for suppression, andhelped cultivate consortia of private-sector entities to serve as force-multiplying cutouts for laundering government censorship efforts.

Krebs’ Role in Censorship

Krebs was integral to these efforts. As the presidential memo details, he was involved in “the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic” and helping suppress conservative viewpoints “under… guise of combatting supposed disinformation,” including through pressuring social media platforms to do so. He also assisted domestic political interference through his sub-agencies’ “blind[ing of] the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop” and downplaying or “promot[ing] the censorship of election information” around “risks associated with certain voting practices” and “electionmalfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/trumps-next-target-in-dismantling-the-censorship-complex-is-cisa/

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Perhaps most notoriously, under Krebs, CISA helped stand up theoutsourced surveillance and censorship vehicle, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), with a quartet of outside actors including the Stanford Internet Observatory — then-led by Alex Stamos, former chief security officer for Facebook. After Krebs’ ouster from CISA, Stamos would launch a consultancy with Krebs that would then be bought by SentinelOne==.

The EIP, as I reported for RealClearInvestigations, targeted among others The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway for silencing due to content she shared concerning the 2020 election. It did so as part of a broader effort to pressure — alongside government — social media companies to expand their terms of service to suppress wide swaths of protected political speech skeptical of orthodoxy on election processes and outcomes; mass-surveil social media for offending content; and flag such content to social media companies for suppression. Those efforts resulted in the silencing of Americans in the heat of an election.

The president issued Executive Order 14149 prohibiting the federal government from engaging in such efforts. But it also calls for an investigation like that which the presidenthas demanded of CISA, to discover “misconduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Already, theTrump administration has laid off more than 100 CISA staffersincluding those tasked with liaising with local and state election officials.It is reportedly planning to remove civil service protections from the vast majority of remaining employees, while threatening to remove one-third of them.And it has cut CISA funding to entities involved in 2020 censorship-related efforts. The revocation of Krebs’ security clearance may well impose an economic cost on him. He has stepped away from his firm and vowed to fight the president.

An Accounting of the Censorship Regime

But a fulsome investigation may reveal more about the size, scope, and nature of the sub-agency’s efforts— including those it sought to obscure during the latter years of the Biden administration after its work in “mis-, dis-, and mal-information” began to receive scrutiny. Only with full transparency can we get to the accountability and deterrence the White House is seeking to ensure our First Amendment rights are not violated again going forward.

To date, no one has faced justice for imposing arguably the greatest censorship regime in U.S. history upon the American people.

The Trump administration in exposing that regime, curtailing its efforts, and pursuing policies to ensure it remains de-fanged — doing what it can where it must to defend free speech.

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The Supreme Court allowed a partly CISA-driven “whole-of-society” censorship dragnet to persist by failing to rule on the merits of the case against it in Murthy. Ultimately, the legislative branch must codify the administration’s policies to ensure the speech policing apparatus does not once again spring into action under a future president.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/trumps-next-target-in-dismantling-the-censorship-complex-is-cisa/

(I suggest that anyone that worked with EIP and Stanford Internet Observatory, including any researchers from Foreign Countries especially the UK, have all Federals clearances be removed and Stanford loses funding for intentionally hosting a group of Free Speech haters and how they were going to control the whole country and ultimately the world. Stanford a US University was fine with this, they should have shut it down.)

anons we need some funny Chris Krebs memes, like chain gangs or other enjoyable visionsHe and many others are truly fucked.

South Carolina’s Play To Nullify Tariffs In 1832 Failed Spectacularly. Newsom’s Will Too

By: Chuck DeVore April 23, 20251/2

Gavin Newsom is dusting off John C. Calhoun’s playbook from 1832, arguing his state can nullify federal law.

Oh, the irony!California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the gel-haired darling of the left,has decided to play President Andrew Jackson’s foilin a modern-day Nullification Crisis. His lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s tariffs — filed with all the fanfare of a Hollywood premiere — smacks ofSouth Carolina’s 1832 tantrum over federal tariffs. Back then, the Palmetto State tried to nullify federal law,claiming it could pick and choose which national policies applied.

Newsom, it seems, fancies himself a latter-day John C. Calhoun, strutting onto the national stage with a States’ Powers swagger.The only problem? He’s reading from a script debunked by history, law, and common sense.

Let’s rewind to1832. South Carolina, peeved over the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 — derisively called the “Tariff of Abominations” — declared them null and void within its borders. The state’s economy, tied to slave-driven cotton exports, chafed under duties that protected northern industry but raised costs for southern planters.

Calhoun, then vice president, penned theintellectual case for nullification, arguing states could override federal laws they deemed unconstitutional. Andrew Jackson called this treasonous nonsense. He issued a Proclamation of Force, threatening troops, and Congress passed a compromise tariff to cool the feud. South Carolina backed down, but the episode laid bare a dangerous question:Can states defy federal authority rooted in the Constitution? Gavin Newsom, on a different day, would say that the Civil War answered that one with a resounding “no.”

Fast forward to 2025, and enter Newsom, California’s self-anointed guardian of the “resistance.” On April 16, Newsom announced a lawsuit to halt Trump’s tariffs, which slap a 10 percent baseline on imports and far steeper levies on goods from China.Trump justifies these under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law granting presidents broad authority in national emergencies.

Newsom, flanked by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, claims the tariffs are “unlawful” and will wreak “chaos” on California’s economy — think higher prices for almonds, wine, and Hollywood flicks as other nations hike their tariffs in response. Sound familiar? Like South Carolina, California is griping about federal policy hitting its economic interests. Like Calhoun, Newsom is betting on state power to thwart Washington.

And like 1832, this is a clash over who gets to call the shots.

The parallels are uncanny, and the irony is thicker than a blanket of Sacramento Tule fog. Newsom, a Democrat who’s spent years preaching federal supremacy on everything from climate to immigration, now cloaks himself in the mantle of state sovereignty to dodge Trump’s trade agenda.

Let’s be clear: States don’t have rights; they have powers, delegated by the Constitution. Only people have rights, a truth the Founders etched into our framework.Newsom’s rhetoric, implying California can opt out of federal policy like some sovereign republic,misreads the Constitution as badly as Calhoun did. This is the same governor who has cheered federal overreach when it suits his progressive piety — think EPA mandates or Obamacare. Yet when Trump wields federal power to address trade deficits,Newsom cries foul, claiming California, the “world’s fifth-largest economy,”deserves special treatment. Newsom is dusting off Calhoun’s playbook, arguing his state can nullify federal law.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/south-carolinas-play-to-nullify-tariffs-in-1832-failed-spectacularly-newsoms-will-too/

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But let’s not kid ourselves. Newsom’s not just channeling South Carolina’s ghost.He’s auditioning for 2028.This lawsuit isn’t about protecting California’s farmers or tech bros; it’s about burnishing his anti-Trump credentials for a future presidential run. He’s been laying the groundwork for months, from begging foreign leaders to spare California from retaliatory tariffs to launching a tourism campaign to lure Canadians back to Napa Valley. Never mind that his own state is riddled with “rampant crime, homelessness, and unaffordability,” as a White House spokesperson pointed out. Newsom’s too busy playing global diplomat to fix the mess in his own backyard.

Here’s where the irony deepens. South Carolina’snullification gambit failed because the Constitution vests Congress with the power to regulate commerce (Article I, Section 8). The Supreme Court has upheld this for centuries, from Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) to modern cases. Newsom’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues Trump’s use of IEEPA exceeds his authority. Good luck with that. Courts have historically given presidents wide latitude under emergency powers, andTrump’s trade war is hardly the first time IEEPA’s been invoked. Newsom’s legal Hail Mary is less about winning in court and more about rallying the coastal elites who cheer his every anti-Trump jab.

And let’s talk about the Logan Act, shall we?Newsom’searlier stunt of cozying up to foreign governmentsto secure tariff exemptions for Californiaskirts dangerously close to violating this 1799 law, whichbars unauthorized citizens from meddling in U.S. foreign policy. If a conservative governor tried this, the media would scream “treason.” But Newsom gets a pass because, well, he’s the left’s poster boy. Imagine the headlines if Texas Gov. Greg Abbott negotiated trade deals with Mexico. The hypocrisy is staggering.

The Nullification Crisis of 1832 exposed the fragility of a Union in which states could cherry-pick federal laws. It took Jackson’s resolve and a compromise tariff to avert disaster. Today, Newsom’s tariff lawsuit risks reopening that wound, not because California will secede (don’t threaten us with a good time), but because it fuels a narrative of state defiance that undermines national unity.Trump’s tariffs may be bold, but they’re a federal prerogative, like it or not.

Newsom’s grandstanding, like South Carolina’s, is a losing bet. The Constitution hasn’t changed, and neither has the lesson:States don’t get to nullify federal law, no matter how much their governors crave the spotlight.

So, here’s to Gavin Newsom, California’s would-be Calhoun, tilting at windmills while his state’s problems fester. The Nullification Crisis ended with South Carolina eating crow. Newsom might want to study that history before his lawsuit crashes and burns.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/south-carolinas-play-to-nullify-tariffs-in-1832-failed-spectacularly-newsoms-will-too/

(CA should get all Federal grants and money frozen until they can investigate where Newsom and the state are spending the Federal money. They can’t even pass an audit, like ever, so it wouldn’t be surprising if CA is using that money to sue and make problems for the government, paid by the American people. Freeze the Federal funding until they learn accounting adjudication.)

DC Courts Are Such A Mess Because Leftist Judges, Not POTUS, Pick Their Colleagues

Zack Smith April 23, 20251/2

Fixing the broken D.C. judicial appointment process is straightforward: Replace it with the process that already exists for nominating, confirming, and appointing every Article III federal judge.

Should sitting judges — especially the controversial James Boasberg and Tanya Chutkan — be able to tell the president what other judges he can appoint?Of course not. But under the current system for selecting D.C.’s local judges, that’s exactly what happens.

It’s bad enough that those challenging Trump administration policies have sought to bring their cases before D.C. federal judges like those mentioned above, who they believe will be inclined to rule against the administration — especially on hot button issues like abortion, immigration, government spending, and trans-identifying individuals in the military, just to name a few.But what’s worse is that those same judges have been empowered to help select other judges who are likely to have the same radically different(and sometimes dangerous) view of their judicial role —regardless of the wishes of the sitting president.

Here’s the backstory: For most of our nation’s history, the president appointed District of Columbia judges via the familiar systemoutlined in the Constitution. When a vacancy occurred, the president would nominate a replacement and appoint that person once confirmed by the Senate.

But starting in 1973 (and slightly before), with the advent of D.C.’s “Home Rule,” Congress radically altered not only the structure and jurisdiction of the district’s courts but also the method by which their judges were selected.Congress ostensibly enacted these “reforms” to give local leaders a greater say in who sat on D.C.’s newly created courtsand to make the process “nonpartisan” and “apolitical.”

But we know that selecting judges is an inherently political exercise. And in practice, any impartial observer would have to admit that the current system has loaded the dice to make it impossible for any constitutionally conservative judge to make it onto the bench.

In a constitutionally questionable move,Congress stripped the president of the ability to nominate his preferred candidate to take the bench. And instead, Congress created a systemwhere anyone who wants to serve as a judgeon D.C.’s “local” courts must firstapply to a statutorily mandated “Judicial Nominating Commission.”

The JNC is comprised of seven members, one of whom the president selects, while D.C.’s mayor and D.C.’s bar (itself an organ of D.C.’s local courts) each select two members. D.C.’s council selects one member too.

Even more bizarrely, the chief judgeof the district’s “federal” court appoints a sitting federal judge “serving in the District” to serve as the final member of the JNC.

This means that these judges are selecting other judges!Of the applicants it reviews, the JNC must select three candidates to fill each vacancy and then forward those candidates’ names to the president.

But here’s where things get even crazier: If the president refuses to nominate one of the three JNC-recommended individualswithin 60 daysof receiving their names, thenthe JNC itself can pick someone, nominate that person, and appoint (after Senate confirmation) that person to serve on the court.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/dc-courts-are-such-a-mess-because-leftist-judges-not-potus-pick-their-colleagues/

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No wonder D.C. Circuit Court JudgeLaurence Silberman (with agreement by D.C. Circuit Court Judge Greg Katsas) questioned the propriety of sitting federal judges essentially picking other judges. It’s inherently political and an ethical quagmire.

Moreover,it’s forbidden by judicial ethicsin other similar circumstances: For instance, federal judges cannot serve on a state’s JNC to help select that state’s judges because of the inherently political nature of that activity. And the same is true here.

Though other judges have so far declined to recommend disciplinary action against the individual federal judge selected to serve on D.C.’s JNC,the selection system is clearly flawed— a fact seen in the dynamic among the current political players involved in the process (never mind that judges aren’t supposed to be political players).

Take, for instance, the fact that under the present system, Chief Judge James Boasberg gets to appoint the D.C. federal judge to sit on the JNC. And Judge Tanya Chutkan, in fact, currently fills that role.

President Trump has previously criticized both of those judges, and both have ruled against his administration for various actions. Chutkan even presided over one of the cases Special Counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump. As if that weren’t enough, then-President Barack Obama, one of Trump’s political and ideological opponents, appointed both to their current positions.

Should these judges really get to tell the current president what other judges he can appoint?Hardly. But under the current system, they can and do.

This problematic appointment system raisesserious questions(among others)about whether it impinges on the president’s Article II appointment power.

But even setting aside the constitutional concerns,the current system isn’t working wellas a practical matter.

Unease about the system has slowed the confirmation process. This reality has left two vacancies on D.C.’s highest appellate court and twelve vacancies on D.C.’s trial court. By all accounts, the courts could use the help of these additional judges to move through the backlog of existing cases and the additional cases — often involving those accused of committing violent crimes — that will be brought.

Fixing the broken D.C. judicial appointment process is straightforward:

• Replace it with the process that already exists for nominating, confirming, and appointing every Article III federal judge.

• The president — and the president alone — should get to select his preferred nominees.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/dc-courts-are-such-a-mess-because-leftist-judges-not-potus-pick-their-colleagues/

(Why hasn’t Congress dealt with this at all, surely the must know that those changes in 1973 ruined the courts? They run around thinking of little changes to threaten them with.WTF don’t all those Attorneysin Congress and Senate bring this up?We know why, it fulfills their political power to tear apart the Presidency.)

Zack Smith is a senior legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

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Vance proceeds to pour his troops a beer, followed by a photo opp

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'You're an important part of how we project power overseas'

JD Vance at Ramstein air base, Germany

Only the US can project power?

10:30 AM · Apr 24, 2025

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BOTH VIDEOS COMBINED AND ATTACHED

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