(Daily Signal)—I’m here in California. I’ve been a lifelong resident of the state, fifth generation to live in the same house. I had a house in the Sierra, and it would almost burn down three years ago during the Aspen Fire, and I’m speaking on the evening when you’ve all heard about the disastrous fire in Los Angeles.

As I’m speaking on a Wednesday night, there have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed. Nobody knows how many people are killed or missing. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.

But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that the severity didn’t have to be as catastrophic. So, I would characterize it as a DEI–Green New Deal hydrogen bomb. It’s something out of “Dante’s Inferno.”

And what I mean by that is, it’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.

He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.

California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it.

We don’t clean the forest. We don’t let loggers come in and have a viable livelihood by harvesting trees. It’s sort of considered natural to let these things burn or to at least create the conditions in which they will inevitably be burned.

It’s almost as if we don’t like humans. We worry about grubs and worms and birds and the ecosystem.

The second breakdown was the mayor, Karen Bass, was in Africa. You tell me why the mayor of the third-largest city in the United States at fire season, when she had been warned and warned for days on end that the Santa Ana winds were up to 100 miles an hour in the evening, and there was a danger of fire, and she goes off to Africa for the inauguration of the president of Ghana.

With all due respect, Mayor, but who cares? You have an obligation to the 6 million people of greater Los Angeles. And then we have the fire chief. I don’t really care that she’s LGBTQ, I don’t care [about] any of that. All I do care is her emphases. She’s been bragging for the last two years that her goal was to make sure [the Fire Department] was diverse and inclusive.

That can be good if it’s competent. But when you announce that 70% of your hiring will not be meritocratic, but will be based on diversity, equity, inclusion, then you’re not putting the interest of your constituents first.

There were not even enough, there wasn’t enough water pressure in Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades is not where I live. It’s one of the wealthiest, most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States. If they don’t have water, then no one’s going to get water, believe me.

There’s not enough insurance. There were famous actors that didn’t have insurance. Why? Because industry is overregulated, it’s fraught with people who make fraudulent claims, and the insurance industry knows that California is hostile to it, but more importantly that it will never clean up its forest or take preventive, time-tried, ancient protocols to lessen the dangers of fire.

And so put it all together, whether it’s a deliberate policy to not store water, not preserve water. Last year was one of the wettest years that we’ve had. We’ve had three out of the last four years have been very wet. We had a huge snowpack. We had rivers that were running in 19th-century fashion, but out to the sea to save the delta smelt.

So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.

Gavin Newsom was fiddling, as he’s almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable, this system’s breakdown.

And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19^th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and defarming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.

So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property.

And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion. And Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport, back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport: “Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department?”

They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine’s first responders, and she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn’t say anything.

I don’t want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we’re not in parts already.

Eighteen registered Democrats in Connecticut, all over the age of 70, appear to have donated $1.9 million to Democratic causes, including ActBlue, through hundreds of thousands of small donations from 2016 to 2024, according to a review of Federal Election Commission filings by Dominic Rapini, cybersecurity company CEO and a former Connecticut Republican candidate for office.

Curious about the donation patterns, Rapini tracked down some of the Connecticut residents and asked them if they really did make thousands of small donations, sometimes multiple in a day, through ActBlue.

Several of the supposed donors told Rapini they did not make any of the reported donations, nor did they know anything about how their names were being used, Rapini told The Daily Signal.

An 88-year-old retired Yale University professor, for example, supposedly made 7,539 donations for a total of $213,163, according to FEC records. After Rapini informed him about the significant donations in his name, he signed an affidavit saying, “I believe this does not reflect my donation frequency or dollars I have donated.”

According to Rapini, who has analyzed numbers for three decades in the tech industry, this is a possible case of alleged identity theft and money laundering. A contribution made by one person in the name of another is illegal.

“When I examine the donation patterns tied to these alleged ‘smurfs,’ the irregularities jump off the page, revealing behavior that defies both human logic and common sense,” he told The Daily Signal. “To safeguard trust in our election process, we must confront these anomalies head-on.”

Rep. Brian Steil, R-Wis., chairman of the House Administration Committee, told The Daily Signal he’s aware of similar reports from across the country.

“In response, last fall, I shared the findings of our investigation with several state attorneys general,” Steil said in an emailed statement. “The committee and I remain fully available to collaborate with any state law enforcement officials who wish to access the information we have gathered on this critical issue.”

An elderly acupuncturist and registered Democrat appears to have made 17 donations in 2022 through ActBlue totaling $317. In an email to Rapini, she promised she hasn’t made political contributions since 2016.

“I can promise you I have NOT made donations myself to the [Democratic National Committee] or Democratic local party since 2016 … ,” she said. “Anything past that are fake and/or manipulated donations.”

A 91-year-old woman appears to have made 2,591 donations totaling $41,000, according to FEC filings. She signed an affidavit with Rapini denying making the reported donations.

Another 75-year-old woman looks to have made 4,270 small donations adding up to $32,323. She too signed an affidavit with Rapini denying making the donations in this frequency or quantity.

ActBlue is currently under congressional investigation for alleged laundering of foreign money laundering.

ActBlue came under fire on Oct. 29 because of its donor-verification policies. In a letter that day to ActBlue, Steil said foreign actors from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China could use the platform to launder illicit money for use in U.S. political campaigns.

The Democratic fundraising platform admitted in 2023 to Steil that it didn’t require contributors to use a card verification value, or CVV, to donate on its website with a credit card. Those security codes are meant to ensure that the person making a purchase physically possesses the credit card.

ActBlue responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the affidavits by referring The Daily Signal to a post on its blog, which says, “Because of how reporting works for intermediaries, contributions made on platforms like ours often show up more than once in public FEC records, because both ActBlue and the receiving campaign or committee must report the contributions.

“FEC rules require ActBlue to itemize every contribution made through its platform, regardless of amount,” the post says.

“Additionally, FEC reports often lump multiple donors with the same name together,” the post continues. “This can make it difficult to easily identify which contributions should be associated with each individual donor, especially donors with common names.”

Rapini said whether the suspicious donation patterns come from “sloppy data systems at the FEC” or “nefarious actors laundering money through unsuspecting elderly donors,” an investigation is needed.

“Transparency and accountability are nonnegotiable when it comes to protecting the integrity of our democracy,” he said.

During a recent visit to Washington, D.C., Bowman visited The Daily Signal to share the incredible tale of Francisco’s life: from his mysterious beginnings in the Azores, to his kidnapping by pirates and arrival on Virginia’s shores, to becoming a 6’6″ towering figure in America’s fight for independence.

Upon arriving in Virginia, Francisco was taken in by Patrick Henry’s uncle, Judge Anthony Winston in Buckingham County, working as an indentured servant. He would later grow to become such a formidable warrior that Gen. George Washington had a special 6-foot broadsword forged for him.

Recalling stories of his famous ancestor, Bowman discusses Francisco’s legendary feats, including the famous Battle of Guilford Courthouse, where his prowess in combat is commemorated by a monument to this day.

Today, Francisco’s legacy lives on through seven monuments, state holidays, and even a 1976 bicentennial stamp. He’s also the main character of historical novel “Luso: For Love, Liberty and Legacy.”

With America’s 250th anniversary on the horizon in 2026, Bowman shares plans for a nine-episode miniseries based on his novel that aims to bring this Revolutionary War story to the screen.

By trying—and, fortunately, failing—to convict Penny in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless drug addict with a long rap sheet who yelled out, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail,” before being subdued, New York authorities signaled that they are more committed to social justice than genuine justice.

Violent criminals who have committed their lives to villainy will be given endless second, third, fourth, and 37th chances. They are victims of oppression, racism, and societal transgressions, according to the Left.

But if a good man individually steps in to help others in a moment of crisis, he will be punished. So, good men, if they are around at all, do nothing.

Like clockwork, several new violent and horrifying incidents took place on the New York City subway in the days before Christmas. One made national headlines.

On Sunday morning, a woman was lit on fire by an assailant while apparently sleeping on the F train. She later died from her injuries. A few viral videos emerged from the incident showing the woman being consumed by fire while the suspect in the attack literally fans the flames.

I won’t link to the videos here. You can find them yourself if you wish, but be warned, they are disturbing.

The videographers provided commentary, but no aid. In fact, nobody seemed to be doing anything to help the woman. In one of the videos, a police officer appeared to be standing near the burning victim, but made no attempt to rescue her from the fire.

The New York Police Department said the officer’s behavior was correct protocol, but it’s hard to imagine watching calmly as someone burns to death.

To make the incident even more heinous, the arson suspect is a 33-year-old illegal alien, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil. He had been staying at the Days Inn hotel on 36th Street, one of the city’s numerous taxpayer-funded “migrant” shelters.

Zapeta-Calil illegally crossed the U.S. southern border in 2018 before being deported by the Trump administration. He had since made his way back into the country.

Yet, somehow, this wasn’t the only serious incident in the past week.

On Christmas Eve, two people were stabbed at Grand Central Station.

The suspect, identified by police as 28-year-old Brooklyn native Jason Sargeant, began repeatedly yelling at a female victim, “What’s your problem?” He is said to have then lunged at her and slashed the 26-year-old’s throat.

“I wish I could be able to travel to my livelihood and not be attacked,” the victim said, The New York Post reported. “I wish there were cops in Grand Central when I was attacked. There were none. I was running for help, and there was no one there.”

She further said that no passersby even called 9-1-1, and that it was her neighbor who she was on a FaceTime call with when the attack happened who made that call.

These incidents are prime examples of why the “crime is actually plummeting” narrative we’ve heard from the media the past few years isn’t being bought by the public. There may be city and FBI data that show statistical declines in some crimes since it began skyrocketing in 2020, but our cities still feel chaotic, and these incidents are too frequent to be just random chance.

“The immolation was the 11th subway murder in New York City this year, surpassing this century’s high point of 10 in 2022,” the City Journal’s crime expert, Rafael Mangual, wrote on Monday. “Between 2000 and 2019, the NYC subways saw an average of 2.2 murders per year. Since 2020, the city has averaged eight murders a year—a nearly fourfold increase—despite significantly lower ridership, which means that the risk of such incidents is even higher than the raw numbers suggest.”

Somehow, tone-deaf Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on social media just hours after the subway immolation, celebrating how she had made the subway safe and increased ridership.

Two hours ago, Kathy Hochul took a victory lap for making subways “safer.” She congratulates herself on the same day two subway riders were stabbed in Queens (one in the face and one in the chest) and another was barbarically burned alive.

Has there ever been a more tone-deaf… pic.twitter.com/KIPujqpKa3

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 22, 2024

Incredible.

The party of Big Government doesn’t want to actually govern; it merely wants to rule. Its members insist on lecturing, coasting on vibes, and handing over policymaking to their ideologically fanatical activist class that thinks men can be women, no person is illegal, and criminals are the real victims.

The Regime says all is well: “Don’t trust your instincts or your lying eyes.” It has dubious government-approved (and later stealth-edited) stats and selfies to prove us wrong.

Yet, Americans can find plenty of evidence on social media and in their own lives that proves the entire lot of farcical, force-fed narratives to be bunk. Penny’s story resonated because, when a decent man had to intervene because of the failure of authorities to deal with street crime, those same authorities tried to turn him into the villain.

Now, everyone is paying the price because the justice system turned justice on its head.

Americans—even many New Yorkers—want the chaos and crime to stop. They want order restored. They don’t want to hear about illegal aliens killing subway riders and young girls. They don’t want to live in fear while commuting to work or going on a jog or visiting friends in the city.

Maybe now, as the evidence of failure becomes undeniable, something will change.

“This is going against the rule of law and against the will of the American people” who elected Trump, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Allison Huynh says of Newsom’s plans.

Democrats in California have “romanticized” sanctuary cities, illegal aliens, and even crime, says Huynh, a former Obama fundraiser and Democrat.

“We’re just opening the gate and allowing all these illegal immigrants to come in, a lot of criminals, drug dealers, and it’s all funded by George Soros and the cartels,” she says, referring to the Hungarian-American investor, liberal political activist, and donor.

Soros-financed candidates for district attorney, considered soft on crime, have won election in cities in California and other states. […]

— Read More: www.dailysignal.com

He released millions of illegal aliens at the border, paroled over a million more using programs Congress never authorized, and allowed at least 2 million more to evade the Border Patrol.

That resulted in the fastest illegal influx in U.S. history. The foreign-born population now exceeds the previous high from the 1890s—over 15%.

The legacy media did its best to hide all this, habitually “gaslighting” their audience—telling many smaller lies in the hopes that eventually people will believe one big lie.

The big lie Biden and his media allies told America is that open borders bring unmitigated good. To prepare the public to swallow this, they told many little lies.

1. They Pretended Legal and Illegal Immigration Are the Same

They aren’t. Congress authorized around 850,000 legal immigrants a year, based on family relationships and labor needs. The millions Biden has paroled, released, or given “temporary” protection to under dubious programs are outside what Congress intended. And unless Congress changes it, the law should be upheld.

2. They Said Illegal Aliens Commit Fewer Crimes Than Americans

The methodology of studies claiming this is suspect, but we know some illegal aliens do commit additional crimes, every one of which is preventable if laws are enforced. One report estimates that “crime by illegal aliens … cost the country some $166.5 billion.” But the cost in victims assaulted or murdered, and a declining sense of public safety, is incalculable.

3. They Told You That All Immigrants Boost the Economy

Which ones? Those under 30 with doctorates in rocket science do. But those without a high school degree, skills, or English don’t. Almost 60% of families headed by an illegal immigrant are on a federal welfare program. Illegal aliens are less educated than U.S. citizens. Over their lifetimes, most of those let in under Biden’s border boom will be a fiscal burden to the country, not a benefit.

4. They Told You Illegal Immigrants Cost Nothing

According to one congressional estimate, illegal immigrants cost over $150 billion a year. To take but one example, the Biden administration wrote a rule forcing Americans to pay for health insurance for people here illegally. “Congress never intended that illegal aliens should receive Obamacare benefits,” said Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, after a federal court overturned Biden’s rule this week.

5. They Told You It Was Inevitable

While the Biden administration undid every effective policy of previous eras, it asked you to believe that mass illegal migration wasn’t its fault. But it was not earthquakes, wars, or feckless governments that attracted the world’s economic migrants to our borders. This week, even The New York Times admitted: “The Biden administration’s policy appears to have been the biggest factor.”

Some of us have been saying that for years. But the legacy media only turned the lights back up when their favorite team lost an election.

The people elected Donald Trump to fix Biden’s mistake. How? The recipe is clear, and with Tom Homan as border czar, the cook is in the kitchen.

1. Reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols

Also known as “Remain in Mexico,” this policy discourages fraudulent asylum claims by keeping applicants outside the U.S. until their claims are decided. We also need to conclude Asylum Cooperative Agreements with every possible country, to deal with refugee claimants closest to their homes.

2. Turn Off the Cash Spigot

Mass movement of people from the Third World to the First is facilitated by the U.N. and globalist elites—elected and unelected. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to bring inadmissible aliens to and into the U.S. We can reverse the polarity of this flow by defunding nongovernmental organizations that facilitate the process and by funding law enforcement.

3. Seal the Border

Authorize Border Patrol to remove or detain illegal entrants, not process and release them. Re-activate lights, sensors, and other measures Biden’s Department of Homeland Security sidelined. Close gaps in the border wall. Barriers don’t stop everyone, but they channel illegal crossing to ports of entry. And, given that both sides of the wall are generally in the United States, we can prosecute anyone cutting or climbing it.

4. Enforce Laws in the US Interior

The Biden administration hamstrung Immigration and Customs Enforcement with prohibitions, arbitrary limits, and paperwork. Biden’s dereliction of duty has created a huge backlog in enforcement, including deportations, that needs a major effort to reduce.

5. Get States on Board

States and cities need to hand over illegal aliens in their custody to federal authorities when asked. They need to stop giving out jobs, driver’s licenses, in-state tuition, welfare, and other benefits to people here illegally.

Biden broke the border. America saw the results and voted accordingly. It’s time to restore the rule of law, the value of American citizenship, and legal immigration that puts Americans first.

As Trump staffs up for a second term, the bureaucrats have hatched at least three strategies to oppose him: returning to the left-wing nonprofit sphere to act as a government-in-waiting; passing new regulations to cement their ideology into the rules before Trump can reverse them; and burrowing into the bureaucracy to oppose him from within, the same way they did during his first term.

Trump will enter office Jan. 20 with a mandate to drain the swamp, but the swamp is working overtime to clog up the drains while it still can.

Here’s how the swamp is fighting back to defend its bureaucracy.

1. The Revolving Door

Trump has vowed to carry out a mass deportation of illegal aliens, but it is often better for aliens to “deport” themselves by leaving the country on their own terms. Similarly, some woke bureaucrats in the administrative state have begun the process of self-deportation, electing to depart the Biden-Harris administration on their own terms before Trump forces them out of government.

Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the Bureau of Land Management, is getting the heck out of Dodge. She’ll be taking over as president of The Wilderness Society in February.

The Wilderness Society, like so many other environmentalist groups, began with the noble goal of conservation, but has since become a woke activist group that opposes fossil fuels and supports “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI.

As I explain in my forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” Stone-Manning is already well familiar with the environmental activism sphere. She spent four years at the National Wildlife Federation before joining the Biden-Harris administration.

The National Wildlife Federation has worked hand in glove with the federal bureaucracy. In 2009, the Interior Department (which includes the Bureau of Land Management) found that the Bureau of Land Management was consulting with National Wildlife Federation staff on budgeting and that the staff were writing and editing official BLM materials to promote the federation’s priorities.

“We’re honored that some of our team members have served in and gone on to serve in essential state, local, and federal roles, including in Democratic and Republican administrations,” Mike Saccone, the federation’s vice president of communications, told me in remarks for the book.

Of course, The Wilderness Society also wanted a cut of the action. The Functional Government Initiative revealed in 2023 that Wilderness Society lobbyists brainstormed “legal and policy pathways” with Interior Department lawyers regarding the Twin Metals project in Minnesota. Interior later canceled leases owned by Twin Metals Minnesota, terminating a critical minerals project, as The Wilderness Society had demanded.

Stone-Manning, who notoriously wrote a threatening letter on behalf of tree-striking eco-terrorists, represents the first Biden-Harris administration official to leave in the lead-up to Jan. 20, but she won’t be the last.

2. ‘Trump-Proofing’ the Bureaucracy

Even before Trump won the 2024 presidential election, bureaucrats had been gearing up to “Trump-proof” the administrative state.

In April, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule that will make it harder for Trump to reinstate his “Schedule F” executive order—an order that would have made it easier for the president to fire certain bureaucrats.

Public sector unions have also schemed with bureaucrats to tie Trump’s hands ahead of time.

The Environmental Protection Agency and its employees’ unions signed a collective bargaining agreement in May that created mechanisms for employees to report any other employee whom they deem to have had “improper influence” on a scientific study.

Public sector unions may also be working to extend collective bargaining agreements to preserve certain perks, like working remotely.

I’m hearing via allies that federal government unions are scrambling to update their collective bargaining agreements to avoid getting fired. The prospect of being asked to return to the office 5 days per week like most working Americans apparently has them “in tears.”

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 18, 2024

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work, creating a scientific integrity council to review any such cases, Politico reported.

Of course, “political meddling” is in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives rightly consider Chicken Little climate warnings (the burning of fossil fuels will bring about the end of the world) a form of political meddling in science.

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats who staff these agencies would likely consider any attempt to dial down the doomsday rhetoric a form of “political meddling,” even though the American people selected Trump, who ran on a platform of unleashing all forms of energy production, including fossil fuels.

The organization Protect the Public’s Trust has compiled a list of at least a dozen breaches of scientific integrity under the Biden administration.

Although Biden issued a Scientific Integrity Memorandum early in office, claiming that “[s]cientific findings should never be distorted or influenced by political considerations,” his Office of Science and Technology Policy “formally recognized” “indigenous knowledge” as “one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States.”

Federal agencies “do not need to judge, validate, or evaluate Indigenous Knowledge using other forms of knowledge in order to include Indigenous Knowledge in Federal policy, research, or decision making,” Biden’s science office said.

3. Retrenchment

Of course, many bureaucrats will simply refuse to leave.

While some federal bureaucrats are already looking for other work, many are feverishly working to protect their jobs ahead of the Trump purge, The Washington Post reported.

Bureaucrats have started scrubbing social media and even changing their job titles in an effort to preserve their woke functions in the coming new Trump administration.

Some agencies are reclassifying jobs with “titles that could clash with Trump’s agenda, especially those promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, boosting environmental justice and fighting the effects of climate change,” the Post reports.

In other words, the Environmental Protection Agency is working to reclassify the climate activist and purveyor of critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist against black people) who got hired to further “environmental justice,” to hide the real reason he has a job.

This will prevent the Trump administration from identifying woke activists and rooting them out, thus enabling these activists to undermine Trump’s agenda from within.

Given how vociferously the deep state fought the first Trump administration, leaking to the press and helping to launch the Trump-Russia probe and the first impeachment, Trump’s second administration must take the threats of entrenched bureaucrats quite seriously.

I humbly suggest that my book, “The Woketopus,” is a good place to start. It lays out many of the woke nonprofits that staff and advise the administrative state, bankrolled by the likes of Alex Soros and his Open Society Foundations.

This vast network should serve as a tool in identifying the worst offenders who seek to turn the federal government into a tool for the woke agenda.

From confirming progressive judges, to constraining American energy with environmental red tape, to simply spending every last unjustified dollar, the Biden-Harris administration is committed to ensuring its policies carry on into the second Trump administration for as long as possible.

“It comes [down to] setting land mines and making it more difficult for the incoming administration to reverse those changes,” Cato Institute policy analyst Tad DeHaven told The Washington Times. “It matters or else they wouldn’t be doing it.”

The American people have decisively rejected the Biden-Harris agenda. So, naturally, the administration has responded by forcing its agenda upon Americans even harder, right down to Donald Trump‘s inauguration Jan. 20.

1. Employees

Across the bureaucracy, career government employees are lining up lawyers and setting up to lobby against mass firings, reports The Washington Times.

At the end of Trump’s first term, by executive order he created a new class of federal workers (Schedule F) which would be easier to hire and fire. The Biden-Harris administration undid Trump’s change, and now the bureaucracy is afraid Trump might reinstitute it.

Employees in two divisions of the Justice Department are also rushing to unionize, according to the Times. This would make it more difficult to fire them.

It also provokes the question, why? Shouldn’t their unimpeachable integrity and relentless pursuit of nonpartisan justice be enough to protect their positions?

2. Rulemaking

While executive branch employees rush to protect their jobs, executive branch agencies rush to protect their progressive policies. For instance, the Department of Education is rushing to finalize a proposed rule canceling student loans for people with “financial hardships,” which it previously expected to finish in 2025.

Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency have been particularly busy. They announced $3 billion in grants to facilitate a rule that requires local municipalities to replace lead pipes within 10 years. They finalized a rule Nov. 12 to fine oil and gas companies for “wasteful methane emissions.”

EPA regulators are also rushing to impose penalties and reach settlements with companies accused of violating their environmental regulations. They plan to grant California a waiver to enforce its rule banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.

Meanwhile, bureaucrats in the Department of Energy are hurrying to complete a study on liquified natural gas exports that is expected to conclude that they’re not “consistent with the public interest” because of their climate impact, The Washington Post reported.

This won’t directly stop the Trump-Vance administration from restoring America’s energy exports, but could help fossil fuel opponents challenge the new administration in court.

“Biden’s decision on LNG [liquid natural gas] is the most consequential thing he can do on climate and fossil fuels before Trump takes office,” declared Fossil Free Media spokeswoman Cassidy DiPaola.

Other environmental rules the Biden-Harris administration is rushing to finalize include “narrowing the scope of an oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” “restricting drilling, mining, and livestock grazing across nearly 65 million acres … to save an imperiled bird,” and “finaliz[ing] three rules restricting the release of toxic chemicals.”

“From what we can tell, they’ve done a very good job lining this stuff up, so there’s not a whole lot at risk of getting punted into the next administration,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities. “I think everyone learned that lesson in 2016.”

The flurry of administrative rulemaking aimed to meet a late-November deadline that marked 60 days from Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Rules finalized within 60 days of Trump taking office are subject to the Congressional Review Act, which means that the incoming Republican majority could block them with Trump’s approval.

3. Judges

Another area requiring cooperation between the Biden-Harris administration and Congress is judicial appointments. Senate Democrats are hurrying to confirm Biden-nominated judges to the federal bench, leaving few slots open for Trump to fill.

Positions in the federal judiciary, which are tenured for life, are officially not partisan, but it is generally acknowledged that judges appointed by Democratic presidents tend to lean more progressive, while appointees by Republican presidents tend to lean more conservative.

This means that the federal judges Biden can get through a lame-duck, Democrat-controlled Senate in the final days of his administration will likely look favorably on his progressive policies.

Before the Senate left for Thanksgiving break, Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise deal to vote on as many as 14 Biden nominees for district court appointments, but not to vote on four appellate court nominations.

4. Spending

The Biden-Harris administration is also hurrying to spend the remaining money allocated by Congress’ stimulus spending in 2021-2022, so that it won’t be available to the Trump-Vance administration.

The Washington Times’ reporting cites unnamed officials who plan to spend the remaining $46 billion available in fiscal year 2025, which ends next Sept. 30.

5. Foreign Policy

The Biden-Harris administration is also spending its lame-duck session making major foreign policy moves—which it declined or refused to make earlier—in hopes of constraining Trump’s diplomatic options.

Biden is trying to spend $6.4 billion in aid for Ukraine—funds Congress allocated in April but have not been spent—and cancel $4.65 billion in debt owed by Ukraine to the U.S. Also, Biden permitted Ukraine to fire longer-range missiles into Russia, provoking further Russian escalation.

NPR reported that the Biden-Harris administration is working hard to finalize another major loan to Ukraine through NATO, before Inauguration Day.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the administration pressured Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hezbollah before Trump takes office.

Why It Matters

The Biden-Harris administration is hoping to outfox the incoming Trump-Vance administration in a high-stakes, bureaucratic game of hot potato. Every time the White House changes hands, the incoming administration seeks to undo the rules adopted by its predecessors.

Thus, in 2021, the Biden-Harris administration reversed administrative actions taken by the outgoing Trump-Pence administration, just as the new Trump-Pence administration, in 2017, had reversed policy moves made by the Obama-Biden administration.

This back-and-forth has gone on at least since President Bill Clinton reversed President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, but it has recently expanded to cover an ever-growing number of issues.

“It’s unfortunate but expected that [Biden officials] will try to throw as many roadblocks at what President-elect Trump has pledged to do,” Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told the Post.

The reason why competing administrations play increasingly critical games of bureaucratic football is that they realize the legislative branch lacks either the ability or the will to stop them. And the sad truth of the matter is that progressives—with greater buy-in from employees of the executive branch and greater faith in the government’s problem-solving capabilities—are usually better at playing the game than conservatives.

To the extent that there is a “Deep State” in “The Swamp,” this is it.

Ordinary Americans don’t spend their lives obsessing over politics, except for occasionally wondering why voting for good people never seems to produce the desired results. In my conservative opinion, the answer resides not in electoral results but in the long-term executive and judicial strategies that round out our system of checks and balances (currently tilted in favor of the executive branch).

This is why bureaucratic maneuvering like these by the Biden-Harris administration matter. When Trump takes the keys and slides behind the wheel on Jan. 20, the success of his whole second administration will depend on how quickly he can take America from zero to 60.

This question—and particularly Trump’s first 100 days—will set the momentum for the next four years. And this question depends on how adroitly his deputies can remove these roadblocks thrown in their path by the Biden-Harris administration.

If Trump wants to return America to the prosperous, cruising state of 2019, he must undo four years of rulemaking by the Biden-Harris administration, and he has only four years to do so.

Can his bureaucracy work faster than Biden’s? We’ll soon find out.

Originally published by The Washington Stand

Tennessee’s SB1 bans medical procedures on minors for the purpose of “enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or “treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the parents of minors who claim to identify as the opposite sex and claim to have benefited from these procedures, sued to block the law, and the Biden administration joined the lawsuit on the ACLU’s side.

The plaintiffs claim that SB1 violates federal law by discriminating against minors who identify as transgender, denying to them the same treatments that would be allowed for minors who do not so identify.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Tennessee’s law, finding that it doesn’t entail discrimination. The U.S. and the ACLU appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio—a male who says he identifies as female—argued the case before the court Wednesday, as did Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice.

Prelogar, Strangio, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of President Joe Biden, twisted the truth on “gender-affirming care” in at least five ways.

1. ‘Puberty blockers’ are reversible

“Critically, puberty blockers have no effect, in and of themselves, on fertility, so I don’t think that concern can justify the ban on puberty blockers, which is just pressing pause on someone’s endogenous puberty to give them more time to understand their identity,” Prelogar argued.

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved GnRH agonists, which stands for “Gonadatropin-releasing hormone agonists,” for the treatment of gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite one’s biological sex) in children. GnRH agonists prevent the natural release of testosterone and estrogen that initiate puberty.

David Gortler, a pharmacologist and pharmacist who previously was a senior adviser to the FDA commissioner on policy and drug safety, previously told The Daily Signal that physicians developed GnRH agonists to help treat certain cancers that depend on estrogen or testosterone.

Endocrinologists—doctors who specialize in the hormone-regulating endocrine system—have testified to the harms these drugs can cause. Dr. Paul Hruz, an endocrinology researcher and clinician at Washington University School of Medicine, wrote that after “an extended period of pubertal suppression,” patients can’t “turn back the clock” and “reverse changes in the normal coordinated pattern of adolescent psychological development and puberty.”

Dr. Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist from the United Kingdom, explained that the effects of certain chemicals on the human brain aren’t well known, and that current science does not support “puberty blockers” for adolescents.

“As puberty is associated with very marked changes in the structure of the brain … the use of puberty blockers may have serious consequences for the development of the human brain,” Scott warned. Studies in sheep and young girls suggest that these drugs affect the size of the amygdala. Male sheep treated with the drugs showed “more risk-taking behaviors,” while treated female sheep “showed higher levels of anxiety and greater avoidance behavior.” Girls treated with the drug also showed “significant greater emotional reactivity” and “lower heart rates.” They also scored lower on IQ tests after taking the drugs.

PANTS ON FIRE

U.S. SG Elizabeth Prelogar repeatedly lies about "gender-affirming care."

1⃣She claims "puberty blockers" are fully reversible: They are "just pressing pause."

2⃣She acknowledges that cross-sex hormones can affect fertility but suggests that kids can be… pic.twitter.com/MFwrO02Bdz

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

2. Suicidality

Strangio, the ACLU lawyer, claimed that it is “clearly established in the science and in the record” that “the medications in question reduce the risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidality, which are all indicators of potential suicide.” (Suicidality refers to the condition of contemplating suicide.) The lawyer admitted that there is no evidence “that this treatment reduces completed suicide” because “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.”

Yet Strangio claimed that “there are multiple studies, long-term longitudinal studies, that do show that there is a reduction in suicidality, which I think is a positive outcome to this treatment.”

NO EVIDENCE

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito presses ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio about whether "puberty blockers" decrease thoughts of su*cide. He rightly cites the Cass Review, which found "no evidence" for that claim.

It gets worse, however. At least one FDA study found… pic.twitter.com/zGAHhfFUUQ

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

The evidence is not as clear-cut as Strangio suggested, however.

In one email on Jan. 25, 2022, Shannon Sullivan, clinical team leader at the FDA’s Division of General Endocrinology, noted that the agency’s Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products performed a “safety review of the GnRH agonist class in pediatric patients in 2016/2017.”

Sullivan noted that while the study did not find effects on bone density, “We did find increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk, and we issued [safety-related labeling changes].”

In other words, some studies show the exact opposite of Strangio’s claim—that GnRH agonists increase, rather than decrease, thoughts of suicide.

BREAKING: A high-ranking FDA official admitted that "puberty blockers" carry an "increased risk of depression and suicidality" but called for approving them for "transgender" kids, anyway. This flips the gender ideology narrative on its headhttps://t.co/dtbdVKEcap pic.twitter.com/4qXc6TZF06

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) August 1, 2024

3. Puberty as Harmful

“Gender-affirming care” advocates repeatedly suggested that the natural process of puberty causes harm to people who identify with the gender opposite their biological sex.

“If you’re thinking about this from the standpoint of, ‘There’s no harm in just making them wait until they’re adults,’ I think you have to recognize that the effect of denying this care is to produce irreversible physical effects that are consistent with their birth sex, because they have to go through puberty before they turn 18,” Prelogar argued.

“So, essentially what this law is doing is saying we’re going to make all adolescents in this state develop the physical secondary sex characteristics consistent with their gender or their sex assigned at birth, even though that might significantly worsen gender dysphoria, increase the risk of suicide, and—I think, critically—make it much harder to live and be accepted in their gender identity as a result,” she said.

Prelogar noted that a male who goes through puberty will develop an Adam’s apple, and that may make it harder for that man to “pass” as female, thereby subjecting him to discrimination in the future.

“You have this population of adolescents, and there are documented very essential benefits for a large number of them, and maybe a small number that will regret this care just like with any other medical care,” she added.

Prelogar’s argument flips the natural course of biology on its head. She and others are suggesting that the natural process of puberty is somehow harmful and that it is better for males who say they identify as female to undergo a chemically induced artificial facsimile of the natural process than it is for them to develop naturally.

The evidence for benefits of this artificial process is flimsy, but the associated harms are manifold—and that’s the exact reason why Tennessee’s General Assembly voted to protect minors from it.

4. ‘The Same’ Medical Condition

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Jackson repeatedly suggested that the Tennessee law bans puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones (estrogen for boys and testosterone for girls, to make them appear like the opposite sex) for males who identify as female and females who identify as male, but not for males who identify as male and females who identify as female.

Sotomayor said that a boy struggling with precocious puberty—the condition of starting puberty too early—would take the same medication as a girl who identifies as male.

“The medical condition is the same, but you’re saying one sex is getting it and the other is not,” she added.

“We do not agree that the medical condition is the same,” Rice, the Tennessee solicitor general, responded. “We do not think that giving puberty blockers to a 6-year-old that has started precocious puberty is the same medical treatment” as giving them “to a minor who wants to transition.”

While the two patients would take the same drug, the intended purpose and practical effect would be different. Sotomayor and Jackson were conflating two very different conditions.

WE DO NOT AGREE

Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson strain to compare the treatment of precocious puberty to the "treatment" of putting boys or girls on experimental drugs to "pause" puberty.

"No, we do not agree that the medical condition is the same," Matt Rice… pic.twitter.com/12V5N8v4hL

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

5. ‘Gender Conformity’

Justice Elena Kagan argued that “one of the articulated purposes of this law is to essentially to encourage gender conformity and to discourage anything other than gender conformity.”

She cited the law’s text, which states that Tennessee has “a legitimate, substantial, and compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex, particularly as they undergo puberty” and a similar interest “in protecting the integrity of the medical profession, including by prohibiting medical procedures that are harmful, unethical, immoral, experimental, or unsupported by high-quality or long-term studies, or that might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.”

She said that it “sounds to me that ‘we want boys to be boys and we want girls to be girls,’ and that’s an important purpose behind the law.”

Rice, representing Tennessee, noted that Kagan’s quotes come in the context of the state’s legislature attempting to prevent causing harm to minors. He noted studies in which minors’ mental health actually got worse after “gender-affirming care.”

“The legislature specifically noted those studies, so I think that statement was rooted in the notion that actually this is causing affirmative harm to minors that were undergoing the interventions, and that’s why they’re saying we don’t want these interventions that will cause minors to become disdainful of their sex,” he explained.

The law does not aim to set forth standards of masculinity to which boys must adhere, or standards of femininity that girls must follow. On the contrary, the transgender movement encourages boys who may have feminine traits to identify as girls and undergo medical interventions to alter their bodies. If any side is advocating conformity to gender standards, it is the transgender movement.

NOT ABOUT GENDER CONFORMITY

Tennessee SG Matt Rice definitively strikes down the absurd claim that the TN law is all about enforcing "gender conformity."

The law aims to protect minors from harm that is encouraged by an ideology that focuses on gender conformity—with the… pic.twitter.com/LlhPbGwRdU

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

6. Comparison to Loving

Justice Jackson repeatedly compared SB1 to the Virginia law banning interracial marriage that the Supreme Court struck down in Loving v. Virginia (1967).

Prelogar agreed that both cases involve “overbroad generalizations of how we expect them to live and order their affairs,” such that “these laws disadvantage someone who falls outside the average description.”

“When we look at the structure of that law, it looks—you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics—it’s sort of the same thing,” Jackson argued.

INSANE

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson strains to compare U.S. v. Skrmetti to Loving v. Virginia, suggesting that a law protecting kids from experimental medical "treatments" to make them appear like the opposite sex is similar to a law preventing interracial… pic.twitter.com/7nAQQkZzQD

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

“In [Loving v. Virginia], those same kinds of scientific arguments were made,” Jackson claimed again when questioning Strangio.

She repeated the comparison a third time when asking Rice, Tennessee’s solicitor general.

“There, the question of can you marry this other person depended on what your race was. You could marry the other person if it was the same, consistent with your race. You couldn’t if [it wasn’t],” Jackson said. “I take your law to be doing basically the same thing. You can take these blockers if doing so is consistent with your sex, but not if it’s inconsistent.”

“In this case, the only way that they can point to a sex-based line is to equate fundamentally different medical treatments,” Rice responded. “Giving testosterone to a boy with a deficiency is not the same treatment as giving it to a girl who has psychological distress with her body.”

Any argument about discrimination relies on confusion about the basic fact that males going through male puberty is healthy and in accordance with nature, while males going through a false, manufactured facsimile of female puberty is not.

MATT RICE STRIKES IT DOWN

"In this case, the only way that they can point to a sex-based line is to equate fundamentally different medical treatments. Giving testosterone to a boy with a deficiency is not the same treatment as giving it to a girl who has psychological distress… pic.twitter.com/yFkAdXQQiI

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

Circling the wagons, Dr. Paul Offit, a current adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, lamely observes, “What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there.”

You bet.

Trump and the public have every reason to distrust the current agency heads, after the repeated blunders, deceptions and coverups during COVID-19. Trump is appointing disrupters with the courage to challenge the status quo.

Like Dr. Marty Makary, nominated to head the Food and Drug Administration.

Makary’s credentials will make it impossible for the U.S. Senate to reject him. A Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, Makary was voted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, which is like the Hall of Fame for doctors.More important, if you’re in the hospital, you want Makary on your side.

Two decades ago, he declared war against the epidemic of medical errors killing as many as 100,000 patients a year: errors like patients being given the wrong dose of a medication, or the surgeon operating on the wrong body part, or a lethal germ invading the patients’ body to cause an infection.

The medical establishment was hush-hush about them. But not Makary. He argued for surgeons always taking a “timeout” in the operating room to look for errors. He also pioneered doctors using checklists, like pilots do, to ensure protocols are followed. My organization, the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, considers Makary a hero.

In 2017, Makary went to bat for patients saddled with unfair medical debt. Even nonprofit hospitals were suing patients, garnishing wages and taking their homes. In many cases, hospitals had charged patients several times more than what insurance companies were charged for the same procedures. Makary called for an end to it.

When COVID-19 struck, Makary had the guts to speak out about mistakes he saw the federal health agencies making, like wasting scarce vaccine doses on people who already had natural immunity while other patients died waiting for a shot.

The federal health officials doubled down, ignoring actual evidence that disproved their insistence natural immunity was not as good as a shot. In fact, it’s many times more effective. The Biden administration pushed its social media lackeys to block his research from public view.

Makary told Congress “public health politicos” were to blame for numerous COVID-19 deaths.

He called for “using scientific evidence and not political badges and censorship in debating public health policy.”

But the left is still attacking scientists based on politics.

Left-wing Washington Post health reporter Lena Sun falsely claims that Trump’s team “is largely untested, possesses scant infectious-disease expertise” and would leave the nation in dire straits “when the next pandemic strikes.” Ridiculous.

Truth is, the public health elite marched in lock-step, muzzling critics even as the mistakes accumulated and 1 million Americans died of COVID-19. The U.S. per capita death rate far exceeded what other developed countries suffered.

To prepare for the next pandemic, the Trump administration must clean house and bring in bold scientists who challenge groupthink and demand evidence, which was totally lacking last time to support masking, 6-foot distancing, school closure and other recommendations.

When evidence is lacking, the rest of us become mere pawns, adhering to misguided medical recommendations that can cost us our lives.

Makary tells how an incorrect recommendation made by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000—that children 3 and under as well as pregnant and lactating mothers should avoid all peanuts—resulted in a peanut allergy panic in the U.S.

Too embarrassed to admit they had no research on peanut allergies, the American Academy of Pediatrics made up that rule. Peanut allergies exploded, with the number of children rushed to emergency rooms with allergic reactions tripling from 2005 to 2014.

Research published in 2015 shows that exposing babies to peanuts actually reduces the risk of an allergy by 86%. But even the National Institutes of Health dithered for two years before giving parents a straight story.

The day Makary takes over at the FDA and brings his unflinching demand for evidence to Washington, D.C., will be a good day for science and for America.