Civics isn’t a class; it’s the backbone of the republic we fight for



I slept through high school civics class. I memorized the three branches of government, promptly forgot them, and never thought of that word again. Civics seemed abstract, disconnected from real life. And yet, it is critical to maintaining our republic.

Civics is not a class. It is a responsibility. A set of habits, disciplines, and values that make a country possible. Without it, no country survives.

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Civics happens every time you speak freely, worship openly, question your government, serve on a jury, or cast a ballot. It’s not a theory or just another entry in a textbook. It’s action — the acts we perform every day to be a positive force in society.

Many of us recoil at “civic responsibility.” “I pay my taxes. I follow the law. I do my civic duty.” That’s not civics. That’s a scam, in my opinion.

Taking up the torch

The founders knew a republic could never run on autopilot. And yet, that’s exactly what we do now. We assume it will work, then complain when it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the people steering the country are driving it straight into a mountain — and they know it.

Our founders gave us tools: separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, elections. But they also warned us: It won’t work unless we are educated, engaged, and moral.

Are we educated, engaged, and moral? Most Americans cannot even define a republic, never mind “keep one,” as Benjamin Franklin urged us to do after the Constitutional Convention.

We fought and died for the republic. Gaining it was the easy part. Keeping it is hard. And keeping it is done through civics.

Start small and local

In our homes, civics means teaching our children the Constitution, our history, and that liberty is not license — it is the space to do what is right. In our communities, civics means volunteering, showing up, knowing your sheriff, attending school board meetings, and understanding the laws you live under. When necessary, it means challenging them.

How involved are you in your local community? Most people would admit: not really.

Civics is learned in practice. And it starts small. Be honest in your business dealings. Speak respectfully in disagreement. Vote in every election, not just the presidential ones. Model citizenship for your children. Liberty is passed down by teaching and example.

RELATED: America’s rights come from God — not from Tim Kaine’s government

Photo by Bill Oxford via Getty Images

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Start with yourself. Study the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and state laws. Study, act, serve, question, and teach. Only then can we hope to save the republic. The next election will not fix us. The nation will rise or fall based on how each of us lives civics every day.

Civics isn’t a class. It’s the way we protect freedom, empower our communities, and pass down liberty to the next generation.

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Red Menace: Why China Poses a Real Threat to Our Democracy

This country's political class has argued furiously for the past few weeks about the latest alleged threat to our way of life. Democrats like the governor of California charge that the Texas legislature's "gerrymandering" maneuver is a severe blow to American democracy. Some claim this redrawing of congressional districts to benefit Republicans in the midterm elections could even sound the death knell of elected government in the United States.

The post Red Menace: Why China Poses a Real Threat to Our Democracy appeared first on .

Democrats crying wolf about a ‘threat to democracy’ backfires



Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have long been attempting to scare voters into casting a ballot their way by regurgitating the line that President Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy.”

However, while, like many Democrats, Schumer has claimed that Trump has created a “constitutional crisis,” the left is the side asking to change the Constitution to get what it wants.

A recent article from the New York Times is titled “Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the court,” with the subtitle “Why the left can’t win without a new Constitution.”

“They want a new constitution,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales laughs on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.” “Now abolish the Senate and the electoral college. Pack the court because nothing else will work. But trust us, bro, we love democracy, except when we don’t.”

“We’ve got to get rid of democracy to save democracy,” she continues.


“They can’t win fairly. And when they can’t win fairly — which we do; we just did — they want to, like, ‘You know what? I’m taking my ball, and I’m going home. We’re going to rip up the Constitution, and we’re going to rewrite the rules in our favor, and then we’re just going to call it democracy,’” she mocks, “because words have no meaning when the left uses them.”

However, the left’s “anti-democracy democracy” strategy doesn’t seem to be working.

Another article from the New York Times is titled “The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis,” with the subtitle “The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box, a new analysis shows.”

“Why would anyone not want to vote for these crazy lunatics?” Gonzales jokes. “I don’t know. But between 2020 to 2024, in the 30 states that keep track of voter registration, Democrats lost ground against Republicans.”

“Maybe they left their party, but I think their party left them. They can’t call themselves Democrats anymore because to call yourself a Democrat would mean that you stand with chopping off body parts of, you know, healthy children, healthy body parts,” she continues.

“Being a part of that party these days means that you then have to be like, ‘Yeah, it’s totally fine. In fact, I love it,’” she adds.

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Leftists Admit They Can’t Win Without Rewriting The Constitution

In his new book, Osita Nwanevu, a contributing editor at The New Republic, offers the same ideas the left has been repeating for years now.

Democracy promotion is dead: Good riddance



What passes for intellectual heft at the Atlantic is any criticism of President Donald Trump. In the Atlantic’s pages and its digital fare, you can read the now-discredited musings of David Frum, who helped bring us the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the inane foreign policy arguments of Max Boot; the interventionist prescriptions of Anne Applebaum; and now, the democracy promotion of political science professor Brian Klaas, who, in a recent article, blames President Trump for killing “American democracy promotion.”

If Klaas is correct, that is one more reason that Americans need to thank President Trump.

Klaas’ first priority is using American treasure and blood to promote his chimerical notions of global democracy and universal human rights.

One would have thought that the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq would have humbled our nation’s democracy promoters — but they haven’t. One would have thought that the failed foreign policy of Jimmy Carter would have humbled those who wish to make “human rights” the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy — but it didn’t. One would have thought that the chaos facilitated by the so-called “Arab Spring” would engender prudence and introspection among the democracy promoters — but it is not so.

Professor Klaas wants the world to become democratic and for U.S. foreign policy to lead the effort in bringing the globe to the promised land.

Rewriting history

The Trump administration, Klaas writes, has “turn[ed] against a long-standing tradition of Western democracy promotion.”

Perhaps Klaas has never read George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he counseled his countrymen to conduct foreign policy based solely on the nation’s interests. Or perhaps he missed John Quincy Adams’ July 4, 1821, address, in which he cautioned against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy and reminded his listeners that America is the well-wisher of freedom to all but the champion only of her own.

Perhaps Klaas believes that Wilsonianism is a “long-standing” American tradition, but in reality, it is mostly limited to starry-eyed liberal internationalists and neoconservatives.

Klaas mentions the “democracy boom” under President Bill Clinton, which was nothing more than a temporary consequence of America’s victory in the Cold War. Yet Klaas thinks it was the beginning of “shifting international norms” where freedom and democracy triumphed in “the ideological battle against rival models of governance” and “had become an inexorable force.”

Here, Klaas is likely referring to Francis Fukuyama’s discredited theory of the “end of history.” We have since discovered, however, that history didn’t die and that democracy is fragile, especially in places and among civilizations that have little democratic experience.

Fukuyama was wrong, but Samuel Huntington was right when he wrote about the coming “clash of civilizations.” One wonders if Klaas has read Huntington or Toynbee — or Spengler for that matter. Or, even more recently, Robert Kaplan’s “The Tragic Mind.”

Authoritarianism disguised as ‘democratic’

Klaas criticizes Trump for praising dictators, but President Woodrow Wilson praised Lenin and President Franklin Roosevelt praised Stalin. Klaas says that Trump is indifferent to democracy and human rights. No, Trump simply refuses to make them the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, which is a “long-standing” tradition that stretches back long before Wilson to our founding fathers.

However, neither Wilson nor FDR wanted America to right every wrong in the world, as Klaas does. Klaas wants his “human rights” and democracy agenda “backed by weapons.” He laments that authoritarian regimes no longer need to fear the “condemnation” and the “bombs” of the American president.

Klaas’ leftism is revealed when he condemns the United States for helping to replace Mossaddegh with the pro-American shah of Iran, overthrowing the Marxist regime of Patrice Lumumba in Congo, helping to overthrow Allende in Chile, and cozying up to other authoritarian regimes.

RELATED: Vance makes one thing abundantly clear ahead of Trump's big ceasefire meeting with Putin

Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The professor also might want to read Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” to learn that sometimes doing these things is in America’s national interests. Klaas’ leftism jumps off the page when he refers to the illegal aliens removed by the Trump administration — many with criminal records — as “foreign pilgrims.”

Some of those “foreign pilgrims” raped and killed Americans. But Klaas’ first priority is not America or its citizens; it is using American treasure and blood to promote his chimerical notions of global democracy and universal human rights. He is anti-Trump precisely because Trump’s foreign policy is America First. Let’s hope Klaas’ style of democracy promotion is dead.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

Democrats ‘defend democracy’ by ditching it



Texas Democrats have once again fled the state — not in the face of danger or persecution, but to block a vote they know they’ll lose.

This time, they’re trying to derail a redistricting plan that would likely establish five more Republican districts. Rather than face the debate, they bolted. Gov. Greg Abbott responded by ordering the Texas Rangers to investigate the absent legislators for potential violations of state law, including bribery.

Voters should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

This isn’t a new tactic for Democrats in Texas. In 2003, they fled to a motel in Ardmore, Oklahoma, to block another redistricting vote. Eleven Senate Democrats later fled to New Mexico in a failed attempt to stop the plan. In 2021, Democrats once again abandoned their posts — this time flying to Washington, D.C. — to obstruct a bill that tightened mail-in voting rules and curbed 2020-era voting expansions in Harris County. That bill passed too.

Now they’re repeating the act, claiming to “defend democracy” from Republican gerrymandering while retreating to safe blue havens like Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. One Democrat compared the new redistricting map to the Holocaust (she later apologized). Others predictably called the plan “racist.” Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries flew to Austin for “closed-door meetings,” and California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to pursue their own gerrymanders back home.

The hypocrisy is as plain as it is tedious.

As journalist Matt Kittle noted in the Federalist, this brand of protest isn’t just ineffective — it’s absurd. Wisconsin Democrats tried something similar in 2011, fleeing to Illinois to block a bill that curbed public-sector union power. Then-Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans passed it anyway using a procedural maneuver to overcome the quorum requirement.

Kittle also pointed out the irony: The Democrats’ sanctuary states — Illinois, New York, California — are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Yet those states don’t seem to trouble the “defenders of democracy.”

It’s easy to see why Texas Democrats like Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Al Green want to preserve a system that favors them. What’s harder to see is what they hope to gain from this stunt. They have no leverage. Their absence ensures failure. Even as political theater, it’s weak and self-defeating. It makes them look unserious and incapable of governing.

Rep. Salman Bhojani, one of the Texas Democrats who fled, may not return at all — he reportedly needs to leave the country for a “family medical emergency.” His constituents in Euless should ask: Who’s representing them now?

But most won’t ask. Most don’t even know who Bhojani is. And that’s the deeper problem.

Too many state legislators are anonymous placeholders. They win office by running with a “D” or “R” next to their names. They stay in office because they’ve been there before. Their constituents rarely track their votes or positions — many wouldn’t even recognize their representative if they saw them on TV.

Bhojani faced no opponent in his last election. Apart from donors and staffers, almost no one in Euless likely knows who he is — until now that he’s left the country and quite likely his job.

RELATED: The cold civil war is real — and only one side is fighting to win

Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

So what kind of democracy is this?

If lawmakers go unchallenged, remain largely unknown, and face no accountability for skipping out on their duties, can we really call this democratic representation? And if redistricting efforts aim to align political boundaries more closely with population centers — rather than carve out safe enclaves for party operatives — might that not restore some of the lost accountability?

At present, most lawmakers serve parties and donors, not voters. The party ensures they run unopposed or draws the district to guarantee victory. The campaign is just a formality. Once elected, they vote the party line and maybe dabble in social media branding.

Right now, this is more a problem for Democrats than Republicans. But that could easily flip. Voters of all stripes should recognize that these performative walkouts have nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law. They’re tantrums — undemocratic and unaccountable.

Republicans in Washington and across red states should follow Texas’ lead: Call the bluff, pass the bills, and begin the work of restoring actual representative government. That’s what voters want — left, right, and center.

KBJ Keeps Showing America Why She Doesn’t Belong On SCOTUS

The more Jackson opens her mouth and pens unhinged opinions, the more clear it becomes she has no business being on SCOTUS.

The era of managerial rule is over. Long live the sovereign!



There’s a world before President Trump’s descent down the escalator, and there’s a world after it. The recent No Kings protests transmitted the idée fixe of the pre-2015 world. That idea was hostility to personal authority, or personal power — hostility to the notion of sovereignty, to the power once exercised by kings. Donald Trump, the figure who has dominated politics since 2015, is its most visible sign of contradiction. In that sense, the protesters weren’t entirely wrong. Trump’s success marks the passing of the world of the latter half of the 20th century, which was defined by hatred of personal authority.

Successive generations demolished the concept of sovereignty, casting suspicion on the notion that a leader’s decisions can legitimately reshape political or social life. This shift began in the United States when the intelligentsia promulgated the concept of “the authoritarian personality.” They found this personality in the working classes, their churches and associations, their families and fathers, and the politicians who represented them. Where there was the whiff of authoritarian character traits, fascism probably lurked.

All the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The anti-authority impulse then extended to challenge the authority of elected bodies. Popular sovereignty became dangerous. In the late 1950s and '60s, on matters such as school prayer, unctuous judges and administrators tied the hands of potentially reactionary legislatures and frog-marched them toward secularism.

In the 1970s, the target was popular sovereignty as embodied in the office of the president. The American Constitution enabled an energetic executive or administrative presidency, traces of the monarchical form. But the president’s authority was decapitated in the great act of regicide — otherwise known as Watergate.

The ‘golden straitjacket’

Sketching the gloomy landscape of the 1970s, the sociologist Robert Nisbet saw in the twilight of authority the rise of impersonal forces; administrators touting “best practices” stepped into the breach. Therapists, managers, and other experts became increasingly important. They coordinated with economic, social, and legal networks to constrain human agents who might otherwise upset progress.

That’s what globalization was all about. At the peak of the era of what Thomas Friedman called “the golden straitjacket,” sovereignty was outré. Successful politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair dazzled their electorates with the bullion of cheap credit and narratives of an impending gilded age while tightening the bonds ever further. They weakened the power of their offices, distributing it to central banks and international agencies.

Their actions clarified the vocation of right-thinking people. Stigmatize the authoritarian personality. Banish any individual or group that displayed its signs from the helm of government and public life. Spin an ever-tighter web of legal, administrative, and economic networks that could remove the risks of exercising personal human control over government — the risks of an energetic executive — once and for all.

All that changed with Trump’s descent down the escalator. “The golden straitjacket” had numerous critics, but no major public figure exposed its hatred of political, personal power as aggressively and abruptly as Trump did. In 2015, he thrust personal authority back to the center of public life. It’s been there ever since, an example to imitate — in enthusiasm or envy.

Restoring the executive

As president, Trump has fought hard to restore the bloodied Article II of the Constitution. His executive and legal actions on behalf of presidential power even won over skeptics in the conservative legal world. Not only did he challenge the presuppositions of government via the administrative state, but he also exposed the overreaching deep state that is devouring the American Constitution.

Indeed, No Kings could very well function as a pro-Trump slogan. Prior to Trump, American presidents largely functioned as kings. Like the monarch in Great Britain, U.S. presidents had long held power in theory as the “dignified” branch, while other actors in the security state made the real decisions — the “efficient” branch. Trump has been his most republican when he has upset this double government.

RELATED: The hidden motive behind the anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

To be sure, anti-Trump No Kings protesters are more troubled by another phenomenon: Trump’s personal style of leadership. They’re not wrong to draw attention to it, but they’re wrong about its significance.

Authority depends on a person’s capacity to command in order to reshape politics. Trump mastered the new fragmented media environment, in which entertainment — rather than solemn statements — wins attention and deference. Trump made his personality an issue. His critics attacked him for it, claiming his persona was a manifestation of the dreaded authoritarian personality. But all the elements of Trump’s personality that his opponents loathe — rhetorical and physical aggression, incivility, scorn for discourse and discussion, brashness, maleness, unwillingness to apologize or express guilt, bluntly demarcating between American winners and losers, claiming the exceptional power to fix America’s problems — have proved, for better or worse, to be demonstrations of strength rather than weakness.

The importance of character traits such as “caring for people like me” or “experience,” which had mattered so much in late 20th-century mass democracy, faded away. Swaths of the electorate would of course still look for their “therapist in chief” or “expert in chief.” But more wanted a boss who asserted control and expected those under him to follow his lead.

The reassertion of personal authority, after decades of opposition to it, has been a messy affair. It’s risible to think that Trump ever intended to abolish elections, set up a dictatorship, or establish a hereditary monarchy. But his style did help accelerate the collapse of institutional authority, such as that once held by the media. Although many of his more dramatic promises have been unrealized (stymied by a variety of forces), the symbology of authority has remained key for gaining and wielding legitimacy.

The twilight of liberalism

A numinous connection has developed between an electorate that confers sovereignty upon its chosen figure and the figure who exercises it. The acoustic and visual symbols this connection generates are all the more potent because, at this point in the 21st century, as Mary Harrington has argued, a culture of mass literacy has vanished. This culture was essential to transmit the symbols associated with the print ideals of liberalism (for instance, the importance placed on the freedom of the press, or on discourse itself). As print culture goes, so go the symbols of liberalism. Other symbols step into their place.

Trump’s more subtle critics, who are troubled by the twilight of liberalism, noticed this transformation. They sense something has changed and single out Trump as the chief villain. But wielding the symbols of personal authority is one area in which Trump has long ceased to be exceptional. Even those who are very far from Trump ideologically and politically still inhabit his symbolic universe, in which personal authority, hierarchy, and one’s capacity to reshape political life are of critical importance.

RELATED: Trump gave Americans what they didn’t know they needed

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Emmanuel Macron’s predecessors, fearing being labeled authoritarians by the May ’68 generation, adopted a deliberately understated, egalitarian style. Macron shocked the French political system by embracing the persona of “Jupiter.” He seized the opportunity that Trump’s descent down the escalator made possible.

Pope Francis began his papacy in a conversational, freewheeling style, akin to a Clintonian or Blairite doing one’s best to manage the media narrative. But after the first few years, he also imitated Trump as his supporters embraced the theology of an imperial papacy.

Joe Biden likewise leaned into a “Dark Brandon” iconography of authority to create the impression that he was in charge, the simulacrum of a functioning presidency.

Politicians who can’t successfully embody the symbolism of authority, such as Biden, or those who shy away from it, such as Justin Trudeau, end up as failures. Trudeau launched his political career by an act of physical prowess, beating up a Conservative Party senator who was too lazy to train for a boxing match. It was a crude but effective way of legitimating Trudeau’s claim to lead the Liberal Party and Canada.

Even in an extremely progressive country, primal assertions of authority win admiration. But Trudeau forgot the underlying lesson. In office, he preferred the symbolism of colorful socks, and his unpopularity forced him to resign in ignominy. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s successor, who invokes the physical, masculine iconography of hockey fights to win votes, has returned to more visceral politics. The liberal norms of national civility go nowhere; it’s the brash Trumpian traits that are deployed to gain victory.

Slashing the straitjacket

The resurgence of authority is why there’s no chance of reverting to globalized, impersonal power — at least how the pre-2015 world conceived it. As candidates compete for personal authority, those vying for power repudiate the notion that economic, social, and legal networks should constrain human agents. The capacity to take back control over these networks is what matters. This helps us understand the deeper unity behind Trump’s signature policies.

All the major themes that Trump hit on when he descended the escalator — an end to mass immigration, free trade, and regime-change missions abroad — were on one level anti-globalization topics: They slashed away at the golden straitjacket.

Anti-globalization themes are now so mainstream that even Keir Starmer imitates Trump’s symbology by talking tough on border control. On one level, it’s a policy victory. But the success is more profound than that. To effect that agenda demands the reassertion of the personal, political will to effect social and political change. Faced with the diminishing returns of the old regime, that’s what more and more people are looking for.

In our new world, leaders rise and fall by how well they can speak the language of authority. Whatever the full implications of this paradigm shift may be, the longing for sovereigns shows no signs of letting up.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally as “A New Birth of Authority” at the American Mind.

JD Vance rejects Democrats' narrative, names the 'real threat to democracy'



Democrats and elements of the liberal media have suggested ad nauseam that President Donald Trump, his supporters, and like-minded Republicans constitute threats to democracy.

After a Biden official's group got Trump temporarily removed in 2023 from the presidential primary ballot in Colorado, former President Joe Biden tweeted, "Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America's standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy."

Years after calling her political opponents "enemies of the state," Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in April 2024 that Trump is "a great threat to our democracy."

'It was a radical success.'

Less than a day after a Democratic donor who claimed "DEMOCRACY is on the ballot" in the 2024 election allegedly tried to assassinate Trump, New York magazine rushed to inform its readers that "Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, and saying so is not incitement."

It's clear that this mantra is little more than a political cudgel intended for those who threaten to diminish Democrats' hold on power. Nevertheless, its repetition has prompted some on the right to seriously reflect on that which actually threatens the American republic's democratic processes.

In his keynote speech at the Ohio Republican Party dinner in Lima, Ohio, on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance made clear that the apparent effort by Democrats to import and then normalize new voter blocs rather than engage and help homegrown Americans — to seek out a new demos as opposed to serving the current demos — is the real threat.

RELATED: Rubio, Vance outline the 'work of a generation,' next steps for the American renewal: 'This is a 20-year project'

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The vice president stressed that illegal immigration is "the most important issue confronting this country" and "the most important issue that was destroying this country for over the past four years."

"If I had stood here in October of 2024, and you had told me that after 45 days of the Trump administration we would have illegal border crossings down between 95% and 99%, I would have said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. I believe the president is very serious about this, and I believe the president is very effective, but there is no way that we're going to have illegal border crossings down that much,'" said Vance. "I'm happy to report that one and a half months into the Trump administration, we had illegal border crossings down 99%. It was a radical success."

"I believe that saved the United States of America," continued Vance, "because we know exactly what the Democrats [would do] — not because we had to read their minds but because Democrats would go out and say that what they wanted to do with those 20, 25 million illegal aliens is give every single one of them the right to vote and turn them into permanent wards of the Democratic Party."

'Now, we have largely solved that problem.'

Democratic lawmakers have worked feverishly in recent years to give foreign nationals the right to vote.

Certain jurisdictions in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. There are also indications that some noncitizens have been registered in Democratic enclaves to vote in federal elections — a troubling matter that the Trump administration is taking seriously.

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Orange County registrar of voters for refusing to provide the DOJ with records pertaining to the "removal of non-citizens from its voter registration list and for failing to maintain an accurate voter list in violation of the Help America Vote Act."

— (@)

Meanwhile, in the District of Columbia, noncitizens are allowed to vote in local elections so long as they were in the city for at least 30 days before the election. According to the Washington Post, of the over 500 foreign nationals who voted last year — including Ethiopians, Salvadorans, and Iranians — 310 registered as Democrat, 169 as independent, 28 as Republican, and 16 as Statehood Green.

Democrats evidently aspired to go far beyond local elections with their noncitizen voting push.

RELATED: Trump doesn’t threaten democracy — he threatens its ruling class

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The Democratic National Convention's 2024 platform endorsed a mass amnesty plan that would have paved the way to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.

The Maine Wire noted that the platform incorporated language from the U.S. Citizenship Act, an inert bill from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) that would change the word "alien" to "noncitizen" in the immigration code and allow illegal aliens to become "lawful prospective immigrants," thereby setting them on the path to legally voting in federal elections.

Even though Trump saw gains in each of the seven swing states in the 2024 election, giving voting rights to millions of yesteryear's illegal aliens could significantly alter America's political destiny.

"If we allowed that to happen, if we allowed the Democratic Party to import voters rather than persuade voters, that would have been the end of American democracy," said Vance. "You hear the American media say all the time that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. The threat to democracy is Democrats importing voters rather than persuading their fellow citizens."

The vice president proceeded to provide his audience with some good news.

"Now, we have largely solved that problem," said Vance. "If you look, for the first time in 50 years — the first time in 50 years — we now have net negative illegal immigration."

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Neera Tanden and the Biden autopen: Probe progresses with help of Trump-centered poetic justice



Neera Tanden, a prominent fixture in the Democratic establishment who served as director of the Biden White House Domestic Policy Council, appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday for hours-long, closed-door testimony concerning Biden's cognitive decline while in office, its cover-up, and its alleged exploitation behind the scenes.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton aide, stuck with the narrative that Biden was mentally fit during his tenure, her opening statement showed. She also suggested that the controversial use of the autopen — a machine used to affix Biden's signature to a myriad of documents, which critics suspect was abused by unelected individuals to advance radical agendas and to circumvent the will of the American people — was above-board.

Tanden's spin notwithstanding, congressional investigators appear to have made headway on Tuesday thanks in part to some poetic justice.

Shield withdrawn

Despite protest from President Donald Trump and warnings from numerous critics about setting an undesirable precedent, Biden waived executive privilege in October 2021 and directed the National Archives to furnish congressional partisans with Trump-era White House records pertaining to the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol.

Biden's counsel noted in a letter that asserting executive privilege was "not in the best interests of the United States."

University of Virginia School of Law professor Saikrishna Prakash, among the legal scholars at the time who understood this move could come back to bite Biden and his advisers, told the Associated Press, "Every time a president does something controversial, it becomes a building block for future presidents."

Trump stacked on this building block this week in the interest of helping along the Oversight Committee's investigation into the autopen scandal.

RELATED: Oversight Project over target: Dems seethe as facade of autopen presidency comes crashing down

Photo by Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images

Gary Lawkowski, deputy counsel to Trump, noted in a letter Tuesday — which echoed the letter previously penned by Biden's counsel in 2021 — that in light of the "unique and extraordinary nature of the matters under investigation, President Trump has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the national interest, and therefore is not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the House Oversight Committee."

After highlighting Tanden's assessment of Biden's mental fitness and her knowledge of who exercised executive powers during his tenure, Lawkowski stressed:

The extraordinary events in this matter constitute exceptional circumstances warranting an accommodation to Congress. Evidence that aides to former President Biden concealed information regarding his fitness to exercise the powers of the President — and may have unconstitutionally exercised those powers themselves to aid in their concealment — implicates both Congress' constitutional and legislative powers.

Blaze News reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Deprived of the shield of executive privilege and thus required to provide lawmakers with "unrestricted testimony," Tanden headed into what she later referred to as a "thorough process."

— (@)

Tanden's admission

The Oversight Project, a government watchdog, revealed in early March that Biden's signature on numerous pardons, executive orders, and other documents of national consequence was likely machine-generated.

The watchdog group also highlighted possible evidence that the autopen was used on some of these documents without Biden's knowledge and while he was absent.

Around the time of the Oversight Project's initial reporting on the autopen, former White House stenographer Mike McCormick told Blaze News that he felt Tanden was a person who could have potentially taken advantage of her position in the White House with regard to the autopen.

RELATED: Don’t let the Biden autopen scandal become just another lame hearing

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McCormick, who neither worked in the White House with Biden after 2017 nor personally met Tanden, said she was often praised by the former president as a "super aggressive, very progressive" operative.

"She would be the person," the stenographer continued. "If she came into his White House knowing that [Biden] was debilitated, would she be the kind of person who would take advantage of that? I think she would."

While it remains unclear whether Tanden misused the autopen, McCormick was right on the money regarding her use of it.

After noting that she did not believe that the committee's investigation was a "worthy subject of oversight," Tanden told lawmakers in her opening statement that when serving as Biden's staff secretary, she was "responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president" and was "authorized to direct that autopen signatures be affixed to certain categories of documents."

McCormick was contacted for comment after news of the White House counsel's letter to Tanden broke. McCormick explained that Tanden's placement in the White House by Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff from 2021 to 2023, was a grave mistake.

"[Klain's] decision to put Neera Tanden, an operative's operative, in charge the staff secretary's office is an extraordinary red flag that must be thoroughly investigated," McCormick told Blaze News.

'I think the American people want to know.'

When Ed Martin, the Department of Justice pardon attorney and director of the DOJ's Weaponization Working Group, announced his investigation last month into the questionable "autopen" pardons issued in the final days of the Biden White House, he indicated that a whistleblower had identified three people who controlled access to the autopen.

"They were making money off of it," Martin said.

Martin did not name the three suspects outright and made no reference to Tanden. He did, however, identify several "gatekeepers" who were "dominant characters in the White House," one of whom was Klain, whose office repeatedly hosted George Soros' son Alexander Soros and who returned to the fold last year amid Biden's debate preparation.

RELATED: Ed Martin floats names of 'gatekeepers' in Biden autopen controversy; Trump accuses exploiters of 'TREASON'

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Tanden told congressional investigators on Tuesday that as of May 2023, she no longer had "any responsibilities in connection with the use of the autopen."

Tanden further suggested that she had "no experience in the White House that would provide any reason to question [Biden's] command as president," adding that "he was in charge."

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the Oversight Committee, told the Washington Examiner that Tanden was "very forthcoming" and that the committee now has "a lot better understanding of how things worked in the Biden administration."

Next steps

Prior to the transcribed interview on Tuesday, Comer told reporters that Tanden's was the "first of many interviews with people that we believe were involved in the autopen scandal in the Biden administration. We have a lot of questions to ask each witness."

The transcripts will be released once all of the interviews are completed.

"I think the American people want to know. I think there is a huge level of curiosity in the press corps with respect to who was actually calling the shots in the Biden administration," said Comer.

Former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and former Idaho Solicitor General Theodore Wold underscored the gravity of the matter in his testimony last week before the the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, noting that the "U.S. Constitution vests the executive power in a single person: the president."

Whether signing an executive order, issuing a pardon, or taking any other action permitted him by the Constitution, "the president's signature is itself the protection of democratic principles. When the president signs, he communicates his assent and endorsement of the action he takes," said Wold.

Wold noted that in numerous instances where the autopen was used, there was no indication "that anyone other than staff were making these decisions."

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