Naomi Wolf continues to expose COVID vaccine: 'A depopulating technology'



Naomi Wolf's 1991 best-seller “The Beauty Myth” made her the most prominent face of so-called "third-wave feminism" and a darling of the liberal elite. The young Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar served as an adviser to both President Bill Clinton and — during his 2000 presidential run — Vice President Al Gore.

But then the COVID pandemic hit. For voicing her concerns about vaccine mandates and draconian lockdowns, Wolf found herself deplatformed from Twitter, marginalized as a so-called conspiracy theorist, and rejected by the same powerful Democrats who had once made her a star.

'A 13% to 20% drop in live births around the world, especially in Western, highly vaccinated countries.'

From Ms. to MAHA

Wolf, in turn, has left the Democrats behind. Seeing current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. join the Trump campaign last year convinced her to endorse "the MAGA-MAHA ticket," she tells me via video call.

"I think it's a great thing for the country for these two groups of voters to be in alignment," she continues.

"What we're seeing right now ... the combination is making the Democratic Party obsolete. And as a lifelong Democrat, I wouldn't have ... said that was a good thing, except that the Democratic Party has turned into such a toxic, marginalized, self-marginalizing stew of festering special interests.”

With last year's release of “The Pfizer Papers,” based on the research of over 3,000 health care volunteers, edited by Wolf and Amy Kelly, Wolf has cemented her reputation as a courageous and supremely eloquent opponent of government overreach and globalist encroachment on public policy and free speech.

Neither safe nor effective

Wolf says that research points to the inescapable fact that Pfizer knew its vaccine was neither safe nor effective but released it on the public regardless because of an agenda that went way beyond mere corporate greed.

Wolf has sat down for this interview to discuss that research, which she recently presented before before the European Union Parliament after an invitation from German MEP Christine Anderson.

I note that Canada, too, has finally begun to question the efficacy and safety of the vaccine with the release of “Post-Covid Canada: The Rise of Unexpected Deaths” from the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

'My heart breaks for Canada'

For Wolf, this is a long time coming. In her view, the situation to her north is even worse than in her home country, with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau overseeing "a horrible overall collapse of civil liberties and the rule of law ... and even basic norms of decency around life itself."

"My heart breaks for Canada all the time," Wolf continues.

“You have no Second Amendment. You have no First Amendment. People are scared — you know, when I go to Canada, people are really scared of what's going to happen to them if they are identified as critical of the government. You know, the poor truckers got de-banked and had to fight that fight back in 2022.”

Wolf describes Canada's major media as being “owned by your government," noting that “there’s been almost no coverage of 'The Pfizer Papers' in Canada."

I mention that Freedom Convoy trucker and protester Chris Barber could not only receive an eight-year sentence for “mischief" (the label the Crown has slapped on his peaceful protest), but could actually have his truck — the now iconic “Big Red” — expropriated by the Ontario provincial government and destroyed. Wolf is aghast.

RELATED: Sudden child deaths after COVID shots? Trump FDA director promises answers.

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

A feature, not a bug

For her part, Wolf has not faced any legal pushback from Pfizer, despite repeatedly calling out the pharmaceutical giant for its alleged culpability in vaccine injuries and deaths.

Nor is Wolf afraid to employ a comparison even her allies may find inflammatory, likening Pfizer's "Pregnancy and Lactation" report to "Nazi science" for the cavalier way it acknowledges the human toll of the vaccines.

“I'm not equating it with Nazi atrocities as a whole, in terms of scale,” Wolf says of the eight-page report Pfizer delivered to President Biden and then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

"But it's a very terrifying document, because it showcases all the deaths and injuries to women and babies that Pfizer knew their injection had brought about, and ... it seems to be communicating the damage to women's reproduction is not a bug, but a feature of the injection, like, ‘Look how effective it is.’ For instance, they've got two babies who died in utero, and Pfizer concludes that it's due to maternal exposure to the vaccine.”

Drop in live births

Wolf notes that this information did not stop Walensky from urging the vaccine on pregnant women or women intending to get pregnant in August of that year.

"So that sequence of events in itself really raises questions, because she knew this would kill babies," says Wolf, raising the specter of infamous Nazi medical experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele.

"I don't make this comparison lightly," says Wolf, who is Jewish and notes that her grandparents lost a total of eight siblings to the Holocaust. "[But the report is] very Nazi medicine in its methodology, because there are charts. And one of the characteristics of Nazi medicine is [being] meticulous about horrific crimes and suffering.”

“So there are charts in this pregnancy and lactation report that show tens of thousands of women injured menstrually; 15,000 women bleeding every day, 10,000 women bleeding twice a month ... 7,500 women with no periods at all, meaning [that they're] totally infertile."

"A 13% to 20% drop in live births around the world, especially in Western, highly vaccinated countries," Wolf says, noting that "that's the takeaway in Canada as well."

Sinister finding

So was this all about the profit margin?

“As a journalist, I try never to go beyond the evidence. … I went into the project thinking, ‘Oh, I'm going to find out that they were just greedy, or they just cut corners.’ That's not what we found at all,” Wolf says.

The truth, according to her, is far more sinister. “There are a number of data points that show that Pfizer intended to create a depopulating technology and that all the people up and down the chain of command — CDC, FDA, the president — knew," Wolf says.

"That's why I think the pregnancy and lactation report is so important, and that that was the main function — is to depopulate the West and also to create a massive scale of injury and and death, in addition to sterilization and pregnancy loss.”

Canada still bent on seizing Freedom Convoy symbol ‘Big Red’



Back in April, the longest mischief trial in Canadian history wrapped up against Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, prominent faces of the most successful populist uprising in recent history: Canada’s Freedom Convoy.

In a trial that is estimated to have cost the Canadian taxpayer upwards of $10 million and dragged on for 20 months (as crimes like the September 2023 drive-by mass shooting of an Ottawa wedding remain unsolved), crown attorneys debated the meaning of terms like “hold the line” while they doggedly pursued guilty verdicts for Barber and Lich, downplaying the entirely nonviolent character of the duo’s actions, as well as their full cooperation with police.

The hardworking Barber family represents an archetype in Canada, hardy settlers who tamed a vast wilderness, contending with harsh winters and vast distances few will understand.

Lich and Barber were eventually both found guilty of “mischief,” a property charge under Canadian law that can carry a 10-year prison sentence. Barber was also found guilty on a separate charge of counseling to disobey a court order. The Crown is seeking to put Lich away for seven years, and Barber for eight, sending a clear signal to Canadians: Don’t you dare oppose us ever again.

Enemies of the state

In her finding of guilt, Justice Heather Perkins McVey came to the conclusion that public enjoyment of the streets of Ottawa were of a weightier and more important consideration than Lich and Barber’s rights to protest, even though Lich didn’t park a truck on any street herself, and Barber’s rig was parked in places Ottawa police told him to park it.

Again, for a pair of normal working-class people with no criminal records whom the Canadian government turned into enemies of the state, they were awfully cooperative with cops and the city of Ottawa, contra Justin Trudeau’s state media making them out to be dangerous insurrectionists.

Sentencing on their convictions will take place on October 7. In the meantime, the province of Ontario, lead by Doug Ford (brother of the late, infamous Toronto mayor Rob Ford), is seeking to impose an even more egregious punishment against Barber and his family: seizing his iconic 2003 Kenworth W900L rig, “Big Red,” which has become one of the defining symbols of the Freedom Convoy.

Red notice

As I wrote here back in April:

Barber’s rig had become a symbol of the Freedom Convoy, featured in thousands of pictures, videos, and memes, as it led the Western Canadian Convoy to Ottawa. Barber has owned and operated that truck since 2003 and put 3.4 million kilometers (roughly 2.1 million miles) on it, mostly hauling heavy agricultural equipment across his home province of Saskatchewan and picking up new equipment from factories in America for his customers.

In the 22 years Barber has owned and operated that truck, he has raised his children in it over trips too many to count, and when his dog Buddy was approaching the end of his life, the poor old dog was put down while lying on the passenger seat: Buddy's favorite place to be.

Under the Emergencies Act, Barber (like many others) had his bank account frozen; the Crown never mentioned anything about seizing Barber’s truck. Perhaps it was a “backup” punishment once a federal court ruled that Trudeau’s invocation of the act was unconstitutional. (Under the administration of Trudeau’s successor, former governor of the Banks of Canada and England Mark Carney, an appeal to that ruling is working its way through the courts.)

Passing the buck

Who initiated this wicked and capricious forfeiture process? We may never know. Testifying at the first day of hearings about seizing Big Red last week — Friday, September 12 — Det. Kari Launen of the OPS Provincial Asset Forfeiture Unit claimed that it was all his idea.

As Lich posted on X:

When asked if he had been directed by the crown to commence this investigation, the detective said he was not. He says he gets requests but it is up to him due to his lengthy career and extensive experience to decide how and when to investigate. He then volunteered that he wasn’t directed by the crown but only commenced the investigation after he’d had some meetings with the crown (in which he was definitely NOT directed by the crown).

The Invisible Man must have telepathically communicated these investigative urges into his psyche. He clarified that he was not directed but “given a task,” again by No One.


It is interesting that Detective Launen claims to have such latitude in deciding what to investigate. Consider the experience of one of his colleagues, Ottawa Police Service Detective Helen Grus. Grus was recently censured for taking it upon herself to investigate a string of nine infant deaths that occurred around Ottawa in the aftermath of the COVID vaccine rollout.

Strange that Grus — part of the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse unit — should be reprimanded for investigating deaths clearly within her purview, while Launen’s interest in the ownership records of a truck from a province on the other side of the country should raise nary an eyebrow.

Still truckin’

Last week I spoke with Barber by phone. He was behind the wheel of Big Red, speaking with me via Bluetooth headset, en route through Saskatchewan while doing what he does best — moving the massive agricultural machinery which helps the Canadian Prairies produce grains which feed the world its daily bread.

“We hired Brendan Miller from Calgary to represent CB Trucking, the company my son and I own 50/50, and my lawyer Diane Magas from Ottawa was there as well," Barber told me.

"Miller threw a wrench into things; normally Ottawa Court is staid and procedural, but Miller really went deep into case law, and it seemed like he was teaching Justice Perkins-McVey at times. ... The Crown got angry when Miller accused them of acting in bad faith.”

RELATED: Canadian feds to seize iconic 'Big Red' as Freedom Convoy persecution rolls on

Chris Barber

Family target

The Crown has now also set its sights on Barber’s son Jonathan. Why, they ask, did Barber give Jonathan a 50% stake in the family trucking company — and, by extension, an ownership stake in Big Red — after first facing charges in 2022?

But what the court bizarrely frames as a tacit admission of guilt likely has a much more straightforward explanation. Facing the potential destruction of his business in the wake of these criminal charges as well as a nearly $300 million civil suit brought by a group of citizens in Ottawa (who, it ought be noted, have brought no such such suit against the Hamas enthusiasts who have been harassing the citizens of Ottawa with impunity for nearly two years straight), it only made sense for Barber to try and protect his business assets via a fairly common transfer of partial ownership. Add to that the fact that seizure of Big Red wasn’t even on the table until a few months ago.

None of that is enough to satisfy the Crown, apparently: Both Jonathan and Barber’s parents have been called to testify this Thursday, in these painfully slower and somehow more evil Kafka-esque proceedings which resumed Monday, September 22.

‘A tough kid’

“Jonathan is a tough kid,” Barber told me of his son, who recently survived more or less unscathed a collision that tore his Peterbilt rig apart (an impatient fellow trucker attempted to pass Jonathan as he attempted to negotiate a major turn with the same kind of massive equipment his dad hauls).

“He’s really stepped up to the plate in managing the business while I have been busy with court and lawyers meetings and all the travel to Ottawa,” Barber continued.

Given that Barber and his family live outside the Saskatchewan town of Swift Current, (known by locals and old school truckers as “Speedy Creek”) a little over 1,800 miles from Ottawa, the last two years of trial have involved an incredible amount of travel. Barber’s parents only live three-quarters of a mile away and often stop in to feed and water his horses and dogs while he is in Ottawa or away trucking.

While I spoke with Chris, his daughter Sierra escorted him in a pilot truck, a mandatory requirement for loads the size Barber specializes in.

Canadian archetype

The hardworking Barber family represents an archetype in Canada, hardy settlers who tamed a vast wilderness, contending with harsh winters and vast distances few will understand. These were the vast majority of Freedom Convoy participants, who easily managed the logistics and likewise dealt with the cold Ottawa winter, so it is no surprise that a government that seeks to make people weak and dependent continues to attack them.

In a video Barber posted online, he explained what he and his family are up against:

Because [prosecutors] are so vindictive and so hateful and so spiteful, they want more.

Our fear is right now that if the judge ... throws the forfeiture out, that allows the Crown to then go back to the province of Saskatchewan at a later date and say, ‘We want that truck, and we want you to help.’ So what we’re trying to do right now is bat that right out of the bloody park, and that’s going to prolong things. We’re talking probably six months of trial. We’re talking possibly Supreme Court.

Barber has already gone through the longest mischief trial in the history of the nation and has been the subject of the most vicious and protracted lawfare the country has ever seen — all for his role in peacefully resisting Canada’s draconian vaccine mandates.

That the government is now so bent on destroying a potent symbol of that resistance reveals something deeply authoritarian about both the Liberal-controlled Canada of the last decade and the managerial regimes of so many other countries that acted in a similar fashion. Americans should take note.

Justin Trudeau offered to save migrants from Trump; 8 years later Canadians are still paying the price



On January 28, 2017, in the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s first travel ban, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent out a tweet that would reverberate far beyond social media:

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”

Migrants and asylum-seekers in the United States took Trudeau at his word, and within weeks, illegal crossings over the Quebec-New York border surged, centered on a rural stretch known as Roxham Road.

The majority of the border-crossers are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian 'refugees.'

The surge was driven by a quirk in the Safe Third Country Agreement, a treaty between Canada and the U.S. dating back to 2004. Under the deal, asylum-seekers are supposed to file their claims in the first safe country they arrive in.

But the STCA applied only at official checkpoints. Those who walked across back roads like Roxham were exempt — and once on Canadian soil, they were entitled to have their cases heard. This loophole transformed Roxham into the busiest irregular crossing in the country.

Invite revoked

What began as symbolic anti-Trump signaling had become a full-blown crisis by the time Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Quebec’s shelters and reception centers filled beyond capacity, municipalities complained of mounting costs, and national polls showed Canadians increasingly skeptical of how the border was being managed.

The issue also spilled across the border. Even as Biden faced criticism for presiding over border chaos in Texas and Arizona, his administration quietly pressed Ottawa to rein in irregular migration to the north. In March 2023, Trudeau and Biden announced an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement that closed the Roxham Road loophole, giving Canadian officials authority to turn back asylum-seekers anywhere along the border if caught within 14 days of entry.

Smuggle session

The irony was hard to miss: Washington was leaning on Canada to tighten a rural crossing in Quebec at the very moment its own southern border remained mired in crisis. Trudeau’s lofty promise of welcome had ended, six years later, in a deal to keep more people out.

But Roxham Road is very much open today — thanks to organized crime groups making a tidy profit from smuggling people across the border.

A recent investigation by Rebel News confirmed reports of rampant human trafficking after Churubusco, New York, resident Jerry Miller contacted the conservative news outlet about an escalation in activity at the border.

According to Miller, the vast majority of those being surreptitiously moved across the border are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian “refugees.”

Haitians head north

Why are they heading north?

Their motivation to come to Canada could certainly be linked to Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Haitians living in the U.S. A Rebel News reporter found Haitian ID cards at the scene, along with discarded backpacks, clothes, and food.

In one night, a Rebel News reporter using an infrared camera caught 23 people crossing.

Hunter Robare, who lives on the same street as Miller, described the situation. "It's every day."

"It can be pretty nerve-racking," Robare added. "Just being at home and you have a group of people walking down the road; you don't know their intentions."

RELATED: Blaze News investigates: Springfield sees lives saved, Haitian exodus thanks to Trump's deportation threats

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Legal increase

Of course, this is just illegal immigration. Under Trudeau and continuing under Prime Minister Mark Carney, legal immigration increased at rates not seen in over a century.

The combination of chronic illegal immigration and lax legal immigration is producing a potential economic catastrophe for Canada, prompting Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow to demand that the federal government accurately assess the illegal immigrant population.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We believe there’s 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada, and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services,” said Schow.

Meanwhile, more than eight years after Trudeau's fateful invitation, the human traffickers at Roxham Road continue to thrive.

Freedom Convoy sentencing straight from anarcho-tyranny playbook



You may not have heard the term “anarcho-tyranny” in a while — maybe never. But it’s the only phrase that fits what’s unfolding in Canada right now: a system that punishes peaceful political dissent while letting real criminals off easy. It’s lawfare in service of regime security.

That was true under Justin Trudeau, and it’s even more apparent under his successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney — a globalist banker who cashed in on political connections and now presides over a government determined to crush dissent.

Even if Barber and Lich are granted the absolute discharge that their lawyers are requesting, the Liberal government has proven its point: Defy us, and we will ... ruin your life.

Drawn-out sentencing

Just look at the ongoing prosecution of Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, two of the main organizers of the 2022 Freedom Convoy — the trucker-led protest that captured global attention when thousands of Canadians rolled into Ottawa to peacefully demand an end to COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns.

The trial began shortly after Labor Day 2023. On April 3, 2024, the pair were found guilty of mischief, but nearly six months later, they still haven’t been sentenced. Their next court date isn’t until October 7.

That makes this the longest mischief trial in Canadian history.

Let’s be clear: Barber and Lich face up to eight and seven years in prison, respectively. For mischief. For organizing a protest. The Crown — Canada’s prosecution — has also filed a request to seize Barber’s truck, known as “Big Red,” an icon of the convoy.

Extraordinary harm?

At a sentencing hearing last week in Ottawa, Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher argued that the two were “criminally responsible for extraordinary harm.” She’s pushing for a seven-year sentence for each, plus an additional year for Barber for “counselling others to disobey a court order.”

A separate hearing to decide on the truck’s forfeiture is set for August 12.

Meanwhile, the presiding judge, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, admitted during the hearing that she was unaware that convoy participants and even donors had their bank accounts frozen by the Trudeau government under the Emergencies Act — a chilling use of power that shocked observers around the world.

Worse than manslaughter

Think about it: In Canada, people are routinely sentenced to six years for manslaughter. Rapists and violent criminals often serve far less. Car thieves are let out on bail and vanish. But organize a peaceful protest against the ruling party’s COVID regime? You get dragged through court for two years and potentially thrown in prison for nearly a decade.

Even if Barber and Lich are granted the absolute discharge that their lawyers are requesting, the Liberal government has proven its point: Defy us, and we will drain your finances, squander your time, and ruin your life. As both Barber and Lich have told me, “The process is the punishment.”

RELATED: Canadian feds to seize iconic 'Big Red' as Freedom Convoy persecution rolls on

Courtesy Chris Barber

Third-world politics

This is not a free society. This is selective repression. Canada now only permits political protest that aligns with the Liberal Party’s agenda. March for climate, Pride, or Palestine? No problem. Challenge government overreach or reject the woke orthodoxy? Prepare for hell.

This is a Canada out of step with both Trump’s America — where woke politics and deep-state control are under attack — and much of Europe, where populist movements are rising, lockdown policies are being questioned, and citizens are reclaiming sovereignty from unelected elites.

To put it bluntly, this is third-world politics without the tropical weather.

The very idea that two peaceful protest organizers could spend eight years in prison should alarm anyone who still believes in democracy, civil liberties, or basic proportionality in the justice system.

But this is the state of Canada in 2025.

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Canada declares independence from Liberal censorship — with Donald Trump's help



Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his government would rescind the Digital Services Tax. Yes, Carney caved.

Canadians should be relieved.

Within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax.

The Liberal government enjoys inventing new ways to tax both Canadians and anyone doing business in Canada. Canada is the home of the Goods and Services Tax and the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Now it was about to have a DST.

Punitive taxation

Of course, taxation for globalists like Carney has nothing to do with raising money. He can always print more money. Taxation has become punitive — either punishing the poor hapless citizens with an ever-increasing tax burden or using taxation to prevent Canadians from receiving anything not officially sanctioned by the Liberal government.

In this case, it’s about restricting access to unacceptable news.

On June 30, U.S. tech companies operating in Canada were expected to begin paying the DST — a 3% tax on all their Canadian earnings. And it would have been retroactive to 2022. The cost was estimated to be over $2 billion, but the experts were probably lowballing it.

On June 27, President Donald Trump announced that if the DST was not scrapped, trade talks between Canada and the U.S. would be terminated.

We have a great relationship with the people of Canada, but it's been very difficult, and they put a charge, and they were a little bit early. We found out about it, and we have all the cards. We have every single one.

… So I said, we're going to stop all negotiations with Canada right now, until they straighten out their act.

Bluff called

Carney’s reaction was initially another example of his cocky, insouciant attitude, as he pretended there was nothing to worry about.

But within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax. Just another example of the president’s unique version of realpolitik.

RELATED: '51st state': Trump teases annexation again after Canada quickly caves on major tax

STEFAN ROUSSEAU/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The winners in the flip-flop are American tech companies and Canadians who have been given a reprieve from another odious piece of Liberal government censorship legislation.

War on bad thoughts

Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Canada adopted Bills C-11, the Online Streaming Act, and C-18, the Online News Act, and came very close to passing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which would have jailed people for broadcasting “hate speech” and actually contained a thought crimes component that envisioned house arrest for people accused by neighbors of thinking bad thoughts.

Bill C-11 demands that foreign companies produce an acceptable amount of Canadian content on the internet, just as Canada has always demanded similar rules from television, radio, and print media.

Bill C-18 went a step farther and demanded that U.S. social media companies provide an annual stipend to the Canadian government if they post Canadian news content on their platforms. The result has been the death of Canadian news on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram sites because the companies have refused to submit to this extortion.

Storming Fortress Canada

The net effect is to entrench the influence of the mainstream media in Canada, which receives massive subsidies from the federal government; and to weaken independent media, which tends to depend far more on social media exposure.

The DST would have furthered this government control and passive censorship of the internet, because many U.S. companies would probably simply have refused to pay the tax and told the Carney government to move on.

For more than a decade the Liberals have been trying to create some kind of Fortress Canada in which independent and foreign voices have no power to shape the national narrative. It is a dangerous and toxic authoritarian experiment.

Canadians should thank Donald Trump for at least slowing the process down by getting his way on the DST.

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.

FBI director Kash Patel to Canada: Control your border



It's long been an open secret in Canadian law enforcement circles: Chinese Triads have been moving people, weapons, and drugs over the the border and into the United States with impunity for decades.

And yet the government in Ottawa has largely failed to act on repeated warnings by a number of Canadian security officials over the years.

'He has stopped all the border crossings. So where's all the fentanyl coming from still? Where's the trafficking coming from still?'

President Donald Trump has brought renewed attention to lax border security, using tariffs as a stick to prompt action.

Now Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel is amplifying his boss' message: Forget Mexico. America's most pressing border security concern is to the north.

'Step up'

During an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartrimono last weekend, Patel brushed aside concerns about Trump's "51st state" rhetoric and urged Canada to “step up” and take responsibility for its border security.

Of the 300 known or suspected terrorists to illegally enter the U.S. in 2024, 85% came via Canada, Patel claimed.

Noting that Trump has effectively "sealed" the Mexican border, the FBI boss also contended that Canada must be the source of the fentanyl that continues to be smuggled into the U.S.

“In the first two, three months that we have been in the seat under Donald Trump's administration, he has sealed the border. He has stopped border crossings. So where's all the fentanyl coming from still? Where's the trafficking coming from still?” Patel asked rhetorically.

He quickly supplied the answer: “The northern border.”

Booming business

Patel identified two distinct roles that Canada plays in the international drug trade: a destination for smuggled fentanyl ingredients and a haven for illegal labs transforming those ingredients into fentanyl.

“Our adversaries have partnered up with the [Chinese Communist Party] and others — Russia, Iran — on a variety of different criminal enterprises, and they're going and they're sailing around to Vancouver and coming in by air."

Patel’s remarks have been largely confirmed by Canadian investigative journalist Sam Cooper, who has done extensive reporting on how fentanyl precursors arrive from China at the Vancouver port, where the shipments are undetected. The precursors are then moved to drug production plants in the interior of British Columbia, where the fentanyl is produced.

Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government showed little interest in interrupting his process until last December, when tariff pressure from Trump helped persuade Trudeau to announce a $900 million border security plan.

Cozy with China

Trudeau successor Mark Carney has has talked about bolstering border security but has yet to allocate a penny more. There is no budget expected from his government until sometime in the fall.

Carney's close ties with China may complicate any attempts to crack down on that country's alleged infiltration of Canadian ports.

As I wrote here last month, Carney has advocated for replacing the U.S. dollar with the Chinese yuan as the global currency. While serving in Beijing as the special economic adviser to then-Prime Minister Trudeau, Carney also secured a $276 million (CDN) loan from the Chinese central bank in October 2024 for Brookfield Asset Management, a company he chaired at the time.

The Apprentice: Carney plays nice during first White House visit



It was another surreal moment in the bizarre relationship between President Donald Trump and new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, staunch political opponents who nonetheless seem to have a genuine affection for each other — at least when face to face.

Carney was in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to meet with the president in his first foreign trip as an elected prime minister. Given that Carney won Canada's April 28 federal election largely by vowing to stand up to Trump, a little tension might have been expected at the White House news conference.

Carney insisted that Trump must stop alluding to Canada as the 51st state if negotiations are to proceed unimpeded.

Instead, Trump called Carney “a talented person." Carney described Trump as “a transformational president.”

No hard feelings

For his part, Trump seems to have been sincere — after all, the president endorsed Carney on three different occasions and was happy to take credit for his victory in typical Trumpian fashion.

Carney's words, however, were a far cry from the tough rhetoric he used while propelling his Liberal Party to a fourth straight term in power. On the campaign trail, Carney vowed to fight Trump and his tariffs every chance he got — tough talk that had no small part in securing his victory.

Clearly any tariff talk was going to go on behind closed doors — at least Trump certainly wasn't giving anything away during the two leaders' first official appearance together.

Each man was surrounded by close advisers. Trump had Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while Carney looked to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, and International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

No business

For most of the conversation with the anxious media, Trump behaved as if Carney weren’t even sitting beside him, almost never referencing his presence or even why he was in Washington.

Carney sat in perfect subservience to the master.

Trump held forth in his usual manner, talking about any issue that came to mind except tariffs. In fact, he dismissed the significance of the neighboring countries' economic relationship: “We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We’re at like 4%.”

Carney was quick to point out how ridiculous this statement was — that Canada is in fact “the largest client of the United States." It was probably the clearest moment of truth the banker turned politician has had since he decided to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

'Maybe even greater than mine'

Trump introduced Carney like an old friend and valued colleague:

It's a great honor to have Prime Minister Mark Carney with us. As you know, just a few days ago, he won a very big election in Canada, and I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him, but I can't take a vote. They were — his party was losing by a lot, and he ended up winning. So I really want to congratulate him.

Was one of the — probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics, maybe even greater than mine. But I want to just congratulate you. Was a great election. Actually, we were watching it with interest, and I think Canada chose a very talented person, a very good person, because we spoke before the election quite a few times, and it's an honor to have you at the White House and the Oval Office.

That was news! They spoke several times during the election? Carney had only mentioned one conversation.

A 'transformational' president

Carney returned the collegiality, saying, “Thank you for your hospitality and, above all, for your leadership. You're a transformational president.”

The prime minister explained that Trump was so transformational because of his “focus on the economy, with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and in securing the world.”

Carney, in a jaw-dropping sequence, explained that he too was fighting for exactly the same things and that he would

transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing our borders, again, on fentanyl, much greater focus on defense and security, securing the Arctic and developing the Arctic. And you know, the history of Canada and the U.S. is that we're stronger when we work together. And there's many opportunities to work together.

And I look forward to, you know, addressing some of those issues that we have, but also finding those areas of mutual cooperation so we can go forward.

Trump nodded and said, “That's great. Very nice. Thank you very much. Very nice statement.”

Fighting words

There was one moment of defiance from Carney as Trump again raised the specter of Canada becoming part of the United States. “Respectfully, Canadians’ view on this is not going to change, on the 51st state," the prime minister said.

Trump genially agreed to disagree, insisting that his relationship with Carney was “very friendly,” even as he reiterated his position that the U.S. did not want to buy any Canadian cars or steel.

Nor did Trump budge on the existing tariffs on cars and steel. When a reporter asked if there was anything Canada could do to roll the tariffs back, the president replied with a flat "no."

No love lost

Trump quickly moved the conversation to a happier subject: how much he loathed former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

I won't say this about Mark, but I didn't like his predecessor. I didn't like a person that worked for him. She was terrible. Actually, she was a terrible person, and she really hurt that deal very badly, because she tried to take advantage of the deal, and she didn't get away with it. …

We had a bad relationship having to do with the fact that we disagreed with the way they viewed the deal, and we ended it. You know, we ended that — that relationship. Pretty much the USMCA is great for all countries. It's good for all countries. We do have a negotiation coming up over the next year or so to adjust it or terminate it.

Carney managed to get a word in on the USMCA free trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, calling the defunct treaty “a basis for a broader negotiation. Some things about it are going to have to change. And part of the way you've conducted these tariffs has taken advantage of existing aspects of USMCA, so it's going to have to change. There's other elements that have come, and that's part of what we're going to discuss during the campaign.”

Positive post-mortem

The two leaders spent another few hours in private meetings before Carney emerged at the Canadian embassy in Washington to explain what progress had been made.

"I conveyed to the president today what our countries have long proven to be true: that Canada and the United States are stronger when we work together," said Carney.

"Really today marked the end of the beginning, of a process of the United States and Canada redefining that relationship of working together. The question is, how we will cooperate in the future. How we can build an economic and security relationship built on mutual respect and common interests, that delivers transformational benefits to our economies."

Carney insisted that Trump must stop alluding to Canada as the 51st state if negotiations are to proceed unimpeded.

"I've been careful always to distinguish between wish and reality. I was clear there in the Oval Office, as I've been clear throughout on behalf of Canadians, saying this is never going to happen. Canada is not for sale; it never will be for sale," said Carney.

Rule by the people? Not anymore in the Western world



On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially labeled Alternative for Germany — the country’s most popular conservative party — as a “right-wing extremist” organization. The nationalist party surged to second place in February’s federal election, winning 20.8% of the vote. This new designation grants the ruling government expanded powers to surveil Alternative for Germany leaders and supporters and sets the stage for an outright ban.

Germany has now joined a growing list of Western governments that delay elections, disqualify candidates, and ban opposition parties — all in the name of defending democracy.

Democracy has become a marketing slogan — useful for justifying war and globalist expansion, but disposable when it interferes with ruling-class priorities.

To call Germany’s relationship with authoritarianism “complicated” understates the case. The country’s historical memory fixates on Nazism as the ultimate expression of right-wing extremism and mass atrocity. But that singular focus conveniently ignores the fact that the Soviet Union, which helped defeat the Third Reich, imposed its own brutal regime across East Germany until the Berlin Wall fell.

Modern Germany has seen tyranny from both the far right and the far left. Yet its national identity now orbits entirely around a rejection of right-wing politics. Anti-fascism has become something like a state religion. But when a country builds its identity on shame and self-repudiation, it risks cultural collapse. We’ve seen the same pathology infect America, where elite institutions push a national narrative defined entirely by slavery and racial guilt.

Every nation has dark chapters. A mature society learns from them. It doesn’t define itself by them forever.

While German history explains some of its deep aversion to nationalism, the trend of suppressing populist movements in the name of democracy has spread far beyond Berlin.

Brazil’s Supreme Court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030. Romania’s Constitutional Court voided its 2024 election, citing supposed Russian influence in the rise of populist candidate Călin Georgescu. And in the United States, courts came dangerously close to removing Donald Trump from the ballot — while the president now fights legal battles over whether he can exercise executive power at all under Article II of the Constitution.

This isn’t democracy defending itself. It’s ruling elites trying to outlaw their opposition.

Western elites justify their dominance by invoking democracy and individual liberty. That wasn’t always the case. The West once called itself Christendom — a civilizational identity grounded in faith, tradition, and truth. But it abandoned that foundation in favor of secular platitudes.

The United States has waged entire wars in the name of exporting democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan — nations that never wanted it and were never going to keep it. These projects were doomed from the start. Yet at least they wrapped American power in the language of benevolence.

Today, even that fig leaf has disappeared.

The modern West treats democracy as a branding exercise, not a principle. Leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and Keir Starmer love lecturing the world about “liberal norms,” even as they jail political dissidents, censor speech, and turn domestic intelligence services against their own citizens. They condemn Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism while staying silent as NATO allies crush dissent at home.

Democracy has become a marketing slogan — useful for justifying war and globalist expansion, but disposable when it interferes with ruling-class priorities.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both slammed the German government for labeling Alternative for Germany as extremist. On social media, Rubio went further, blaming Germany’s open-border policies for the Alternative for Germany rise and calling the state’s surveillance powers tyranny in disguise.

Germany’s Foreign Office issued a formal reply, insisting the decision stemmed from an “independent” and “thorough” investigation.

The claim is absurd on its face.

No government can “independently” investigate and condemn its most prominent political opposition — especially not when the accusation is “extremism,” a term that now means little more than holding views the ruling class finds inconvenient.

I’ve made no secret of my dislike of modern mass democracy. But the original concept, at least, had merit. Democracy once meant rule by the demos — the people of a particular nation, rooted in shared history, culture, and civic identity. Its legitimacy came not from procedure or process but from the bonds between citizens and their country.

Today’s ruling class has twisted that definition beyond recognition. As I’ve written before, globalist elites now use the word “democracy” to describe a system governed by unaccountable institutions they alone control. Populism, they say, is dangerous. Democracy, they insist, must be preserved. But in practice, they oppose the popular will and protect only the process they’ve captured.

Elections have become sacraments — rituals that legitimize the rule of bureaucracies, not expressions of the people’s will. The process is sacred, not the outcome. That’s why Western politicians now speak of “our sacred democracy,” which must be defended not from tyranny, but from actual democratic movements.

Western leaders still try to justify their global power by invoking freedom and liberty. But their credibility has collapsed. It’s farcical to hear men like Justin Trudeau or Keir Starmer preach about “shared Western values” while jailing political opponents and silencing dissent at home.

The moral authority of liberal democracy is crumbling. And the cause isn’t Putin or China. It’s Western leaders who’ve gutted the electoral process and replaced it with rule by managerial elites.

The Trump administration should continue to expose this hypocrisy. But it also must act. That means offering political asylum to dissidents facing persecution in places like Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Americans rightly recoil at repression in Russia. They should feel the same revulsion when it comes from our “allies” in Berlin, Ottawa, or London.