Timothy Snyder has built a career trying to convince Americans that Donald Trump is a latter-day Adolf Hitler — a fascist demagogue hell-bent on dismantling America’s institutions to seize power. Last week, the Yale historian and author of the bestselling resistance pamphlet “On Tyranny,” briefly changed course. Now, apparently, Trump is Jefferson Davis.

In a recent Substack post, Snyder claimed Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg amounted to a call for civil war. He argued that the president’s praise for the military and his rejection of the left’s historical revisionism signaled not patriotism but treason — and the rise of a “paramilitary” regime.

Trump doesn’t want a second civil war. He wants the first one to mean something.

No, seriously. That’s what he thinks.

Renaming Fort Bragg

Trump’s first alleged Confederate offense, Snyder said, was to reinstate the military base’s original name: Fort Bragg. The Biden administration had renamed it Fort Liberty, repudiating General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate ties. Trump reversed the change.

The Biden administration had renamed the base Fort Liberty, citing General Braxton Bragg’s service to the Confederacy. Trump reversed the change. But he didn’t do it to honor a Confederate general. He did it to honor World War II paratrooper Roland L. Bragg, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained.

Snyder wasn’t buying it. He accused the administration of fabricating a “dishonest pretense” that glorifies “oathbreakers and traitors.”

That charge hits close to home.

My grandfather Martin Spohn was a German Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Berlin in 1936. He proudly served in the U.S. Army. He trained with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Bragg before deploying to Normandy. Like thousands of others, he saw the base not as a Confederate monument but as a launchpad for defeating actual fascism.

Restoring the name Fort Bragg doesn’t rewrite history. It honors the Americans who made history — men who trained there to liberate Europe from tyranny.

That’s not fascism. That’s victory over it.

Deploying the National Guard

For Snyder, though, Trump’s real crime was calling up the National Guard to restore order in riot-torn Los Angeles. That, he claimed, puts Trump in the same category as Robert E. Lee.

According to Snyder, the president is “preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.”

Let’s set aside the hysteria.

Trump didn’t glorify the Confederacy. He called for law and order in the face of spiraling violence. He pushed back against the left’s crusade to erase American history — not to rewrite it but to preserve its complexity.

He didn’t tell soldiers to defy the Constitution. He reminded them of their oath: to defend the nation, not serve the ideological demands of woke officials.

Snyder’s claims are as reckless as they are false.

He smears anyone who supports border enforcement or takes pride in military service as a threat to democracy. Want secure borders? You’re a fascist. Call out the collapse of Democrat-run cities? You’re a Confederate.

This isn’t analysis. It’s slander masquerading as scholarship.

The real division

But this debate isn’t really about Trump. It’s about power.

The left has spent years reshaping the military into a political project — prioritizing diversity seminars over combat readiness, purging dissenters, and enforcing ideological loyalty. When Trump pushes back, it’s not authoritarianism. It’s restoration.

The left wants a military that fights climate change, checks pronouns, and marches for “equity.” Trump wants a military that defends the nation. That’s the real divide.

Over and over, Snyder accuses Trump of “trivializing” the military by invoking its heroism while discussing immigration enforcement. But what trivializes military service more — linking it to national defense or turning soldiers into props for progressive social experiments?

Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

And Trump isn’t breaking precedent by deploying the National Guard when local leaders fail. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson used federal troops during desegregation. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights marchers. The Guard responded during the 1967 Detroit riots, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the Black Lives Matter and Antifa upheavals of 2020.

Trump acted within his authority — and fulfilled his duty — to restore order when Democrat-run cities descended into chaos.

A House divided?

Snyder’s rhetoric about “protecting democracy” rings hollow. Trump won the 2024 election decisively. Voters across party lines gave him a clear mandate: Secure the border and remove violent criminals. Pew Research found that 97% of Americans support more vigorous enforcement of immigration laws.

Yet Snyder, who constantly warns of creeping authoritarianism, closed his post by urging fellow academics to join No Kings protests.

Nobody appointed Timothy Snyder king, either.

If he respected democratic institutions, he’d spend less time fearmongering — and more time listening to the Americans, including many in uniform, who are tired of being demonized for loving their country. They’re tired of being called bigots for wanting secure borders. They’re tired of watching history weaponized to silence dissent.

Snyder invokes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to condemn Trump. But it was Lincoln who paraphrased scripture when he said, “A house divided cannot stand.”

Americans united behind Trump in 2024. Snyder’s effort to cast half the country as fascists or Confederates embodies the division Lincoln warned against.

Here’s the truth: Trump doesn’t want a second civil war. He wants the first one to mean something.

He wants a Union preserved in more than name — a Union defined by secure borders, equal justice, and unapologetic national pride.

If that scares Timothy Snyder, maybe the problem isn’t Trump.

Perhaps, the problem lies in the man staring back at him in the mirror.

RFK Jr. torches vaccine panel to make consequences count again

Consequences. The word means little when applied to the failures of America’s so-called expert class. COVID-19 exposed the rot. Officials failed again and again at precisely what they were paid to understand — and escaped unscathed. Lockdowns failed. Masks failed. The mRNA shots failed. Yet, Anthony Fauci walked off the stage wealthier than ever. That’s the problem.

But nearly halfway into year one of Trump 2.0, America finally seems hungry to Make Consequences Great Again.

Choosing a freer, healthier, more dignified path is not just possible — it’s the rightful consequence of reclaiming citizenship in a nation built on liberty and courage.

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled the COVID-19 jab recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women. The move strips the shot of its legal basis for mandates now or in the future. Then, in a sweeping housecleaning, Kennedy announced he would “retire” all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee.

Of those members, 13 were appointed by Joe Biden as recently as 2024. I wonder who was running the autopen to make that happen. Since most of those members have direct ties to pharmaceutical companies, I’ll let your imagination fill in the details.

Children’s Health Defense cites a 2000 U.S. House investigation that found conflict-of-interest rules for the CDC’s vaccine committee went largely unenforced. A 2009 report by the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General reached the same conclusion. Follow-up investigations in 2021 and 2024 showed no improvement, even as the path was cleared for mRNA shots to be hailed as the next biomedical miracle.

How deeply do the vaccine high priests on this committee worship their pharma gods? When RFK Jr. began removing them like Elijah at Mount Carmel, he noted that the committee had never recommended against adopting a vaccine. Not once.

That’s not science. That’s idolatry. That’s how children went from receiving fewer than 20 shots in my generation to more than 70 on today’s schedule. At this point, after so many miraculous infusions of “health care,” shouldn't we all be glowing, levitating, and reading each other’s minds?

Instead, as RFK Jr. keeps pointing out, Americans today suffer from staggering rates of chronic illness, obesity, and mental distress. That’s what happens when the expert class convinces new parents their babies are born defective — ticking time bombs of disease in constant need of pharmaceutical salvation. Go for a run? Nah. Take a pill instead. Live prayerfully? Try pharmaceutically.

This is what you get when a culture forgets it was made in the image and likeness of God.

We may be the most formally educated society in human history, but we’ve been conditioned — psychologically and emotionally — like lab rats. Decades of programming have trained us to fear life itself and trust the experts to manage it. That’s why RFK Jr.’s purge of the vaccine committee goes far beyond health care. It strikes at the heart of the worldview — because worldview shapes everything.

My partner in crime, Todd Erzen, has long said that most young Christian parents would probably vaccinate their children before baptizing them. He’s not wrong. Fear — not faith — drives too many of our most important decisions. And without realizing it, no matter how many comforts we enjoy, we’ve traded a life of color for one in black and white.

Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The vaccine committee had to go. It had morphed into a cult of flat-earthers — deniers of reality in service of profit and power. For too long, Americans wore their chains, obedient to the credentialed class that promised safety while delivering sickness and dependency.

But we don’t have to live that way.

Choosing a freer, healthier, more dignified path is not just possible — it’s the rightful consequence of reclaiming citizenship in a nation built on liberty and courage. That’s the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And for once, we have unlikely allies to thank: Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both have reminded Americans that the door out of this madness isn’t locked. We just needed the will to kick it open.

The real tyranny? Institutional groupthink disguised as truth

Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” has become a pocket-size gospel for progressives in the age of Trump — a secular catechism of 20 rules to resist looming fascism. It’s pitched not just as a historical analysis but as an urgent survival guide, borrowed from the dark lessons of the 20th century. The message is clear: Authoritarianism is always just one election away, and Donald Trump is its orange-faced harbinger.

Such moral urgency unmoored from historical context tends to collapse into political theater, however. “On Tyranny” is not a serious book. It is an emotive pamphlet that relies less on the actual historical complexities of rising tyranny than on the reader’s willingness to conflate MAGA hats with brownshirts.

Snyder believes a tyrant is always the populist outsider, never the insider who manages democratic decline in a suit and tie.

Such historical flattening is the first and most obvious flaw in Snyder’s argument. He leans heavily on the atrocities of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia to suggest that Trump’s rise follows the same trajectory. But this is not serious analysis — it’s emotional manipulation. It’s one thing to warn against patterns; it’s another to flatten every populist movement into a prequel to genocide.

Snyder, a Yale historian, surely knows better. But “On Tyranny” depends on your feeling like you're living in 1933 — whether or not such historical parallels are actually true. And they’re not.

A democratic mandate

Snyder warns against the rise of a single leader claiming to represent the will of the people and establishing a one-party state — equating the 2016 Republican sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress to Hitler’s consolidation of the Third Reich. Such a comparison isn’t just blatantly false; it’s a cruel dismissal of the democratic will of the people for merely voting in Republican candidates.

Surely Snyder didn’t accuse Barack Obama of fascist one-party rule when he and the Democrats swept the White House and Congress in 2008. Such electoral outcomes aren’t a harbinger of fascism. No, no! That was a mandate from the American people, democratically spoken, demanding change from the status quo. Voters sent that message loud and clear in 2008 — as well as in 2016 and 2024.

Snyder’s false equivalency counts on fear rather than critical thinking — any semblance of which would entice Democrats to pause for a moment of self-reflection and listen to what the American people are saying through the electoral process. But Snyder’s one-sided alarmism silences the electoral voice — merely because it rallied behind Trump.

Civic theater

Snyder’s advice to citizens reads like a secular sermon: “Defend institutions.” “Stand out.” “Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.” On the surface, it sounds noble — defiant, even. But strip away the aesthetic of resistance, and what’s left is a deeply superficial understanding of civic virtue.

What exactly are we defending when we’re told to “support the press” or “protect truth”? In practice, Snyder’s rules amount to an uncritical loyalty to legacy institutions that have forfeited public trust — media outlets that gaslight, bureaucracies that bloat, and experts who contradict themselves while silencing dismissive voices.

Snyder dismisses the possibility that institutions can rot from within, that the loudest defenders of “truth” are often its gravest opponents. Instead, he offers something simpler: the feeling of resistance while catering to the institutional elites.

The real culprits

The irony of “On Tyranny” is that the tactics Snyder warns against — censorship, moral panic, political conformity — have not come from MAGA rallies but from the very institutions Snyder holds up as guardians of democracy. It wasn’t Trump who quashed dissenting speech on COVID-19 or colluded with social media companies to throttle viewpoints that didn’t conform with the government’s narrative. It was the political elite and their complicit peddlers in the mainstream media and social media companies.

Unfortunately for Snyder’s brand, tyranny doesn’t always wear a red hat. Sometimes it comes in the name of “safety,” or “science,” or “social justice.” Sometimes it cancels you over a social media post, not because you’re dangerous, but because you’re not sufficiently obedient.

If Snyder were genuinely concerned with authoritarianism in all its forms, he might have warned against this progressive impulse to control thought and punish deviation. Instead, he gives it cover — because the real threat, in his mind, is always the populist outsider, never the insider who manages democratic decline in a suit and tie.

Less performance, more courage

Snyder is right about one thing: democracies don’t die overnight. But they do die when fear replaces thought, when virtue becomes branding, and when citizens outsource their moral judgment to bureaucracies and mainstream news.

“On Tyranny” offers the illusion of courage but none of the substance. It is performance art disguised as resistance. To preserve freedom, we should defend institutions and champion truth. But that requires holding corrupt actors in such institutions accountable, whether it be within the federal government or legacy media. That was the democratic mandate communicated loud and clear in 2024, and if Snyder were genuinely concerned about defending democracy, he would listen.

Dictator, thief, puppet: Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 3 strikes revealed

The mountain of lies about Ukraine is beginning to crumble under the weight of the truth. The media-crafted façade of Ukraine as a beacon of democracy — and Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the Winston Churchill of our time — is disintegrating. February’s disgraceful Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Ukrainian dictator revealed Zelenskyy’s true character.

After Trump made it clear that Ukraine would never join NATO, Zelenskyy responded with open defiance, vowing NATO membership would happen anyway. His message was clear: The war must go on — regardless of the cost to his people. From the beginning, NATO expansion into Ukraine has been the root provocation behind Russia’s so-called "special military operation."

The United States and NATO have waged a proxy war against Russia and for globalism.

This week, Zelenskyy removed any lingering doubt about his intent. He outright rejected President Trump’s peace proposal, effectively sabotaging any meaningful negotiation.

An illegitimate president

Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor recognized Zelenskyy’s role as a puppet early in the war — stunning mainstream media. He sees Zelenskyy as the “globalist enemy within” — undermining any chance for peace. To achieve the most direct path to peace, Macgregor has urged Trump to immediately stop all military and financial aid to Ukraine, dump Zelenskyy, and pull out all American personnel — in or out of uniform.

Zelenskyy’s term expired last May, but he canceled presidential elections to remain in power. Donald Trump has called out Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections” — and that’s not even the half of it.

Zelenskyy has shut down all nongovernment-controlled media, banned opposition parties, jailed dissidents, and reportedly had critics kidnapped, tortured, or killed. He’s ordered thugs to snatch thousands of men off the streets and shove them into the trenches. He’s outlawed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, jailing its priests. Meanwhile, his government and military remain riddled with neo-Nazis — a fact the media refuses to address.

Zelenskyy also uses Ukrainian lawfare to lock up members of his own party when they speak out against his corruption.

Dissent silenced

Oleksandr Dubinsky was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament as a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party. He is the only MP to speak out against the criminal regime. Dubinsky states, “I’m currently fighting a politically motivated case, filed by Zelensky's [sic] regime, to silence my criticism of his corruption, as well as the corruption of Soros-backed NGOs and the Bidens' connections to Burisma.” In November 2023, Dubinsky was arrested, charged with treason, and thrown into prison, where he remains awaiting trial. From his prison cell, Dubinsky has called for Zelenskyy’s impeachment and announced his intention to run for president — assuming elections are ever allowed again.

In a Kyiv courtroom in February, Dubinsky exposed the SBU, Zelenskyy’s secret police, for their brutal arrest, imprisonment, torture, and murder of American independent journalist Gonzalo Lira — whose only crime was criticizing both the Zelenskyy and Biden regimes.

In a remarkable prison interview, Norwegian scholar Glenn Diesen spoke with Dubinsky — who knows Zelenskyy well. In 2019, both men were allies when Zelenskyy ran as a peace candidate promising normalized relations with Russia. But Dubinsky broke ranks once Zelenskyy aligned with globalist interests, collaborated with the neo-Nazis, and embraced full-on corruption and criminality.

Dubinsky provides a deep insight into Zelenskyy’s motives and exactly who is pulling his strings. “Zelenskyy is the product of the efforts of globalist and liberal elites who saw the war in Ukraine as a tool to consolidate their own power,” Dubinsky said. “Ukraine has become the last stronghold of globalism and Zelenskyy is its figurehead.”

This war has never been about Ukraine. The United States and NATO have waged a proxy war against Russia and for globalism. The ultimate objective of the international globalists — and American neoconservatives — is to destroy and break up Russia. Dubinsky contends there is “no goal of securing Ukraine’s victory. The only objective is to prolong the war.” And their immediate goal? To “undermine President Trump’s peace initiatives.”

Thirty years ago, George Soros conjured up the sinister strategy of sacrificing European Slavs to fight a proxy war with Russia. “The combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO,” he wrote, “reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries.” In Ukraine, the globalists found Zelenskyy, who, for 30 pieces of silver, has obliged, filling NATO body bags with his countrymen.

Before entering politics, Zelenskyy’s day job was as a comedic television actor. Dubinsky, well-versed in Zelenskyy’s theatrics, noted that his Oval Office appearance in February — including his costume choice — was “a deliberate performance designed to sabotage negotiations.” Mission accomplished.

A neocon’s dream

The globalists and neocons set a trap. Trump walked into it — and now, he must walk back out.

I still believe Trump sincerely wants to disengage from Ukraine and bring peace. But if he allows American military and financial support of the Zelenskyy dictatorship to continue, any peace will be impossible. Since his inauguration, the president has talked about peace in Ukraine but has maintained the Biden status quo. That’s not going to cut it now.

Trump won because he was the peace candidate with a revolutionary anti-war, anti-globalist pledge: “There must ... be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neocon establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars.” This was a bombshell. But as the initial shock of Trump’s victory has worn off and the commitment to dismantle the neocon establishment has not been acted upon, the “globalist neocon establishment” has regrouped and is back on the attack.

In Europe, Zelenskyy and his globalist masters in the European Union and NATO openly defy Trump, calling for a prolonged war and NATO membership for Ukraine. Here at home, neoconservatives at all levels of the military-industrial-congressional complex — and their mainstream media — openly undermine him.

In April, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee to report on the status of the war. In a profoundly dishonest presentation, Cavoli made a case for prolonging the war and avoiding a negotiated settlement.

Cavoli’s remarks were an inspiration to Zelenskyy and a slap in the face to Trump. The fact that he could defy and insult his commander in chief with total impunity reveals just how deeply entrenched the neocon power structure remains.

Dictator, thief, and globalist puppet

To save Ukraine — and his presidency — Trump must break free from the neocons and globalists once and for all and stop all aid to Ukraine.

People are beginning to understand who Zelenskyy really is. My previous essays made clear that he is a dictator and a thief. Now, we know that he is also a globalist puppet sabotaging peace in Ukraine. Three strikes, and you’re out.

The next American revolution is happening — will you be part of it?

These are remarks adapted from the closing keynote at the Heritage Foundation’s Annual Leadership Conference, which took place earlier in April in Naples, Florida.

Conservatives have been given a generational opportunity — a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shift our country’s trajectory back toward people and values that Washington has for too long left behind. The five values that Ronald Reagan espoused when he won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 1980 are “family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom.” More than any time since Reagan, those values are making a comeback. “Rejoice in hope,” St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans. How could we not?

This is our moment to truly shape America’s future.

But this should be our rallying cry, not a victory lap.

Because the left’s counter-fight is coming, and our response will determine whether last November was the high-water mark of the new conservative movement or simply the first triumph in America’s greatest comeback — whether we squander this moment in history, or whether we seize it.

Conservatives have the opportunity, the mandate, and the plans to rise to the occasion. The only question is whether, in these turbulent days, we have the vision to put those plans into action and the grit to see them through despite doubts and adversity.

Mandates from the past

When I think about how the conservative movement should respond to this moment, I look for lessons from our past. And lately, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about one of my heroes from the founding era: Patrick Henry.

Two hundred and fifty years ago last month, Henry stood up at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, and delivered one of the great speeches in American history. Everyone remembers its most famous line: “Give me liberty or give me death.” That one always hits home.

But another sequence in that speech resonates even more specifically with us now. Henry’s speech was not just a call to revolution. In his mind, the colonies had already passed that point. “The war is actually begun,” he said, whether Americans realized it or not. He was calling for the courage to see it through — to push past fear in the face of a powerful adversary.

“They tell us, sir, that we are weak,” Henry said, “unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger?”

The question still resonates: When shall we be stronger?

Six months from now, when the left throws everything it has in Virginia and New Jersey, or 18 months from now, when we head into the midterms, shall we gather strength while sitting on our hands? Will we stand by as our president weathers a hurricane of criticism? Shall we watch quietly as our majorities in Congress sidestep the most critical issues facing our country? Will we pass by the working families who wait for Washington to deliver them from a woke culture, a weaponized government, and a rigged economy?

Of course not. We have worked too long and too hard to squander this opportunity. Now is the moment conservatives can enact permanent policy change, not just half-a-loaf compromises: rebuild our economy, our military, and our local communities to answer the challenges of the coming generation.

This is our moment — not just to win elections or temporary 51-49 majorities — but to truly shape the future. This is our generation’s shot to secure a new birth of freedom. To write a new chapter in the American story — one that begins with courage and ends with victory.

The left is regrouping

But as extraordinary as this moment is, it will be just as fleeting. If we do not seize it now, it will slip through our fingers and won’t come back for a long time. And what comes next would be worse than anything we have yet endured.

The left hasn’t changed. Leftists may rewrite their talking points, but the writing on their hearts is the same. They’re still elitists who disdain the Constitution, globalists who scorn national sovereignty, and woke theocrats who reject religious liberty, parental rights, moral truth, and scientific fact.

They are already regrouping, re-funding, and reasserting their power. Their victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race was not a fluke. They still control the media and elite institutions, and they are going to weaponize both for as long as they can.

That is why conservatives cannot sit back. We must stay in the fight — and open new fronts in it.

Will we rise up?

Two hundred and fifty years later, Americans still face Patrick Henry’s question: When shall we be stronger?

At the Heritage Foundation, we have an answer.

We’ll be stronger every time we stand on principle — and for America and Americans. When we act with the urgency and courage this moment demands, when we realize the future is ours to win or to squander, when we understand that neither the left, China, media, nor any other adversary can defeat us, our only downfall is our own timidity and complacency.

Just consider: What do we think the other side wants us to be doing right now? What do Planned Parenthood, the teachers’ unions, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and MSNBC want us to do right now?

Nothing. They want us complacent, fat, and happy — just like good establishment Republicans. They want us to think the last six months are all we need and all we can hope for. They want us basking in the success of 2024, eating popcorn, and watching Fox News while they storm the field.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint them.

The Heritage Foundation is not sitting this one out. Donald Trump and JD Vance are not sitting this fight out. And I know you won’t either.

We can’t. The moment is too important. The stakes are too high. Last November’s historic victory was only the beginning. The next chapter in America’s history is ours to write. Whether we fight or not will be our generation’s story — what our children and grandchildren learn about us.

A time to act

I can’t help but think that if Patrick Henry were alive today, he would look at President Trump and his entire administration and be convinced that the American dream is still possible to revitalize. And that dream isn’t just about an idea, as noble as that idea is. It’s about a real place — where you were born and are likely to be buried. It’s a place our children and grandchildren and generations after us — God willing — will be born and buried.

This providential moment we’ve been given to save this republic and revitalize America gives honor to all those who came before us — wherever they were from — who, in their last moments, were as grateful as you and I are to call ourselves Americans.

Canadian feds to sieze iconic 'Big Red' as Freedom Convoy persecution rolls on

On Friday, Saskatchewan truck driver Chris Barber took to X and posted a photo of "Big Red," his 2003 Kenworth W900Lr. With it, he included a reminder of Canada's upcoming federal election April 28.

"This is my livelihood, the breadwinner that has kept my family fed for years, and the crown seeks to destroy my life and future because we took a stand against tyranny. Government overreach at its finest. Our Canada under #Liberal rule!!!!! Vote smart #Canada"

The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.

As one of the faces of 2022's Freedom Convoy, the largest and most effective populist uprising in recent history, Barber has been subject to three years of vicious lawfare from the Liberal-controlled Canadian government.

And now that same government wants to take "Big Red," which has become a symbol of the Convoy.

The truck stops here

On Thursday, April 3, a ruling came down in an Ottawa courtroom against Barber and another prominent Convoy protester, Tamara Lich, a grandmother and musician from Alberta.

Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey gave her final judgments on a number of charges stemming from the three-week protest in February 2022, where Barber, Lich, and thousands of others exercised their once-cherished rights to freedom of expression, hurting no one and causing no property damage as they demanded to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his underlings and negotiate an end to Trudeau’s punishing COVID regime.

Perkins-McVey acknowledged the peaceful nature of the protest in her ruling, despite presiding over 45 days of government testimony spread across 20 months in a Kafka-esque show trial where the government argued over the minutiae of TikTok videos and the meaning of slogans such as “Hold the Line!”

Court-sanctioned 'mischief'

This entire situation has been one for the record books. The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.

Prosecutors failed to convince Perkins-McVey of most of their cases against Lich and Barber, who were found not guilty of intimidation, along with other fraudulent and spurious charges.

Lich and Barber were, however, found guilty of mischief, and Barber additionally was found guilty of disobeying a court order regarding the honking of truckers’ air horns, which became a rallying cry of the protest and an instant online meme. Barber had made a video telling his followers to honk their horns in defiance of the order if, and only if, their trucks were approached by a large group of police officers. This context didn’t move Perkins-McVey.

The problem with mischief, as a criminal charge in Canada, is that it is a “property” crime, and a conviction can land you in prison for a maximum of 10 years.

What was the property here? The public property of the streets of Ottawa.

Hamas exception

In a very peculiar part of the ruling, McVey asserts that the public’s enjoyment of the use of city streets took precedence over the Convoy’s right to protest. It ought be noted that since the tragic events in Israel in October 2023, supporters of Hamas have protested every single week, unencumbered by the government, nor have they been accused of interrupting the enjoyment of those streets.

At the conclusion of the ruling, Justice Perkins-McVey sought to issue sentencing the following day, but on the objection of the prosecutors, a later date was set to … set another date.

Prosecutors wanted time to assemble more victim impact statements, as if three years of hearing from Ottawa’s bureaucrats about the delusions of phantom honking wasn’t enough to assemble them all. Maybe they needed to hear about the honking again, just one more time. In case anyone forgot.

'Red' notice

On April 16, we found out the punishment that the crown seeks against Lich and Barber is two years in a federal clink, and, in a request that is clearly vindictive and requires an essay of its own to unpack, the crown is seeking to seize “Big Red.”

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.

With the mischief conviction, Barber may not be allowed back into the United States to serve his customers, a pretty major blow to his business — and punishment enough, in a way.

A new low

What justice is served in this move by the Canadian government? In all the hundreds of prosecutions of other Convoy protesters, many of which remain ongoing, never has the government sought to seize anyone’s property.

Perhaps authorities did enough of that during the protest itself, when they froze hundreds of people’s bank accounts and locked them out of economic life altogether, something that likewise happened to Barber. The actions of the banks were so comprehensive that drivers working for Barber’s small company were calling him when the bank freezings started, to tell him the fuel cards for their trucks no longer worked.

It seems like the government is trying to send a message to every Canadian that dissent will not be tolerated at all and that if you defy the government diktat, the authorities will crush you, your family, and your very own business.

Barack Obama famously dismissed the efforts of American business owners with his comment, “You didn’t build that.” It seems that the Canadian government, under the Liberal Party of the very recently departed Justin Trudeau, is building on Obama’s attitude.

He built that

It doesn't matter that Chris Barber did build something. Never mind the time and blood and sweat and sacrifice he put into his successful small trucking company. Our leaders can come and take it all away with the swipe of a pen.

Truly and terribly evil — and unbecoming a once supposedly free country.

Lawyers for Barber have filed for a stay of proceedings. It’s a pretty long shot, but if granted, this gross abuse of state power and capricious message-sending will be stopped.

Meanwhile, in a TikTok video thanking his supporters, Barber paid tribute to "Big Red:"

I bought this truck brand-new in 2003, November 26 to be exact, and I've got 3.4 million kilometers on this truck as of today. I have raised my children in this truck. I have trucked all over North America with this bad boy. It is a piece of me. It even has the little foot marks from where Jonathan as a toddler used to kick the dash with his little winter boots in the car seat.

Click here to watch the message in its entirety.

A version of this article previously appeared on the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.

Land of the free? Parents ARRESTED after refusing to vaccinate 9-month-old baby

America may be sold as the land of the free, but after the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families ripped five children from their parents' arms for allegedly refusing to vaccinate their 9-month-old baby — the word “free” seems to mean very little.

The parents, Israel Rivera and Ruth Encarnacion, were then arrested for “familial kidnapping” last month when they took their children and fled to Texas to escape the DCF.

This all began when the family’s pediatrician filed a 51A “neglect” report when the parents declined vaccination for their baby boy on religious grounds — despite the fact that Massachusetts does allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccination, and the pediatrician reported the baby boy as healthy.

“In Massachusetts, you are legally, as a parent, allowed to decline vaccines. There’s no mandate that can force you to vaccinate your child. You have a right to a religious exemption,” Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” comments.

The Department of Children and Families then left a notice on the family’s front door of their apartment demanding to be let into the home in order to inspect the living situation. The parents refused, and frightened, hid.

The police came back the next day, and the family was so scared that they left and fled to Texas.

“They believed they would have more freedom to exercise their religious beliefs because though Massachusetts told them they had a right to a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate for children, that wasn’t what was happening,” Wheeler explains.

When a family member reported the family missing, the DCF filed a care and protection petition, which is an emergency order to take custody of the children away from the parents and give that custody to the state.

The judge granted the order without any due process of law.

Police then hunted down the parents in Texas, arrested them, and charged them with kidnapping their own children. The penalty, if found guilty, would be a $1,000 fine and a year in prison.

“Now, if this sounds egregious to you, it’s because this is beyond egregious,” Wheeler says.

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Trump tears down the woke iron curtain

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has not just shifted the political landscape; it has delivered a cataclysmic blow to the woke iron curtain that suffocated free thought and meritocracy across America. This ideological fortress, erected by the apostles of progressive extremism, has crumbled under the relentless assault of Trump’s bold leadership, exposing the lunacy of woke culture that had brainwashed too many.

For years, we’ve been force-fed a diet of equality of outcome over opportunity, in which schools indoctrinated rather than educated, in which workplaces became battlegrounds of identity politics rather than arenas of productivity. This was not just misguided; it was an affront to the very principles upon which America was built.

Trump’s comeback has not just dismantled this woke iron curtain — it has sparked a cultural revolution.

Trump's executive orders are a fusillade of legal cruise missiles, each one precision-targeted at the heart of this cultural cancer. His re-election was a resounding “no” to the woke narrative, a rejection by an America sick to death of being told how to think, what to say, and how to apologize for existing.

The electorate, fed up with being shamed for heritage, gender, or success, voted for a return to sanity: economic strength, national pride, and the liberty to speak without the sword of cancellation hanging over their heads.

Trump’s immediate actions have been nothing short of revolutionary. By obliterating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, he’s not just cutting fat — he's excising a tumor that was eating away at the merit-based core of our institutions.

The military, previously distracted by social experiments, is now refocused on its singular purpose: combat readiness. No more will our soldiers be subjected to the absurdity of gender-neutral training or racial sensitivity sessions. They’ll train to win wars, not woke points.

In education, Trump’s administration is purging the curriculum of the poisonous ideologies that turned learning into ideological conformity. The message is clear: Education will once again be about knowledge, not indoctrination.

The most courageous act by Trump so far is his executive order protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation. This decree not only strips federal funding from medical procedures aimed at altering the sex of minors but also stands as a moral bulwark against the mutilation, sterilization, and irreversible harm to impressionable children. It challenges the so-called “affirming care” narrative by prioritizing the long-term health and well-being of our youth over the radical and shortsighted agendas of activists. This order is a clarion call to protect the innocence and future of our children from the perils of an ideology that would sacrifice their physical integrity on the altar of political correctness.

Hollywood’s flops and corporate backpedaling on woke policies are not accidents; they’re the market's reaction to an America that has spoken. The American public has had enough of being lectured to by celebrities and CEOs who've lost touch with reality.

This historical moment is about rejecting the tyranny of forced conformity in the name of an equality that seeks to level everyone down rather than lift everyone up on merit. It's about restoring the American dream, where success is not dictated by one’s skin color, gender, or pronoun preference but by hard work and talent.

Trump’s comeback has not just dismantled this woke iron curtain — it has sparked a cultural revolution, a reclamation of American identity from the clutches of those who would see it redefined to suit their narrow, divisive agenda.

We are witnessing the rebirth of a nation where diversity of thought is not just tolerated but celebrated, where merit trumps mediocrity, and where America can again proudly stand as a beacon of freedom, not as a petri dish for social experiments.

The fall of the woke iron curtain thanks to Trump's leadership is not just a victory; it's a declaration of independence from the tyranny of wokeism. This is America's moment to reclaim its soul, its strength, and its sanity.

China and Iran wage war on faith, culture, and free expression

Freedom of religion and expression forms the foundation of human dignity, yet authoritarian regimes continue to suppress these fundamental rights. Two of the world’s most oppressive governments, China’s Chinese Communist Party and Iran’s Islamic Republic, follow the same playbook — silencing anyone who challenges their ideological control. The persecution of Shen Yun and the Bahá’í community serves as chilling proof of this shared agenda.

Shen Yun, a globally acclaimed performing arts group, is dedicated to reviving traditional Chinese culture through music and dance. To most, this mission seems harmless — maybe even admirable. But not to the CCP. For the regime, Shen Yun represents defiance. The group celebrates China’s rich spiritual and cultural heritage, aspects the CCP has spent decades trying to erase. Worse still, Shen Yun dares to expose the CCP’s human rights abuses on the world stage.

We cannot allow regimes like China and Iran to decide who gets to exist, which cultures can flourish, and which beliefs are acceptable.

In response, the CCP has waged an aggressive campaign against the group. It spreads propaganda to discredit Shen Yun, sabotages performances worldwide, and launches relentless cyberattacks. Yet, despite lacking government funding or major corporate sponsorships, Shen Yun has defied all odds. It has become an underdog success story, standing strong against one of the most powerful regimes in the world.

This story resonates deeply with me because I have experienced firsthand what it means to live under a regime that fears freedom of thought. I was born into a Bahá’í family in Iran, where the Islamic Republic has waged a decades-long campaign of persecution against the Bahá’ís, the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. For the “crime” of practicing their faith, Bahá’ís have been imprisoned, tortured, executed, and systematically denied education and employment.

When I was 11, my family fled Iran, leaving behind our home, community, and everything familiar. We were not activists or threats to the state — we were ordinary people whose only “offense” was believing differently.

That persecution continues today. Just recently, Iranian authorities arrested 13 Bahá’ís, charging them with “proselytizing,” a vague and unfounded accusation the regime routinely uses to justify brutal crackdowns. The message from the government is clear: There is no room for diversity and no tolerance for beliefs that challenge its imposed ideology.

The hypocrisy of these regimes is staggering. The CCP has interned over one million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, subjecting them to forced labor, sterilization, and “re-education.” Yet its close ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran — which claims to defend Muslims worldwide — remains silent. This refusal to condemn China’s abuses exposes Iran’s duplicity, proving that its priority is not protecting Islam but consolidating power.

What unites the CCP and the Islamic Republic is their shared fear of cultural and spiritual diversity. Authoritarian regimes thrive on control — of minds, beliefs, and narratives. They target groups like Shen Yun and the Bahá’ís because these groups represent what tyrants fear most: the resilience of the human spirit.

Shen Yun’s performances celebrate the beauty and depth of Chinese civilization, a deeply spiritual heritage the CCP has spent decades trying to erase in its pursuit of ideological conformity. Likewise, the Bahá’í Faith, with its emphasis on unity and justice, challenges the Islamic Republic’s relentless suppression of any belief that could undermine its authority. In both cases, these regimes see cultural and spiritual expression as direct threats to their absolute control.

The stakes in these battles extend far beyond China and Iran. Freedom of religion and expression are universal values, and any erosion of these rights anywhere threatens them everywhere. When authoritarian regimes suppress dissent without consequence, they embolden others to do the same.

I do not write this as an outsider with abstract concerns. My life was uprooted by tyranny. I still remember the fear of living under a regime that hated my family for our beliefs. I will never forget the strength it took to flee that oppression and rebuild a life in freedom.

We cannot allow regimes like China and Iran to decide who gets to exist, which cultures can flourish, and which beliefs are acceptable. Their playbook relies on fear and control, but history has shown that these tactics ultimately fail in the face of courage and solidarity.

Joseph Brodsky: The Soviet poet who loved America — and distrusted 'equality'

“Illness and death are, perhaps, the only things that a tyrant has in common with his subjects. In this sense alone a nation profits from being run by an old man.”

Those words, penned by Joseph Brodsky in 1986, drip with irony.

'To be governed by nobodies,' Brodsky wrote, 'is a far more ubiquitous form of tyranny, since nobodies look like everybody.'

Brodsky, the exiled Russian poet, knew tyranny firsthand. Born under Stalin, shaped under Khrushchev, and later expelled under Brezhnev, he lived through the mechanical cruelty of the Soviet regime. It was a world where dissent wasn’t just suppressed — it was criminalized.

Dropping out

From his earliest years, Brodsky rebelled against the omnipresent symbols of state control. He hated Lenin, tired of seeing his face staring down at him from banners and posters. At 15, he dropped out of school and drifted through a series of odd jobs, including a stint sewing corpses in a coroner's office. This was no teenage rebellion; it was a rejection of a system that demanded total submission.

His poetry, initially apolitical, became his quiet form of resistance. But tyranny has no tolerance for neutrality.

By 24, Brodsky was branded a “malicious social parasite.” A state-run newspaper dismissed his work as “pornographic and anti-Soviet.” Arrest followed. In 1964, he stood trial in a courtroom packed with secret police. The judge mocked him as a “pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers.”

Sentenced to five years of hard labor, Brodsky found himself shoveling manure and breaking rocks in subzero conditions on a northern Russian farm. He served 20 months of this sentence before being released, battered but unbroken.

Returning to Leningrad, he moved into a cramped communal apartment with his parents, their portion a mere 100 square feet. Two blocks away, a young Vladimir Putin grew up in similar conditions, breathing the same stifling air of state control.

In 1972, Soviet authorities raided Brodsky’s apartment and declared him a “non-person.” They exiled him, shoving him onto a plane bound for Vienna. He would never return to Russia.

Go west

Joseph Brodsky found refuge in America, a land he embraced with gratitude and affection. Over the next two decades, he rose to prominence, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987 and serving as the U.S. poet laureate in 1991. His essays and poems grappled with the themes of tyranny and individuality, dissecting power with the precision of a scalpel.

“Tyranny,” he once said, “will make an entire population into readers of poetry.” It was a statement both bleak and hopeful, suggesting that oppression might, at least, awaken the human spirit.

In “To a Tyrant,” Brodsky described a figure both sinister and mundane: an aging dictator, limp-wristed and stoop-shouldered, sipping coffee while fantasizing about raising the dead to bow before him. Tyrants, Brodsky believed, are inherently boring — driven by fear and self-preservation rather than imagination or vision.

But he also recognized the peculiar efficiency of tyranny. At first, it brings order, security, and stability. People embrace it not because they love oppression but because they crave simplicity. Tyranny structures life for you, sparing you the chaos of democracy’s competing voices and the burden of choice.

Yet this order comes at a cost. Tyranny stifles individuality, replacing it with sameness. Over time, even the illusion of participation disappears. Public discourse fades into whispered compliance. Isolation sets in — not just for the people but for the tyrant himself.

In Brodsky’s view, this isolation is the true engine of tyranny. Cut off from genuine human connection, the tyrant grows paranoid, mistaking his fears for reality. Meanwhile, the people, silenced and divided, begin to accept oppression as normal. Suspicion flourishes. Fear of public disgrace or private reprisal keeps everyone in line.

Our better instincts

Tyranny, Brodsky argued, doesn’t always announce itself with violence. More often, it appeals to our better instincts — offering safety, stability, and refuge. It presents itself as an escape from politics, promising a world free of conflict and division.

But this is the great lie. Politics, for all its messiness, is the expression of freedom. It’s where individuality meets community, where ideas collide and evolve. Tyranny erases this complexity, replacing dialogue with directives, choices with commands.

Brodsky saw this dynamic play out in the Soviet Union, but it’s a lesson that transcends time and place. The tyrants of today may not wear military uniforms or deliver fiery speeches. They may look like the rest of us, blending in with the crowd. But their goal is the same: to depersonalize the individual, to turn citizens into subjects.

Brodsky warned that modern tyranny often comes dressed in the language of equality and progress. It replaces the spirit of individualism with the anonymity of the collective. “To be governed by nobodies,” he wrote, “is a far more ubiquitous form of tyranny, since nobodies look like everybody.”

This insight is chilling in its simplicity. Tyranny doesn’t require a single charismatic leader. It can thrive in the hands of a party, a bureaucracy, or even a culture that prioritizes conformity over creativity.

The antidote

For Brodsky, the antidote to tyranny was individualism. But he acknowledged that true individuality is hard work. It requires self-awareness, courage, and a willingness to stand apart from the crowd.

Plato observed that a good ruler is one who can govern himself — a stark contrast to the tyrant, who can control others but not his own impulses. This inability to govern oneself is, perhaps, the defining trait of tyranny. It substitutes violence for power, mistaking brute force for true authority.

And yet, as Brodsky knew, tyranny is always temporary. It collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, unable to sustain the illusion of order indefinitely. When it falls, it’s replaced — not always by something better, but by something new.

The question, then, is not whether tyranny will end but what will come after it. Will we rebuild a society rooted in individuality and mutual respect? Or will we succumb to the same patterns, allowing fear and convenience to guide us back into the arms of another tyrant?

In his lifetime, Joseph Brodsky never stopped asking these questions. He saw tyranny not just as a political problem but as a spiritual one. For him, the fight against oppression began with the soul — with the recognition that freedom is both a right and a responsibility.

“The Last Judgment is the Last Judgment,” he once wrote, “but a human being who spent his life in Russia has to be, without any hesitation, placed into Paradise.”