Month: March 2025

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. (left), WV Governor Patrick Morrisey (right)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference with Republican West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey on Friday to announce a new health initiative in America’s most obese state.

West Virginia currently has the highest rate of obesity in the United States. But that may soon change!

While speaking, RFK trolled the governor over his weight, saying, “You look like you ate Governor Morrisey” and demanding a “rigorous regimen” that includes a carnivore diet for the governor. “When he’s lost 30 pounds, I’m going to come back to the state and do a celebration and a public weigh-in with him,” Kennedy said as the crowd burst into laughter and applause.

Now, far-left outlets like Axios, which have no sense of humor, are reporting headlines like “RFK Jr. body shames W.Va. governor” to distract from the Secretary’s mission to give Americans a healthier lifestyle.

Watch below:

Kennedy: I said to Dr. Morrisey or Governor Morrisey; the first time I saw him, I said, “You look like you ate Governor Morrisey.” And there was a lot of talk about getting healthy again. And I’m very happy, and he’s invited me to be his personal trainer. And I am going to put him— I’m going to put him on a really rigorous regimen, and we’re going to put him on a carnivore diet.

We’re going to make him do— raise your hand if you want Governor Morrisey to do a public weigh-in once a month. And then when he’s lost 30 pounds, I’m going to come back to the state and do a celebration and a public weigh-in with him.

“West Virginia is strongly embracing the Make America Healthy Again movement,” Morrisey said Friday in a press release. “We’re getting junk out of our foods, promoting exercise, and putting nutrition back into SNAP. Thank you to Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Rollins for their commitment to ensuring the next generation of Americans lives a healthier and happier life.”

As The Gateway Pundit reported, West Virginia has enacted a comprehensive ban on several synthetic food dyes and preservatives, positioning itself at the forefront of the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative championed by President Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The new bill, signed by Morrisey late last week, targets additives linked to potential health risks like obesity, tumors, and a variety of other ailments, particularly in children.

West Virginia Bans Artificial Food Dyes that Target Children, implementing Make America Healthy Again Agenda

“Food dyes such as Red Dye 40 and Yellow 5 and 6 come with warning labels in Europe. They’re linked to behavioral issues in children. But in the U.S., they are generally recognized as safe,” Kennedy stated in while announcing a bold plan to eliminate harmful chemicals from America’s food supply earlier this month.

West Virginia has since passed the first bill in the country that bans the dangerous food dyes, and the governor has submitted a waiver to remove soda from SNAP food stamp benefits.

“West Virginia is leading the nation in passing a bill to clean up our food supply and submitting a waiver to remove soda from SNAP,” the Secretary said in a press release Friday:

Kennedy: I commend the 24 states pushing MAHA bills to clean up our food system, improve school lunches, submit waivers to SNAP, and promote patient choice. This state leadership adds leverage to the Trump administration’s drive to Make America Healthy Again. I urge every Governor to follow West Virginia’s lead and submit a waiver to the USDA to remove soda from SNAP.

If there’s one thing we can agree on, it should be eliminating taxpayer-funded soda subsidies for lower income kids. I look forward to inviting every Governor who submits a waiver to come celebrate with me at the White House this fall. Thank you, Secretary Rollins for your leadership on this vital issue for children’s health.

Per Fox:

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, R, and Kennedy held a joint event on Friday to announce a ban on certain food dyes. The governor also took the opportunity to announce that his state has submitted a waiver that would prohibit Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants from using the benefits to purchase soda.

Morrisey celebrated the move, saying his state was “putting ‘nutrition’ back into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”

Morrisey’s policies could make a big change for West Virginia, which currently has a higher rate of obesity than any other state.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of 2023, West Virginia was one of only three states to have an obesity prevalence of 40% or greater.

Kennedy called on all governors to “get in line behind Governor Morrissey and apply for a waiver to my agency.” He continued, “We’re going to give it to you.”

WATCH:

Kennedy: The food companies all came and met with me two weeks ago, and they’re scared of me, but they’re more scared of Governor Morrissey… they said, “tell us what you want and we’re going to do it.” And they said, “but stop these governors from passing these laws, because we don’t want a patch work where West Virginia and California are banning food dyes, and we have to make special products for those states.” So they’re terrified of this, of what you’re doing, and the message that I want to give to the country today and to all the other governors is get in line behind Governor Morrissey and apply for a waiver to my agency, and we’re going to give it to you. That’s the way we’re going to witness.

The post MAHA! RFK Jr. Joins WV Governor Patrick Morrisey Announcing New Law Banning Unhealthy Food Dyes and Removing Soda from Food Stamps, Says He’s Training Governor and Calls for “Public Weigh-ins” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Credit: Geograph Britain and Ireland

Starting Tuesday, white men in the United Kingdom will face tougher sentencing than ethnic, cultural, or faith minorities, as well as young people under 25, women, and pregnant women.

They used to call this racism.

So now, if you are a white man, you can expect more time in prison than a minority person.

This is the same country that arrests you for smart-a$$ comments on social media.

Britain truly is lost.

What a humiliating end to a once-great empire.

Total Globalist Tranny ALERT!

The British Sentencing Council has decided that starting Tuesday, white men will be sentenced to longer prison sentences than women and ethnic minorities

Soros DAs across the U.S. already enforce this anti white rule to the point of not… pic.twitter.com/jRFFfGeF3x

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) March 30, 2025

Via Caldron Pool:

From Tuesday, new judicial guidelines in the United Kingdom will introduce sentencing policies that apply differential treatment based on ethnicity, gender, and age—leading to harsher punishments for white men compared to other groups in society. The move has been met with criticism from Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, both of whom have expressed concerns about the fairness of the policy and signalled potential legislative action.

Under the updated guidelines, judges will prepare pre-sentencing reports where necessary for defendants from ethnic, cultural, or faith minorities, as well as young people under 25, women, and pregnant women. Historically, such reports have resulted in mitigated sentences, including reduced jail time. The practical implication of these changes is that white men, who do not qualify for these reports, will face relatively harsher sentencing outcomes.

The policy has sparked controversy, with many arguing that it enshrines racial and gender-based discrimination into the judicial system. Critics say the new approach is a violation of the principle that justice should be blind to race, gender, and background.

The post Britain Is Lost: White Men in UK to Face Tougher Sentencing appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

 

New Culture Forum Founder & Director Peter Whittle via The European Conservative’s YouTube channel

In an interview with Harrison Pitt, a prominent writer and thinker in Britain’s national conservative sphere, Peter Whittle, founder of New Culture Forum, explores the increasingly dire state of affairs in modern Britain.

The pair explore the nation’s mounting challenges, many of which arise from an entrenched, anti-democratic elite that is deeply antagonistic toward—and even outright disdainful of—the historical peoples of Britain, dismissing their call to end decades of mass migration—especially the influx of military-aged men from alien cultures.

Their discussion centers on the profound ethnocultural and religious demographic shifts that are eroding Britain’s cultural identity, fracturing social cohesion, and diminishing the economic well-being of the working and middle classes by driving down wages and inflating housing prices.

Pitt poses the question on the minds of many inquiring young people across the West: How on earth did the United Kingdom, once the jewel in the crown of Western civilization, become a demoralized nation on the brink of extinction?

Whittle, a lifelong Londoner, former arts and film critic for publications such as the Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times, and The Times, and former deputy leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), forcefully challenges a narrative relentlessly promoted by the lying mainstream press, academia, the film industry, and elite cultural institutions—the unassailable doctrine that diversity is our greatest strength.

Whittle begins by discussing London’s transformation, highlighting the significant decline of the white British population that occurred in the 1960s—a time when, across the Atlantic, the US dismantled long-standing immigration laws designed to preserve its historical demographic composition, ushering in the era of mass immigration on an unprecedented scale.

The director of the New Culture Forum underscores the rapid pace at which the demographic shift, often referred to as demographic replacement, has occurred. In 1961, white British residents made up 97% of London’s population; today, that figure has plummeted to approximately 37%—and continues to decline at a rapid pace, Whittle observes.

He describes this radical and historically unprecedented transformation not as a natural evolution, but as a deliberate process driven by the ubiquitous “diversity is our strength” narrative.

In this cultural climate, where left-liberals enjoy what social theorist Antonio Gramsci termed “cultural hegemony,” a climate of self-censorship has emerged among legacy Britons. Whittle argues that people are increasingly hesitant to speak openly about cultural changes, fearing that even suggesting it’s undesirable to become a minority in their historic homeland will lead to accusations of racism or intolerance.

“London has stopped being my city,” Whittle declares, once again underscoring what he perceives as a deliberate erasure of traditional British cultural values in favor of rootless, globalist cosmopolitanism imposed upon Britons.

Venturing where most right-wing commentators in the UK seldom tread, Peter delivers a rare critique of the monarchy, accusing it of failing to protect and defend British cultural interests. He singles out King Charles III for endorsing a “community of communities” approach, which he says amounts to a capitulation to multiculturalist ideology.

He also discusses the failure of political leaders to address these issues and the need for more radical reform.

Whittle argues that London—a city that he says is now increasingly transactional and disconnected from its historical roots—has lost its cultural soul due to the demographic shift.

He observes that many of today’s London residents lack the collective memories and shared experiences that once shaped the city’s identity and served as a unifying cultural and social fabric.

He also discusses the failure of political leaders to address these issues and the need for more radical reform.

Political are also alternatives are explored, with Whittle offering measured support for Reform UK. He believes the party has the potential to tap into rising public frustration but argues it requires a more radical stance on immigration and cultural preservation.

The conversation represents more than a nostalgic lament; it’s a serious examination of national identity in an era of unprecedented demographic flux.

While some may dismiss Whittle’s perspective as reactionary, his meticulously documented observations merit serious consideration. As Britain continues to undergoes profound demographic transformation, the questions he raises about cultural continuity, institutional integrity, and national identity remain deeply relevant.

The interview serves as a thought-provoking reminder that demographic changes are not just statistical abstractions, but lived realities that profoundly reshape social landscapes.

To read more of Harrison Pitt’s work, visit his Substack here. Similarly, you can find Peter Whittle’s Substack here.

The post From 97% to 37%: Think Tank Director Peter Whittle on the Dramatic Decline of White Londoners & Britain’s Radical Ethnocultural Revolution appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Photo Credit: Dan Fleuette, Author of “Rogues, Rebels, and Outlaws.” Find his work at x.com/doitfluet and doitfluet.com.

Republished with permission from The Stream, courtesy of investigative journalist Rachel Alexander.

Prominent election integrity lawyer and former law professor David Clements, known for his podcasts and landmark 2024 documentary about election fraud, Let My People Go, has been predictably under vicious attacks by the left over the past few years.

They are filing bar complaint after bar complaint against him, and got him fired from his law professor job at New Mexico State University due to refusing to subject his students to the mask and COVID-19 experimental drug mandates.

The retaliation against him for leading an election audit in New Mexico’s Otero County has been vile, resulting in death threats against him and his wife. However, he isn’t backing down, and instead is continuing to stand up to the corrupt political witch hunts.

This is my interview with him exposing what has happened to him. The details are stunning and frightening.  

On February 14, 2025, former law professor David Clements was 680 miles away from his wife, Erin, meeting with election integrity experts on how to capitalize on the new Trump administration’s sweeping reforms to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse throughout the federal government — but with a focus on elections.

At 6:17 pm, while most couples were celebrating Valentine’s Day, Clements received a text photo from Erin. Moments before, she had opened a letter marked “CONFIDENTIAL” from the Supreme Court of the State of New Mexico.

The contents revealed that the Disciplinary Board had opened an investigation over allegations of professional misconduct.

The accusation? That Clements’s recent visit with former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters in a Colorado jail — Peters being the wrongfully convicted and courageous whistleblower that exposed Dominion Voting Systems — was achieved through “false pretenses.”

She was sentenced to nine years after a sham trial that excluded nearly all her defenses and most of her testifying experts — one of whom was Clements.

Unable to help Peters at trial, Clements sought to bring greater awareness of her conditions by publishing a short video update with her, which went viral.  The Clementses knew the claims were patently absurd – but reactions were markedly different.  Clements texted Erin back “Yay!!!” He seemed to relish another opportunity to fight the bar association.

But when he called his wife, she was understandably worn down. “They never stop,” she said.

And she would know. This was the sixth complaint filed against Clements since August 2021 — and even worse, it would prove to be the start of a sixth preliminary investigation to determine whether Clements should be disbarred.

His latest accuser? Oddly enough, it was the same man who had brought accusations against him in 2020 that had gotten him fired from his job at New Mexico State University: Trent Toulouse.

We encourage you to read every word of Clements’s response to the Disciplinary Board.

What this journalist found is that the Toulouse complaint pales in comparison to a much larger story — namely, a coordinated effort between political operatives, government-funded media, and the bar association to destroy Clements.

I recently took the time to interview him and several others with whom he has crossed paths over the past several years.

“The Process Is the Punishment”

Clements easily rebutted Toulouse’s claims of entering a secure facility under “false pretenses.” Here is a short excerpt from his response:

“There is no legal or ethical prohibition for an attorney, whether licensed in the forum state or not, to visit a prisoner…. [t]he webpage explicitly welcomes video visitation, which can take place via “almost any smart phone or internet connected PC with a webcam and microphone.”

As you can see, there is no prohibition against screen recording from people on the outside, which the jail could not enforce even if they wanted to.

The undersigned produced his name and New Mexico bar card, produced the identity of Ms. Peters’ attorney of record, and disclosed the iPad I would be taking into the facility to Sheriff Deputy Michael Walters (Badge #16005).

I was cleared by his chain of command after they confirmed my identity, credentials, and searched my person. There is no rule restricting an attorney from taking a tablet into the facility that has recording capability.

In fact, it is customary practice for attorneys to meet with their clients to record statements, take electronic notes, and in some cases provide legal research while on the grounds. The meeting room has floor-to-ceiling windows, is transparent and under recorded surveillance.”

If there was no merit to Toulouse’s complaint, I asked Clements why he thought it was filed. He answered, “To keep me under continued investigation. The process is the punishment.

I have to tell prospective clients that my representation could hurt them by virtue of an ever-present black cloud hovering over my license. It also takes up considerable time and money on my end defending against these never-ending complaints.

“But to better answer your question, you have to know who Trent Toulouse is. He’s a psychology professor at a New Mexico community college that runs a radical left website called ‘RationalWiki.’ He’s on the board of trustees as the operations manager.

“Looking at RationalWiki’s X page, I’ve located a post advocating that the age of consent to engage in sexual intercourse with an adult be lowered to 14. He just took that down after I filed my response. The page is a treasure trove of perversion, and an incubator to target conservative influencers. I’ve got screenshots of it all.”

He continued: “And if Toulouse’s name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because he is a family relation of New Mexico Secretary of State, Maggie Toulouse Oliver.” 

The picture now begins to sharpen. Clements’s audit work in New Mexico has provided the basis for numerous articles exposing election corruption in New Mexico – and that has proven to be a personal wrecking ball to Oliver.

In August 2021, Trent Toulouse filed his first bar complaint against Clements, accusing him of “sedition and treason” after he made a presentation at a Cyber Symposium concerning the 2020 election that millions of people watched.

Around that time, New Mexico State University suspended Clements from his teaching job in the business college for refusing to subject his students to the mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

A second complaint arrived shortly thereafter from attorney Nicholas Bullock, accusing Clements of jeopardizing the university’s safety because his influence as a subject-matter expert in consumer protection law stood as a stark rebuttal to the “settled science” that was at that time being proliferated on campus.  A week later, fellow NMSU Professor Jamie Bronstein filed a third complaint, making similar allegations. A video on Rumble titled “Law Professor REFUSES to MASK UP or get the JAB,” which garnered hundreds of thousands of views, set much of these events in motion.

WATCH:

Tall Poppy Syndrome

Clements became an easy target after he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s primetime show, and also because of his history of thumbing his nose at the university for woke DEI “antiracism” and “antidiscrimination” policies. For example, out of approximately 60 university faculty senators, Clements was the only one to vote against a formal statement declaring that New Mexico State University was founded on institutional (i.e., white) racism. “We are a Hispanic-majority state, and our state was founded 50 years after the abolishment of slavery!” Clements said later. “But my vote gave the Marxist faculty all they needed to play the race game.”

The opening salvo from the first three Disciplinary Board investigations required Clements to produce 5,000 legal documents from hundreds of election cases nationwide on which he had offered commentary in response to questions during various podcasts. Simultaneously, the university was working through back channels to collect evidence it could use to fire him from his social media posts.

In response to the bar and his university’s groupthink on all things COVID-19, Clements ended up writing and submitting a legal treatise on the virus, highlighting scientific articles, legal defenses from the Nuremburg Code, and arguments provided under the Federal Trade Commission prohibiting deceptive practices.

He offered to walk the Disciplinary Board through election evidence aggregation websites to show them where they could locate and view thousands of sworn affidavits and expert election reports. In fact, he was so painfully helpful to the tribunal that the Disciplinary Board started backtracking as he provided receipt after receipt on the rigged 2020 election. The board modified its request for 5,000 documents to a paltry 10 affidavits. To Clements, it seemed as if the board wanted to limit what he put on the record.

Meanwhile, the university was unable to rebut a single claim Clements made in the medical-legal treatise he delivered to combat what looked to be an inevitable firing; Clements published the entire termination hearing online.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

After being tied up for months with discovery production, Clements eventually prevailed against his first three accusers. He maintained his law license while the Disciplinary Board issued an advisory opinion that fell well short of exonerating him.

Later, he reflected on his initial good fortune concerning why he wasn’t sanctioned.

“The answer is simple,” he said. “They knew I was about to be fired from the university. And the day after my termination hearing, I was.”

But instead of going away, Clements went on the warpath.

With the steadfast support of his wife, Erin — a formidable licensed engineer and data analyst — he secured approval to perform a commissioned forensic audit of Otero County, New Mexico, and partial audits in seven other counties statewide concerning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The audit team they selected was akin to something Clements would have pulled together when he was a prosecutor taking on a drug trafficking organization: Nation-state vulnerability experts, master statisticians, and IT professionals analyzed everything they could get their hands on. They ended up producing a report so devastating in its scope that Otero was the first county nationwide to vote to get rid of Dominion Voting Systems and remove Mark Zuckerberg-funded ballot drop boxes. It also voted to sue Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver for illegally certifying a fraudulent system.

The Clementses’ expert team believed they confirmed that Dominion illegally wiped the entire 2020 election file from the county’s Election Management System – which made it an active crime scene.

While the audit was being performed, the U.S. Congress issued a cease-and-desist order against its prime contractort. The order, signed by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), claimed the auditors were engaging in voter intimidation, and included subpoenas demanding that all communications be turned over to the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

With Congress intervening, the Otero Commission fell under pressure from every direction to distance itself from the Clementses. And of course, the media and social media played their roles: a political operative uploaded a TikTok video fabricating an encounter with “intimidating” canvassers that never happened. The Daily Beast published the fabricated account, all too happy to participate in a national smear campaign.

And then “it got worse,” Clements said. “Operatives schemed with a two-faced Otero County attorney who worked behind the scenes to shut down the audit and discredit the team.”

A Pivotal Meeting

One such effort involved the county attorney drafting a public censure, which would rebuke Clements’s canvassing team. The commission would read the censure aloud and vote on it, with propaganda outlets standing by to publish a false narrative that the auditors were violating voters’ civil rights.

When the Clementses learned of the scheme, they drove to Alamogordo, New Mexico from their home in Las Cruces to attend the Otero County meeting. There, they exposed the source of the fabricated encounter and played voicemail message after voicemail message of leftist political operatives leaving death threats for Clements and his wife.

“As each voicemail was played, you could see [the county attorney] shrinking in size, looking more and more resigned that their scheme was being exposed in real time,” Clements said. [Watch the whole encounter at “Otero County Commission Meeting March 10, 2022.” [Fast-forward to the 2:30:00 mark for this part.]

After the rebuttal, the attorney still half-heartedly pushed for a censure, but to no avail. The commission voted to rescind it. Regardless, the Clementses’ efforts to rid the county of Dominion were short-lived: Clements later met with County Sheriff David Black and District Attorney Scot Key.  “I handed them probable cause on a silver platter to seize the tabulators that were wiped by Dominion,” he recalled. “I remember them looking at me like I had lost my mind, like, ‘What do you expect us to do, go to war with the federal government?”

With most of the Otero County commissioners still holding the line to get rid of Dominion Systems voting machines, Mark Zuckerberg-funded ballot drop boxes, and sue New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a radical leftist network aided by Oliver went to work to undo the victory.

“First, Oliver petitioned the New Mexico Supreme Court for a Writ of Mandamus,” Clements explained. “Within 24 hours, the Court declared that the Otero County commission had no choice but to certify what they believed to be a fraudulent election. The court also referred the commissioners to a George Soros-funded attorney general to prosecute them if they did not provide a rubber stamp of approval.”

As a result, one county commissioner changed his vote, fearful of being arrested; the other two held strong.

So three individuals in New Mexico, supported by a coalition ranging from a D.C.-based NGO called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics to the NAACP and the watchdog group Common Cause, along with several New Mexico-based law firms, filed a lawsuit in left-leaning Santa Fe County to remove Otero Commissioner Couy Griffin from office. Griffin had been deemed to be “an insurrectionist” for praying and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

While federal prosecutors declined to charge Griffin with anything tantamount to insurrection, an out-of-county civil lawsuit was used as pretext to remove him – and then bar him from holding office for the rest of his life.

“Why?” asked Clements. “Because for a heartbeat, the election cartel feared that other commissioners would discover they had the power to say no to corruption.”

Justice Denied

When the dust settled, the majority vote to make the needed changes in Otero County and sue the Secretary of State had vanished.

“Sheriff Black, who holds himself out as a constitutional sheriff, stood by while Griffin was physically escorted from his commissioners’ office. Sickening.” said Clements. “He is the most courageous commissioner in the country. He gave the effort everything he had.”

Undeterred, Clements proceeded to travel to 47 states over the next three years — holding hundreds of evidence seminars, providing legal briefs, and equipping citizens to become experts in their own right to stand up against the maladministration of local elections.

Nebraska election activists Brad and Connie Reinke shared some insights into Clements’s mentality during that time. “He drove a 17-hour trip through the night to get to a meeting in our county of 6,000 after his flight was canceled,” said Connie. “And wouldn’t accept payment for his services.”

Brad added, “To make matters more complicated, his flight home was cancelled due to bad weather, and he had to be at a county meeting the next evening for a crucial vote. I got to be a part of his adventure when he agreed to let me drive him back through the night. It was surreal to have this guy I’ve read about crashing in the back of my minivan on sofa cushions.”

Spiritual Warfare

Two more Disciplinary Board investigations seeking to disbar Clements followed in late 2022. One complaint was lodged by apolitical operative who ran for office on the Democrat ticket in one of the counties the Clementses audited, claiming he had slandered her. Clements ultimately prevailed — but not without the investigator writing an advisory opinion that his actions were “suitable for the FBI.”  That advisory opinion was leaked to the press and became a dog whistle for others to file complaints.

So a fifth investigation came courtesy of a woman Clements learned was corresponding directly with Disciplinary Board investigators weeks before she filed her complaint. In his Response to the Disciplinary Board, Clements proved that she had made the following statements:

“I know it’s a holiday weekend but I wanted to send you what I have when I find it….”
“You might want to get this info over to Jane Gagne ASAP….”
“You might want to read this thread…. Those two are mentally unstable. But I know you can only deal with complaints about David sadly not (his wife).”

Instead of dismissing the complaint based on its clear conflict of interests, the Disciplinary Board subjected Clements to another preliminary investigation. Clements provided the Board with screenshots of a website his accuser operated, which contained occult tarot card readings about his and his wife’s deaths.  Two of his accuser’s ominous warnings were submitted to the Disciplinary Board:

“It’s interesting she is your present card. Consider what your future card reveals. The Empress just might mean it will be a woman who will be responsible for your downward spiral.”
“In the future you will be made to look like a fool, because you are a fool. You will probably even take an insanity plea at some point.”

I asked Clements if he truly felt his license was in jeopardy, given how ridiculous the complaint was. “Every complaint is different,” he said. “I think after I provided the Board with the occult screenshots, they knew they had to abandon ship. The worst part was that I never received a formal ruling on the complaint. For years, I’d have to tell clients that I was still under investigation. That’s how they got their pound of flesh.”

Pressing On

Clements kept busy doing the work of a lawyer, but stayed tight-lipped, knowing his public profile could be used against his clients.

“I try to be a hard target,” he said. “Pick my spots. Get in. Get out.”  For example, prosecutors pursued nation-state vulnerability expert Jeff Lenberg in Michigan after he exposed election machines shifting thousands of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Antrim County. In Georgia, Lenberg — based on Clements’s expert opinion — believed he showed that Dominion machines were remotely accessed during an election. As corrupt law enforcement started targeting the investigators, Clements took Lenberg on as a client.

“I would have owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to a law firm to represent me,” Lenberg said. “[Clements] wouldn’t take a penny. “He defended me in Curling v. Raffensperger — the case where CISA had to admit the tabulators had massive vulnerabilities. During my deposition, we sparred with over a dozen lawyers on the other side for eight hours, with David making objection after objection. Efforts were made to indict me in Fani Willis’ RICO prosecution of President Trump. In the Michigan prosecution, David met directly with the special prosecutor and two other attorneys in their office. He doesn’t avoid conflict. So far, the efforts to indict me have failed.”

Then there is the high-profile J6 prisoner, Jake Lang, a 29-year-old from upstate New York who spent nearly four years behind bars awaiting trial.

“I have worked with dozens of attorneys. David is in a class of his own,” he said. “I was a month out from trial, and he agreed to be my attorney. He refused multiple attempts to compensate him. From late-night calls to visiting me in prison, he’s been there for me.

“His documentary showed the real story about J6ers and elections. As the country learned what was really happening, the discussion of getting pardons became a real possibility. Trump won and I was pardoned. David waited outside the gulag in the freezing cold for two days so he could give me a hug.”

Amid all the distractions, Clements managed to write and direct an explosive documentary about the January 6 protest against the 2020 election results and how J6 “rioters” were targeted by the Biden administration called Let My People Go.  But even that was not free from lawfare. The documentary was hacked during its release and cancelled by its credit card processing and DVD packaging companies. Just after the launch, Clements was targeted by the IRS.

The film’s cinematographer and editor, Kent Esmeier, had a front-row seat for all of that action. “You’ll notice the film is uncredited with exception of the J6 prisoners,” he pointed out. “David did not want the artists to be targeted, even if that meant no one knew we made the film. [We spent] many early mornings, late nights, going back and forth, editing. “He’s fueled by the Holy Spirit and a never-ending cup of coffee. I’m glad to call him my friend.”

Starting a Ministry

I asked Clements how he keeps his perspective, not letting the lawfare get to him.  “People like Jake [Lang],” he responded. “No matter how bad things are, someone is going through something worse. Focusing on the J6 prisoners has helped me not do the pity party thing.”

In 2021, Clements started a ministry called “The Prisoners Record,” which served the needs of J6 prisoners. Tim Rivers, creator of the book The American Gulag Chronicles offered his thoughts on what the ministry has meant. “Over the four years of the Biden administration’s pursuit of January 6 protestors, The Prisoners Record’s nightly prayer vigils have continued without a missing a single day,” he said. “Its discussion channels became a center point of resistance and communications. Other subchannels were formed from it. Some focused on commissary needs and letter writing … others on calls to action. But in hindsight, they all sprang organically from The Prisoner’s Record. They raised over $2 million that went directly to prisoners.” As with the rest of his efforts, Clements refused to allow any of the administrators to take a salary.

While his friends and colleagues are quick to offer praise, a quick internet search offers countless negative articles about Clements, mostly related to his election advocacy. I asked him if he knew how many.

“I used Google alerts,” he said. “I stopped counting after about a 1,000 hit pieces. I’m not saying these were unique stories. You’d see weird stuff, like a Washington Post article about me being reprinted word-for-word in a Malaysian newspaper. Or a local story from my hometown in New Mexico showing up in a Clemson, South Carolina, student newspaper. So, the same story could be circulating with 50 different publishers. It wasn’t organic.”

A Coordinated Effort?

Clements’s suspicions have all but been confirmed. According to a fact sheet which has since been taken offline, in 2023, USAID funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets, and supported 279 media-sector civil society organizations. Former Administrator Samantha Power admitted the agency’s role in influencing “strategically important elections” by using the “Democratic Elections Fund.” USAID directed nearly $500 million into the secretive, U.S. government-funded NGO Internews Network, which collaborated with 4,291 media outlets, had produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts in a single year — reaching up to 778 million people — and trained over 9,000 journalists as of 2023.

The Internews Network also has supported social media censorship initiatives. Unsurprisingly, many of the news outlets that published hit pieces about Clements received USAID funding. “Now understand that the American Bar Association has been proven to receive millions from USAID,” said Clements. “It’s bad enough that the media has been bought off, but organizations that regulate my profession are also on the take.”

I asked Clements to put aside the latest investigation for two last questions. What has been the key to survival, and what’s next? He responded:

“God’s daily provision. His goodness. He has saved our country. This latest investigation is nothing more than an enemy drawing its last dying breath — desperately thrashing about, too stupid to know it’s already defeated.

“We have won. Trump is in. Most J6 prisoners have been pardoned and released. DOGE is kicking butt. And Trump just declared to governors everywhere that we are getting rid of the rigged machines. I’ll get through this, and once Tina Peters is set free, I’ll take a giant victory lap.

“As for what’s next… my cabin burned down in one of those mysterious fires last summer. My family needs to start picking up the pieces to rebuild. We’ll start there.”

Photo Credit: Dan Fleuette

 

The post Professor David Clements Investigated a SIXTH TIME by Disciplinary Board – This Time for Visiting Hero Tina Peters in Jail appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Under the feckless and corrupt leadership of RINO House Speaker Dustin Burrows, the Texas House of Representatives has descended into absolute lawlessness.

On Friday, the House chamber was scheduled to convene, but what unfolded was not democracy in action—it was a brazen sham orchestrated by the very person sworn to uphold the Constitution.

Speaker Burrows, a so-called “Republican,” was caught red-handed falsifying quorum by counting 40 absent lawmakers as “present” in a desperate attempt to ram through proceedings in violation of Texas law.

The Texas Constitution is clear: Two-thirds, or 100 members, must be present to establish a quorum in the 150-member chamber. And yet, Speaker Burrows, in full-blown swamp mode, attempted to manipulate the electronic voting system to fake quorum numbers, allowing business to continue unlawfully.

“There were only 63 that bothered to show up today,” said Rep. Brian Harrison (R–Midlothian), the conservative firebrand who exposed the fraud in real-time. Harrison demanded a verification vote—and the results were damning. Only 65 members could be verified. That’s not even close to the 100 required.

“House “leadership” tried to take votes anyway. I objected and demanded verification.” Harrison added.

Every member was notified over a week ago, on March 20, that Friday’s session was happening. Yet most couldn’t be bothered to show up, and Burrows tried to paper over their laziness with a lie.

The Constitution requires 100 members be present to constitute a quorum.

There were only 63 that bothered to show up today.

House “leadership” tried to take votes anyway.

I objected and demanded verification.

Watch Speaker @Burrows4TX LIE about quorum… and get caught! pic.twitter.com/0VMToJxyA6

— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) March 28, 2025

According to Texas Scorecard, “With no quorum and no official proceedings, Speaker Burrows encouraged current members to come to the House chamber later in the day for an unofficial recognition of the former lawmakers. Capitol staffers were reportedly notified to sit in the chamber’s vacant seats to help make the room appear full.”

Imagine the audacity—lying to Texans’ faces while playing pretend politics in a chamber built to serve we the people.

The lawlessness didn’t stop there. On Saturday, the House reconvened for its first weekend session of the 89th Legislative Session, and Burrows’ clown show hit a new low.

Good morning, Texas.

This is the first Saturday we’ve been asked to work this session… after 10 long weekends.

The House is scheduled to convene at 10am… will we have the (Constitutionally required) quorum today? pic.twitter.com/ReKK2NpkON

— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) March 29, 2025

The session lasted a measly 8.8 seconds—barely enough time to blink—before Burrows admitted, yet again, that no quorum existed.

Harrison’s staff counted just 28 members present out of 150. That’s right: a pitiful 18% of the House showed up for work. Harrison demanded a roll call vote under House Rule 5, Sec. 2, with strict enforcement to prevent proxy voting fraud, but Burrows ignored him flat-out.

“Lawless: Texas House breaks quorum two days in a row. Members are required to be here. I demanded a roll call vote this morning from Speaker Burrows, who IGNORED my request. Texans deserve transparency!” Harrison wrote.

According to the request from Harrison:

Mr. Speaker:

Given yesterday’s attempt to conduct House business with far short of a quorum of “two-thirds of the House” present as required by the Texas Constitution (Art. III, Sec. 10) and the requirement in the Texas House rules that “no member shall be absent from the sessions of the house without leave, and no member shall be excused on his or her own motion” (Rule 5, Sec. 3 (a)), I am requesting a roll call vote (under Rule 5, Sec. 2) with strict enforcement (Rule 5, Sec. 40) to prevent any member from voting for another member when the House convenes at 10am.

My staff counted only 28 members (out of 150) that bothered to show up for work this morning. https://t.co/3gRLFQGoQZ

— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) March 29, 2025

“LAWLESSNESS CAUGHT ON TAPE,” Harrison blasted on X, sharing another clip of Burrows brushing off his motion. “The Texas House is corrupt.”

LAWLESSNESS CAUGHT ON TAPE: Watch Speaker @Burrows4TX flagrantly ignore my motion – in writing – for a roll call vote this morning.

The Texas House is corrupt.

h/t @KXAN_News https://t.co/3gRLFQGWGx pic.twitter.com/vnZLkVwogM

— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) March 29, 2025

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Texas House, under the leadership of newly elected Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), has not only appointed a Democrat, Joe Moody of El Paso, as Speaker Pro Tempore but has also handed over the leadership of half of the chamber’s newly created subcommittees to Democrats.

This decision comes despite a clear Republican majority in the House.

Texas is a solid red conservative state that went to Trump in 2024 by 14 points!

Thanks to the disgraceful support from 36 supposed Republicans and 49 Democrats, he managed to cling to his position. Now, he’s repaying his Democrat cronies by handing them significant roles in the legislative process.

Burrows faced a challenge from the true conservative, state Rep. David Cook, who promised to stop the Democrat overreach by preventing them from chairing House committees.

Read more:

Outrageous Betrayal: Republican-Led Texas House Names Democrat as Speaker Pro-Tem, and Hands Half of New Subcommittees to the Left

BOTTOM LINE: RINO Speaker Dustin Burrows has been caught red-handed faking a quorum, ignoring House rules, and trampling the Texas Constitution. This isn’t leadership. It’s lawlessness. And it’s time for him to step down.

Texans deserve better. Texas deserves truth, transparency, and constitutional leadership.

The post Lawlessness in Texas: RINO Texas House Speaker Caught Fabricating Quorum — Caught Red-Handed Counting 40 Absent Lawmakers as ‘Present’ Breaking State Law appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

If HHS Secretary and healthy food advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his way, SNAP will stand for Soda Not Allowed Period.

On Friday, Kennedy brought his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign to West Virginia, where Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that he will be seeking permission from the Department of Agriculture to put soda on the list of items that cannot be bought through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often referred to by its former name of food stamps, according to The Washington Post.

“Taxpayer dollars should be targeted toward nutritious foods,” Morrisey said.

Kennedy issued a full-throated request for states to copy Morrisey’s lead.

“I urge every Governor to follow West Virginia’s lead and submit a waiver to the USDA to remove soda from SNAP,” Kennedy said in a statement, according to Newsweek.

“If there’s one thing we can agree on, it should be eliminating taxpayer-funded soda subsidies for lower income kids. I look forward to inviting every Governor who submits a waiver to come celebrate with me at the White House this fall,” he said.

Waging a SNAP war on soda is opposed by Valerie Imbruce, director of the Center for Environment and Society at Washington College.

“Controlling how the poor eat is a paternalistic response to a problem that is not based in SNAP recipients’ inability to make good decisions about healthy foods, it is a problem of the price differential in choosing healthy or junk foods,” she said.

“Soda and candy are much cheaper and more calorie dense than 100 percent fruit juices or prebiotic non-artificially sweetened carbonated beverages, thanks to price supports and subsidies by the federal government to support a U.S. sugar industry,” she added.

The soda industry was also miffed, the Post noted.

RFK Jr. “I want to commend Governor Morrisey … for his courage.”

“These legislators who are pushing this bill, all of them are getting calls every day from the big soda companies … and the fake food companies.”

“We’re not eating food. We’re eating food-like substances.” pic.twitter.com/ncl0v8I5DG

— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) March 28, 2025

“What’s unhelpful about this whole conversation is that soda is not driving obesity,” Merideth Potter, senior vice president at the American Beverage Association, the industry’s lobbying group, reacted. “We’ve become this easy punching bag.”

Seth DiStefano, of the leftist West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, said a ban on SNAP paying for soda could force shoppers out of the state and lead to store closures.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is the one who makes the call on SNAP.

“I look forward to receiving Governor Morrisey’s SNAP pilot request and will work swiftly to make certain West Virginia is equipped with the technical assistance and expertise to move forward,” Rollins said in a statement.

Calley Means, a senior adviser at the White House, said 15 governors are talking with Kennedy about removing soda from the list of products SNAP funds can buy.

“We’re not saying anyone can’t drink Coke,” Means said. “We’re saying no government subsidies for Coke.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post RFK Jr. Moves to Cut Soda from List of Approved Food Stamp Purchases – Pay Attention to Who Is Fighting Him on It appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Today we celebrate an important milestone: Gateway Hispanic continues to grow, and for over 7

The post Gateway Hispanic Continues to Grow appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Donald Trump’s mandate from the voters undoubtedly gives him wide latitude to close the border to illegal aliens, which he has done. Border crossings are down 90 percent and more illegal aliens were arrested in Trump’s first 50 days than across Joe Biden’s final year in office.

Now, many in the America First movement are asking, “What about reducing legal immigration?”

Big Tech moguls Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy accidentally raised awareness of this controversial topic in December by defending—while also calling for reforms to—the H-1B visa program, which allows companies to hire specialist workers from abroad for up to 6 years. “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B,” Musk noted on X.

Ramaswamy said the “badly broken” program “should be replaced with one that focuses on selecting the very best of the best.” Yet he’s also blamed American culture for “venerat[ing] mediocrity over excellence,” justifying the foreign worker program. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy declared, so “top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans.” 

The resulting debates were colorful and worth reading, and they revealed a powerful, widespread desire to reduce America’s influx of legal immigrants, and not just among America Firsters.

A Rasmussen poll published days after the Musk-Vivek ruckus found that 60 percent of likely voters believe America does not need more H-1B workers since the country “already has enough talented people to train and recruit.” That includes nearly three-quarters of Republicans, two-thirds of swing voters, and almost half of Democrats. At least one California Democrat in Congress has criticized the H-1B system for rampant fraud and abuse.

Trump, for his part, denied a larger share of H-1B applications in his first term (18 percent) than either Obama (11 percent) or Biden (just three percent). Yet he recently praised the program, saying he was “a believer in H-1B” who had used it many times in his business properties. That doesn’t mean Trump 2.0 won’t scale down the program, though. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ruled that visa policies now fall under his purview as “foreign affairs,” allowing him broad discretion to revise visa rules without the drawn-out public notice/comment process. 

But what are the facts around America’s immigration system, and what role do H-1B visas play in it?

Reframing the Debate

The H-1B program is capped annually at 85,000 three-year visas, which can be renewed for another three-year term. Estimates put the total number of H-1B workers in the nation at 500,000–600,000 people. 

At the same time, H-1B holders may apply for lawful permanent residency, allowing them to live and work here indefinitely. The process isn’t automatic, but a significant portion—perhaps as high as 90 percent—of H-1B-holders ultimately receive green cards, according to Homeland Security “adjustment of status” statistics. (No one knows the actual figure, apparently.)

While the debate that Musk and Ramaswamy kicked off centers on temporary foreign workers, the real debate on the Right should focus on the vastly larger mass-immigration pipeline permitted by our expansive “family reunification” policies. 

There are roughly 13 million green card holders in the United States, dwarfing the number holding H-1B visas, about half a million. We’ve admitted more than 1 million more each year since 1990 on average, even during the bleak COVID years of 2020–21. That includes an indeterminate number of H-1B workers.

A permanent resident may apply for U.S. citizenship after five years, or three if they marry a U.S. citizen. Between 2021 and 2024, 2.6 million permanent residents became naturalized U.S. citizens, 98 percent of them through the green card process.

Once naturalized, however, new citizens may invite in their spouses, married or unmarried children, and even adult siblings—and at 675,000 people per year, the annual immigration cap for family reunification is far larger than any temporary worker program.

This is the mass immigration pipeline that a growing number of Trump voters wish to dramatically scale down, if not pause outright and indefinitely as past generations did after periods of intensive migration. 

A Half Century of Mass Immigration

We’ve been in such a period since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Since then, the percentage of foreign-born residents has skyrocketed, reaching an all-time high of 15.6 percent, or 51 million people, today. The mass immigration that the statute enabled has created serious political consequences for the republic.

Naturalized citizens made up a record-breaking 1 in 10 voters in the 2024 election and voted at higher rates than native-born Americans. Forty-four percent self-identified as Democrats, compared with just 30 percent who called themselves Republicans. This has been true for decades, which is why leftist get-out-the-vote groups have spent a fortune courting immigrants as part of the Democratic Party’s “New American Majority” program.

Astonishingly, this aspect of our troubled immigration system has been largely forgotten, yet it’s arguably the part that should concern MAGA voters most, given the movement’s interest in putting American jobs, education, health, and well-being first. Perhaps far less attention should be paid to the people immigrating on temporary worker visas and more on this massive immigration pipeline of low-skilled workers under the family reunification policy.

That doesn’t excuse the glaring problems with the H-1B program, of course. Its proponents—such as Musk and Ramaswamy—often market the H-1B program as our nation’s only tool for attracting highly sought-after experts, particularly in the tech industry. But the facts tell a different story. 

Importing Experts or the Huddled Masses?

The H-1B program is marketed as importing “highly skilled foreign workers” into the United States. But that’s stretching things… a lot. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) lists the requirements to apply: Attainment of a bachelor’s degree and a sponsorship by a U.S. employer for a job requiring “highly specialized knowledge.”

“Highly specialized knowledge” encompasses everything from a general neurology physician earning $380,000 per year down to an accountant paid $22 an hour, according to job listings on Indeed.com. Most of the positions offered to H-1B applicants are in Big Tech, but many are not. And the “nots” include entry-level mortgage assistants, e-commerce account executives, lathe machinists, bridge repair operators, college admissions consultants, AC/DC motor plant technicians, and life insurance call center specialists—jobs certainly fillable by native-born Americans.

Speaking of the native-born, in most cases there is no legal requirement for companies to prioritize hiring Americans before foreigners. Nor are companies prohibited from replacing American employees with (presumably cheaper) H-1B workers, so many do. In 2022 alone, U.S. companies hired 34,000 new H-1B employees while laying off tens of thousands of Americans. Among them was Elon Musk’s Tesla, which requested 2,000 new H-1B visas at the same time it was laying off 15,000 U.S. employees last April.

The number one H-1B employer is Amazon at 9,265 foreign hires, per the USCIS list of H-1B employers and their total visa employees. Number two is the Indian tech multinational Infosys. This foreign company may be based in Bangalore, yet it’s imported over 8,100 H-1B visa workers into the U.S. 

Infosys has a checkered past: In 2013, the company paid $34 million in a settlement with federal authorities for illegally using B-1 visitor visas for work requiring H-1B visas. Infosys admitted no wrongdoing. In 2019, Infosys reached an $800,000 settlement with California for again funneling nearly 500 employees into the state on B-1 visas, instead of H-1B visas, avoiding paying payroll taxes or disability and unemployment insurance.

It’s a similar story with the third-biggest H-1B employer: Cognizant Technology Solutions, an Indian tech company that’s imported over 6,300 foreign workers into the U.S. In 2024, whistleblowers sued the company for discriminating against 2,000 American workers over imported Indian employees. 

Not surprisingly, 73 percent of H-1B visa holders come from India and 12 percent from China, countries famous for their ethno-nationalism and highly restrictive immigration systems. Those nations rarely offer citizenship or even permanent residency to foreigners.

“I definitely knew it was because of me being an American, not being Indian, and also because I was black,” said one woman who was fired by Cognizant three days after suing the company. A jury agreed with her.

While U.S. law clearly protects H-1B workers from discrimination by employers, there’s far less scrutiny on employers discriminating against native-born workers in visa holders’ favor. Fortunately, the Trump administration has begun cracking down on the practice. But conservatives should ask, “Is it enough?”

Other H-1B employers are less shady but their actions will still make conservatives bristle. Hitachi Energy (visas: 45) is a Swiss renewable energy firm that prioritizes “sustainability” and a “commitment to human rights” on the march “towards carbon-neutral” power in line with “the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals” on global warming. Similarly, Schlumberger (visas: 97) is a French multinational oil producer “accelerating decarbonization” to “reduce emissions . . . on the journey to net zero.”

Again, these are foreign companies outsourcing American jobs to foreign workers… in America.

At least these positions are filled by only the best and brightest, bringing much-needed talent to bolster America’s economy. But across the country, many more jobs are filled by the luckiest, not the most talented.

Every year the H-1B program is flooded with 386,000 applications by individuals who meet its minimum standards. Of these, 65,000 are selected by lottery, while another 20,000 are picked at random from a pool of applicants with master’s degrees.

Wily companies game the system, using staffing agencies to hire thousands of foreign workers desperate to enter the United States and get a shot at permanent residency and U.S. citizenship, while big companies get lower-cost employees who can’t afford to leave.

Critics on the right and the left have blasted this system as a revival of indentured servitude. If visa holders lose their job, they have 60 days to find a new position—and a sponsor—or risk overstaying their visa. Consequently, “H-1B workers can’t complain too much” about lower wages, writes Peter Van Buren in The American Conservative. “Unable to change jobs freely . . . they have to take what they are given.”

Not only experts and analysts, but also everyday people, take issue with the H-1B system. On Reddit, a social media app popular among young people, several users have bluntly criticized the program. An example:

H1Bs are a way for firms to force job loyalty through indentured servitude (in spirit) and increase bottom lines by undercutting the acceptable salary range of the already existent American workforce. It’s not to fill roles that they can’t fill through American labor [due to] lack of availability, that’s just the Trojan horse.

Then there’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “Elon Musk is wrong,“ he tweeted in January. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”

There are solutions to at least some of these problems. The Trump administration could raise the H-1B salary floor to stop foreign hires from undercutting Americans, prioritize the highest-paid positions to mitigate the lottery’s “crowding out” effect, and weight certain industries above others. None of these fixes require shutting down the visa program entirely, but they would go a long way toward addressing its problems.

But defenders of the system want to expand the H-1B cap, believing it the best way to discover the world’s next Einstein. Yet the U.S. actually has a separate visa specifically for “extraordinary” individuals: the EB-1 “Einstein” visa, which grants permanent residency to 40,000 of the most gifted Olympic athletes, researchers, surgeons, and Pulitzer Prize winners each year. 

These are unquestionably the “high achievers” most Americans want to attract. Which raises the question, why invite so many middle-class, white-collar jobs through H-1B—particularly at a time of mass tech lay-offs?

Techpocalypse and the GOP

That’s the question bothering so many 20- and 30-something men, a demographic sprinting towards Trump and the new Republican Party in search of hope, opportunity, and dignity.

Recent tech industry lay-offs suggest H-1B visas, even if they worked as marketed, aren’t needed—or wanted—in the current economy, especially if they lead to layoffs for hard-working Americans. In late February alone, healthcare, cybersecurity, and computer part manufacturers cut 6,000 jobs. Hewlett-Packard announced restructuring plans affecting an additional 6,000 jobs. 

That’s small fry compared with the 380,000 U.S. tech workers laid off between 2022 and 2024, led by Tesla, Intel, and Cisco. Partly this was the result of letting go of extra hands that had been hired during the COVID pandemic to meet ballooning consumer demand, which has since dropped off. Other firms fear a looming recession, so are cutting labor costs to preserve critical cash reserves. Experts expect more lay-offs to come in 2025. 

A jobs shortage would argue against importing more middle-skill workers.

“There is no shortage of qualified STEM workers,” argues the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports H-1B reform. “The H-1B program has transformed over time from a means to supplement the American tech workforce to a means of cheaply replacing it. Americans who are replaced by H-1B guest workers are often forced to train their replacements or risk losing their severance.” At the same time, the center points out, “foreign STEM workers often come from sham universities abroad—particularly in India—and have far fewer specialized skills than they claim.” 

The center records the stories of 11 different American tech workers unnecessarily replaced by “underqualified” foreign hires. “99 percent of people with H visas are totally underqualified. No skills. I worked with so many of them from Infosys. There are millions of Americans who could do this work,” one Seattle worker writes.

“If we said anything, they’d accuse us of being racist, using the company’s anti-discrimination policies,” laments another woman laid off from her insurance job.

By the Numbers

Immigration policy is almost always a numbers game, and a large segment—if not a majority—of the America First movement wants significantly fewer immigrations… or perhaps just few, period.

The discussion around H-1B policy both illuminates and obfuscates this. On the one hand, the resentment felt by Americans whose jobs have been outsourced in their very own country suggests the Right wants to go beyond deporting illegal aliens and tighten immigration altogether. 

On the other hand, too much public discussion is hung up on the relatively modest number of H-1B workers, instead of the million low-skill immigrants who flood in legally each year simply because a family member happens to live here. 

Credit: U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services

Sixty percent of green card holders entered either as immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen or through “family-sponsored preferences.” These are decidedly not the world’s “best and brightest” doctors, engineers, or AI experts. Chinese and Indians combined comprise just 11 percent of the lawful permanent resident population, whereas Mexicans, Dominicans, Filipinos, and Cubans together make up 36 percent, with Mexicans as the plurality.

Nor are they vibrant, young workers with decades in the career force ahead of them: Just 20 percent of green card holders are 34 or younger, while 57 percent are age 35–64. 

Even without U.S. citizenship, they’re entitled to Social Security benefits such as retirement and disability if they worked in the U.S. for at least ten years.

Credit: U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services

This is the consequence not of prioritizing merit, as is often argued, but of the mass immigration system created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

The H-1B fight is really over two different visions of America: Is it a special economic zone without borders or a concrete identity (America the idea), or are we a distinct people with a history, language, culture, and tradition (America the nation)?

For MAGA, the answer will make all the difference in the world.

The post The Inconvenient Truth about H-1B Visas appeared first on The American Conservative.

What have become of my Royal Tenenbaums?

Over the last few years, a series of seemingly unrelated events have conspired to make me consider with grim perplexity the fate of the cast of one of the favorite movies from my vanished youth, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums.

I was 18 when I first saw—and saw and saw again—The Royal Tenenbaums, which, in its incredibly close approximation of the J.D. Salinger short stories I had gobbled up as an adolescent, played like a cinematic transcription of my imagination. The movie offered a child’s vision of genteel cosmopolitanism: The fictitious Tenenbaums were a brood of well-off but listless one-time enfants terribles who rattled around their Manhattan brownstone with their mink coats, perfectly turned phrases, and infinite treasury of troubles. 

Each of the spawn of Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum (the parents played by the late Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston) began life as would-be virtuosos: Chas was a financial impresario, Margot a crackerjack playwright, Richie an ace tennis player. But the trio of Tenenbaum siblings failed to capitalize on their early promise. 

“In fact, virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster,” says the film’s narrator—played, significantly, by an unseen Alec Baldwin.

Now to the point behind this reminiscence: I confess that my mind turned to Baldwin’s ominous assessment of the outcomes experienced by the imaginary Tenenbaums when watching the actor’s own very real reality show, The Baldwins on TLC.

If ever a program represented the downfall of a once-notable talent, this is it. The show was seemingly dreamt up to boost the flagging public image of Baldwin, who was then in the midst of criminal proceedings that resulted from a truly awful accident on the set of a movie: In 2021, while shooting the Western Rust, Baldwin’s prop gun discharged a bullet that claimed the life of the cinematographer. (The charges were dismissed while the trial was underway last summer.) The Baldwins works overtime to showcase the softer side of its star, but when compared against his once-impressive movie career, it is pretty tepid stuff: Alec has gone from costarring with Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October to giving the folks at home a tour of his closet. How the mighty have fallen.

That’s when it occurred to me: Many of the Tenenbaums have lost some of their royal sheen in recent years.

Let us take the case of Gwyneth Paltrow, who played, with great indolent charm, the adult version of Margot Tenenbaum. Since she appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums some twenty-four years ago, Paltrow has starred in a grand total of three movies for which I have purchased a ticket: 2002’s Possession (a ho-hum literary adaptation), 2003’s Sylvia (a creditable biopic of Sylvia Plath), and 2005’s Proof (a ho-hum theatrical adaptation). I have missed (or avoided) the entire corpus of Iron Man. So inconsequential is Paltrow’s post-Margot screen career that my most vivid recollection of her from the last quarter century is her appearance in a 2023 civil trial in which a skiing eye doctor asserted that she bore responsibility for a ski collision some years back. The goofy legal proceedings were televised, etching my memory her scoffing expression as the plaintiff gave his version of events and her supercilious answer on the stand when asked about how the incident in question had affected her: “Well, I lost half a day of skiing.”

Then there is the matter of Hackman—Mr. Royal Tenenbaum himself. Having long ago called it quits on his screen career, Hackman made his permanent home in New Mexico in what everyone assumed was complete contentment—“assumed” because he seldom made himself available, post-retirement, to the press. After all, hadn’t the star of The French Connection, Hoosiers, and Unforgiven earned the right to while away his golden years in peace and quiet? But, in the fullness of time, it turned out that Hackman had too much solitude: In late February, the bodies of Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were discovered in their home after having died at some ill-defined earlier point. Authorities later disclosed that Hackman was felled by heart disease—some number of days after his wife had perished after contracting hantavirus. All endings are sad, but this was one both sad and strange. 

What about the rest of the cast? Well, Luke Wilson—Richie Tenenbaum—was unable to replicate the cinematic success of his sibling Owen Wilson, though Owen, a mere supporting player in The Royal Tenenbaums, hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire lately: If you had heard of his recent movies Bliss (2021), Marry Me (2022), or Secret Headquarters (2022), you were one step ahead of me. I grant that appearing in little-seen motion pictures is not so cruel a destiny as facing a criminal trial, like Baldwin; or making a fool of yourself in a civil trial, like Paltrow.

Am I saying that the cast of The Royal Tenenbaums is cursed? Not quite. My point is more prosaic: Not even glamorous and successful movie stars who had starred in what seemed like a charmed movie are exempt from the fickle finger of fate. 

“Betrayal, failure, and disaster” were the words Baldwin used to describe the Tenenbaums. Phew—he was more right than he knew.

The post The Fall of the House of Tenenbaum appeared first on The American Conservative.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has quietly been abandoning the security framework of her predecessor, the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador famously took a soft-touch approach towards cartels in Mexico, saying that ultimately what would solve organized crime are “hugs, not bullets,” a statement which became the motto for the security plan used by Mexico during his six-year tenure as president.

This approach was based on the argument that cartel crime is ultimately motivated by economic inequality and instability and thus the correct way to reduce cartel violence is to provide young people with housing, education, and economic opportunities. This was a strong political position for López Obrador to take, as it provided additional justification for all sorts of welfare programs that he hoped to implement to reduce inequality among Mexicans. But the administration did put in place a number of programs explicitly aimed at improving youth education and economic opportunities, such as Young People Building the Future, a government jobs program that provides significant pay and benefits for Mexicans aged 18–29 that are not otherwise working or in school.

The main problem with the approach was that it completely failed at transforming the landscape of organized crime in Mexico, for fairly obvious reasons. López Obrador’s contention is not entirely without merit; many young people do go into organized crime for economic reasons. But those reasons are not solely related to desperation and poverty. The drug trade is immensely lucrative, offering a higher salary than the legal side of either the Mexican public or private sector can reasonably afford. Government welfare programs can prevent poverty, but joining a cartel can make you rich.

The light touch from the Mexican government, coupled with opportunities created by the Biden administration’s lack of enforcement at America’s southern border, allowed the cartels to flourish over the past several years. Mexicans have paid the price. Homicides in Mexico reached record highs under López Obrador in 2020, and although official murder rates declined slightly over the six years of his presidency, they remain historically high. Worse yet, much of that decline may be illusory, as Mexico has suffered rapid growth of missing persons cases. In 2023, there were over 100,000 people missing in the country, many of whom were likely victims of cartel violence whose bodies have not yet been found.

The astonishing spectacle of cartel brutality has become increasingly prominent in Mexican politics. Some states, like Sonora and Coahuila, have become virtual war zones—in 2024, both saw an average of more than 100 murders every month, primarily the result of organized crime. Shootouts between rival cartels have become common, with civilian victims caught in the crossfire. Nor are the cartels hesitant to flex their muscle politically when it becomes convenient: The savage murder of the mayor of Chilpancingo, the capital of the crime-ridden state of Guerrero, shocked the nation last October. Just six days after the mayor was elected on a promise to crack down on crime in the city, he was found dead in his car, his head chopped off and placed on top of the vehicle as a grim warning to other potential reformers.

Anger at the effects of organized crime has become steadily more salient, as Mexicans tire of the depredations of cartels and gang members. This is one reason that Sheinbaum, as president, has declined to use the phrase “hugs, not bullets” to describe her own political program. Her change in approach is not merely rhetorical. While Sheinbaum maintained a focus on welfare and youth assistance, adding her own signature plan to vastly increase housing construction in the country, she also proposed a new security plan that focuses on investigation and intelligence to infiltrate cartels and disrupt their activities.

The fact that cartel violence has become so visible and unpopular is doubtless one reason that Sheinbaum has proven so cooperative with President Donald Trump in his efforts to close down the border and crack down on drug and human trafficking from Mexico into the U.S. Unlike Canada, which has seen a major anti-American backlash from both the populace and the government in response to the U.S. president’s aggressive moves, Mexico has largely taken Trump’s sometimes bewildering pattern of threats and demands in stride, following Sheinbaum’s cool and intentional approach. The Mexican president has handled the situation with impressive tact and control, calmly asserting Mexico’s sovereignty and avoiding any appearance of subordination to the U.S., while also largely providing Trump with everything he has asked for and sometimes more—sending thousands of Mexican troops to the border, cracking down on trafficking, even taking the unprecedented step of extraditing cartel kingpins from Mexican prisons to be tried in American courts. The result has been an unusual situation in which the U.S. has a better working relationship with Mexico than with Canada.

Sheinbaum’s security programs still have a long way to go to become truly effective at taking on cartel violence. Faced with a mounting deficit last year, Sheinbaum cut the security services budget significantly for 2025, a decision she may now regret. But she has long since begun tacking away from López Obrador’s lenient treatment of organized crime, and Trump has provided excellent cover for her to do so under the guise of political necessity—something that allows her to avoid a politically costly confrontation with her predecessor’s supporters in the party.

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