Month: May 2025

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has removed a controversial anti-gun exhibit from its national headquarters.

The memorial display, called the ‘Faces of Gun Violence,’ consisted of 120 portraits of individuals killed in gun-related incidents and was installed under the Biden administration and was taken down earlier this year by Trump-appointed officials.

The decision, confirmed by the Department of Justice, marks yet another reversal of subversive gun control messaging embedded into federal agencies during Biden’s term.

The ATF has still kept the anti-gun propaganda video on its YouTube page.

DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin stated that the removal was not a political act but part of broader efforts to “balance agency messaging” with the Second Amendment values affirmed by recent Supreme Court rulings.

The display included images of high-profile victims such as Robert Godwin Sr., who was murdered in Cleveland in 2017, and portraits of children killed in school shootings, alongside slain law enforcement officers. While originally presented as a neutral tribute, critics long argued that the exhibit was a thinly veiled anti-gun propaganda, intentionally placed in a federal law enforcement building to reinforce a narrative in favor of further firearm restrictions.

Gun control activists and Biden-aligned interest groups reacted with outrage. Kris Brown, president of Brady United Against Gun Violence, accused the ATF of being “politicized” and called the removal “a gut punch to every American family affected by gun violence.” Brenda Haymon Joiner, mother of one of the victims featured in the exhibit, also issued a statement calling the action “cruel and deeply disrespectful.”

Elderly left-wing Star Trek actor George Takei, on Facebook, denounced the change and claimed it re-traumatized the victims’ families.

But to many Second Amendment supporters, the removal was long overdue.

Ammoland, a prominent firearms news outlet, posted a video applauding the decision, calling the exhibit “a taxpayer-funded guilt trip” that cast suspicion on law-abiding gun owners by implying collective responsibility for criminal violence. The outlet’s editorial noted that many of the highlighted deaths had no connection to legally-purchased firearms or ATF-regulated activity, raising questions about the exhibit’s relevance to the agency’s mission.

During the Biden years, the ATF came under fire for increasingly partisan messaging, including partnering with groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and appearing at activist events. The memorial exhibit was one of several initiatives quietly pushed into public view without input from Congress or the firearm-owning public.

ATF leadership has indicated it is exploring other ways to honor victims of crime without conflating tragedy with political ideology. Gilmartin noted the agency will “seek a more inclusive and respectful approach” that doesn’t alienate millions of responsible gun owners.

ATF leadership has been undergoing a significant change since the departure of Joe Biden. ATF’s Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks was fired by the Trump administration and escorted out of the Washington, D.C. headquarters on February 20th.

The current Acting Director of the ATF is Daniel Driscoll.

Left-wing activists deliberately use the phrase “gun violence” as a way to include suicides, accidental shootings, and shootings by law enforcement as a way to inflate their statistics. The older phrase “gun crime” more than halves the amount of annual incidents involving a gun. In 2022, for example, there were approximately 48,204 firearm-related deaths in the United States but suicides were 27,032 deaths, accounting for about 56% of all gun-related deaths. Homicides involving a gun, by contrast, were approximately 19,651 deaths, making up about 41% of the total of “gun violence” in the year.

Meanwhile, left-wing outlets like National Public Radio and Hyperallergic are framing the exhibit’s removal as a ‘cruel erasure’ of victims’ memories — ignoring the broader context of politicized federal overreach. Their coverage fails to mention that no such exhibit ever existed honoring victims of knife violence, gang shootings, or border-related crime — all of which statistically eclipse the types of incidents highlighted by the display.

The post ATF Removes Anti-Gun Propaganda Display in DC Headquarters, Leftists Say Removal “Retraumatizes” Dead Victims appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Attorney Ty Clevenger is turning up the heat on the FBI—and he’s naming names.

Clevenger has unleashed a scathing rebuke of the FBI’s ongoing stonewalling in the Seth Rich case, accusing the bureau of peddling “incredibly weak excuses” to hide thousands of critical documents that could blow the lid off the Russia collusion hoax and the mysterious 2016 murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.

The FBI’s refusal follows a pattern of obfuscation. For years, the agency denied even possessing Seth Rich’s laptop—until Clevenger’s legal efforts forced the FBI to admit they had it all along. Yet, the agency still refuses to disclose any metadata from Seth Rich’s electronic devices.

Last month, Clevenger filed a motion in federal court to hold the FBI in contempt for what he calls a “deliberate and willful defiance” of a court order mandating the release of key information related to murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.

After being met with silence, Clevenger fired off a blistering letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, torching the Bureau for what he says is a calculated and ongoing effort to conceal critical records about Seth Rich and bury the truth about the discredited Russia narrative.

Clevenger took to X on Tuesday, writing, “The FBI filed a response to our contempt motion in the Seth Rich case, and it raises more questions than it answers. The response offers some incredibly weak excuses for thousands of missing documents, and it contradicts some of the earlier admissions by the FBI.”

The attorney’s April 18, 2025, letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, first reported by The Gateway Pundit, laid bare the FBI’s possession of critical evidence, including Seth Rich’s work laptop, a personal laptop image, a DVD, and a tape drive—items the bureau initially denied having.

Despite court orders to review these devices, the FBI has stonewalled, offering flimsy justifications for withholding thousands of documents. Clevenger argues this is a calculated effort to protect the discredited narrative that Russian hackers, not Rich, leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks in 2016.

“Per my April 18, 2025, letter to FBI Director Kash Patel and AG Pam Bondi (see https://thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/breaking-attorney-ty-clevenger-exposes-fbis-role-hiding/…), this stuff goes to the heart of the Russia Hoax. It appears that the infamous Michael G. Seidel, chief of the FBI’s FOIA section, may have been forced out in April. If Patel and Bondi did that, then good for them,” Clevenger wrote on X.

The attorney praised Bondi and Patel for possibly forcing out Michael G. Seidel, the former chief of the FBI’s FOIA section, in April. However, he slammed the duo for allowing the FBI to continue its “pattern of obfuscation and delay.”

Clevenger singled out Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Spence, who remains in charge of the Seth Rich case, as “part of the problem.”

He urged U.S. Attorney Ed Martin to remove Spence and replace the entire team handling the case.

“This has dragged on far too long,” Clevenger wrote, calling on congressional heavyweights Rep. James Comer, Rep. Jim Jordan, Sen. Chuck Grassley , and Sen. Ron Johnson to demand the release of all records and haul the FBI into public hearings.

The @FBI filed a response to our contempt motion in the Seth Rich case, and it raises more questions than it answers. I’ve posted the response and two exhibits below.

The response offers some incredibly weak excuses for thousands of missing documents, and it contradicts some of…

— Ty Clevenger (@Ty_Clevenger) May 7, 2025

FBI’s Response to Attorney Ty Clevenger’s Contempt Motion

The FBI has responded to allegations that it is obstructing the release of crucial documents.

In a newly filed court response obtained by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI claims it has “substantially complied” with court orders and accuses plaintiff Brian Huddleston of making baseless, inflammatory claims to push a narrative of government concealment.

Huddleston, represented by attorney Ty Clevenger, previously filed a motion demanding the FBI be held in contempt of court for allegedly failing to follow a judge’s explicit instructions to review and release material from Seth Rich’s work and personal laptops—devices believed by many to hold the key to unraveling the DNC email leak scandal and its ties to the now-debunked Russia collusion hoax.

But in its response, the FBI insists that it did what was required and then some, asserting that it conducted a “document-by-document review” of the files, produced the court-ordered Vaughn indexes, and even addressed metadata from both laptops—despite the court only mandating metadata from the work device.

The Bureau’s filing downplays the importance of the data, claiming that the laptops merely “came into the government’s possession following Seth Rich’s murder” and that they do not contain official government records.

The FBI even argued that many of the files were too corrupted to be opened, suggesting that the agency has no obligation to “restore” or reconstruct the records.

The FBI wrote in their response, “The laptop and the records found thereon belong to an individual, a homicide-victim, that happened to land in the government’s possession. Defendant has no obligation to restore a computer to its original condition when it did not receive the Personal Laptop in its original condition.  The files were corrupted at the time the government first attempted to review them. What Plaintiff is requesting is, essentially, that the Defendant create new records that it never possessed—uncorrupted files from homicide victim’s personal computer—but this exceeds the government’s obligations under the FOIA.”

Most telling, however, is the Bureau’s accusation that Huddleston has “lack standing” to pursue the contempt claim, pointing to a prior filing indicating he “transferred his interest” in the case.

“It is undisputed that Plaintiff Huddleston has “transferred his interest in this case.” ECF No. 164. Because Mr. Huddleston lacks any cognizable interest in the case, he no longer has standing to pursue relief. Therefore, he lacks standing to seek to hold Defendant in contempt for violating any court order.”

Read the FBI’s response here.

FBI Hiding Explosive Seth Rich Laptop Details Under Guise of “Active Investigation”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael P. Spence and Acting FBI Section Chief Shannon R. Hammer have effectively admitted that the Bureau is withholding the contents of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich’s work laptop, personal laptop, DVD, and tape drive—citing vague claims of “ongoing investigations” and “national security concerns.”

According to the Bureau, releasing the information could “undermine the law enforcement interests” and “reveal information about the nature, scope, focus, and conduct of active, ongoing investigations.”

According to Hammer, “To describe the specific contents of the Personal Laptop and the Work Laptop at a document-by-document level, could reveal information that Exemption 7(A) protects from disclosure. Such a disclosure could reasonably be expected to harm the ongoing homicide investigation led by the USAO-DC, as well as the pending enforcement proceedings and spin-off national security investigations derived from the Special Counsel’s Office. These harms include, as discussed more fully in the Eighth Declaration of Michael Seidel (ECF No. 148-1), permitting targets, witnesses, or subjects of the ongoing investigations to estimate the scope of the investigations, and allowing those persons to discern investigative strategies and employ countermeasures to thwart them.

Read Shannon Hammer’s declaration here.
Read Michael Spence’s declaration here.

The post Attorney Ty Clevenger BLASTS FBI’s “Weak” Excuses in Seth Rich Case — Demands Congress to Haul FBI Into Hearings: “Patel and Bondi Have Allowed the FBI to Continue its Pattern of Obfuscation and Delay” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

White South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump and South African and US tech billionaire Elon Musk gather in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria, on February 15, 2025 for a demonstration. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump is following through on his promise to extend a hand to one of the world’s most persecuted yet ignored minority groups — white South African Afrikaners.

According to an internal memo reviewed by The Lever, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to welcome the first wave of white South African refugees to American soil within days.

On February 7, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order halting all U.S. aid to South Africa, citing “government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” including racially discriminatory property confiscation.

It can be recalled that South Africa’s EFF leader Julius Malena was again calling for genocide against white South Africans at a rally last year.

Julius Malena told supporters, “We must be able to explain to our people what black consciousness is and why it cannot coexist with the idea that white people are inherently superior, and one of the two must die.”

Trump’s executive order mandates that the U.S. promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping such discrimination.

It directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

Following the executive order, the U.S. Embassy in South Africa reported receiving a list of over 67,000 individuals expressing interest in refugee status under this program.

U.S. officials have begun interviewing applicants, with more than 30 approvals reportedly granted as of late April 2025, according to Reuters.

According to The Lever, the memo, signed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and ORR Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison, outlines a coordinated effort to expedite the resettlement of this vulnerable population using funds from the federal “Preferred Communities” program—traditionally reserved for those at highest risk, including the elderly and sick.

The outlet also reported that the first group of Afrikaners is expected to arrive in the U.S. within the coming days.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump officials plan to use funds for at-risk refugees to facilitate an influx of white South Africans within days, according to a government source & internal memo viewed by @LeverNews.

The influx is happening as Trump bans other refugees. https://t.co/opqqreLcNX

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) May 6, 2025

The Lever reported:

In the April 30 memo, which has not previously been reported, officials with the Office of Refugee Resettlement wrote to Kennedy, requesting approval for the “mobilization of immediate support for vulnerable incoming Afrikaner refugees,” including “housing, health services, and resettlement support upon their arrival.”

The group of Afrikaners, officials wrote, was slated to arrive “within a few days of this memo,” and therefore officials needed approval to make emergency arrangements outside of typical refugee resettlement protocol.

Kennedy signed and approved the document that day.

[…]

The agency is preparing to resettle as many as 1,000 Afrikaners this year, the source said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services responded to a request for comment after publication and confirmed that Preferred Communities program funding would be used in resettling Afrikaners.

Watch how quickly Democrats become anti-immigrant.

The post REPORT: Trump to Welcome First Batch of White South African Refugees Fleeing Government-Sponsored Racial Persecution to U.S. Within Days appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

When Vice President J.D. Vance unearthed an old clip of Rep. Ilhan Omar seemingly calling for racial profiling of white men, little did he know a wave of online chatter about the “woke right” would follow.

It’s a phrase that is often used to describe resurgent racialism and its influence on more mainstream conservatism, though some people appear to mean conservatives who are particularly sensitive to anti-white rhetoric on the Left. The two groups can overlap, to be sure, but are not really the same.

Omar would say that this racialism and extremism among a subset of white men is what she wants the government “profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight” rather than white men in general, though it would not be surprising to learn she harbors such suspicions about most people a few millimeters to the right of Sen. Susan Collins. But “woke right” is more commonly used by conservatives to describe other people who consider themselves, or market themselves to, conservatives.

It’s a clever way of categorizing online provocateurs who range from the edgy to the genuinely bigoted, with many trying to leave ambiguous where on this spectrum they truly lie. This terminology also does capture some real truths.

Racialists of the right and left are often more alike than they care to admit. They are also mutually reinforcing. It is hard to imagine right-wing racialism having more than a marginal appeal if it weren’t for the excesses of wokeness, from self-flagellation encouraged in the academy and by corporate HR departments to the more sophisticated forms of critical race theory. Similarly, the whole cottage industry of corporate and collegiate anti-racism, with its struggle sessions and White Fragility reading groups, gains legitimacy and support from any reported increase in authentic white nationalism.

I have myself written about how some advanced modern forms of anti-racism in practice actually appear to reduce antibodies against ancient hatreds in people who might otherwise be immune to them, including antisemitism. College campuses are petri dishes in which all manner of identitarianism and illiberalism can grow. 

Pace Tolstoy, racial obsessives of all stripes are the unhappy families that are alike.

It’s also true that white nationalists have been known to use the language of identity politics, though this predates wokeism. David Duke attempted to rebrand the Ku Klux Klan as the National Association for the Advancement of White People in the late 1970s and the segregationist Bryant Bowles made the same play on the NAACP’s name in the 1950s.

But there are some reasons why the woke right formulation doesn’t quite work, or at least obscures as much as it illuminates. Even as you can clearly find some similarities in their errors and collectivism, the intellectual influences, where applicable, are different. Derrick Bell and Jared Taylor are not really making the same arguments. Neither are Ibram X. Kendi and Julius Evola. 

Most importantly, wokeness is meant to be a heightened awareness of social injustices, especially those involving race and gender. It is a hypersensitivity to racism. People who are drawn to the alt-right or who are alt-right-adjacent may have some kind of heightened awareness of their own identity, real or imagined. But they typically believe that to fight their ideological foes effectively, they must develop a hyperinsensitivity to racism and bigotry. 

This can become attractive to normal conservatives who see accusations of racism or antisemitism primarily as political weapons wielded against them by the left or their other ideological opponents. They want to become bulletproof against these weapons, or at least rob them of their emotional impact. 

Perhaps helping internet-addled right-wingers flirting with racism or antisemitism see how similar they are to what they profess to hate the most will prove to be an effective deterrent against radicalization and racialization. If so, then so be it. 

But the reason this doesn’t strike me as hair-splitting is that I think the racial hyperinsensitivity is a better explanation of what leads some on the right astray than a simple-minded eagerness to beat the woke at their own game, even if the latter motivation is surely real. They become desensitized to sensitivities and sensibilities that exist for good reason.

It’s true that in political debate, messaging and definitions don’t have to be totally precise or rigorous to be effective. Using the word woke to describe attitudes that are actually the exact opposite might be a good way to hit the alt-right where it hurts. Nevertheless, if you want to fight something, it does seem important to first understand what it is.

The post Is ‘Woke Right’ a Useful Term? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas repeatedly spoke over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Tuesday as the Trump official responded to a question regarding the administration’s deportation policy concerning minors.

Escobar said, “Reclaiming my time” to Noem four times within 20 seconds while the secretary testified before the House Oversight Committee.

The representative’s question to Noem concerned whether a specific Immigration and Customs Enforcement form was filled out in the case of three children of illegal immigrants, who are U.S. citizens, presumably because they were born in the country.

Escobar asked if ICE Form 71-078, Caregiver Designation at Arrest, was completed.

“The specific cases that you’re referencing with these children, it was the parents’ choice to take their children with them,” Noem answered.

Escobar interjected, “Did ICE follow through on the policy?”

Noem continued with her answer, “which it is a policy of the Trump administration to keep families together.”

“Reclaiming my time,” the congresswoman then said.

.@Sec_Noem completely destroys @RepEscobar for pushing the Fake News that the Trump administration deported U.S. citizen children:

“The specific cases that you’re referencing with these children, it was the parents’ choice to take their children, which it is the policy of the… pic.twitter.com/5CS6ScUVjb

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 6, 2025

Escobar proceeded to instruct Noem that her questions only require a yes or no answer. “Was that form used in any of those cases?” the congresswoman asked.

“I will get back to you on that specific form. I don’t know the number, but I do know these mothers were on the record, filling out paperwork and in interviews reiterating they wanted to keep their children with them,” Noem responded.

Even before she had completed her answer, Escobar once again interrupted, saying, “Ma’am, reclaiming my time,” and restated it two more times.

“I’d like you to avoid the filibuster so I can get to all my questions,” Escobar said.

“I’m answering your questions with facts,” Noem countered.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio faced a similar question from NBC’s Kristen Welker last month while appearing on “Meet the Press,” when questioned about a Washington Post story saying the administration had deported three U.S. citizen children.

“That’s a misleading headline,” Rubio said. “Three U.S. citizens, ages 4, 7 and 2, were not deported. Their mothers, who are illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers. Those children are U.S. citizens. They can come back into the United States, if there’s their father or someone here who wants to assume them.”

“You guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the two-year-old and threw him on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true,” he added.

The headline about three U.S. citizens ages 7, 4, and 2 being deported was very misleading.

It was their mothers, who were in this country illegally, who were deported. The decision on whether or not their children go with them is the choice of the parents. pic.twitter.com/iHIhcLO4sX

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) April 28, 2025

Welker followed up asking whether people are being deported without due process.

“If someone’s in this country, unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported,” Rubio answered.

“If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child, and says, ‘I want to take my child with me,’ well, now you have two choices. You can say, ‘Yes, of course you can take your child, whether they’re a citizen or not, because it’s your child,’ Or you can say, ‘Yes you can go, but your child must stay behind.’ And then your headlines would read, ‘U.S. holding hostage, 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old while mother deported,’” the secretary said.

He reiterated, “So the parents make that choice.”

Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. In this case, the parent stated they wanted to be removed with the children.

We take our responsibility to protect children seriously and will… https://t.co/HmsNziMM2M

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 26, 2025

According to Border “czar” Tom Homan, the Trump administration is also working to locate 300,000 minors who crossed the southern border illegally and unaccompanied, but were lost during the Biden administration.

He said, “Already about 5,000 found. Rescued. Some of these were with relatives, but some weren’t. Some were in forced labor,” adding it is a hard job, because they do not have the digital footprint that adults do, but “we’re not going to rest until every single one of them is found and rescued.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Watch: Dem Rep. Repeatedly Cries ‘Reclaiming My Time’ When Kristi Noem Gives Inconvenient Answer During Hearing appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The global population under thirty has grown up in an environment of total consumerism, where

The post From “Corporate Communism” to Modern Slavery: How China and Global Elites Are Destroying Western Industry Under the Guise of Free Trade appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

An abandoned house in Hollywood that was taken over by a group of homeless squatters recently burned down, in a development that should surprise absolutely no one.

Neighbors repeatedly complained to the city that the house had been taken over by squatters. Police would come and the squatters would disappear, then just come back the moment the police were gone.

You would think the people of southern California have had enough of fires after the last few months, wouldn’t you?

FOX 11 in Los Angeles reported:

Vacant Hollywood home burns down after string of fires allegedly caused by squatters

A vacant Hollywood home burned down Thursday, one week after FOX 11 was first to report on homeless squatters taking over the building.

Thursday morning’s destructive blaze along the 1700 block of Wilton was the fourth fire at the location in about two weeks.

“It’s almost comical,” said Jeanne Rice, a neighbor. “I’m kind of laughing a little bit, because it’s like a joke. We’ve been tortured over it.”

Rice is one of several neighbors on Wilton who have complained to city officials for months about two vacant homes on the street taken over by squatters.

Nearby residents have reported public drug use, constant nudity, large fires, and a general disregard for laws.

“If there are abandoned buildings on the street, they can’t be lying there for like a year without being knocked down,” said Carolita Blythe, another neighbor. “Because, people without homes are going to go into the buildings.”

See the video report below:

LATEST: One of the homes in Hollywood we reported on last week, taken over by squatters, has burned down. Nearby residents are demanding accountability. #hollywood #losangeles pic.twitter.com/j8TR9yCeVW

— Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) May 2, 2025

After wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in southern California earlier this year, the city and state have absolutely no excuse for this. They should be on high alert for fires started by homeless people with a zero tolerance policy. What an utterly predictable failure.

The post SHOCKER: Abandoned House in Hollywood Burns Down After Being Taken Over by Homeless Squatters (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

In its first Singaporean parliamentary election since the election of Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in 2024, the People’s Action Party (PAP) won a decisive victory Saturday, capturing 87 seats in the city-state’s 97-seat Parliament. The election was seen as a comment on Wong’s popularity after the 53-year-old bureaucrat succeeded Singapore’s third prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, who had governed the island for two decades. 

“Singaporeans have given the PAP a clear and strong mandate to govern,” Wong, a American-trained economist, said following the election. “The results will put Singapore in a better position to face this turbulent world. Many are watching the elections closely, whether it’s international media, investors or foreign governments, they will have taken note of tonight’s results. It’s a clear signal of trust, stability and confidence in your government.” 

PAP, which has ruled Singapore since the nation’s inception in 1965 when the country gained its independence from Great Britain, won a significant majority in the Parliament behind campaign promises of economic stability and ideological continuity. Wong, the nation’s fourth prime minister, becomes the first to increase the party’s vote share following a change in prime minister. 

Writing on X Saturday, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, congratulated Wong’s party with a nod to the future. “We greatly value our excellent cooperation with Singapore,” wrote von der Leyen. “Our partnership is deepening, in trade and investment, and also defence, security, innovation.”

PAP’s landslide victory gives Singapore’s ruling party a clear mandate heading into the future. Of the nearly 3 million people registered to vote on the island, more than 65 percent of voters selected PAP, giving the ruling party its 14th consecutive win for PAP since independence. The vote perpetuates Singapore’s system of a one-party state with government control of industry. 

The center-left Workers’ Party, which ran on a platform of delivering housing and economic relief, won 15 percent of the vote total and captured 10 of the 97 seats up for grabs. No other opposition party won more than 5 percent of the vote and the National Solidarity Party recorded its lowest vote total in history. Despite reported opposition to PAP’s rule in the lead up to the election, including an explosive op-ed penned by the son of Singapore’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in the New York Times, voters selected Singapore’s ruling party by an overwhelming majority.

The campaign window for the nation’s election lasted only nine days, making it one of the world’s shortest. In the lead up to Saturday’s vote, Wong’s government ordered Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta to remove several posts on Facebook which Wong claimed were made by foreign actors associated with the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party in an attempt to spread misinformation ahead of the election. 

Despite concerns of rising inflation on the island and the brewing trade war between the U.S. and China, Singapore’s global outlook on trade and growth has turned the tiny city-state into an economic powerhouse. Wong emphasized the need for competent governance at a time of upheaval and repeatedly told voters that the PAP put citizens in the best position to “steer Singapore through the storm.” 

“The results will put Singapore in a better position to face this turbulent world,” Wong said after votes were counted on Sunday. 

The post Singapore Stays the Course appeared first on The American Conservative.

It is frightening to see how swiftly my home country is transforming into a semi-totalitarian state. There are now serious efforts to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD), the leading opposition movement on the right and the country’s most popular party according to many polls. Would you label “democratic” a country that eliminates an unwelcome opposition party, let alone one that enjoys the support of around a quarter of all voters? Banning the opposition and chilling the free speech of its supporters would make Germany resemble a “People’s Republic of Germany” rather than a free country.

The new chancellor Friedrich Merz, who is not popular at all—in fact his approval ratings are miserable and only one fifth of all Germans consider him fit to lead the country—might be tempted to rid himself of the biggest competitor to his center-right CDU party. Merz, whose bid to become chancellor suffered an embarrassing setback in the first parliamentary vote on Tuesday, when he failed to secure majority support, will preside over a weak coalition with the Social Democrats. Polls indicate that many voters, including CDU supporters, are deeply unhappy with the coalition plans—or rather, the lack of any clear plans to deal with irregular mass migration and a proposed massive increase in public debt. Evidently, high voter dissatisfaction has intensified the temptation to eliminate the largest opposition party.

In recent days, the pressure has mounted on AfD after the domestic spy agency (called the “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” in German Verfassungsschutz) published a press release designating it a “proven extremist” party.

This is a scandal in part because the Verfassungsschutz did not disclose evidence backing up this verdict. The spy agency has assembled a more than 1100-page report with supposed evidence, yet they keep this report secret. Would you consider a state to be under the rule of law if it charged and denounced an individual but did not allow him to see the evidence needed to defend himself? Well, Germany has now done that to an entire party.

The so-called “Office for the Protection of the Constitution” alleges that AfD undermines the free democratic order and violates the principle of human dignity by denying migrants the same rights as ethnic Germans. The agency calls the simple acknowledgment that there is a German people defined by common ancestry “ethnic nationalism”.

Some small parts of the spy agency’s report have been leaked to the press, providing a glimpse of the kind of evidence marshalled. The quotes from AfD members that the agency has assembled as evidence are extraordinary—that is, extraordinary that they were thought to constitute evidence of crimes against the constitution.

One tweet on X by an MP that the office finds scandalous reads: “Misguided migration policy and the abuse of asylum have led to the 100,000-fold importation of people from deeply backward and misogynistic cultures.” Another MP declared at a public meeting that Germans “must be allowed to decide again who actually belongs to this people and who doesn’t.” He also spoke of a “law of nature” that means “each and every one of you has more in common with me than with any Syrian or Afghan.” A third AfD politician is quoted with this statement: “Diversity means multiculturalism. And what does multiculturalism mean? Multiculturalism means loss of tradition, loss of identity, loss of homeland, murder, manslaughter, robbery and gang rape.” 

Yes, you can argue that all this is highly polemical. But unconstitutional? What about free speech?

AfD leader Alice Weidel, who is married to a woman of Sri Lankan descent, has blasted as deeply undemocratic the attempts to ban her party, and she vows to fight back. She and her co-party leader have promised to “continue to take legal action against this defamation that jeopardizes democracy.”

Even U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio intervened and condemned the intelligence agency’s move, calling it “tyranny in disguise.” In truth, this tyranny isn’t very disguised. It might sound shocking to non-German ears that the spy authority is already now allowed to use wiretaps, hack into computers and emails, infiltrate the party with undercover agents, and even send agents provocateur to “gain information.” Especially in East Germany, many citizens are reminded of the methods the former GDR secret service agency, the Stasi, used to subvert and destroy the opposition.

What is happening in Germany is highly alarming. Politicians from all parliamentary parties, from the SPD, the Greens, and the Left, but also from the conservative CDU, are pushing for a vote to start the process of banning the AfD. Ultimately, this will be decided by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. The legal procedure likely will take several years, but it could be completed before the next regular date for federal elections in 2029. Thus, the AfD could be banned by the next election, disenfranchising around a fourth of the electorate.

The totalitarian fantasies of those who purport to “save democracy” by attempting to suppress the main opposition party have been laid out quite clearly by the CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz, one of the main proponents of a ban:

We would basically pull the plug on this party. The party would be banned and its assets confiscated. All the people who work for the party would immediately lose their jobs. All mandates, from honorary local councilors to seats in the European Parliament, would be annulled immediately. All employees of MPs and parliamentary groups at all levels would instantly lose their jobs. We would reduce the structure of the AfD to zero.

That, according to Wanderwitz, would provide “a breathing space for democracy.” Others might call it the suffocation of democracy.

It now all comes down to Friedrich Merz and the CDU leadership to decide whether they support a vote in the federal parliament to begin banning AfD. For now, they seem inclined to hesitate. Some leaders have invoked tactical arguments against the move: AfD might gain further support in the short term from citizens who are enraged about the suppression of opposition and free speech. Others point to legal hazards: It is not guaranteed that the court in Karlsruhe would follow the request to ban AfD. However, the court is packed with former party politicians of the CDU, SPD, and the Greens, and most are very close to the ruling class. Many observers doubt that the judges will uphold the principles that constitute a free country.

Yet Merz might opt to wait and scrutinize the “evidence” gathered by the Verfassungsschutz spy agency. This is what the designated Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (from the sister party CSU) has announced will happen. But the pressure to move towards a ban is getting stronger and hangs like a sword of Damocles not only above the head of the AfD, but above the whole German democracy.

Banning popular opposition candidates from running has become something of a fashion in EU countries, as we have witnessed in Romania and France. Banning an entire party would be a novelty. It would turn Germany into an authoritarian “controlled democracy.”

The post German Democracy Is in Peril appeared first on The American Conservative.

Kari Lake, as United States Agency for Global Media Senior Advisor, has announced a partnership with One America News Network, providing government-funded news services, including Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), “free-of-charge.”  

Statement from Kari Lake:

“United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is excited to announce a partnership with One America News Network (OAN) to provide newsfeed services to USAGM networks, including Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Martí, and Voice of America (VOA).

This idea came about after OCB suggested we explore OAN as a newsfeed option for the Miami-based, U.S. Government-funded news operation broadcasting to Cuba. At their suggestion, I reached out to OAN, and they offered to provide their newsfeed and video service free-of-charge.

This is an enormous benefit to the American taxpayer, who is the sole-source of funding for USAGM’s news outlets, which broadcast only to international audiences.

In my current role as Senior Advisor to USAGM, I don’t have editorial control over the content of VOA and OCB programming, but I can ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs.

And every day I look for ways to save American taxpayers money. Bringing in OAN as a video/news source does both.

OAN is one of the few family-owned American media networks left in the United States. We are grateful for their generosity.”

—Statement from Kari Lake, Senior Advisor at USAGM

Lake made the announcement on X:

ANNOUNCEMENT

“United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is excited to announce a partnership with One America News Network (OAN) to provide newsfeed services to USAGM networks, including Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Martí, and Voice of America (VOA).

This…

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) May 7, 2025

This is a developing story. 

The post BREAKING: Kari Lake Announces Partnership with One America News Network appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.