Former Republican Rep. David Rivera of Florida was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison (Screenshot: WPLG Local 10)
A former U.S. congressman will now spend a full decade behind bars after being handed a 10-year federal prison sentence on Friday.
Former Florida politician David Rivera was slapped with the decade-long sentence after being convicted of secretly acting as an unregistered foreign agent for a hostile regime, failing to register under FARA rules, and conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars tied to the illicit scheme.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May, Rivera and Nuhfer were found guilty by a federal jury following a trial that exposed the secret Venezuela-linked lobbying arrangement.
The previous Gateway Pundit report detailed prosecutors’ allegations that Rivera and Nuhfer accepted millions connected to the Maduro government while concealing the relationship and using Rivera’s political connections to pursue Venezuela’s interests in the United States.
Rivera had faced a statutory maximum of as much as 60 years behind bars following his conviction.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed down the 120-month sentence on October 2 following Rivera’s conviction on conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), violating FARA, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts involving transactions in criminally derived property, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Rivera, 61, represented Florida as a Republican in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013.
Federal prosecutors said Rivera and political consultant Esther Nuhfer secured a staggering $50 million contract with a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA.
But prosecutors said the arrangement went far beyond ordinary consulting.
According to evidence presented at trial, Rivera and Nuhfer secretly worked to advance the interests of the Venezuelan government in Washington while failing to register as foreign agents as required by federal law.
The pair allegedly leveraged Rivera’s political relationships to lobby American officials, including then-Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Pete Sessions, and helped arrange contacts between U.S. policymakers and senior Venezuelan officials, including Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez. Prosecutors also said Rivera and Nuhfer used coded language in their communications while conducting the operation.
Rubio testified during the trial that he was unaware Rivera was working under the Venezuelan-linked consulting agreement, according to the Associated Press.
Rivera’s attorneys have maintained that his work was commercial rather than political and have indicated they intend to appeal his conviction.
Federal prosecutors said the money did not simply remain inside a consulting operation.
Evidence introduced at trial showed Rivera deposited approximately $1.5 million in proceeds from the contract into his Florida state congressional campaign account between March 2017 and August 2018, according to the Justice Department’s sentencing announcement.
Nuhfer allegedly used approximately $455,000 in proceeds to purchase a home in Key Colony Beach, Florida.
Nuhfer was convicted alongside Rivera of FARA and money-laundering offenses and was previously sentenced to five years in federal prison.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Miami Field Office and IRS Criminal Investigation.
U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones said following Rivera’s sentencing that “foreign influence in America cannot operate in the shadows.”
“Today’s sentence reinforces a simple rule: foreign influence in America cannot operate in the shadows,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “If you act at the request, direction, or control of a foreign government and engage in covered political activity, you must comply with our disclosure laws. That can include conduct like arranging a meeting with policymakers, lobbying a government official, or promoting a foreign government’s message on social media.
“For a former Congressman from South Florida, this betrayal cuts especially deep. Rivera represented a community shaped by generations of families who fled communist oppression and came to this country seeking freedom. He knew that history. He knew what this community had endured. Yet the jury found that, for millions of dollars, he secretly used the access and relationships entrusted to him to advance the interests of the Maduro regime.
A former U.S. congressman has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after being convicted of secretly lobbying on behalf of the Venezuelan government, failing to register as a foreign agent, and laundering money tied to the scheme. The case sends a clear message: access,… pic.twitter.com/sctZAGe2QL
Jordan Domingue, a top staffer who worked two of Abdul El-Sayed’s campaigns has quit the Democrat’s U.S. Senate race and is now talking. What he describes is a candidate who has faked his way through public life, right down to the “physician” title. This is a lengthy article, but every American needs to understand, from an insiders perspective, how dangerous this man would be if elected to the U.S. Senate.
Jordan Domingue and El-Sayed
In a post on X, Jordan Domingue outlines his decision to defect from Abdul’s campaign after working first on his failed gubernatorial campaign and again on his current Senate campaign.
“His foreign policy was driven by a desire to invoke what seemed like misplaced revenge.”
I protected Abdul for two years, I worked as his personal assistant/executive protection lead on his campaigns. I departed two jobs early from working abroad, moved to Michigan twice, and took paycuts averaging 50,000k.
I took his lovely wife to the hospital for visits when she was pregnant. His youngest daughter called me Mr. Jorjan. I painted him an original piece of artwork for his birthday.
I was happy to do and experience all of this. For his gubernatorial run he never mentioned foreign policy. During his senate run, his foreign policy was driven by a desire to invoke what seemed like misplaced revenge.
When I finally realized he didn’t actually care about civilians and peace, everything I had previously ignored or excused made it obvious to who he was and that I was on the wrong side.
Jordan Domingue’s profile on X reads more like that of a Republican: USMC Combat Veteran – International Security Professional – Bjj Brown Belt – Lockheed Liberal – Anti DSA – Democratic Field Organizer – Rugged Individual
Jordan Domingue
After leaving Abul’s campaign, Jordan Domingue became the founder of Democrats for Mike Rogers.
Domingue uses the Dems for Mike Rogers X account to expose the truth about El-Sayed’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas.
Abdul El-Sayed wants to…
Send our money overseas to UNRWA, whose employees participated in the October 7th terrorist attacks, raping and murdering Israeli women and children.
While the mainstream media would like everyone to believe El-Sayed is tied for the lead in Michigan, Democrats for Mike Rogers signs are appearing everywhere in a very liberal neighborhood near my home in Michigan.
I live in a very liberal southeastern MI neighborhood.
I am shocked by the number of @DemsForMike (Democrats for Mike Rogers) & Mike Rogers signs in front yards everywhere!
We’ve selected just a few of Jordan’s tweets to give voters some insight into the real Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Our hope is that the former staffer’s messaging about why he quit Abdul’s campaign will provide some clarity about Michigan’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from the perspective of an insider.
His management pushed multiple staff to tears—He acted like an entitled mobster
On September 17th he wrote, I’ll share insight as the campaign staff member who has to this day, had the most 1:1 time with him. The first person to see him in the morning and the last to see him at night. Some average of 6-7 days a week, 12-14 hr days, 50,000+ miles, hundreds of Harribo Halal Happy Colas, and so much more.
Abdul loves this Shakespeare quote and would say it almost daily when I worked for him. “Past is prologue.”
Though he doesn’t adhere to it, I like the question it asks. Who are we when no one is looking? Of all the opposition research on Abdul, the Mount Sinai lawsuit has been the most accurate from my experience at highlighting his character.As a 30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections, the profile in the lawsuit is revealing.
Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years on how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality. When he acted liked an entitled mobster to elected officials in 2017-2018, I excused it as justified outsider earning their place.When he would say one thing to one group and another thing to a different group hours later, I considered it just the norm or “strategic ambiguity” as he calls it. When his management pushed multiple staff to tears and dangerous breaking points, in addition to them, I considered his stress.
I think documents like the Mount Sinai lawsuit tell the story of who he is, just as the Detroit News highlights who he wants you to forget. Past is absolutely prologue.
I’ll share insight as the campaign staff member who has to this day, had the most 1:1 time with him. The first person to see him in the morning and the last to see him at night. Some average of 6-7 days a week, 12-14 hr days, 50,000+ miles, hundreds of harribo halal happy colas,… pic.twitter.com/X5BSgV8fyg
The former staffer used a tweet by El-Sayed mocking the decision of an IA researcher at Antropic to leave his job to compare his decison to leave El-Sayed’s campaign, citing El-Sayed’s hatred for Jews.
Most loyal campaign staff don’t resign from their roles because…the candidate they worked for values the safety of Jewish Americans.
How we change the incentives leading antisemitism in the Democratic Party and protect Jewish Americans against these existential risks are the… pic.twitter.com/hYQmMSZNC6
Jordan says he doesn’t believe Abdul actually hated animals; he just didn’t think they were worthy of being properly cared for.
Reminds me of the apathy he has for animals. I don’t think he hates them, but just sees them as blobs that exist. He would say this on several occasions “I have a weird relationship with animals, I don’t know what they are thinking.” I don’t know if it’s the dog that bit him as a… https://t.co/d8uUTJkiCxpic.twitter.com/RGXT7UouS6
Last month Abdul El-Sayed shared a campaign video of himself dancing to a Taylor Swift song where he appears to be tapping into his more feminine side. In the video, El-Sayed could be seen dancing like a teenage girl at a Swift concert, which sparked a lot of comments on social media questioning his masculinity. At around the same time, a “Blue’s Clues” themed campaign video was released, showing El-Sayed dancing and dressed as the very effeminate main character in the show, “Steve,” which seemed to trigger another uptick in social media users questioning his sexual preferences.
Watch:
@taylorswift13 Did you give permission to this controversial, Jew-hating, America-hating, Terrorist- funded US Senate candidate, who’s campaigning with Hassan Piker, who said “America deserves 9-11,” to use your music in his campaign ad? pic.twitter.com/SBfiNyZL9J
Domingue Jordan had this to say about individuals questioning whether or not El-Sayed, is gay, which, of course, if true, would be the final nail in the coffin of the Sharia Law compliant Senate candidate’s campaign.
“A lot of people are saying he might be gay, and I think that is inaccurate.”
Jordan shared his take on El-Sayed’s bizarre and often immature behavior:
This behavior is best explained by the guy who never grew past the high school locker room. His masculinity is a performance, and he has the maturity to match it.
One of the most disrespectful and immature forms this was shown throughout my two years with him, was his love of farting. He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy. To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.
A lot of people are saying he might be gay, and I think that is inaccurate. This behavior is best explained by the guy who never grew past the high school locker room. His masculinity is a performance, and he has the maturity to match it.
He repeatedly lies about his record of public service
Last week, Michigan reporter James Dixon shared a post about Abdul El-Sayed that questioned why he’s not telling the truth about his less than 3 years of public service, Dominque confirmed the terror-sponsored U.S. Senate candidate was indeed lying to prop up his phony image:
On the trail he likes to say he has “10 years of public service experience.” I knew that was a lie while working for him, but I also was surprised he would say it. Not because it was a lie, but because 10 years of public service work experience at 41 was embarrassing to me.
Using this as a way to credential yourself for the U.S. Senate, as someone who didn’t work a real job until 31 was deeply out of touch. I started working in lawn care everyday after school and during long summer days when I was 8 or so years old.
On the trail he likes to say he has “10 years of public service experience.” I knew that was a lie while working for him, but I also was surprised he would say it. Not because it was a lie, but because 10 years of public service work experience at 41 was embarrassing to me.… https://t.co/YHSzgUcVwf
Democrats like El-Sayed put wokeness before the needs of everyday Americans
Losing the former combat Marine couldn’t have been easy for El-Sayed. Domingue seems to have his finger on the pulse of the Michigan voter and unlike Democrat leaders in Michigan, he isn’t so blinded by his hatred for those who don’t agree with him that he’s unable to make an honest assessment of his political opposition.
The former top aide for El-Sayed explains how woke Democrats no longer understand the working-class man and woman and why they now vote for Republicans.
A point that too many democrats don’t understand as they cling to death on “affordability”, and completely misunderstand the culture wars. People who work for a living. People whose labor is taxing on their body. People who have dirt or sometimes blood under their fingernails at the end of the 12hr day.
These people don’t trust the Democratic Party. They know that gas will still be high under the Democratic Party, because of climate initiatives instead of war. They know their economic situation won’t improve. They are red voters and will stay red voters because they know at least things won’t get weird again.
Watch the video Jordan is referring to in his post on “X,”—you won’t be disappointed.
A point that too many democrats don’t understand as they cling to death on “affordability”, and completely misunderstand the culture wars. People who work for a living. People whose labor is taxing on their body. People who have dirt or sometimes blood under their fingernails at… https://t.co/0Qa39jYoxV
Short man syndrome–Ivy League and lacrosse–Cartoonishly fake masculinity
A large number of political commentators have remarked about El-Sayed’s small stature and wondered out loud if he suffers from “short man syndrome.” Jordan addresses this issue in response to a compilation of clips where El-Sayed plays the “tough guy.”
Honestly was always one of the most annoying things about working closely with him. Most of these stories are fake. Funny thing is that they are a new feature, likely consultant crafted. He wasn’t like this in 2017-2018. Took him grappling once and he said he bruised a rib. That was a lie to not go again.
Abdul is lvy league and lacrosse to his core. If I could pass on one thing for anyone interviewing him, it is to look past the cartoonishly fake masculinity, and press on with hard questions/follow ups/rebuttals. He’s not going to hurt you, in fact he’s more likely to say you were aggressive or mean.
Abdul is a coward pretending to be a bully
Dominque warns anyone in the media interviewing him to ignore the tough guy act who doesn’t want to talk about Palestine.
To anyone in media interviewing him. Don’t let the appearance of toughness and his slightly antagonistic filibusters bully you. After he does his stunt just get to your questions. He will fold, and transition into the victim built on grievance, which is truly all he is.
Other Arabs/Muslims understand this, and put him in check all the time. What I find frustrating though is the man wants to be a U.S. Senator, made Israel – Palestine a core part of his primary, even based the conflict as the catalyst of his motivation to run. Yet wants to now not talk about it.
To anyone in media interviewing him. Don’t let the appearance of toughness and his slightly antagonistic filibusters bully you. After he does his stunt just get to your questions. He will fold, and transition into the victim built on grievance, which is truly all he is. Other… https://t.co/ZvogdoUCwO
The “Manufactured Man”—How He and his family have a recorded history of disrespect for law enforcement
On July 28, El-Sayed was endorsed by the Wayne County Deputy Sheriff’s Association (a union). Although El-Sayed’s campaign video could certainly make you believe otherwise, the endorsement if from the deputies’ association, not the Wayne County sheriff as an office, and not a statewide deputies’ endorsement. The union claims it represents hundreds of Wayne County deputy sheriffs who handle court security, emergency response, and community outreach.
In a Sept 22 post on X, the former El-Sayed aide and confidante, has this to say about Abdul’s relationship and disrespect for law enforcement and the truth behind this phony campaign video,
A manufactured man. They even have the shot of him pretending to be “getting his kit” ( kit = weapons, plates, etc) out of the trunk. It’s meant to invoke he has worked in law enforcement or in protection industry. That isn’t the only clip or article covering another issue, in which he is using to lie as if it was law enforcement or crime related. I have a strong suspicion that this ad only stays on YouTube and doesn’t come to this platform.
It’s also interesting that the very deputies/sheriff’s office of wayne county (he doesn’t use the county in order to pretend it’s broadly statewide) that endorsed him, did so because they worked with at same county. This is how it was described to me gleefully. It wasn’t a serious endorsement meeting.They are personal friends, and it didn’t even include policy, awareness of his defund comments, philosohy on crime, and was conducted without meeting with other primary candidates. Suspiciously this support was quiet, and due to fear of leftist anti cop backlash.
Watch:
Domingue continues to expose the U.S. Senate candidate who, together with his family, despises law enforcement:
One of his biggest vulnerabilities has been crime and law enforcement given past comments. Additionally his half sister is charged with assault on law enforcement. However more pressing is a very recent murder in Detroit that likely will cause a big conversation on crime.
Currently Abdul and other leftist are having a moment where they have to hide or lie about their support of defunding the police, ending cash bail, emptying the jails or whatever mythical elitist critical theory nonsense they came up with to crime. The very policy positions that kill members of the working class.
If Abdul were an honest man, he would just say he was wrong. Say he is here to listen and learn. Instead we get this weird cosplaying chamelon. I hope @MIPOAM (Police Officers Association of Michigan), loudly highlight this chameleon candidate.
And this is where we will end this eye-opening expose on the real Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. “If Abdul were an honest man…”
After working with him for several years, Jordan Dominque made the decision to tell the truth about the dangerous and deceitful “manufactured man.” We are grateful to him for his courage and his willingness to share what he knows about the man who wants to become the next U.S. Senator from Michigan.
Shouldn’t every Michigan voter, regardless of party or religious beliefs, be concerned about a man who bullies his staff, lies incessantly to the media, sympathizes with terrorists and accepts money from terror groups? Are voters okay with El-Sayed buddying up to radical lawmakers like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who put the interests of Hamas before those of their constituents? And finally, isn’t the whole purpose of becoming a “public servant” to serve your constituents and not to become a U.S. Senator because you’re hungry for power?
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is taking a fresh look at allegations of misconduct by prosecutors involved in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon more than half a century ago.
Former Nixon White House aide Geoff Shepard recently delivered a two-hour presentation to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility outlining his case that Nixon and other Watergate defendants were denied fair treatment.
The 78-page presentation, titled “Watergate as Lawfare,” alleged that special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski improperly communicated with judges and withheld evidence from defendants.
Shepard previously sought a DOJ investigation into his allegations, but the Biden regime declined to pursue it further back in 2022.
A DOJ spokesman stressed that the latest development does not yet constitute a formal investigation.
“Given his expertise and scholarship on Watergate, he was recently invited to give a presentation,” the spokesman said.
Exclusive: More than 50 years after Watergate, the Justice Dept. is reaching back into history to consider whether Richard Nixon was treated unfairly https://t.co/vyVyyMTQoa
The reassessment comes amid growing interest among Republicans in challenging the conventional account of Nixon’s downfall.
Vice President J.D. Vance drew a direct comparison between Nixon and Trump during an appearance at the Nixon Presidential Library in June.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said, arguing that it was “crazy” that the scandal destroyed Nixon’s presidency.
Vance added that the deep state targeting of Nixon was comparable to to the efforts to undermine President Trump during his first administration.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) went further Thursday, declaring at the Nixon Foundation’s Grand Strategy Summit that Nixon was “absolutely couped out of office” and “framed.”
“We now know more about the deep state and its power and ability to literally change things at the top,” Moore said.
.@RepRileyMoore (R-WV) on the Watergate scandal: “Richard Nixon was absolutely couped out of office and was framed. All of this was fake.” pic.twitter.com/IzqktCPKie
Nixon resigned in August 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment over obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress stemming from Watergate.
In the decades after his resignation, Nixon’s presidency underwent significant historical reappraisal, with more attention paid to his foreign policy achievements and broader record in office.
Whether the DOJ’s renewed examination develops into a full investigation remains unclear.
Led by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, there is a growing push for a NATO bank that would enable greater military expenditures. Recent reporting suggests that the British government, which had dismissed the idea a few months earlier, is seriously reconsidering the idea. Should such a bank be established, however, it would worsen national debt burdens while functioning as a giveaway to weapons manufacturers and financial institutions.
Increased defense spending is presented as an unavoidable imperative that should not undermine other expenditures. In a piece published in the Financial Times in June of this year, Carney and his Luxembourgish counterpart Luc Frieden argued that “a new NATO bank” is necessary since pledges to increase defense budgets “will require more than €850bn in additional annual spending across the alliance in Europe and Canada, which cannot come at the expense of other investment priorities at home.”
In reality, a new financial institution can’t allow military spending to somehow not “come at the expense” of other domestic priorities. At best, it would merely delay a necessary reckoning between competing priorities.
A NATO defense bank would have three primary beneficiaries: political leaders who could present themselves as strong on defense; arms manufacturers whose profit margins would skyrocket; and financial institutions that would provide the credit and make a killing on the interest. Despite its branding as an international financial body that seeks to improve intergovernmental cooperation on defense, the NATO bank, at its core, would be merely a mechanism to mobilize capital from private banks. In effect, some of the world’s biggest financial institutions would be able to lend money to military contractors and national governments while debts could nominally be kept off national ledgers. But such rearrangements would not address the underlying fiscal implications.
The proposed Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) would, nonetheless, increase overall national debt burdens. If growing military budgets are indispensable, itself a debatable claim, then governments should raise taxes to pay for them. The problem is that electorates have contradictory demands, wanting more spending on the armed forces and public services while at the same time desiring reduced tax burdens.
Though ostensibly modelled on the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the DSRB probably wouldn’t bring the same economic benefits. Military spending is one of the least effective forms of government expenditure when it comes to employment. Research shows that the direct and indirect employment impact of military spending in the United States— which has the world’s largest and most complex military-industrial ecosystem—is lower than for renewable energy, healthcare, and education. Military hardware, often packed in warehouses and offering dubious combat effectiveness, does not have the same economic multiplier effect as investing in frontier, civilian-oriented technologies.
Some may point to Russia as a successful example of military-driven economic growth. Despite Western sanctions, its GDP has grown fairly significantly since February 2022, when Moscow invaded Ukraine. Controlling for differences in local prices, Russia’s GDP has even overtaken Japan’s and Germany’s. But the Kremlin has been far more fiscally prudent than its Western counterparts, relying on increased taxation to fund its military operations. As a result, Russia’s debt as a share of GDP has remained around 20 percent, significantly lower than in the U.S., Britain, Canada, and France—all of which have public debt burdens above 100 percent.
Moreover, the rush to fill arsenals to meet arbitrary spending targets risks extreme financial waste. In the initial years of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, Moscow, Kiev, and Western capitals focused on boosting artillery production and armoured vehicles only to later learn that cheap drones would play a star role in the combat. If billions of dollars worth of new military materiel can be rendered outmoded in just two to three years, greater caution is warranted before borrowing even more money to build up militaries.
A defense bank is just one example of the misguided pursuit of militarization to resolve fundamental challenges. Amid reduced industrial competitiveness and fears of lagging behind, Western governments have increasingly been hoping that weapons manufacturing can revive economies. In Britain, the defense industry has been identified as a pillar of the country’s economic growth strategy. Meanwhile, the famous German company Volkswagen recently announced that one of its plants will be converted to manufacture Israeli air defense equipment. Many argue that “arms makers will be at the heart of Ukraine’s economic reconstruction.”
All of this planned spending represents an enormous opportunity cost. An overemphasis on military expenditure risks underinvesting in other parts of society while distorting economic and political incentives. This summer’s devastating heatwaves, resulting in droughts in Britain, thousands of deaths across Europe, and nearly a quarter of million evacuations in France and Spain alone due to wildfires, exemplify the real and present dangers that can be neglected because of a narrowing focus on military spending. Food security, transport infrastructure, and pandemic prevention are all priorities that ought to be central to discussions about national defense.
Political leaders are loath to make difficult decisions. But if they are sincere in their belief that increased military spending is vital for national defense, then they should be prepared to shoulder the potential political cost of raising revenue through taxes and not debt. As long as national leaders focus on borrowing more money to buy expensive weapons with dubious utility to present themselves as tough, they are declining to do the difficult work of governance on which the long-term health of their societies actually depend.
Why Putin Is Threatening Nuclear War Over Kaliningrad
Russia experts shed light on the Kremlin’s calculations.
(Gavriil Grigorov / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
If the world blows up in a conflict over Kaliningrad—the diminutive Russian exclave sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea—at least there would be a silver lining for survivors to appreciate: It would be darkly humorous and ironic.
Kaliningrad—or Koenigsberg, as the formerly German city was called before its capture in 1945 by the Soviet Union—was the birthplace of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose most enduring contribution to political theory was a long essay on international relations, Toward Perpetual Peace. In it, Kant outlines some big-brained ideas that governments should implement to not only end active hostilities but create the political conditions for, well, perpetual peace.
Old Kant published that hopeful essay 231 years ago and would certainly be disturbed and disappointed by this week’s headlines. The most riveting came from the New York Post: “Moscow threatens nuclear response over tiny fortress wedged between US allies as clash fears grow.” (The Post really has a knack for this kind of thing, doesn’t it?)
The one from the Associated Press more aptly, if less dramatically, described the latest development. “Russia warns NATO of a possible nuclear response if Kaliningrad is cut off,” it blared.
So, what’s got the Russians so worked up? Top Russia experts told The American Conservative that Moscow assigns profound strategic significance to the exclave and perceives a Western threat against it.
“Kaliningrad gives Russia another warm water port on the Baltic Sea,” said Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former White House expert under President George W. Bush. “It also holds major military assets to defend Russia’s interest in the region, including access routes to St. Petersburg.”
Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute noted an even more straightforward Russian interest than that. “Russia cares about this because it is internationally-recognized Russian national territory,” Lieven said. “Any attack on it or blockade is therefore legally an act of war against the Russian Federation, to which the Russian government would have to respond or face deep humiliation.”
Those are important points with which few experts would quibble. But what really distinguishes Graham and Lieven is their ability to discern—from Russia’s point of view—a Western threat against Kaliningrad, and to take it seriously. Judging by the comments both men provided, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin didn’t issue the nuclear threats lightly.
“In some NATO countries there has been talk of blockading Kaliningrad, that is, isolating the region from the rest of Russia by land and sea,” Graham said. “Putin would see a blockade as an act of war against Russia. So he is making sure that Europe understands that he will defend Russian land with all necessary means, which could include nuclear weapons.”
Moscow had already been inclined, even before the latest tensions exploded between Russia and the West, to view Kaliningrad as exposed to NATO’s predations. “NATO expansion to Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, and Finland means that Kaliningrad is now surrounded by NATO countries both by land and sea,” Lieven noted.
Sadly, not all Western experts perform such acts of perspective taking. Consider a recent article in The Hill, which, in the view of this editor-cum-columnist at least, actually brought the week’s most disturbing headline: “Kaliningrad is just Putin’s red herring.”
The coauthors—Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet—write that the Kremlin is engaged in “nuclear bluffing” designed to intimidate the West and distract from its own military failures in Ukraine. Early in the piece, the only context they provide for Moscow’s warnings is a new British television miniseries called The Wargame, in which the UK launches retaliatory strikes on Kaliningrad after a Russian attack.
A casual reader of their article could be left with the impression that this TV show was the main thing, perhaps the only thing, motivating Putin’s threatening rhetoric. But a careful reader would learn otherwise, for the authors inadvertently illuminate the kinds of Western behavior that prompted Putin’s warnings.
“Kaliningrad is a hollowed-out shell of what it was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” they write. “As Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski pointed out earlier this month, ‘There are hardly any [Russian] troops [in the Kaliningrad exclave].’”
But that’s not all that Sikorski said. Toth and Sweet link to an article in Defense News, the first sentence of which is this:
NATO allies could hold drills in proximity of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in an attempt to push Moscow to weaken its military posture in Ukraine and withdraw some of its troops there, said Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister.
Clearly, Sikorski went far beyond merely commenting on Russia’s force posture in the region. The article emphasizes that he didn’t recommend “offensive” actions against Kaliningrad, but you could hardly blame Putin for failing to appreciate the distinction. Indeed, in the relevant quotes, Sikorski recommends that NATO “aggressively” exercise around Kaliningrad and start treating the exclave as a front in the confrontation between Russia and the West.
Toth and Sweet’s article continues: “Although Kaliningrad is still the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, the Baltic Sea itself has effectively become a NATO-controlled lake, after the accession of Sweden and Finland as the newest members of NATO.” Kaliningrad, they write, “is highly vulnerable,” and these days it merely hosts nuclear missiles, its conventional forces having been deployed to Ukraine.
Thus, “Moscow’s nuclear Armageddon bluffing is simply the latest attempt by Putin and his Kremlin cronies to paper over this problem.”
Here the premises lead to the conclusion only in the sense that they crash violently into it. If an increasingly vulnerable Kaliningrad holds strategic value for Russia and can only be defended by nuclear weapons, then perhaps Western leaders shouldn’t threaten it—and perhaps Western analysts should take more seriously Moscow’s repeated warnings that such threats could meet a nuclear response.
And those analysts should understand that the Russian political establishment in general—not just Putin—perceives a Western threat against Kaliningrad that, if acted upon, could precipitate a devastating Russia–NATO conflict. Referring to Sikorski’s apparent suggestion that NATO might isolate the exclave, forcing its surrender, Lieven said, “If this did happen, every Russian with whom I have spoken has said that Russia would have credibly to threaten the use of nuclear weapons, followed by their actual use if NATO failed to back down.”
Tensions between Russia and the West are worse than they’ve been since the Cold War, and mutual understanding perhaps worse than even then. In our age, Kant’s dreams of perpetual peace may seem naive if not delusional, but surely our leaders have enough wisdom not to let inexcusable miscalculations over his homeland on the Baltic lead to nuclear war. Right?
Britain has banned new drilling in the North Sea, one of the richest oil reserves on earth. The EU has spent five years and counting forbidding oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, even as it declared its intention to wean itself off Russian energy. Stories like these are routine now. They are the fruit of a political crusade against fossil fuels that the progressive left has waged for decades.
The United States has held up better. Every time progressives have moved to kill a pipeline or a drilling project, Republicans have been there to block them. Part of the reason is that Republicans, far more than their European counterparts, understood what these anti-fossil fuel policies were really about.
In the 1990s, as the Democratic left grew more absorbed in environmentalism, the oil industry drifted toward the Republican Party for protection. The drift became a realignment in 2000, when voters narrowly sent two former oil executives, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, to the White House. Progressives now had every reason to make the industry a public villain, and they went about it with enthusiasm.
So began the golden age of the climate narrative. In 2006, Al Gore, the man Bush had beaten, released An Inconvenient Truth, and it became a global sensation. I was a 15-year-old liberal at the time and found it persuasive. A year earlier, my secondary-school geography class had sat through a solemn screening of The Day After Tomorrow, a climate-apocalypse film our teacher plainly regarded as required viewing. The fate of the planet, we understood, depended on our paying attention. All of this while two Republican oilmen sat in the White House, and while the oil, gas, and coal industries kept writing checks mostly to Republicans. I am still no admirer of Bush, but it is hard to believe that was a coincidence.
Something similar is happening to Big Tech. When President Donald Trump said recently that data centers could be “bigger than oil,” he probably meant the economic upside. But the resemblance runs deeper than that. Today’s fevered warnings of a tech-driven apocalypse sound a great deal like the case made against oil in the mid-2000s, and they are driven by the same partisan logic.
Four years ago, Silicon Valley was a progressive stronghold, the censorship arm of the global elite. Every major social media platform had banned Trump outright.
Now the same industry is the left’s favorite villain. The platforms have not only restored Trump and his allies; they have made their peace with his administration. Elon Musk’s right-wing radicalism seems to deepen by the week. Palantir grips the far left’s imagination as an accomplice in ICE deportations. Data centers are cast as environmental plagues.
And as with oil companies, Democrats are keen to demonize tech as an existential threat to humanity. The progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants to completely ban the development of AI superintelligence—taking it as given that such a technology is even possible to develop, which remains a topic of debate. One would think the doyen of “abundance liberalism,” Ezra Klein, might disagree with socialist Sanders, but no—in a recent New York Times article, he suggests banning AIs from coding, a step which would be even more radical than what Sanders has proposed.
More serious, because it is already playing out, is Anthropic’s insistence that all AI companies open up their technology to third-party evaluators. Sounds like a good idea—except the CEO of their handpicked AI safety outfit, METR, has expressed the belief that “effective altruism” means destroying the concept of national borders. As my institute, the Foundation for Freedom Online, has been laying out in a series of recent reports, these “neutral third-party evaluators” have much in common with the “disinformation” and “brand safety” experts who seek to insert themselves (sometimes via government mandates) as intermediaries between social media algorithms and the public. It is now on AI safetyists to prove that their project isn’t just a similar ideological power-grab over the technology of the future.
The right still has real complaints about the tech giants. The headline reinstatements aside, biased content moderation remains an unsolved problem. But taken as a whole, the picture is hard to describe as anything but a full reversal.
Given how quickly it happened, it is no wonder the narrative has lagged behind, but the story now filling the vacuum is a poor one. The public is being sold an account of the technology industry that blends legitimate worry with exaggeration and, in its wilder versions, plain paranoia.
In this account, Elon Musk is poisoning democracy. He fed USAID to the woodchipper, which is true. My institute’s founder, Mike Benz, lent a hand, and the agency had it coming. Politicians in Europe and Britain accuse Musk of stoking “extremism” in their countries. The rest of the industry, we are told, has thrown in with the Trump administration, which is using Palantir to steal Americans’ data, deport innocent immigrants, and bomb Palestinians. Its moguls intend to reduce the rest of us to digital serfs, stripped of our jobs and of control over our data, our likenesses, and our identities. The data centers powering all of this will finish off the environment, unless superintelligent machines finish off humanity first.
Democrats, career bureaucrats, and foreign governments have an even stronger motive to go after tech than they had to go after oil. The oil industry merely funded Republicans. Big Tech undermined the legacy press and thus also the control by liberal elites of public information. Across the West, the power of liberal officials and functionaries depended in large part on this control. When Musk bought Twitter (now X) and restored free speech, he became the face of a perceived threat to their continued rule.
Among European governments, this political calculation is compounded by a wish not merely to rein in American tech firms, but to replace them with an indigenous “Eurostack” subsidized by the taxpayer, data centers included. “Digital sovereignty” has become a fashionable slogan in a Canada that seeks to get out from under American economic dominance. The panic isn’t actually about the dangers of out-of-control AI or the harms, real or imagined, associated with data centers. It is a fight to defend the power of Western governing elites. Conservatives, who instinctively distrust those same elites, should be made aware of this fight so that they can better understand the political stakes of the intensifying debate about Big Tech.
Of course, not every critic of Big Tech is a political shill. When the podcaster Theo Von argues that data centers belong to a Silicon Valley scheme to achieve immortality, corner the necessary technology, and consign everyone else to permanent serfdom, he means it, even if the theory is a bit mad. Teenage climate activists who vandalize historic paintings because they expect the world to end within their lifetimes are usually sincere too. They need not grasp the elite politics that shaped their beliefs. The line running from Al Gore and The Day After Tomorrow through the permanent “climate emergency” back to American party politics in the 2000s may never occur to them. A belief can be sincerely held and still be the downstream product of an elite campaign against an industry seen as a political threat.
Republicans eventually learned to tell a good story about energy. “Net Zero” is now a reliable target for right-wing populists, who tie it to stagnation, soaring power bills, and the petty indignities of regulated life, from paper straws to feeble air conditioning. In the United States, green policy came to be associated with the hollowing out of the Rust Belt and the loss of good jobs in mining and oil. Both stories were substantially true, and the parties of the right profited from telling them.
Technology is a harder case. The industry does not employ a comparably broad domestic workforce, and its reliance on H-1B labor remains a stain on its record. Tying Silicon Valley’s prosperity to the prosperity of the average American is more difficult than tying energy production to jobs and cheap power. But conservatives can still explain the fight over political control.
The story should begin with the industry’s pre-election gamble in 2024. Starting with Musk’s X, technology companies began refusing demands from governments and activist groups to censor their political opponents at scale. Data centers had existed for years by then. The nationwide panic over them had not. The timing deserves more attention than it gets.
Many conservatives are understandably exasperated by what they see as conspiracy theories circulating among their fellow travelers in the podcast world, such as those regarding data centers. But the public should not be scolded for staying alert to elite coordination. It should be pointed toward the kinds of coordination that can be proved.
Is there a concerted effort by the permanent bureaucracy in the United States and by foreign governments to weaken, capture, or replace American technology platforms, and with them Americans’ ability to speak freely online? There is. Is a similar cohort of highly ideological elites now assembling to take over the AI safety field? It certainly seems so. That is its own kind of elite coordination, and a story which many readers of this magazine will find familiar.
A planned Islamic center near Plano, Texas is causing quite a stir with local residents raising concerns at town meetings. Governor Greg Abbott has even stepped into the debate.
One thing is for sure – whoever designed the image below is not doing the Islamic center any favors. It clearly shows a Christian church transforming into a mosque.
When people already have concerns about Islam and conquest, this does nothing but make people more uneasy.
Take a look:
The homepage of the group raising money for a new 40,000 square foot Islamic facility near Plano, TX prominently features a Christian church being replaced by a mosque. Islamists are not here to “coexist” or assimilate. They are here to conquer and replace America’s Christian… https://t.co/ZHg1yHafrtpic.twitter.com/KAUcVjhDSa
This report from The Federalist is also cause for concern:
‘We Want Islam For This Country’: Muslims In Texas Lay Out Vision For Islamic America
Shaykh Uthman ibn Farooq laid out a vision for an Islamic America during a livestreamed event at the Sufaraa Center in McKinney, Texas, last week. Authentic Ilm Mission, which hosted the event, has plans for a 40,000-square-foot facility near Plano, Texas, and used the livestream featuring Farooq to fundraise for the multipurpose school and Islamic community center.
“We love this country,” Farooq said. “We want good for this country. And that’s why we want Islam for this country, ’cause we think that’s the best thing. And we’re not going to be ashamed of that.”
He went on to argue that Muslims are fully within their constitutional rights to adhere to Sharia law. “We’re Muslims. That’s our identity, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Constitution of this country protects that. That’s our right to believe in the Sharia. Yes, I said it. That’s our right.”…
The AIM website describes the project as having raised $300,000 of the $800,000 needed, with donations reportedly coming from 1,500 individuals in 50 countries. The site features a video of a mosque displacing a beautiful church building with a steeple and classical brick architecture. A different graphic on the website allows users to swipe across the screen to replace an image of the church building at the address listed with an image of the new mosque. The number of mosques in America has surpassed 3,000 in recent years.
People in Plano have a right to be concerned.
The image of the church being transformed is unsettling.
Polling for this election cycle is crazy. Does everyone remember when we were told that Farncesca Hong, the Democrat Socialist running for governor of Wisconsin was a lock? How about Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary? He was supposed to win his race by double digits and ended up squeaking out a win by a hair.
Are you tired of being told that James Talarico is walking away with the Texas Senate race, even though every single thing that he says is completely insane?
In the video below, conservative talk host Larry O’Connor addresses this issue, and explains that polling is being weaponized against Republicans and conservative voters.
Shut up about the polling and fight. That’s the overall message Larry O’Connor had today regarding the mountains of polls showing a blue avalanche, and he’s sick of it. Polling has degraded massively since the 2012 election, when even Gallup, which missed the mark so badly on Obama and Romney, opted to retire its final election poll for presidential races. It had Mitt Romney up 49-48 over Obama and were off by several points…
He broke down how the likely/registered voters are off, how voter enthusiasm isn’t all that different between the MAGA base and Democrats, so how could there be massive swings in the YouGov/Economist and Harvard/Harris polls? There’s also been no real decline in MAGA support for Trump, so these defectors, another sub-plot in this cycle, might also be a wild dream.
The math isn’t mathing on some of this stuff, but political operatives are taking it as gospel, which has diverted cash from key races like North Carolina. It’s a state that’s split down the middle regarding voter registration, and people here don’t decide who they’re voting for until two weeks before Election Day.
In the video, Larry says:
“When you see that James Talarico is beating Ken Paxton by over five points in Texas, when you hear people saying that James Talarico is a better candidate than Beto O’Rourke ever was, James Talarico, a man whose viral clips of him standing in a church pulpit saying that Jesus was non-binary, and that Christ wants children to change their sex, I think maybe the polls that show James Talarico is winning might be a little off.”
Watch the whole thing:
The media is FLOODING Texas with FAKE polls and PHONY stories to CRUSH Republican enthusiasm for Ken Paxton
Larry O’Connor EXPOSES the coordinated campaign of fake polls and manufactured news stories designed to SUPPRESS Republican turnout in the Texas Senate race.
President Trump on Friday afternoon stopped to chat with reporters before boarding Marine One en route to Mobile, Alabama.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked President Trump about a third possible impeachment if the Democrats take control of Congress in the midterms.
Outgoing Democrat Rep. Al Green has initiated impeachment resolution against Trump too many times to count.
Rep. Green’s latest impeachment resolution failed with many Democrats voting “present.”
Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are distancing themselves from impeachment talk…for now.
President Trump brushed off potential future impeachments as “fake.”
“You’ve already been impeached twice, so what’s a third time?” Peter Doocy asked President Trump.
“Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it,” Trump joked.
President Trump then took a swipe at Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
“We could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it wouldn’t have been appropriate,” Trump said.
“I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I’d have the chance to do it if I wanted. And I said that would be inappropriate. But with me, they like to do it,” he said.
Left wing author Malcolm Gladwell recently appeared on MSNOW’s ‘Morning Joe’ and suggested that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees American citizens the right to bear arms, was really written about slave patrols.
He spends much of the segment complaining about the Supreme Court, which he says has been ‘a significant impediment’ in the left’s pursuit of gun control.
The most amazing thing is that what he is saying here is treated as completely normal by the hosts, who do not interrupt or correct him in any way.
MIKE BARNICLE, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it’s threatening and it’s killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS, we — we react, we find — we find a cure almost immediately. People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades — decades. And there’s nothing we can do.
GLADWELL: Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have — the last two major gun rulings — in the Bruen case and the Heller case — are abominations. And I had — I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously.
And the — and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes — no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s commas everywhere. There’s this weird initial what’s called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, “Okay, here’s how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause — here’s how James Madison used that clause. Here’s what James Madison meant.” What he meant was, we’re talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest.
Send our money overseas to UNRWA, whose employees participated in the October 7th terrorist attacks, raping and murdering Israeli women and children.
The media is FLOODING Texas with FAKE polls and PHONY stories to CRUSH Republican enthusiasm for Ken Paxton
