Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Ted Cruz has proposed a resolution to replace the leftist Pride Month with one that celebrates life. Cruz introduced a resolution to designate June as “Life Month” to mark the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

“Every human life is worthy of protection, and it is especially incumbent upon Americans and lawmakers to protect the most vulnerable among us. Designating June as Life Month is a recommitment to the American principle that every life has dignity. I call on my colleagues in the Senate to swiftly pass this resolution,” the Texas Republican senator said in a statement.

A companion resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.-04).

Smith issued the following statement:

“For decades abortion advocates have gone to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize, and cover up the battered baby victim, fostering a culture of denial, disrespect, and bias against the unborn. This resolution designating June as Life Month highlights our moral imperative to protect innocent children’s lives from extermination. It calls our nation to reject willful blindness to the realities of abortion—brutally dismembering helpless babies with sharp knife-like curettes or poisoning babies with pills that literally starve them to death and often result in their bodies being flushed down a toilet. This resolution affirms that the cruel injustice of abortion need not be forever: instead we must defend the unborn and show love and compassion to both mother and child through meaningful assistance and support.”

Read the resolution text here.

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This resolution is supported by ADF, Heritage Action, SBA Pro-life, National Right to Life, Human Coalition, Heartbeat International, Family Research Council, Students for Life, Americans United for Life, Family Policy Alliance, Concerned Women for America, Catholic Vote, March for Life, 40 Days for Life, National Pro-Life Alliance, NIFLA, Citizens for Life, Christian Broadcasting Network, Focus on the Family, Liberty Counsel Action, and Eagle Forum.

Kristen Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom said, “Life is the first and most fundamental human right. Without it, no other right can exist. So it’s fitting to commemorate the historic Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. For nearly half a century, America lived under the shadow of Roe v. Wade, which prevented efforts to protect the unborn and ensure women have the support they need. That shameful era ended on June 24, 2022, when the Court rightly found: ‘The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.’ America must now take the next step forward. After more than 60 million lives lost to abortion and countless women harmed by the proliferation of dangerous abortion drugs, we must urgently work to restore a deeply rooted reverence for human life and expand access to life-affirming healthcare for women. I’m grateful for congressional leaders who are working toward that goal, and I commend Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chris Smith for their longtime leadership in defending the sanctity of all human life.”

Janae Stracke, Vice President of Heritage Action said, “Heritage Action commends Senator Ted Cruz for his bold and historic proposition to designate June as “Life Month.” While life is a gift we each get to celebrated daily, designating June as “Life Month” is more than appropriate to honor the thousands of lives saved by the historic Supreme Court Dobbs case decision to reverse decades of legalized abortion under Roe. Overturning Roe v. Wade emphasized that abortion was never a federal right, affirmed that every innocent human being has a right to life, and allowed many pro-life state laws to immediately take effect.

Hon. Marilyn Musgrave, VP of Government Affairs at SBA Pro-Life America said, “The landmark Dobbs victory rightly restored power to protect unborn children in the law to the people and their elected representatives. Thank you, Sen. Cruz and Rep. Smith, for your resolution that celebrates this pivotal moment and underscores the need to protect every life and support women, children and families across our nation — not only for the June anniversary of Dobbs but year-round.”

Carol Tobias, President of National Right to Life said, “The U.S. Supreme Court rightfully overturned the horrendous Roe v. Wade decision on June 22. In memory of all the children lost to abortion, it is fitting that June be recognized as Life Month. We are grateful to Sen. Cruz for spearheading this effort.”

The resolution is cosponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.),  Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Bill Cassidy (R-La), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

The post Ted Cruz Wants to Replace Pride Month With Pro-Life Month appeared first on LifeNews.com.

POTUS better wake up. Quick. The Deep State is in the midst of f#cking him yet again.

We are referring, of course, to Sunday’s utterly reckless attack on Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent, allegedly by the Ukrainian military. Yes, the one that’s so feeble and incompetent that thus far it has lost one-fifth of its territory—despite upwards 150,000 dead soldiers according to Col. Douglas Macgregor and more than $200 billion of US and European military and economic aid.

That is to say, the Sunday drone attack according to Zelensky himself was nearly 20 months in the making. So it was surely hatched, kitted, trained and pre-positioned with heavy duty support from US covert operations and then actually triggered, launched and guided by US intelligence assets.

Stated inversely, it appears that forces which were most surely not the bedraggled Ukrainian military operating in rogue fashion attacked the heart of Russia’s nuclear deterrent. And yet and yet: It is likely that the Donald was also not honestly informed ahead of time!

After all, when Trump had his “Putin’s gone crazy” outburst a few days ago he didn’t even know—by his own public admission—that a swarm of Ukrainian drones had attacked Putin’s helicopter while the latter was being transported inside it. And again, given the in-depth layers of protection around Putin, there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that the Ukrainian military pulled off this near-miss on Russia’s demonized dictator without heavy duty intelligence support from the US.

Therefore, we are strongly inclined to believe that the Deep State is once again sabotaging the Donald while keeping him in the dark about crucial operations that bear heavily on the risk of escalation and war with Russia. To be sure, in connection with his outburst at Putin, Trump did warn that something “VERY BAD” could happen to Russia without him, but when you see all caps you know it’s just regular Trumpian bluster of the kind that is now being emitted from the man’s social media accounts on nearly a daily basis.

Besides, we believe Trump is attempting to function as an honest peace-maker on the Ukraine front because he suffers badly from NPPE (Nobel Peace Prize Envy). In turn, the latter is due to Obama’s surely undeserved snaring of the award within months of taking office. Accordingly, the Donald may well be playing an amateur “art of the deal” game with Putin on Ukraine, but we don’t think for a moment that he would have been knowingly reckless enough to put his prize in jeopardy by authorizing attacks on four or five of Russia’s strategic bomber airfields.

And we do mean “knowing” in the sense of comprehending as opposed to the wild ass bluster Trump frequently emits—even when he doesn’t vaguely appreciate the stakes, such as was evident in his 72-hour threat to put a 50% tariff on $600 billion of imports from the EU. So it needs be understood that what is reported to be the destruction or serious impairment of between 20 and 40 of Russia’s heavy intercontinental strategic bombers at at least four different Russian bases thousands of miles from both Ukraine’s borders and from each other constitutes a drastic escalation of the proxy war on Russia, veering toward the precipice of nuclear confrontation.

These hits on Russia’s strategic bombers by the nominally “Ukrainian” drone swarms—about 120 devices in total—account for upwards of 20-25% of the bomber leg of Russia’s triad nuclear deterrent. Yet these long range heavy bombers have had almost no role in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine because in the actual war theater it primarily uses intermediate range bombers to launch cruise missile assaults, and, if need be, could use ground based launching pads, as well.

So the Sunday drone attack had no resemblance whatsoever to a militarily-relevant knock-out blow. Instead, it amounted to an order of magnitude escalation toward nuclear confrontation designed to prolong and intensify Washington’s proxy war on Russia and throw immense new roadblocks in the path of a negotiated peace agreement.

Most especially, these reckless attacks were irrelevant to Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating position on the battle front at the line of contact in eastern Ukraine. In fact, just during the last week of May the Russian forces captured another 18 settlements and villages and over 200 square kilometers of territory, meaning that the Ukrainian army is no longer capable to hold its defense lines and that the end is near.

At the same time, this drone attack hugely implicated the core strategic nuclear equation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. To wit, the attack broke the rules of the strategic deterrence game and what remains of the 2010 New Start arms control agreements that nominally remains in effect through February 2026.

Although New Start was suspended by Russia in response to the US sanctions and NATO seizure of $300 billion of Russian assets in the global banking system, the limits and enforcement protocols have been largely observed by both sides. This included retaining the limit of 700 deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles.

Moreover, New Start’s inspection regime had provided for substantial transparency as to the locations and operational particulars of each land, sea and air-based delivery vehicle that had been declared under the 700 deployed vehicle limit. So to now use this New Start based compliance information to unilaterally attack and destroy previously declared weapons systems was a blatant breach of the entire arms control confidence building regime that had evolved over the decades since the 1970s and Soviet times.

In Russia’s case, it had chosen to list and have inspected 300-400 land-based ICBMs, 200-300 sea-based ballistic missiles and 50-60 heavy bombers. Among the latter was 40-50 Tu-95MS bombers and @15 Tu-160 bombers of the type that were destroyed in Sunday’s attack and about which the US has abundant detailed knowledge. That’s because the inspection and enforcement protocols with respect to these disclosed delivery vehicles included biannual data exchanges, notifications of changes in status (e.g., silo activation/deactivation), and up to 18 annual inspections.

In Russia’s case it generally kept its heavy bombers—which were subject to this comprehensive inspection regime—visible on open airfields per the illustrative photo shown below. There was nothing to hide, anyway.

So to repeat: the wanton attack on the known locations and regularly inspected strategic bombers in Russia’s nuclear deterrent like those depicted here was a radical breach of the whole arms control regime itself.

Equally importantly, it is damn obvious that Washington was in full cahoots with the Ukrainian military. The 120 or so drones used to attack the Russian bombers in the vastly scattered locations shown in the map above were surreptitiously smuggled into Russia in the covered containers shown in this photo. They were then secretly transported to near the Russian airfield locations and prepped for the eventual simultaneous launches.

Again, the odds that no one in the US military or the upper rungs of the Deep State in Washington was involved in this extensive and daring operation are somewhere between slim, none and hideously impossible.

At length, of course, after being pre-positioned near the target airfields, the crates shown above were opened, revealing that attack drones inside. We long ago gave up wearing our tinfoil hats, but are damn sure that the simultaneous launch of 120 of these little buggers at the same moment across thousands of miles of Russian territory was indeed the result of an intricate Washington-driven plot and conspiracy.

No Ukrainian cowboys could have pulled this off on their own steam.

At the very same moment, therefore, heavy Russian bombers spread across the Eurasian continent met the fate depicted below. And while this feat has the Washington and NATO warhawks and neocons gloating over the alleged brilliance of the scheme, that’s not even the half of it.

The real purpose of the attack was to destroy any vestige of trust that remains between the Donald and Putin, and leave the latter with no choice except to retaliate in kind. But further escalation into the zone of MAD (mutually assured destruction) that has kept the nuclear era peace for 60 years is surely the most dangerous thing that has happened since October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of annihilation.

So the hour is late indeed. The Warfare State and the MIC (military-industrial complex) are about to establish dominance over the Donald once again. This time with virtually existential implications.

So man up, POTUS, and cut off Zelensky and his Deep State puppeteers at the knees. That is, shut off the spigot of all aid, all weapons delivery, all intelligence and all other operational support, demand a cease fire and invite both Zelensky and Putin to Camp David.

Then, keep them there until they agree to dismantle the handiwork of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. After all, the latter were the actual bloody authors of today’s dubious borders and a Ukrainian state that had never existed before in all of history prior to 1922.

It shouldn’t take long to partition the map and allow Crimea and the four provinces of the Donbas and south to go their separate ways back to Mother Russia. And the only “guarantees” that would be needed would be a Russian pledge to not allow the partitioned provinces to attack the rump of Ukraine, and for the US to guarantee that the shrunken state of Ukraine will not join NATO or attack the lost provinces.

As it happens, that’s all that Putin has ever wanted. And for the US it would mean not only closing another hideously stupid chapter in the Forever Wars, but also the chance start down a new path toward global peace and disarmament that might actually offer the Donald a real chance to get his Nobel Prize.

Needless to say, a 11th hour Camp David summit would also give the Donald a chance to reclaim his own presidency, which was clearly usurped when the Senate’s two leading Ukraine warmongers—Graham and Blumenthal—showed up in Kiev last week on the eve of this insane escalation.

And we do mean insane. The Ukraine warhawks led by the despicable Lindsay Graham, in fact, are now so far off the deep-end that they have introduced in the Senate new out-of-this-world sanctions on Russia which would impose a 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian energy, uranium, and other raw materials – measures aimed chiefly at India and China. Can you say, “WWW III here we come!”

Indeed, putting the three stooges of Ukraine’s latest disaster back in the dunce’s corner where they belong would be progress in itself. Self-evidently, Graham and Blumenthal knew what was coming but not the Donald, at least according to a leak to Tanya Noury of NewsNation by a high administration official: Like in the case of the attack on Putin’s helicopter, Trump was not informed of the drone caper, either.

Well, now the Donald surely knows they are coming for him again. So he better get busy taking names, kicking ass and cleaning house or his second Administration will be done before its gets started. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of us, too.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
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After facing pressure from a pro-life Republican senator, the Trump administration official responsible for overseeing the nation’s drug approval and regulation policies has promised to launch a full-scale investigation into the abortion pill, mifepristone — an announcement met with joy by the nation’s right-to-life movement.

“FDA is committed to safeguarding public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and quality of the products it regulates,” wrote Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary in a June 2 letter to Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the senator revealed on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. “As the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, I am committed to conducting a review of mifepristone and working with the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.”

Pro-life advocates have long asked health officials to review the safety of mifepristone, since successive Democratic administrations have loosened restrictions about its disbursement and stopped counting adverse effects, asking doctors only to report deaths directly attributable to the chemical.

“Praise God that the FDA has once again confirmed that they are reviewing the safety data on mifepristone. The impact of this drug on all women who take it has never been fully investigated by the FDA,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The latest data show that nearly 11% of women have a serious event within 45 days of taking the drug, including ER visits, infection, hemorrhage, incomplete abortion, and sepsis.”

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The promise represents a turnabout for Makary, who announced at the April 24 Semafor World Economy Summit that he had “no plans to take action” to curtail mifepristone, the first pill of the two-drug cocktail that induces a chemical abortion. “This is exceptionally disappointing to say the least,” wrote Hawley at the time. “Not a good beginning at the FDA.” Makary’s latest pledge came in response to an April 28 letter by Hawley, calling on the Trump administration to reinstate abortion pill protocols to protect women’s health and safety which had been repealed by the Biden-Harris administration.

Polls show Americans favor health and safety measures to regulate the abortion pill. A full 92% of registered voters in Gen Y and Gen Z support laws requiring an ultrasound screening before dispensing the abortion pill, to save lives from ectopic pregnancy, according to a poll taken earlier this year by the Demetree Institute for Pro-life Advancement. The poll also found:

• 92% support requiring blood tests for RH factor, to preserve the mother’s future fertility.
• 90% support conducting tests to determine the environmental impact the abortion pill has on the nation’s drinking water supply.
• Two-thirds (66%) of young voters support dispensing the two-drug, abortion pill cocktail only in person to assure that abusers, irresponsible boyfriends, or human traffickers do not obtain the drug to kill a mother’s child without her knowledge.

Chemical abortion accounted for 63% of all abortions in states where the practice is legal in 2023 — up from 53% in 2020 — according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

The commitment follows Hawley’s asking Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do a “top-to-bottom review” of mifepristone. “At the very least, the label should be changed,” replied Kennedy. “I’ve asked Marty Makary at the FDA to do a complete review and report back.”

Kennedy’s commitment echoes his statements from the beginning of the administration. “We need to understand the safety of every drug, mifepristone and every other drug,” said RFK Jr. during his confirmation hearings in January. “It’s against everything we believe in in this country, that patients or doctors should not be reporting adverse events.” President Trump has “made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues and I’ll ask NIH [National Institutes of Health] and FDA to do that.”

Pro-life advocates sued to overturn the 2000 approval of the drugs in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The abortion pill’s FDA “approval happened as the result of the Clinton administration’s pro-abortion agenda and the Clintons’ general disregard for women,” said Szoch. “Americans deserve better.” The Supreme Court unanimously rejected their petition on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing but, in a return to the narrow procedural decisions of the Roberts court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion did not rule on the underlying merits of the case. “FDA needs to release the names of all experts who reviewed the abortion pill so we can see what their bias was,” said Carole Novielli of Live Action.

“I look forward to Dr. Makary’s report on the safety of the drug which, if done truthfully and with scientific accuracy, should result in mifepristone’s removal from the market,” concluded Szoch.

LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

The post Review of Abortion Pill Could Save Babies, Protect Women’s Health appeared first on LifeNews.com.

One of the two major administration agenda points for Joe Biden’s regime, during the four years he was in the White House, was abortion. The other was transgenderism.

On abortion, he promoted it everywhere he could, in the United States and around the world.

He tried to impose abortion requirements on unwilling targets of his political agenda, and one of those was the community of emergency room physicians.

Biden’s administration simply reinterpreted a federal law, which actually provides protections for the “unborn child,” to insist that emergency room physicians had to perform abortions, essentially on demand by a patient.

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Now President Donald Trump has reversed that reinterpretation.

His administration announced it is revoking a “guidance” to hospitals that ordered them to do “emergency abortions” for women, on the condition that was “necessary” to stabilize their medical condition.

It was in 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the faulty Roe v. Wade precedent that incorrectly created a constitutional “right” to abortion that the Biden administration retaliated.

Its guidance said to preserve abortion access for cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an immediate abortion, ER doctors must commit abortion.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, of SBA Pro-Life America, said the move was one of the ways Biden tried to push abortion into states where there are legal and constitutional limits.

“Democrats have created confusion on this fact to justify their extremely unpopular agenda for all-trimester abortion. In situations where every minute counts, their lies lead to delayed care and put women in needless, unacceptable danger,” she said.

Lawyers with the ADF also confirmed they had filed a voluntary dismissal of a lawsuit against the Biden actions.

The case, Catholic Medical Association v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, argued that the Biden orders under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act overstepped Biden’s statutory authority and violated members’ conscience rights.

“Doctors—especially in emergency rooms—are tasked with preserving life. The Trump administration has rolled back a harmful Biden-era mandate that compelled doctors to end unborn lives, in violation of their deeply held beliefs,” said ADF lawyer Matt Bowman.

“Emergency room physicians can and do treat life-threatening conditions such as ectopic pregnancies, and every state allows doctors to do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of a mother. Now, doctors will be able to perform their life-giving duties without fear of government officials forcing them to end life and violate their beliefs.”

It was Biden’s HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra, who claimed he could override state laws regarding abortion to demand ER doctors perform the procedures.

LifeNews Note: This column originally appeared at WorldNetDaily.

The post Trump Cancels Biden Mandate Requiring ER Docs to Do Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Recently published research coupled with a reply to a Parliamentary Question raises very real concerns about the risk to women’s health related to state-supported abortion. The Pro Life Campaign has called for a meeting with the Minister for Health to discuss these and other developments regarding Ireland’s abortion law.

The research article published in the Irish Journal of Sociology describes a retrospective review of cases of in-patient medical abortion up to 12 weeks gestation in a single tertiary hospital in the south-west of Ireland, during the period from 1 Jan 2019 to 31 Dec 2022. 1

The complications recorded resulting from the abortions included women requiring blood transfusions, extended hospital stays, with some even being admitted to high-dependency units. 12% of the women who underwent abortions during this period presented to an emergency department on an unplanned basis, primarily due to concerns about infection or bleeding.

While the authors of the article described these complications as “infrequent” and in keeping with the international literature, their findings are worth highlighting in the context of very little public discussion of abortion complications in Ireland since Irish hospitals began providing medical abortions. 2

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Separately, but also of significance, a reply from the HSE to a parliamentary question submitted by Deputy Carol Nolan TD (PQ 10966/25) states that during the period 2019-2024, there were 29 incidents where ‘moderate harm’ was reported for women undergoing abortions.

Commenting on all the latest information that’s come to light, Pro Life Campaign spokesperson, Eilís Mulroy said:

“These findings taken together are very troubling and should prompt a serious official response. The reply to the recent Parliamentary Question showing that for 29 women since 2019, the damage done to them by the abortion they had reached the level of ‘moderate harm’, which is one of the official categories listed for adverse incidents. The description given for ‘moderate harm’ includes an increased length of stay in hospital and the possibility of ‘causing permanent or long-term harm or loss of function’ for the woman. 3 The possibility of such an outcome is very serious for the women involved. It raises the question: why is there little or no public discussion on this and other deeply troubling effects of the new abortion law previously raised? If, as it appears, they are being overlooked because some people in power don’t want to face any of the inconvenient truths about the law they passed, this shows disgraceful disregard of women’s health. Some healthcare providers are less likely to discuss challenges of abortion provision if it could undermine continued availability of abortion – a reality of “self-censorship” that is explicitly stated in another recent article, published by researchers involved in the three-year review. 4

“Women being admitted to high dependency units in hospitals after abortion is not what the people of Ireland were promised at the time of the abortion referendum, when senior politicians were falsely calling abortion ‘healthcare’ even though it’s evidently a life-ending procedure. What was claimed back then is a discussion for another day but right now the Government has a duty to start listening to voices other than those from the most extreme side of the pro-abortion movement.

“In the interests of women’s health and the lives of unborn babies, those in positions of power need to start acknowledging what’s happening under the new law, including the massive increase in abortions and the adverse consequences of abortion on women that are not being faced. The Pro Life Campaign is requesting an urgent meeting with the Minister for Health to discuss the matter.”

ENDS

1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07916035251342113
2. https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/personalpq/pq/2025-pq-responses/march-2025/pq-10966-25-carol-nolan.pdf
3. https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/nqpsd/qps-incident-management/incident-management/hse-incident-management-framework-guidance-2020.pdf
4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07916035251342129

The post 1 in 8 Women in Ireland Needs Emergency Medical Care After Botched Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In 1976 the French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd predicted the down fall of the Soviet Union. In After The Empire, first published in French in 2001, he predicted the (relative) decline of the United States. 

In his latest (and last) book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), he laments the West’s inability to distinguish facts from wishes, as seen in its behavior during the war in Ukraine. Nihilism, a lack of values and of acceptance of reality, has infested western thinking:

Trans ideology is therefore, in my opinion, one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy not just things and people but reality.

Todd recently opened a substack where he is posting speeches and talks he has given.

Two of those, a recent talk given in Russia (in French) and one given in Hungary (in English) make (mostly) similar points.

The downfall of the Soviet Union led to deep psychological and societal dislocations in Russia. The defeat of the West, or ‘liberal democracy’,  is leading to similar consequences in Western societies.

While Todd had predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, he had not anticipated the consequences it would have for Russia:

But the collapse of Russia in the 1990s is something I would never have anticipated. The fundamental reason why I was unable to understand or anticipate the dislocation of Russia itself is that I had not understood that communism was not simply a means of organising economic activity in Russia, but also a kind of religion. It was belief that allowed the system to exist and the dissolution of that belief represented, of course, something at least as damaging as the dislocation of the economic system.

It took three decades for Russia to overcome the psychological dislocation that was the result of the destruction of its political and economical system.

Todd is suspecting that a similar process is currently happening in the West:

All of this has a bearing upon what is happening today. I will talk about two things in my lecture. I will talk about the defeat of the West, by which I mean something quite technical and specific, which is not very complex and has not surprised me. I had anticipated it, and to a certain extent it’s already under way in Ukraine. But we are now in the next phase, which is the dislocation of the West, and I have to say that, just as in the dislocation of communism, of the Soviet system, I am unable to understand exactly what is going on. The fundamental attitude that we need to have now is, I would say, an attitude of humility. Everything that’s happening, especially since the election of Donald Trump, surprises me.

I have been surprised by the violence with which Trump has turned against his Ukrainian and Europeans allies – or rather his vassals. The will of the Europeans to continue or restart the war – even though Europe is certainly the region of the world which would be most advantaged by a peace agreement – has also been a great surprise to me. We have to start from these surprises if we want to think properly about what’s going on.

I will discuss those surprises, some of which concern me a lot, in a later piece.

The defeat of the Soviet Union (and Russia) came after it had lost the economic war with the West. It had also lost a war in Afghanistan. The Soviet system had turned out to be a failure.

The West, or as Mearsheimer is arguing (vid), ‘liberal hegemony’, has been routed in Afghanistan. The attempts to ‘liberate’ Libya and Syria have failed to the point where the Western ‘war on terror’ launched against al-Qaeda has led to the installation of an al-Qaeda bigwig as the new president of Syria. The economic decline of the West is demonstrated by the rise of China. The West’s moral self-defeat of its ‘values’ can be daily witnessed in Gaza.

‘Liberal democracy’, the system of ideas that has for decades been the leading light of the West, has failed.

Like communism in Russia, ‘liberal democracy’ has not only an economic side but is also a kind of religion. The failure of this belief system is upon us.

The accumulation of defeat after defeat by the ‘liberal democracy’ system has led to a psychological breakdown, an internal dislocation of the West. This is now leading to irrational acts and to seeking refuge in wishful thinking.

Or, as Alastair Crooke is summarizing the phenomenon and warns:

The psychological dislocation caused by ‘defeat’ may explain (but not justify) the West’s ‘curious’ inability to understand world events: The almost pathological dissociation from the real world that it displays in its words and actions: It’s blindness – for example, to the Russian experience of history and to the long history behind Shi’a defiance in Iran. Yet, even as the political situation deteriorates … there is no sign of the West becoming more reality-based in its understanding – and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality – until it is forcibly expelled.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways—with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata—cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO and the USA PATRIOT Act to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine, the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans—not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police—only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.

There are few things more “Catholic” in Catholicism than the pope, especially regarding the dogma of papal infallibility. Unfortunately, it’s also widely misunderstood.

Here are five common myths about papal infallibility:

Myth 1: Papal infallibility means the pope is never wrong.

Truth: Papal infallibility means the pope can be infallible when he teaches a certain way, not that he is always infallible in everything he teaches all the time. He is only infallible when he, in exercising his Petrine office, intentionally teaches something definitively for the whole Church. It’s rare for popes to invoke this authority.

Myth 2: It means the pope never sins.

Truth: Papal infallibility only regards doctrine, not the holiness of the pope. As our former pontiff, Pope Francis, humbly admitted, the pope is a sinful person who is in need of God’s grace and goes to confession like everyone else.

Myth 3: It means the pope can make up new doctrines.

Truth: It’s actually the teaching of the Catholic Church that divine revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle. The only thing the Church’s magisterium, which includes the pope, can do is defend, explain, and clarify the Word of God. The pope is not capable of revealing “new” truths, only correctly interpreting what God has already revealed.

Myth 4: It’s a modern invention.

Truth: Yes, papal infallibility was made a dogma in the 19th century – but it had always been believed by the Church. You can see it in the Church fathers, even as early as the second century, in the writings of Saint Irenaeus (Against Heresies, III.3).

Myth 5: It’s not in the Bible.

Truth: Jesus told Peter that he was the “rock” on which He would build His Church, and that the “gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” (Mt. 16) If the Church is built on Peter (the successor of whom is the pope), and the Church can’t fail, then that means the Holy Spirit will not let the papacy fail. That’s the essence of papal infallibility.

Would you add anything to the list?

California has earned a reputation for high taxes. Yet, this week there is a sign of hope for tax resistance in the state legislature. On Monday, the California Assembly voted unanimously to delay by five years a tax increase that had been set to go into effect on July 1.

AB 564 — the legislation approved by the Assembly — deals with delaying the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration’s impending increase of a state-imposed special tax on marijuana sales from 15 percent to 19 percent. The state tax is in addition to special marijuana taxes that local governments impose.

A March press release from Assembly member Matt Haney, the bill’s sponsor, presented several arguments supporting the stopping, or at least delaying, of the impending tax increase. The press release noted that “the licensed cannabis market” in California that “has been in a sharp decline as evidenced by plummeting sales and tax revenue” is at a disadvantage because of marijuana taxes already being lower in other states such as Michigan and Colorado. The press release further argued that the expected tax increase would cause marijuana businesses across the state to fail and could even significantly hinder tourism in California.

I January of 2019, I wrote about the threat high taxes in California posed to the then one year old legal recreational marijuana market in the state. HR 564, which still has to be considered by the state’s Senate and governor before it can become law, is a starting place for addressing this problem.

Delaying a marijuana tax increase does some good. But, ultimately, to enhance respect for freedom and increase wealth, the special marijuana “sin taxes” imposed by governments in California and across America should be eliminated.