Category: Conservative Review
Supreme Court Indicates Its Time For Biggest Shakeup To Federal Bureaucracy In Nearly A Century
‘Massive, unchecked, uncontrolled power’
‘Law enforcement isn’t to prevent crime’ — Jasmine Crockett makes wild claims about ICE and National Guard
Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has some interesting ideas on how law enforcement should be utilized.
Crockett was speaking on the “Grounded” podcast when she was asked about the presence of military vehicles in cities like Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
‘They are not trained to deal with civilians in that way.’
Host Jon Tester wanted to hear Crockett’s thoughts, asking the congresswoman if she thought it was good or bad to have military presence in those cities.
“I think it’s terrible,” the politician replied. “First of all, you know, I’m like, how is it that we have a government that is hostile towards its people? Because that’s what it is. I mean, we are in the midst of a hostile government takeover, and it is our government that is, like, bringing the hostility.”
Crockett prefaced her remarks, made in September but now going viral, by saying that she would need to go into “legal mode” to explain how agencies like ICE and the United States Armed Forces are being misused by the Trump administration.
It was during that portion of her statements that Crockett made the odd claim about how local law enforcement is supposed to operate:
“I want to be clear that, like, law enforcement isn’t to prevent crime. Law enforcement solves crime. OK? That is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to solve crimes, not necessarily, um, prevent them from happening per se.”
RELATED: Jasmine Crockett claims Republicans ‘LOVE’ her
In addition to those views, Crockett claimed she does not believe the “average person” understands the different types of training that various law enforcement or military agencies undergo.
“So literally ICE is not trained to go out and do what they’re doing,” the 44-year-old stated.
However, not only do ICE’s Enforcement and Removal operations teams train for “arrest, detention, and removal of aliens,” but the American Immigration Lawyers Association even called ICE agents “among the most highly trained federal law enforcement officers in the United States” in 2018.
Moreover, the St. Louis native said she worried about the U.S. military’s “readiness” due to the Trump administration “not doing smart things” with its allies. She then cited “different training” and different missions as being the reasons why she believes ICE and the National Guard are being misused by Trump.
“Local law enforcement, whether it’s your local municipal police, your sheriff’s deputies, your state troopers, they are trained completely differently. They are the ones that are trained in investigatory work. They are the ones that are trained on how to testify in trial, how to pull a case together. Same thing with, like, your FBI, your DEA, and that kind of stuff,” Crockett went on.
The congresswoman then boldly claimed that those who signed up for the military do not have the training to deal with civilians.
“We are taking those that signed up for the service in whatever capacity, and we are now putting them on the streets and having them with guns. They are not trained to deal with civilians in that way. That is not what they are trained to do. Like, when you sign up for any military, you are a trained killer. You are trained for war, not for going and policing our streets. All right?”
Not only are civilian interactions common practice in training operations for U.S. military members, per official training documents, but the District of Columbia National Guard specifically trained for civilian interactions as recently as May 2024 under the Joe Biden administration.
The training noted the D.C. National Guard as having a long history of supporting operations in D.C. and that the training would help the entity “continue to support local law enforcement agencies in the metropolitan area.”
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Trump Facing Resistance On Indiana Redistricting From His Own Party
‘He thinks he’s morally superior’
University To Fork Out Over $10 Million For Discrimination Over Religious COVID Vaccine Exemptions
‘Supposed legitimacy of students’ and employees’ religious beliefs’
‘Enemy of Europe’: Liberal globalists attack Trump over recognizing ‘civilizational erasure’ in Europe
President Donald Trump has set about bringing the “golden age of America” into existence though appears keen also to strengthen Western civilization at large. Nations across the Atlantic have, however, proven reluctant to join the U.S. in rejecting the “false song of globalism” and in turning away the hordes of unassimilable migrants who threaten to transform their lands into places both unsafe and unrecognizable.
The Trump administration made abundantly clear in its newly released 33-page National Security Strategy that European allies now have a choice to make: lean into their strengths and former greatness, reassert their national identities, and reject the liberal policies that have led them to relative ruin or continue down the path to “civilizational erasure” without the United States of America holding their hands.
‘We want Europe to remain European.’
European officials and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic — including a former Obama official — have melted down over the document, attacking the Trump administration for daring to identify the threat and choice now facing Europe.
In civilizational terms
The administration has attempted on several occasions to give America’s European allies a helmet readjustment.
Vice President JD Vance, for instance, noted in a Feb. 14 speech at the Munich Security Conference in Europe that it is high time to “change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction.”
In addition to blasting the British and European political establishment for their ruinous mass migration polices, Vance expressed disappointment over their suppression of popular political movements, crackdown on free speech, and routine attacks on religious liberties.
RELATED: No more stiff upper lip: My fellow Brits are fed up with ‘diversity’
Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images
The State Department has similarly expressed concerns about the trends weakening Europe and the need for America’s friends across the Atlantic to buck up and get their affairs in order.
In a May essay shared on its Substack, the State Department suggested that the globalist liberal campaign to “usher in an era of unprecedented peace” in the wake of World War II “by overcoming the anchors of nationhood, culture, and tradition” was a colossal failure.
“This promise lies in tatters,” wrote Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. “What endures instead is an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.”
“Our relationship is too important, our history too valuable, and the international stakes too high to allow this partnership to be undermined,” continued the essay. “Therefore, on both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come.”
Trump’s national security strategy
The 33-page National Security Strategy document released by the Trump administration on Friday signaled a continued break with the thinking of previous administrations on a number of matters, including on America’s special relationship with Europe, which the document suggested is conditional on Europe maintaining its values and culture.
In a section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the document notes that Europe has lost significant share of global GDP over the past 35 years largely as the result of “national and transnational regulations,” “but this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.”
“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” continued the strategy document. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
The Trump administration’s strategy document indicated that if certain NATO members continue down their present path, they might not only cease to be recognizably European but cease to remain “reliable allies.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau summarized on X that despite insisting upon transatlantic cooperation while wearing their NATO hats, “when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are often utterly adverse to US interests and security — including censorship, economic suicide/climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for national sovereignty/promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, support for Communist Cuba, etc etc. This inconsistency cannot continue.”
“Either the great nations of Europe are our partners in protecting the Western civilization that we inherited from them or they are not,” continued Landau. “But we cannot pretend that we are partners while those nations allow the EU’s unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative bureaucracy in Brussels to pursue policies of civilizational suicide.”
With the understanding that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States” and that the U.S. cannot “afford to write Europe off,” the Trump administration emphasized its support for “genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history,” and recommended its European allies get their acts together.
Backlash from the usual suspects
The strategy document was welcomed by many of those on both sides of the Atlantic who’ve read the writing on the wall and paid close attention to the various crises now destabilizing Europe.
British-American historian Niall Ferguson noted, for instance, “However unpalatable you may find this analysis, you will struggle to find evidence to the contrary. My better-informed British and European friends whisper it softly: ‘Maybe it’s true.'”
‘We must stop behaving as a friend.’
Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R) wrote, “America is back to practicing a foreign policy rooted in strength, restraint, and national interest, not Wilsonian fantasy. The new National Security Strategy marks a clear return to a distinctly American tradition: Realism.”
Of course, those supportive of Europe’s current path condemned the document.
RELATED: ‘Begin repatriating’: German chancellor admits it’s time to give Syrian migrants the boot
Syrian rallygoers in Berlin. Photo by RALF HIRSCHBERGER/AFP via Getty Images
Valerie Hayer, a member of the European Parliament and president of the liberal political group Renew Europe, called the document “unacceptable and dangerous,” stating that the Trump administration “has no right to question what makes the European Union, its values, its democratic choices” and no right “to attempt to impose onto our territory the xenophobic and ultra-conservative vision of the MAGA networks.”
Hayer suggested further that the National Security Strategy served as confirmation that the “Trump administration is an enemy of Europe” and that “we must stop behaving as a friend toward it.”
Shashank Joshi, an editor at the Economist, echoed Hayer, saying it was “a radical, dangerous document” and suggesting the strategy was to “Make Europe White Again.”
Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who served as director of global engagement at the Obama White House, told the Independent that the plan was a “disastrously dumb, deeply damaging document for American diplomacy.”
“It only further fuels distrust and puts more distance between Washington and the allies we most desperately need to ensure our own security and prosperity,” added Bruen.
The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, was reportedly also prickled by the document, stating that “we see ourselves as being able to discuss and debate these matters entirely on our own in the future, and do not need outside advice.”
In Wadephul’s country, which had a birthrate of 1.35 children per woman last year, has in recent years, like other European nations, suffered an explosion in violent crime as a result of its admission of third-world migrants; has a capital city with apparent no-go zones where Jews and homosexuals cannot safely transit certain areas; and has sought to ban, vilify, disarm, debank, and criminalize the popular party that has attempted to turn things around.
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ART? Beeple puts Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg heads on robot dogs that ‘poop’ $100K NFTs
A political artist says he is making a commentary on how social media platforms control what people see.
Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the moniker Beeple, created an exhibit called “Regular Animals” that featured some of the world’s most influential men as robotic dogs.
‘Zuckerberg and Elon, in particular, control a huge amount of how we see the world.’
Visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach saw realistic masks of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol on robotic dogs that defecate photos. Winkelmann also added two look-alikes of himself into the mix.
“The dogs are continuously taking pictures and ranking those pictures to find the most interesting ones,” Winkelmann explained on his X page. “When it comes time to poop they are reimagined using AI according to each dog’s personality / worldview.”
According to Page Six, onlookers — who called the exhibit “freaky” and “creepy” — saw the Zuckerberg dog produce photos that look like the Metaverse, while Musk’s were black and white.
Bezos’ robot reportedly did not make prints, but was included because Bezos is a person “who shapes how we see the world,” Winkelmann explained. “So he needed to be in the piece.”
RELATED: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are racing to enclose Earth in an orbital computer factory
The dogs — which are reminiscent of the film “Mars Attacks!” — are an attempt by Winkelmann to communicate that he parodied individuals who are controlling what the world sees.
“It used to be that we saw the world interpreted through the eyes of artists, but now Mark Zuckerberg and Elon, in particular, control a huge amount of how we see the world,” he told Page Six. “We see the world through their eyes because they control these very powerful algorithms that decide what we see. And so we wanted to kind of play with that idea.”
Beeple added, “You’re increasingly seeing the world through the eyes of AI and robotics,” noting that he thinks this will increasingly occur.
The 44-year-old artist does not seem to be against the capitalistic nature of those he criticizes, however, as his robodog-produced photos are allegedly being sold to private collectors for up to $100,000 each. The photo owners will allow them to travel with the exhibit, though.
This is not Winkelmann’s first foray into politics. His video shorts, for example, have focused on issues relating to power and communication.
On his website, the artist features pieces like “Transparent Machines,” which is meant to portray “conflicting concepts of transparency and privacy.”
Other clips include a music video for “Manifest Destiny” by Run the Jewels, a radical political rap group, as well as commentary on the housing market collapse of 2009.
Apart from the music video, the shorts compile vague imagery that serve as safe commentary representing widely popular viewpoints. This was reflected in an interview with Icon, in which Winkelmann said he is “not extreme” in his political views.
“To me, it’s very frustrating that we have such binary parties these days, because I’m very much in the middle.”
The artist also revealed he “voted for f**king [George W.] Bush twice, which seems dumb in retrospect,” he noted.
“I’m not sure [I’m] liberal, but it’s just crazy town on that other side,” he said of his politics.
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Holiday stress? Here’s one way to handle it.
Holidays are tough. It’s not fun to say it, and it feels like failing to admit it, but they are.
But why? Why are they tough? Why are the days that are supposed to be full of joy instead oddly stressful — and too often fraught with bickering, arguing, and disappointment?
We want things to go perfectly on the day that is supposed to go perfectly — and when they don’t, our disappointment lands harder than it would on a random Tuesday in March.
It seems inevitable, almost as if it’s another tradition. Someone snaps about something small, then someone takes offense to something else, and then there’s an argument or a fight or just a weird feeling in the air that wasn’t there before.
Too many cooks
It could be in the kitchen, especially when dinner is nearing. Mom, Grandma, and maybe a daughter or two are in there helping. A bystander pokes his or her head in and offers a “helpful” comment. One of the chefs responds with an eye-roll. A certain stifling quiet — not a good quiet — descends.
Or it could be at the dinner table: Someone lobs a political point knowing that it will rub another guest the wrong way, but he “needs to say something.” Then someone else feels compelled to answer, and another after that, until the whole thing cascades and suddenly the arguments are spilling over into dessert.
Moms are disappointed in their sons and daughters because they just want everybody to get along for one day when everyone is home. “Can you just not talk about that?” Dads are tired of having the same argument, so they zone out. Sons and daughters are mad because no one takes them seriously. They are in college and know more than they used to, but think they know more than they really do.
Family feud
These things happen in families. Not all, of course. Some excel at sweeping every irritation under the rug and maintaining a serene, passive surface at all times. A few are even perfect — or as close as anyone gets — and enjoy holidays filled with nothing but gladness. But most families, in one way or another, run into moments like the ones above or something close to them.
These points of conflict and stress are only a few of the familiar moments that surface when families gather for the holidays. There are countless other paths to confrontation, disappointment, or quiet unease. Sometimes the friction is subtle — simmering unnoticed for months — and it’s only during the holidays that anything finally bubbles up and over.
At bottom, our stress and disappointment come down to expectations, especially the impossible kind.
A holiday is supposed to matter more than an ordinary day. It’s supposed to be more enjoyable, more memorable, more special. That’s a crude way of putting it, but it’s the truth we all feel somewhere deep down, even if we would never say it out loud.
Moms want the meal to be flawless and everyone to get along. Dads want to relax. Kids home from wherever they have been want to share what they have learned and maybe earn a little more respect.
Perfect storm
We want things to go perfectly on the day that is supposed to go perfectly — and when they don’t, our disappointment lands harder than it would on a random Tuesday in March. Greater disappointment feels like a greater failure, and that casts a shadow over the day or at least over our memory of it.
Our expectations rise so high that disappointment becomes almost guaranteed.
That’s why the holidays are tough. It’s not that being around the people you love is hard or that it’s impossible to stay on your best behavior and avoid a spat with your sister or cousin. The holidays are tough because we want things to be the way they ought to be — the way we imagine they could be, the way we wish we could be. Admitting that the holidays are tough stings a little, because to acknowledge it feels like confessing a kind of failure.
I don’t know how to eliminate holiday disappointment entirely, but I do know the first step toward easing it: accepting that our holidays will never be perfect. Hopes run high, tensions run high, and something will inevitably go awry. We’re human. And that’s okay. Maybe our bar shouldn’t be so high. Maybe we ought to grade the day on a curve. Maybe a B- really is an A. Maybe we can forgive ourselves for not living inside a Hallmark movie.
Holidays aren’t perfect. Neither are we. And that’s okay.
The Supreme Court takes up New Jersey’s baseless assault on pro-life support for moms
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office was recently forced to make a stunning admission before the U.S. Supreme Court. During oral arguments, Platkin’s team conceded that although the state issued a sweeping subpoena against a pregnancy center — First Choice Women’s Resource Centers — the office had no complaints against the organization.
That admission stripped away any pretense that the attorney general was protecting consumers. It revealed the real motive: a fishing expedition into constitutionally protected internal records and private donor information for no reason other than First Choice’s commitment to life-affirming support for women. Now the court must decide whether New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer can bully pro-life charities out of helping women and families.
When First Choice made its case before the Supreme Court, it stood up for every American who believes mothers deserve compassion without harassment from the state.
What’s at stake is the work of pregnancy centers and charities nationwide that help women sustain their decision for life. These organizations provide the material and emotional resources mothers need to meet their own needs and the needs of their children.
Choosing life for an unborn child is never a one-time decision. It’s a daily commitment made amid financial, professional, emotional, or health-related pressures — and often in the face of serious challenges in securing food, clothing, housing, and other essentials. Women deserve support in every one of those areas so they can pursue their ambitions with their children. Pro-life Americans stand ready to offer that support. Platkin prefers abortion over help for moms.
Research shows that 60% of women who have had abortions would have preferred to choose life if they had more financial security or emotional support. Pregnancy centers and life-affirming organizations across the country confront this reality every day. Last year alone, they provided $452 million in support services, medical care, and material goods — all free of charge.
And the need keeps growing. Over the past two years, pregnancy centers increased their material assistance by 48% to ensure that women have what they need to thrive in pregnancy and early parenting. In 2024 alone, they served 1 million new clients.
When families face challenges beyond diapers and baby supplies, pregnancy centers rise to meet them. At Real Options Pregnancy Center in Texas, staff provided full Thanksgiving meals to local families. In Chicago, a center hosts an annual Christmas celebration so moms can put gifts under the tree. Across the country, community partners working with Her PLAN offer free car maintenance and help women escape trafficking and addiction, secure housing, and receive job training.
Every woman’s story is unique. Pregnancy centers recognize that dignity, which is why they collaborate with trusted community resources to provide comprehensive support tailored to each individual who walks through their doors.
This community network forms the pro-life safety net that Her PLAN strengthens through grassroots engagement and an online directory of vetted service providers across seven categories of care. For women with nowhere else to turn, this wraparound support provides stability, hope, and practical help.
RELATED: Leftist war on pro-life pregnancy centers faces Supreme Court reckoning
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Women who receive services from pregnancy centers report a 98% satisfaction rate. The real measure of success, however, is the women who later return to help others.
Courtney, once overwhelmed by two unexpected pregnancies, now works at the very center that supported her.
Jean Marie, who escaped human trafficking with the help of a New Hampshire pregnancy center, now runs a center in Vermont, using her experience to counsel vulnerable women.
In Northern Virginia, a maternity home helped Shawnte when she lost her job and housing. Today she works as a peer-recovery coach and credits the maternity home with giving her the strength not to abort “a child I knew I wanted, just because things got hard.”
These women — and countless others — were empowered by the pro-life safety net and now devote themselves to strengthening it for the next mother in crisis.
This is work that protects lives, stabilizes families, and strengthens communities. It deserves support, not intimidation from pro-abortion politicians. When First Choice made its case before the Supreme Court, it stood up for every American who believes mothers deserve compassion without harassment from the state.
Helping women is not controversial. It is love in action.
