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Talk of ‘pre-emptive pardons’ sets the stage for Trump to drain the Washington swamp

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President-Elect Donald Trump reacts during his meeting with Prince William, Prince of Wales at the Embassy of the United Kingdom’s Residence on December 7, 2024, in Paris, France

From LifeSiteNews

By Conservative Treehouse

Once you understand how Donald Trump is assembling his White House and once you accept the mission of the DC system to defend itself by isolating a weak spot in the mechanism, then the assembly of cabinet based on loyalty makes sense.

Any time the professional leftists lose anything, they immediately become victims. Whether defeated in the battle of ideas (retreat to safe spaces), defeated in the field of pop culture, or even defeated linguistically through debate (words are violence). Whenever the professional left loses, they immediately become victims. It’s what they do.

The professional political left, newest version from the Chicago spawn of Dohrn/Ayers, has been waging full combat lawfare via a weaponized government for the past 16 years. However, Obama/Plouffe were defeated, “their kind” rose again and won the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

What we see in this “pre-emptive pardon” narrative, is a repeat of the victim narrative. This time the White House discussion boils down to “lawfare agents must be protected from any retaliation for their action.” Pardons presumably provide the mechanism to protect the victims. In the big picture of ideology, this is a continuation of the same mindset.

Politico started the narrative with an outline saying the White House was having an internal debate as to whether Joe Biden should pre-emptively issue pardons to members of the January 6 committee, members who constructed false impeachment accusations, members within the DOJ who fabricated political cases using the special counsel process, or generally people on the political left who supported/facilitated all the aforementioned false attack fronts.

As the narrative is told, all those who supported the attacks against President-Elect Donald Trump and his allies now need to be protected from “retribution.” Inherent in the argument, and within the use of pardons, is the baseline that some form of illegal activity was taking place. Heck, if it wasn’t unlawful conduct, then no pardon would be needed. This is the political catch-22 created by the pre-emptive pardon narrative.

Various congressional people, DOJ insiders, White House liaisons, State Department officials and underling staff are all possible recipients if Joe Biden decides to take this unprecedented approach. However, if you look at the expressed approach indicated by Trump and the assembly of cabinet members who would be in place to carry out such “retribution,” you will not find any indication of intent. Quite the opposite is true.

Trump does not appear to be in alignment with any approach that would lead to legal indictments, arrests, charges or other legal accountability measures.  Beyond the public release of hidden, perhaps classified information that might put sunlight on the previous activity by those who weaponized their offices, there is nothing. Sunlight on prior events, while moving forward to restore functioning law and order, appears to be the most likely approach. From Politico:

… White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.

The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broad.

All outward indications are that Trump wants to create a legacy presidency for the Gen-Z generation (Barron), similar to what was created by Ronald Reagan for the Gen-X generation. Selecting Susie Wiles as chief of staff is the strongest indication of this intent.

The appointments to White House legal counsel positions and main justice legal offices by Trump all appear to have one common denominator: to protect the president. I strongly doubt there will be any effort beyond that.

Big picture

Once you understand what Trump is assembling (the phalanx) and once you accept the mission of the D.C. system to defend itself by isolating a weak spot in the mechanism, then everything from the assembly of the cabinet to the process being discussed makes sense.

Within a phalanx, if one shield drops the entire construct is compromised. The strongest shields need to surround the core with ferocity.

The recent Supreme Court decision affirmed the president of the United States as the unitary, plenary power that controls every mechanism of the executive branch of government, and as long as the president is acting within his “official duty” he holds absolute power and absolute immunity.

Think of each cabinet member as a shield in this political phalanx that surrounds the weapon, Trump.

Yes, the phalanx is by construct an offensive fortification used to advance upon the enemy. However, the strength of the phalanx is its ability to be impervious to attack from 360°.

The phalanx advances, inch by inch, against a larger fortification. In the transition team assembly, this is what Trump is putting together.

Hegseth is a key component of the phalanx, the fortification process that puts Trump at the center of the cabinet. Each component of the cabinet protecting the center.

The phalanx is the mechanism to carry the weapon that is President Donald Trump. The D.C. UniParty is looking for a weakness in the phalanx, like a wolf circling a porcupine.

Trump has turned his focus to the “war fighters,” the men and women who carry out the mission objective of the Defense Department. The nomination of Pete Hegseth represents the confrontation of a power struggle that has been decades in making.

The self-serving senators are trying to block Hegseth, while maintaining a position of pretending support for Trump. The DeceptiCon republicans in the Senate are in full circling mode, looking for a weakness to exploit.

The schemes of the conniving Republican senators are transparently visible in the efforts of Senator Joni Ernst, who is circling the phalanx Trump is creating – while simultaneously inserting herself into the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) mission.

Ernst is doing Mitch McConnell’s work, under instruction from John Thune and Mitch. See Ernst with clear eyes.

One does not become unattached to corrupt intent.

Clear eyes!

 

I did not think President-elect Trump had the accurate laser vision for the task.

I was getting concerned.

Then I saw the very specific wording of this:

The McGinley move makes a lot of sense. DOGE and the Office of Management and Budgets (OMB) are going to be joined at the hip. They are going to have to navigate the Impoundment Control Act, challenging the system that places limits on a president’s ability to unilaterally withhold funding.

Inside that legal battle, deciding what DOGE can do without legislative approval, the OMB is going to be the execution part. McGinley will be the legal liaison focused on what technical approaches DOGE/OMB can execute. In essence, can they stop funding XX, thereby eliminating it?

That said, that’s not the important part.

The language Trump is using to describe the role of David A. Warrington, the switched White House counsel, is something entirely new.

Donald Trump says: “to serve as Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President. Dave will lead the Office of White House Counsel and serve as the top attorney in the White House.”

Normally the White House counsel does not represent the interests of the president, the WHC represents the interests of the office.

It would appear to me, at least as I review the details, that Trump is now fully aware how his presidential interests can sometimes conflict with the interests of the White House counsel, and he is making a move to ensure that conflict doesn’t happen.

An example of the conflict I have explained repeatedly in the “declassification of information.”

Not kidding, it is almost as if someone very close to Trump read something I previously outlined, because it came with a serious warning borne out of years of frustration:

In Term-1 the IC message to the WH Counsel was that if Donald Trump declassified any documents, they would use the DOJ (special counsel weapon) to attack the office of the president for “obstructing justice.” The WHC was fraught with fear over what would happen and demanded that POTUS Trump stop trying to declassify information/documents the IC didn’t support.

The way Trump is now portraying the role of the White House counsel is to represent his interests first and foremost, then represent the interests of the office. In a few subtle, and not so subtle ways, this makes sense.

We can tell by the nominations to attorney general, deputy attorney general, and assistant attorney general-national security division, that main justice is already positioned to defend and protect Donald Trump. The people in charge of the silo are all loyalty-first people, aligned in the interests of Trump.

It would appear that Trump is now bringing that same outlook into the White House. The White House counsel aligning in common purpose, with the specific purpose of executing the intentions of President Donald Trump.

I’m glad to see this approach, because as I have repeatedly affirmed, only President Trump (the person) can confront the silo system in Washington, D.C.

That’s why the phalanx makes sense.

Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.

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Artificial Intelligence

AI is accelerating the porn crisis as kids create, consume explicit deepfake images of classmates

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

“Ten years ago it was sexting and nudes causing havoc in classrooms,” writes Sally Weale in a chilling new report at the Guardian. “Today, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made it child’s play to generate deepfake nude images or videos, featuring what appear to be your friends, your classmates, even your teachers. This may involve removing clothes, getting an image to move suggestively or pasting someone’s head on to a pornographic image.”

I have been covering the rise of the next horrific manifestation of our collective porn crisis here at LifeSiteNews since 2019, when I warned that the rise of “deepfakes” would inevitably result in people making artificial pornography of their peers. Just a few years later, I reported on stories of middle-schoolers making deepfake pornography of kids they attended class with; last year, I reported on the rise of “nudify” apps that can digitally undress people in photographs, and the trauma, bullying, and inevitable sexual blackmail that has resulted.

The Guardian report reveals how swiftly this crisis is escalating. One teacher described an incident in which a teenage boy took out his phone, chose a social media image of a girl from a neighboring school, and used the “nudify” app to digitally remove her clothes. The teacher was shocked to see that the boy wasn’t even hiding his actions, because he didn’t see what he was doing as shocking, or even shameful. “It worries me that it’s so normalized,” she said. Other students reported the boy, his parents were contacted, and the police were called. The victimized girl was not even told.

The crisis is global. “In Spain last year, 15 boys in the south-western region of Extremadura were sentenced to a year’s probation after being convicted of using AI to produce fake naked images of their female schoolmates, which they shared on WhatsApp groups,” Weale writes. “About 20 girls were affected, most of them aged 14, while the youngest was 11.”

A similar situation unfolded in Australia, where 50 high school students had deepfake images distributed; in the United States, 30 female students in New Jersey discovered that “pornographic images of them had been shared among their male classmates on Snapchat.”

The mother of one student in Australia said that “her daughter was so horrified by the sexually explicit images that she vomited.” In the United Kingdom, the problem has exploded overnight:

A new poll of 4,300 secondary school teachers in England, carried out by Teacher Tapp on behalf of the Guardian, found that about one in 10 were aware of students at their school creating “deepfake, sexually explicit videos” in the last academic year. Three-quarters of these incidents involved children aged 14 or younger, while one in 10 incidents involved 11-year-olds, and 3% were younger still, illustrating just how easy the technology is to access and use. Among participating teachers, 7% said they were aware of a single incident, and 1% said it had happened twice, while a similar proportion said it had happened three times or more in the last academic year. Earlier this year, a Girlguiding survey found that one in four respondents aged 13 to 18 had seen a sexually explicit deepfake image of a celebrity, a friend, a teacher or themselves.

Predictably, teachers are also being targeted. Girls and women are left shattered by this victimization. Laura Bates, author of The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny, writes: “It feels like someone has taken you and done something to you and there is nothing you can do about it. Watching a video of yourself being violated without your consent is an almost out-of-body experience.” Boys, meanwhile, are engaging in criminal behavior often without even knowing it. In the world they have grown up in, pornography is normal – and this is merely the next step.

The experts that Weale interviews are, as usual, at a loss of what can be done about this crisis. They emphasize education, while admitting that this is the equivalent of taking a water pistol to a raging forest fire. They are skeptical that guidelines or bans around technology at school will help. Understandably, educators are demoralized and even despairing. Pornography and sexting have already transformed schools. Deepfake pornography is now making an already ugly crisis far more personal, and there is no indication that the problem can be stopped without dramatic action.

The good news is that the first step in this direction has already been taken in the U.K. On November 3, the government  tabled the Crime and Policing Bill in Parliament. It includes an amendment criminalizing pornography featuring strangulation or suffocation – usually referred to as “choking” – with legal requirements for tech platforms to block this content from U.K. users.

This is the first time a genre of pornography has been criminalized on the basis that even if it is consensual, it genuinely harms society. That is an encouraging precedent, because it applies to virtually all hardcore pornography – and certainly to the “nudification” apps that are set to make middle school a hyper-sexualized hell for women and girls.

The porn industry is destroying society. We must destroy it first.

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

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Health

News RFK Jr.’s vaccine committee to vote on ending Hepatitis B shot recommendation for newborns

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From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.

Vaccine advisors to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plan to vote on ending the recommendation of the Hepatitis B shot for infants and discuss other changes to the childhood vaccination schedule.

The federal advisers, selected by RFK Jr., will meet on Thursday and Friday to review the childhood vaccination schedule, according to a report from The Washington Post. The goal is to examine whether vaccines on the recommended schedule are contributing to the rise in allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other conditions such as autism.

The vaccine panel, headed by Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist and critic of the COVID shots, plans to vote on ending the Hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for infants within 24 hours of birth. The panel will decide whether to delay the first dose to a later time.

Critics of the very early administration of the first Hepatitis B vaccine dose argue that it represents an unnecessary risk, as the vast majority of children are not at risk of infection.

The vaccine committee makes recommendations to the CDC director on the vaccine schedule. Directors have typically adopted the panel’s recommendations, compelling insurers to cover certain vaccines. These recommendations also provide a guideline for most pediatricians and medical organizations.

READ: Florida moving to be first state to end all childhood vaccine mandates

“We’re looking at what may be causing some of the long-term changes we’re seeing in population data in children, specifically things such as asthma and eczema and other autoimmune diseases,” Milhoan told The Washington Post.

“What we’re trying to do is figure out if there are factors within vaccines,” he added.

He said that the committee is examining the potential dangers of using aluminum as an adjuvant, an ingredient meant to trigger an immune response strong enough for the body to develop antibodies and protect the person from the disease.

The CDC recently revised its website on the issue of autism and vaccines, now stating, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The CDC had previously held that there was definitely no link between vaccines and autism. The change was made at the direct order of RFK Jr.

The McCullough Foundation, founded by famous cardiologist and COVID response critic Dr. Peter McCullough, goes even further in its critique of childhood vaccines. In a recent extensive report, the authors analyzed 12 studies comparing routinely vaccinated with unvaccinated children. According to the report, all of these studies showed “superior overall health outcomes among the unvaccinated, including significantly lower risks of chronic medical problems and neuropsychiatric disorders such as ASD [Autism spectrum disorder].”

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