With the left automatically opposing all of President Trump’s policies --- if only because they’re HIS --- it should surprise no one that they continue to devise “workarounds” to keep him from implementing his directives. This goes for leftists both inside and outside of government.
For example, there’s the President’s executive order calling for the release of the CIA’s still-classified assassination documents. Think the CIA is just going to roll over? As longtime JFK assassination investigator Jefferson Morley told Tucker Carlson in a recent interview (subscription-only), “There are some very clear benchmarks to figure out ‘is this working or not?’ Are people holding up the process and obstructing the President’s wishes, or are they...really going along? The proof is in the pudding.”
“It’s great that a President has committed to this,” he said. “It’s amazing that no President has committed in this way before.” Morley is one of those who, while not a Trump supporter, definitely wants to see him succeed on this front.
But he sees “pitfalls ahead,” as “this is not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen,” even though much is possible. The secret agencies are extremely powerful, he emphasized, and he sees loopholes they can exploit even in Trump’s order to come up with a declassification plan. For example, he anticipates a possible interpretation that the CIA director can still overrule any decision on declassification. (Note of optimism: that’s John Ratcliffe, so such decisions fall to him.)
“The agencies cannot have final control over the release of this material,” Morley said. “They’ve been resisting full disclosure since the day Kennedy died --- that’s the day that the CIA’s lies began.” They started lying about Lee Harvey Oswald, he said, “within hours” of JFK’s murder.
Their decades of lying, he said, won’t stop “just because President Trump said something on a piece of paper.” They successfully dodged the 1992 law requiring disclosure, and if they could get away with that, they’ll certainly do whatever they can now to thwart President Trump. It could be that they see the release of certain information as more damaging to them than the sight of them flouting this order.
So, gotta watch ‘em like hawks and make sure it happens. Morley is looking for the production of specific “key documents” (details at link). If we monitor the process, he advised, that should tell us whether or not they’re serious about complying.
Another example of “workarounds” (also known as sabotage): In the firehose of news during the past couple of weeks, you might not have seen this recent undercover video from James O’Keefe and his O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) of a consultant at the Defense Department, a “special advisor” to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who bragged about secret meetings with retired military officials to orchestrate a resistance against Trump.
This is Jamie Mannina, telling his “date” that he had become a special agent for the FBI to be a “spy hunter” after Trump won in 2016. His assessment of Trump is that he’s “a sociopathic narcissist who is only interested in advancing his name, his wealth and his fame.” He was, he said, “in conversation with a couple of retired generals to try and explore what we can do.” These were 1, 2, 3-star generals, he told her.
When asked about Gen. Mark Milley, he said Milley was his former boss but “doesn’t know me.” He doubted Milley was involved in “something like this,” although “he’s around.”
He mentioned that since last spring, he’d been working with a nonprofit called National Security Leaders for America, trying to defeat Trump, “to explain to the American people the national security consequences of another Trump presidency.” They published a large number of op-eds under generals’ names in newspapers around the country --- ghostwritten largely by him, he claimed, “working day and night.” (Presumably, since Trump won in spite of his round-the-clock effort, he now has more time to date.)
To clear out this TDS-infected garbage, new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has his work cut out for him. (The video was made before Hegseth’s confirmation; Mannina has plenty of nasty things to say about him here.) Since the video of this “special advisor” was made public, he’s been fired. But this just shows how deeply embedded the saboteurs are, and how potentially difficult they will be to root out.
One clue in this case: Mannina met Hillary Clinton when he was in college, went to work for her and “followed her” to the State Department, which is still infested with her cronies. He’d been hoping to advance his career even farther, he said, and anticipated receiving a “pretty big job” if Kamala won. A lesson in how Washington works, in case anyone didn’t know.
https://www.wnd.com/2025/01/keep-it-between-us-watch-as-deep-stater-plots-resistance-to-president-trump-and-then-gets-fired/
As for FBI ‘workarounds,” we know the best way to counter these is going to be with a no-nonsense director like Kash Patel. Elsewhere in the newsletter, we have a rundown of how his confirmation hearing went today. (Democrats revealed themselves to be extremely hostile and afraid of him, which is a good sign as long as he still has the votes for confirmation.) But it seems appropriate here to offer Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy’s entertaining and 100 percent accurate assessment of the FBI’s problems and the proper way to deal with them. Patel gets the answers right. This is a great history lesson, too; don’t miss it...
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2025/01/30/sen-kennedy-fun-moments-at-patel-hearing-n2185002
Regarding immigration reform, we already know there will be countless “workarounds.” Here’s one at the university level, where, as legal analyst Jonathan Turley says, “the federal government and local and educational authorities are on a collision course over immigration policies.”
You’ve no doubt heard Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, who is determined to be the loudest voice of resistance on the deportation issue coming from “sanctuary” states and cities. Various college and university presidents have spoken up, too, but Turley cites in particular a plan by the Los Rios Community College District in (surprise) California.
On Tuesday, they sent out an email intended to allay the fear “widespread through the undocumented and ally communities about their safety and the safety of their families and loved ones.”
(Note: it’s unclear who the “ally” communities are, but one assumes they’re all the other left-wing interest groups, such as LGBTQIA++++++, who are not affected in any way by deportation policies but whom the left always mobilizes for the Cause Of The Day.)
After Trump won, Los Rios published eight commitments in what they call their “Compact in Support of Undocumented and DACA Students and Employees.” One of these promises is to conceal a student or employee’s immigration status. (AKA, “accessory to committing a federal crime” and “committing a federal crime.”)
Turley cites a couple of Supreme Court rulings that might have bearing on this. In Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., they ruled unanimously that the federal government could withhold funding from schools if they barred military recruiters from interviewing students, based on the 1982 Solomon Amendment. (NOTE: We don’t typically link to Wikipedia, particularly for anything political, but this entry does explain how federal grants to universities can be denied.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Amendment
Rumsfeld v. FAIR later challenged the Solomon Amendment on free speech grounds, but SCOTUS ruled unanimously, as John Roberts wrote for the majority, that “The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything...As a general matter, the Solomon Amendment regulates conduct, not speech. It affects what law schools must do --- afford equal access to military recruiters --- not what they may or may not say.” Schools could still be denied funds.
So, if schools must allow military recruiters on campus to maintain their government funding, one would think they must allow immigration officials there, too. Universities, particularly state institutions who depend on that funding, will have to decide if this is really the hill they want to die on.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/30/universities-announce-plans-to-defy-federal-immigration-enforcement/
If you have time, REDSTATE has more commentary on Turley’s piece.
https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2025/01/30/as-universities-vow-to-defy-trumps-immigration-enforcement-jonathan-turley-goes-bottom-line-n2185005
Finally, corporations announcing publicly that they’re ending so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs might be quietly doing “workarounds,” too.
On January 24, as if to sort-of signal their move away from DEI, Target Stores issued a press release announcing their “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer,” Kiera Fernandez, would now go by the title of “Chief Community Impact and Equity Officer.” (Okay...) The memo Fernandez sent to her staff about the change included this bit of vapid corporate babble:
“Many years of data, insights, listening and learning have been shaping this next chapter in our strategy, and as a retailer that serves millions of consumers every day, we understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape, now and in the future --- all in service of driving Target’s growth and winning together.”
Who wrote that, Kamala Harris? Meanwhile, Target is retaining every one of its DEI hires, at every level of the organization. It appears they’re merely soft-pedaling their DEI, rebranding it. In other words, this looks like just another workaround; time will tell if they really have abandoned gender craziness and the racist, discriminatory practices of DEI.
We typically don’t call for boycotts here; be advised that this article at THE FEDERALIST does. You be the judge on where you want to shop, but do remain skeptical that Target and other corporate entities have dropped DEI. This might be as much of an illusion as that created by a “tuckable” swimsuit.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/01/30/targets-press-releases-show-its-lying-about-ditching-dei/
GREAT WEEKEND READING: We brought you a story earlier this week concerning the federal government’s improper use of legislation to charge January 6 defendants with “interfering with an official proceeding” when all they did was step inside the Capitol building. Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin has opened an investigation into who decided to do this and why. I think we all have a good idea why.
For when you have time, investigative reporter Julie Kelly has a superb in-depth piece on this. She goes into the origin of that law, what it’s actually supposed to cover, and shows how wildly inappropriate it was for then-U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves --- he’s gone now, hooray! --- to charge hundreds of J6 defendants with violating it. The Supreme Court mercifully reversed this last summer. Martin called these cases “a great failure of our office.”
This was the type of prosecution that led 37-year-old Matthew Perna to hang himself rather than face trial.
Martin will have a preliminary report soon. It can’t come soon enough.