Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

An activist group is suing an Oregon city over its public camping policies after the city prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed municipalities to enforce homeless camping bans.

The new lawsuit comes after the Supreme Court in June 2024 upheld a local ordinance banning public camping, which activists claimed criminalized being homeless. The court rejected 6-3 the novel argument that the local law in Grants Pass, Oregon, violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The new legal complaint in Disability Rights Oregon v. City of Grants Pass was filed on Jan. 30 in the Circuit Court for the State of Oregon for Josephine County. Grants Pass, with a population of 39,000, is in southwest Oregon near the California border.

The city has one overnight shelter that adults may access, called the Gospel Rescue Mission.

Some homeless people don’t stay there because it requires regular attendance at religious services, and bans smoking, alcohol, illegal drugs, and pets, according to the complaint.

On Jan. 7, the City Council voted to shut down the larger of two city-owned campsites on which homeless people had been permitted to stay and to restrict the use of the smaller one. City officials said the larger site was an unsanitary eyesore. Construction of a water treatment facility is expected to begin at the larger site in May.

The legal complaint said both sites were unsuitable for use by disabled people, including those using mobility devices such as wheelchairs.

These people “often found themselves struggling to traverse the uneven ground, requiring assistance to make it even a short distance within the campsites.”

The smaller site is open from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., after which campers have to remove their belongings.

The lawsuit asks the state court for a temporary restraining order reversing the closure of the larger campsite and halting the city policy restricting the hours of the smaller campsite.

Portland-based Disability Rights Oregon and five homeless individuals who are disabled say in the complaint that the city’s new camping policies discriminate against disabled people and run afoul of a provision in Section 195.530 of the Oregon Revised Statutes, a state law.

Subsection 2 of the law states that: “Any city or county law that regulates the acts of sitting, lying, sleeping or keeping warm and dry outdoors on public property that is open to the public must be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness.”

Subsection 4 allows a homeless person to “bring suit for injunctive or declaratory relief to challenge the objective reasonableness of [such] a city or county law.”

The complaint argues the city is breaking the law because the space in which camping is now allowed is, among other things, too small.

The small plot of land is “only large enough to hold less than 20% of the tents of people who are currently homeless in Grants Pass. For about 80% of the homeless people in Grants Pass, Grants Pass city code now makes it illegal for them to exist and survive by virtue of their poverty and disabilities,” according to the complaint.

Instead of making objectively reasonable regulations “the city has chosen to use its authority to recriminalize being homeless in the guise of a time/place/manner restriction,” the complaint said.

The city “wants to make being homeless in Grants Pass so unpleasant that people go elsewhere,” the complaint said. “Despite the presence of numerous elderly, ill, and disabled people on site, the city increased its draconian restrictions in the dead of winter leaving hundreds of people with no legal option for their continued survival.”

The city “currently has no meaningful plan to provide shelter or otherwise assist homeless people to find places to live. People have no place to legally go,” the complaint states.

Jake Cornett is the executive director and CEO of Disability Rights Oregon.

“Putting the lives of people with disabilities at risk in the dead of winter because they don’t have housing is cruel and illegal,” he said in a statement. “Without adequate shelter space available, forcing a person in a wheelchair or someone with a chronic illness to pack and move their belongings daily is not just impossible, it’s inhumane. Grants Pass’s dangerous actions must be stopped.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Mark Bartholomew, interim city attorney for Grants Pass, for comment. No reply was received by publication time.

While the name of the game for Trump has been cut, cut, cut and put a halt to all wasteful and corrupt US foreign aid siphoned abroad, funds sent to Israel have remained untouched.

And now the Trump administration is readying a new $1 billion arms sale to Israel, including 4,700 1,000-pound bombs and armored bulldozers. Trump is requesting fresh Congressional approval for the potential sale.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story Monday, wrote “The planned weapons sales include 4,700 1,000-pound bombs, worth more than $700 million, as well as armored bulldozers built by Caterpillar, worth more than $300 million, the officials said.”

“The new arms requests, which would be paid for from the billions of dollars in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington and set to meet President Trump on Tuesday to discuss the cease-fire in Gaza, a separate truce in Lebanon and tensions in the wider Middle East,” the report continued.

This comes amid the backdrop of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arriving in Washington D.C. on Monday, ahead of his scheduled White House visit with Trump Tuesday.

Crucially, Netanyahu will be the first world leader to meet with Trump since the Jan.20 inauguration. Israel remains America’s closest official Mideast ally, and a meeting between a new president and Israel’s head of state is typical spanning back multiple administrations.

But these are sensitive times, given the fragile Gaza ceasefire and hostage/prisoner swap deal is still ongoing. Some hardliners close to Netanyahu oppose it, even while families of the hostages have pressed for it to go all the way until all hostages alive and deceased are returned.

The Tuesday meeting in the Oval Office is expected to be dominated by these several issues:

• Preserving the Gaza ceasefire
• A potential deal to finally achieve Israel-Saudi relations
• Moving forward with a total $8 billion in arms transfers

These issues are somewhat interlocking. Trump has stood with Netanyahu on the stance of wanting to see the final military eradication of Hamas, but Trump has also hailed the ceasefire as ultimately the product of his administration entering office.

As for the arms transfers issue, WSJ has detailed the following:

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials are expected to press Trump to move forward with a separate set of arms transfers that were initially requested by the Biden administration, totaling more than $8 billion in new bombs, missiles and artillery rounds.

The Biden administration notified key congressional leaders about that sale in January before it left office. The weapons haven’t yet received full approval because of a hold by some Democratic lawmakers, a congressional official said.

Last week, Trump within released a hold on a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel previously paused by the Biden administration.

And on Monday, the US has moved to cut all funding to the controversial UN aid organization present in Palestinian territories – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The US has long sided with Israel regarding the accusation that it is compromised by local Hamas staffers, or Hamas-sympathetic officials.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

A Secret Service agent is for the first time publicly speaking out against the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which he says contributed to the first assassination attempt against President Trump last summer.

A 13-year veteran of the agency who has served in an elite unit and top protective assignments, Rashid Ellis sat down for an interview with the Independent Women’s Forum, a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit.

IWF is in the process of making a documentary, titled “Qualifications, Not Quotas,” about Ellis’s experience and released an explanation of the documentary and a trailer Thursday providing a snapshot of his experience and concerns.

“My initial thoughts when seeing the Butler assassination attempt was dread,” Ellis states solemnly in the trailer. “My stomach was in knots watching it because we had known for years that this was coming.”

“I believe agendas have taken priority at the United States Secret Service for a long time, which is why Butler and July 13 happened and why we got a president get shot,” he adds.

A graduate of The Citadel, a prestigious military college in South Carolina, Ellis has served on the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, an elite unit that provides tactical support to the president of the United States. Ellis went on to serve on the Presidential Protective Detail, a top assignment protecting presidents and their families, and as an instructor at the Secret Service James J. Rowley Training Center, where he has taught new and experienced agents about counter-surveillance, according to a 2023 article on The Citadel’s website.

“To be in the Secret Service, you have to be worthy of trust and confidence,” Ellis, wearing his Citadel class ring on a braided necklace around his neck, states in the video. “I’ve always viewed [it] as an honor and privilege to serve in this capacity. However … what I’ve seen with the United States is a different set of standards based on gender.”

Despite his accomplishments, Ellis, who is black, says he was unfairly denied a leadership position and believes that DEI gender “quotas played a factor.” He argues that the agency’s hiring and promotions based on skin color and gender have directly contributed to lowering morale and the ongoing exodus of senior agents leaving the agency. The previous Secret Service leadership placed a special emphasis on hiring and promoting women.

“Real danger is out there,” he states. “We need to restore confidence. We have to be focused on the threat that’s outside and the threat that’s in front of us.”

During the final weeks of the campaign, whistleblowers warned members of Congress that Trump was facing multiple “assassination teams,” including three inspired by Iran and other governments. The FBI arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national with ties to Iran, one day before the Butler rally and later charged him with murder for hire as part of an alleged scheme to assassinate Trump on U.S. soil. The Justice Department in November announced separate charges against an “Iranian asset” and two Americans in a murder-for-hire scheme against Trump.

Even before the assassination attempts in the final months of the campaign, Secret Service agents were sounding the alarm that DEI policies were lowering hiring and training standards in the push to reach quotas for female and minority agents and officers, as RealClearPolitics reported in late April.

The criticism came in the wake of an incident in which a female Secret Service agent physically attacked a superior at Joint Base Andrews, home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi described the incident as a “medical matter” and said the agency would not “disclose further details.”

The incident attracted scrutiny of an initiative signed by former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to increase the number of female agents. Cheatle, whom former President Biden tapped to serve as USSS director, was responding to Biden’s executive order requiring all federal agencies to demonstrate a commitment to DEI, which he issued on his first day in office in 2021.

Cheatle, who resigned under pressure from Congress after the Butler assassination attempt, signed onto the 30×30 initiative, a national campaign to increase the representation of women in all law enforcement ranks across the country to 30% of the workplace by 2030. Before Cheatle stepped down, she was close to reaching that goal, with women making up nearly a quarter of Secret Service agents and Uniformed Division officers, Secret Service sources told RCP.

In addition, at least until Trump’s first days in office, the Secret Service had an “Inclusion and Engagement Council,” which pledged to become the agency’s “game-changers” when it comes to helping the agency “build, foster, create, and inspire a workforce where diversity and inclusion are not just ‘talked about’ but demonstrated by all employees through ‘Every Action, Every Day.’”

The agency also had an Office of Equity & Employment Support Services, which maintained an internal website to provide “executive leadership and oversight for the effective management of all resources and, agency-wide initiatives, and external requirements” for DEI. That office included at least a dozen officials devoted to working on DEI programs, according to screenshots of the internal website that RCP viewed.

After the first assassination attempt against Trump and before the second at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, the Secret Service’s DEI office sent out an agency-wide email soliciting nominations for agency employees to attend the “Out and Equal” Workplace Summit at Disney World. The all-expense paid, three-day LGBTQ+ conference, which RCP first reported, took place Oct. 7-10, during the height of the campaign season when agents were working at a frenetic pace with no leave permitted.

The internal agency solicitation spurred a wave of criticism from members of Congress investigating the agency’s failures at Butler. The Secret Service rationalized its participation with a spokesman noting that only a limited number of administrative personnel were permitted to attend.

On his first day in office, Trump began to dismantle the previous administration’s DEI efforts across the federal government. His executive order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” directed all federal DEI staff be placed on paid lead and, eventually, laid off.

Trump also tapped Sean Curran, head of his campaign detail, as the new director, replacing acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe who retired last week. Just two days into the job, Curran started cleaning house. On Jan. 21, he reassigned or pressed at least 10 senior leaders to retire immediately in a shake-up agents referred to as “Bloody Friday.”

Though many agents applauded these actions from the new administration, they believe it will take years of effort to right the DEI wrongs, which they say have severely weakened the agency.

“Though I welcome the change of leadership at the top of the agency and the reforms I hope they will prioritize, I worry that it will take years to rectify the damage that discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion policies have caused,” Ellis told RCP in a written statement. “The Secret Service’s role is critical, and if we do not clean out the rot that has embedded itself in this agency, our people – and our protectees – will pay the price.”

Ellis noted that he has proudly worked for the agency for 13 years and has repeatedly put his “life on the line to advance this agency’s mission and secure the safety of our protectees.”

Unfortunately, he says, over the past several years he watched the agency’s leaders abandon its critical protective mission “in favor of ideological goals.”

“The relentless push by Secret Service leadership to meet diversity quotas in particular has compromised our ability to meet our protectees’ needs,” he argued. “This agenda has contributed to devastating security failures, including the July 13 assassination attempt of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“I know this firsthand because I am one of many Secret Service agents who was wrongly sidelined by agency leadership because I did not meet their sex-based diversity requirements,” he said.

The IWF is continuing to work on a full documentary about Ellis’ experiences and deep concerns but decided to release a trailer to highlight the “counterproductive” impact DEI policies have had on several federal agencies, including the Secret Service. DEI policies are especially detrimental to the Secret Service’s “zero-fail” mission and its top priority of protecting presidents, vice presidents, their family members, and key Cabinet members, according to Kaylee McGhee White, editor-in-chief of Independent Women Features, IWF’s storytelling and journalism arm, which is producing the documentary.

“The Secret Service is one of many federal agencies whose work has been hampered by divisive and counterproductive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies,” McGhee White said. “Given the Secret Service’s critical work, this agenda has had particularly visible consequences. The Secret Service’s protectees should not be worried about whether the agency is able to adequately prepare for and respond to threats due to unfair hiring and promotion standards.

“Unfortunately, as Rashid Ellis has confirmed, that is exactly what has happened,” she said.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

Authored by By Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

• OPEC has replaced the EIA with Kpler, OilX, and ESAI as secondary sources for assessing crude oil production and compliance with output cuts.

• This decision comes after OPEC previously dropped the IEA from its list of data sources.

• The move is seen as a significant snub to the U.S. energy agency and reflects growing tensions between OPEC and the West.

OPEC is dropping the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) as a secondary source to assess crude oil production of the OPEC+ countries and their compliance with the group’s output cuts, the cartel said after a panel meeting on Monday.

After thorough analysis from the OPEC Secretariat, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) replaced consultancy Rystad Energy and the EIA with Kpler, OilX, and ESAI, as part of the secondary sources used to assess the crude oil production and compliance, OPEC said.

The move is effective from February 1, 2025. Before that date, OPEC used figures from seven consultancies and agencies, including the EIA, Rystad Energy, and Wood Mackenzie, among others.

OPEC uses secondary sources to track and report its crude oil production and to monitor compliance with the OPEC+ production cuts by using the average of the figures provided by these sources.

OPEC had already dropped in 2022 the International Energy Agency (IEA) from its list of secondary sources after the Paris-based agency embarked on a campaign to criticize oil-producing countries and call for no new oil and gas projects in a world of net zero emissions.

OPEC has repeatedly slammed the international agency for what the cartel says are “dangerous” predictions of peak oil demand by 2030.

Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman even called in 2021 the IEA’s Roadmap to Net Zero “La La Land”.

Now it’s the turn of the U.S. EIA to be replaced as a secondary source.

OPEC did not give explanations as to why it has decided to drop the U.S. energy administration from its pool of secondary sources providers.

At the Monday meeting of the JMMC, the OPEC+ panel reviewing policy and markets and potentially recommending actions to the group’s ministers to take, the committee said it would not recommend changes to the group’s current plans to begin gradually unwinding the cuts in April 2025.

Update(1815ET): And now apparently Dems have essentially been locked out of the USAID headquarters in Washington, amid efforts to get in and investigate what’s going on, and seeking to meet with top administrators now running the show (or rather, overseeing the dismantling of the agency) in the HQ. The Hill details Monday afternoon:

A group of Senate and House Democrats were blocked from entering the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday.

The Democratic lawmakers, who are opposed to President Trump’s efforts to shut down the agency, left without incident after a brief exchange with security officials. The group, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), were told the front office of the administrator of USAID was not available to meet. 

A select group of USAID employees with the front office administrator were in the office Monday, an official told lawmakers outside the doors, but were not free to meet with the lawmakers.

One Democratic lawmaker told the publication about being blocked at the entrance that the whole saga is “underwhelming”. However, clearly Trump and Musk are setting off huge alarm bells, and this is likely but the first salvo on Congress’s attempt to intervene.

Dem lawmakers were barred from getting into the USAID offices, says Sen @ChrisVanHollen. They had slammed Musk and the Trump administration for what they’re doing to USAID, repeatedly calling it illegal. pic.twitter.com/Fn91CTVuKg

— Alex Marquardt (@MarquardtA) February 3, 2025

Blocked!… no access:

* * *

It’s happening fast after Sunday statements of Elon Musk confirming President Trump “agreed” to shut USAID down… USAID’s headquarters in Washington D.C. has been closed for the day on Monday, with employees receiving an early morning email telling them to remain at home.

Musk says the agency has effectively been shut down. The email, which is now widely circulating on social media postings, was sent from Gavin Kliger via an official usaid.gov. address. He is one among the twenty-somethings assisting Musk in implementing Trump’s order to slash foreign aid and stop waste.

“Logos and photos of its aid work have been stripped from building walls,” CNN writes of the HQ’s sudden closure. This after all web and and social media accounts went dark over the weekend, now with a simplified version of its webpage on the State Department’s website.

“None of this could be done without the full support of the president,” Musk said in a Sunday X Spaces event. “I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed with that we should shut it down. I want to be clear. I actually checked with him a few times. I said, “Are you sure?’ ‘Yes.’ So we’re shutting it down.”

Thousands of staff have told media outlets that they have lost access to their email accounts, which have been deactivated.

A USAID worker has subsequently said: “We have been officially informed that the US Department of State now has access to all of our internal documents and our entire suite of files, documents, everything — all of our systems.” Top officials were fired over the weekend.

Musk says “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper”…

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone to some great parties.

Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025

Access to USAID’s Google drive and other sensitive data has reportedly been transferred straight under the State Department. It appears any future foreign aid programs will simply be run out of the State Department, with more executive branch oversight.

One big question that remains is how much noise Congressional leaders will make. Will Congress attempt intervention, also as there are reports that Musk and DOGE have access to the US Treasury’s payment system?

Having long witnessed the phenomenon of USAID-backed ‘color revolutions’ in neighboring and regional former Soviet satellite countries, Russia has been closely following the Trump administration’s efforts to fully dismantle the United States Agency for International Development.

Head of the recently established US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, has been spearheading this, saying on Monday that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” And now Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has weighed in with a message and a warning.

The former Russian president and top national security official expressed hope that the US deep state won’t consume Elon Musk after shutting down the long-running agency known for having funded regime change operations abroad for many decades.

“Smart move by Elon Musk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole,” Medvedev wrote on X.

Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole…

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) February 3, 2025

Ironically this came the same day that never-Trump neocon and intellectual architect behind Bush’s disastrous Iraq war issued a tweet declaring his preference for the deep state, and he was being quite literal.

“The deep state is far preferable to the Trump state,” Kristol said, in a rare moment saying what many other career government operatives are thinking, or saying the quiet part out loud.

Interestingly Medvedev also took the opportunity Monday to blast Ukraine and President Zelensky over alleged ‘missing’ USAID funds meant for Kiev. According to Russia’s RT:

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s recent claim that he is unaware of the whereabouts of more than $100 billion of Western aid funds allocated to Kiev is a “brazen and cynical lie,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested.

In a Telegram post on Monday, Medvedev, who now serves as the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, accused Zelensky and his associates of embezzling significant sums. “In a fit of candor, the Bandera regime’s boss admitted that he and his cronies had siphoned off $100 billion,” he stated.

Zelensky had told the Associated Press in an interview published the day prior that Ukraine received just over $75 billion in military and other types of assistance, despite $177 billion in military aid had been approved under Biden.

“When it is said that Ukraine received $200 billion to support the army during the war – that’s not true. I don’t know where all that money went. Perhaps it’s true on paper with hundreds of different programs – I won’t argue, and we’re immensely grateful for everything. But in reality, we received about $76 billion. It’s significant aid, but it’s not $200 billion,” Zelensky said, in remarks that have raised eyebrows.

There may also be serious questions from the new Trump administration over the line about not knowing where all that money went. Time for a full stoppage at least until there is a thorough US-sponsored audit? Medvedev has alleged, “The hundred billion lined the pockets of all kinds of kleptocrats from Washington to Kiev.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Last week, the Trump administration doubled down in its fight against birthright citizenship. The usual alliance of pundits, professors and press lined up to declare any challenge to birthright citizenship as absurd. Yet the administration seemed not only undeterred, but delighted.

There is a reason for that euphoria: They believe that they cannot lose this fight.

The legal case against birthright citizenship has always been tough to make, given the long-standing interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in federal courts and agencies. Many in academia and the media have shown unusual outrage toward anyone questioning the basis for birthright citizenship as a legal or policy matter.

This is perhaps best evinced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe’s profane tirade the last time Trump raised this issue years ago: “This f—ing racist wants to reverse the outcome of the Civil War.”

Putting aside that the Civil War was fought over slavery, not immigration, many at the time would have disagreed that this was one of the outcomes of either the Civil War or the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment starts and ends as a model of clarity, stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are “citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” However, sandwiched between those two phrases, Congress inserted the words “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Those six words have perplexed many since they were first drafted.

For some, the line must be read as a whole and guarantees that anyone born within the United States becomes an American citizen.

For others, the six words cannot be read out of the amendment as superfluous. They argue that this indicates that the parents must be here in a legal status, either as citizens or legal residents.

This division was evident at the very birth of the amendment.

Some of those debating the question clearly believed that the amendment did cover anyone born on our soil regardless of the status of the parents.

During the debates, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania asked:

“Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child born of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen?” Senator John Conness of California answered this in the affirmative.

Others indicated the opposite understanding.

Senator Jacob Howard, coauthor of the Fourteenth Amendment, said it was “simply declaratory” of the Civil Rights Act to protect freed slaves.

Howard assured senators, “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, or who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Likewise, Senator Lyman Trumbull, author of the 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act and a drafter of the Fourteenth Amendment, said that the six words included only those “not owing allegiance to anyone else.”

This debate has raged for decades. While Democrats today portray anyone supporting the narrower interpretation as a racist or nutty, it was not long ago that many Democratic leaders opposed birthright citizenship, including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). He later denounced his old position with the same passion.

The Supreme Court itself seemed conflicted in the relatively few cases that touched on this issue. In 1872, in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the court interpreted the words “subject to its jurisdiction” as “intended to exclude from its operation” children of “citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States.” A few years later, in Minor v. Happersett, the court unanimously expressed “doubts” that citizenship would apply for “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.”

Then, in 1884, the Supreme Court handed down Elk v. Wilkins and held that parents must not merely be “subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and not subject to any foreign power”  To claim citizenship, they must owe the U.S. “direct and immediate allegiance.”

Supporters of birthright citizenship can cite countervailing authority to support their position. In 1898, the court ruled in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that “the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.”

Anti-birthright advocates stress the court’s additional emphasis that the parents had to have “a permanent domicil[e] and residence in the United States, and [be] there carrying on business.”

Yet in 1982, in Plyler v. Doe, the court voted 5-4 that the Fourteenth Amendment required Texas to provide public schooling to the children of illegal immigrants, noting that there is “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

There are strong arguments in favor of the broader interpretation to include birthright citizenship, and the case law favors the conventional interpretation. Indeed, it is not clear whether the Trump administration could secure a majority of the court to adopt the narrower interpretation, including potentially skeptical conservatives such as John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

What is clear is that such an interpretation would likely need to be made by the Supreme Court (rather than lower courts) given the existing precedent in favor of birthright citizenship.

So what makes this a win-win proposition for the Trump administration? The politics are stronger than the precedent.

Even if the administration loses before the Supreme Court, it will force Democrats again to fight against a tougher stance on immigration issues. Democrats maintained that position in the last election despite polling showing that 83 percent of Americans support deportations of immigrants with violent criminal records and almost half support mass deportation of all undocumented persons.

On birthright citizenship, roughly half of the country now opposes it, according to a recent Emerson poll.

That is consistent with much of the world.

The U.S. is actually in the minority on the issue.

Our closest allies in Europe reject birthright citizens and follow the common practice of “jus sanguinis,” or right of blood.

We are part of a smaller number of countries following “jus soli,” or right of soil.

That is why the Trump administration may win either way. It will either secure a new interpretation from the high court or it could spur a campaign for a constitutional amendment. All of this could unfold around the time of the midterm elections, when incumbents of the president’s party are generally disfavored. This is a wedge issue that many in the Republican Party might welcome.

Indeed, the most relevant quote from the Civil War period may be that of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the final year of the war, when he declared “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” It was a war of attrition, and Grant liked the odds. Some conservatives seem to have the same view of the lay of the land in the fight over birthright citizenship.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Apparently the Trump administration is directly over the target, as Democrats are absolutely freaking out over DOGE’s ‘hostile takeover’ of USAID, which on Monday was folded into the State Department under Marco Rubio.

In a nutshell, USAID has been a deep state slush fund used for unmitigated malarkey around the world, and was essentially a money laundering operation that has funded radical organizations linked to terrorists, censorship operations, EcoHealth Alliance, and a laundry list of other anti-American activities.

USAID – The Ultimate Nerve Center Of A Rogue Foreign Policy Establishment pic.twitter.com/jz9nJsmzw0

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 2, 2025

In a Monday statement, the State Department acknowledged that USAID “has long strayed from its original mission of responsibly advancing American interests abroad, and it is now abundantly clear that significant portions of USAID funding are not aligned with the core national interests of the United States.”

Cue Freakout

For further confirmation that USAID is nothing but a deep state slush fund, look no further than its defenders. On Monday, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) staged a protest outside USAID headquarters in Washington DC.

“We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like!” screeched Omar. Notably, $2.3 billion of USAID went to Somalia, where she’s from.

JUST IN: Rep. Ilhan Omar goes on an unhinged rant claiming that Trump is a dictator because he’s trying to save money and get rid of government corruption.

“We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship… pic.twitter.com/DbBYCXNjhD

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 3, 2025

Raskin, meanwhile, slammed DOGE head Elon Musk.

“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury, but you don’t control the money of the American people.”

“Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID,” Raskin continued, adding “He doesn’t have the power to destroy it, and who will stop him? We are!”

Sorry Jamie, USAID was created by JFK at the height of the Cold War by Executive Order, and can be folded into the State Department at Trump’s will.

BREAKING: Rep. Jamie Raskin blasts Elon Musk outside USAID HQ, declaring that Democrats will block DOGE from eliminating government waste and fraud.

“Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID.”

“He doesn’t have the power to destroy it, and who will stop him? We are!”

“We don’t have a… pic.twitter.com/sXtf9AqDZe

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 3, 2025

Again, Trump and Musk are directly over the target. 

President Donald Trump’s weekend tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China. He stated that these tariffs are necessary to “protect” Americans from “illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl,” asserting that this “extraordinary threat constitutes a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.” 

By 10:23 ET, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum capitulated to Trump’s tariffs and decided to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops immediately to the Mexico-US border to halt the flow of fentanyl and illegal aliens. 

Financial markets bounced on Sheinbaum’s headlines after a gloomy red morning across equities, currencies, bonds, and crypto.  

Trade War Over? Mexican President Says Tariffs Delayed For Month After Deploying 10,000 Troops To Border To Halt Fentanyl https://t.co/eYHZctzoIn

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 3, 2025

As for America’s neighbor to the north, far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not yet capitulated. In fact, Trudeau has promised retaliatory tariffs of $100 billion. 

Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius has been entirely correct about the multi-day trade war: “The Canada- and Mexico-focused tariffs are likely to be short-lived.”

Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre: “Even if you believe in tariffs, how is it possible to put a 25% tariff on Canada, & only a 10% tariff on China?”

“Fentanyl? Fentanyl is coming from China. It’s killing our people, too.”

pic.twitter.com/sdqID5WjNC

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 2, 2025

Whether Canada will capitulate remains to be seen, but if and when it does, a joint US-Canada strategy to combat transnational organized crime, money laundering, and terror financing networks will be essential, according to a new report published by Garry Clement, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, and Dean Baxendale of Optimum Publishing International. The Canadian independent publisher and research firm specializes in geopolitics, espionage, and intelligence. 

“This strategy outlines a joint US-Canada plan to systematically disrupt and dismantle transnational organized crime networks, including drug cartels, money laundering operations, cybercrime, and state-sponsored illicit financial flows. It integrates border security, intelligence, military, law enforcement, and political oversight with private sector engagement to address vulnerabilities in the economic system,” the authors of the report titled “US/Canada Joint Drug and Money Laundering Task Force” said. 

The key pillars of the joint strategy align with Trump’s national emergency under IEEPA to secure both northern and southern borders and stop the flow of illegal aliens and fentanyl.

Here’s more color on the strategy: 

Developing a comprehensive strategy to combat the CRINKS Alliance—China, Iran, Russia, North Korea—along with Mexican and Colombian drug cartels and terrorist proxy groups operating within the United States and Canada is an urgent necessity. This policy document focuses on disrupting the financial backbone—better known as the illicit trade and financial ecosystem—that fuels their operations.

No single country can tackle this threat alone, yet Canada has failed to step up. Through political indifference and ambivalence, these criminal and state-backed networks have deeply embedded themselves within Canadian civil society. While the United States faces its own challenges, bipartisan efforts in Congress have made strides in isolating and targeting these threats. President Biden has signaled that this is a national security priority. In contrast, Canada’s political leadership has maintained a laissez-faire approach, neglecting the threats emanating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and other hostile actors for over three decades.

Both of Canada’s main political parties have exploited diaspora communities for electoral gains while ignoring the presence of malign actors within these groups—individuals who advance the interests of foreign states engaged in an escalating hybrid war against the West. As a result, Canada has become a safe haven for espionage, human smuggling, and organized crime.

When scrutiny is applied to individuals within Chinese Canadian or immigrant communities who engage in espionage, influence operations, or criminal activity, Beijing’s “magic weapon” of disinformation is deployed. The CCP and its allies swiftly label any investigation or reporting as “anti-Asian hate” or “racism,” a narrative that the media have amplified to stifle legitimate concerns about Beijing’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) and its ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Ministry of State Security (MSS).

Let’s rewind to April 2024, when we covered the House Select Committee on China that revealed the Chinese Communist Party used tax rebates to subsidize the manufacturing and exporting of fentanyl chemicals to North America. 

The report stated, “Through subsidies, grants, and other incentives, the PRC harms Americans while enriching PRC companies.” 

Recall this report in August: Chinese Narcos In Toronto Run “Command & Control” Fentanyl Laundering Network Used In TD Bank Case: US Investigator

Chinese Narcos In Toronto Run “Command & Control” Fentanyl Laundering Network Used In TD Bank Case: US Investigator https://t.co/X82NgBTohs

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 31, 2024

A coordinated North American strategy is essential to dismantling the command-and-control centers of these transnational organized crime networks that have fueled the drug death crisis in America, killing 100,000 folks (many working-age or military-age men and women) per year. This is hybrid warfare by Beijing – and folks have to start asking why progressive leadership allowed this to happen.

The United States seized 43 pounds of Fentanyl at the Canadian border last year alone. That’s enough Fentanyl to KILL 9,700,000 Americans…and that’s what we caught. Imagine what got through…and Trudeau is upset about tariffs? Mexico and Canada KNOW DAMN WELL what to do. pic.twitter.com/msShpAuiEN

— 🇺🇸 Kyle Bass 🇹🇼 (@Jkylebass) February 3, 2025

Whether far-left progressive Trudeau concedes to Trump’s tariffs and works with the US to address the drug epidemic remains to be seen. Mexico appears to have joined Trump.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Is the Fed playing politics? Does the Fed know what it’s doing at all?

Fedthink!

Today I coined a new word, Fedthink. I hope it catches on.

Here are some reader thoughts and my comments on them from a recent post.

Regarding Fedthink

Reader: Sometimes I wonder if people like Mish really think that the Fed plays it straight in times like this, versus telling us what is ostensibly the straight dope while they are actually playing some complex metagame.

Mish: I have commented on this before. The Fed believes the nonsense they preach on 2% inflation, inflation expectations, the Phillips curve and other economic nonsense that amusingly even the Fed’s own studies prove wrong.

There is no diversity in thought at the Fed. You get in the position of Fed Governor or President by thinking the same way as the rest of the members.

People confuse diversity with race and sex. True diversity is in thought. But there is no diversity of thought at the Fed. They have all been trained to be ignorant. And you do not get into the group unless you believe the same things.

This we call Fedthink.

Regarding Debasement

Mish: [Regarding why gold was $43 per ounce when Nixon killed gold convertibility, and is over $2,800 now.] “What’s changed is persistent Fed and government-sponsored inflation.”

Reader’s Accurate Assessment: Or to put it another way, it’s currency debasement. The dollar is not sound, it is a sliver of a fraction of itself from early last century, but has held its position relative to other currencies.

Regarding Platinum

Reader: Platinum, which is much scarcer than Gold, hasn’t budged in price in 5 years. It remains around $1000 per oz. Based on the gold price it should be something like 30-40K an oz.

Mish: Platinum is nearly 100% an industrial commodity and has to compete with palladium. Also the primary industrial use is in catalytic converters of which there is no need in EVs. Gold’s primary use is as a monetary metal.

Regarding Jewelry

Reader: 50% of gold is used for jewelry.

Mish: Nearly 100% of gold ever mined is still in existence. Yearly production is miniscule. The supply of gold is 100% of gold ever mined minus what is lost at sea, buried and forgotten, on in valuable art pieces in museums. Of the rest nearly all in bars. You confuse the supply of gold with annual production, a major error.

I looked this up and there is more gold in jewelry than I thought but less than my reader thought.

USGS says there are about 244,000 metric tons of gold of which 57,000 metric tons are in underground reserves. 92,000 tons of gold are currently used in jewelry according to the World Gold Conference. That’s about 37.7 percent is in jewelry, much higher than I expected, but still consider a monetary use.

Finally, I have no idea how much of that jewelry is in priceless museum pieces, not for sale, and not really part of overall supply of gold. The same applies to old gold coins that are worth much more than their weight in gold. So 37.7 percent is in practice overstated.

Regarding Bitcoin

The supply of Bitcoin is every Bitcoin ever mined minus lost keys.

Many Bitcoin advocates confuse halving (the rate of increase in supply of Bitcoin) with actual supply. Bitcoin is not getting scarcer over time.

Regarding Short Term Interest Rates

Many readers said the market, not the Fed, sets interest rates.

If that was true, then the Fed would be irrelevant and could not wreak the havoc that it has.

I discussed this paradox at length several times previously. But let’s go back to my original post.

The Fed Uncertainty Principle

Please consider The Fed Uncertainty Principle written April 3, 2008 before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Does the Fed Follows the Market?

Most think the Fed follows market expectations.

However, this creates what would appear at first glance to be a major paradox: If the Fed is simply following market expectations, can the Fed be to blame for the consequences? More pointedly, why isn’t the market to blame if the Fed is simply following market expectations?

This is a very interesting theoretical question. While it’s true the Fed typically only does what is expected, those expectations become distorted over time by observations of Fed actions.

If market participants expect the Fed to cut rates when economic stress occurs, they will take positions based on those expectations. These expectation cycles can be self-reinforcing.

The Observer Affects The Observed

The Fed, in conjunction with all the players watching the Fed, distorts the economic picture. I liken this to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle where observation of a subatomic particle changes the ability to measure it accurately.

The Fed, by its very existence, alters the economic horizon. Compounding the problem are all the eyes on the Fed attempting to game the system.

A good example of this is the 1% Fed Funds Rate in 2003-2004. It is highly doubtful the market on its own accord would have reduced interest rates to 1% or held them there for long if it did.

What happened in 2002-2004 was an observer/participant feedback loop that continued even after the recession had ended. The Fed held rates rates too low too long. This spawned the biggest housing bubble in history. The Greenspan Fed compounded the problem by endorsing derivatives and ARMs at the worst possible moment.

In a free market it would be highly unlikely to get a yield curve that is as steep as the one in 2003 or as steep as it was just weeks ago when short term treasuries traded down to .21%.

The Fed has so distorted the economic picture by its very existence that it is fatally flawed logic to suggest the Fed is simply following the market therefore the market is to blame. There would not be a Fed in a free market, and by implication there would be no observer/participant feedback loop.

In my post, I provided four key corollaries with discussion. Here is a short synopsis condensed from the full post.

Fed Uncertainty Principle: The fed, by its very existence, has completely distorted the market via self-reinforcing observer/participant feedback loops. Thus, it is fatally flawed logic to suggest the Fed is simply following the market, therefore the market is to blame for the Fed’s actions. There would not be a Fed in a free market, and by implication, there would not be observer/participant feedback loops either.

Corollary Number One: The Fed has no idea where interest rates should be. Only a free market does. The Fed will be disingenuous about what it knows (nothing of use) and doesn’t know (much more than it wants to admit), particularly in times of economic stress.

Corollary Number Two: The government/quasi-government body most responsible for creating this mess (the Fed), will attempt a big power grab, purportedly to fix whatever problems it creates. The bigger the mess it creates, the more power it will attempt to grab. Over time this leads to dangerously concentrated power into the hands of those who have already proven they do not know what they are doing.

Corollary Number Three: Don’t expect the Fed to learn from past mistakes. Instead, expect the Fed to repeat them with bigger and bigger doses of exactly what created the initial problem.

Corollary Number Four: The Fed simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed is operating under the principle that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.

The Fed Uncertainty Principle is still my all-time favorite post.

Asinine Proposition on Low Inflation

Please recall this Asinine Fed Proposition on Inflation by Rudy Havenstein: “It would take a decade of above 2.5 percent inflation to make up for 5 years of shortfall“

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen said her only regret was “low inflation”

As you can see by that excellent composition, Fedthink on too low inflation was widely believed and practiced.

The Fed wanted more inflation, got it in spades, and never apologized for its role.

Fed Studies Debunk the Phillips Curve

• Fed Study Shows Phillips Curve Is Useless
• Yet Another Fed Study Concludes Phillips Curve is Nonsense.

Both studies were done by Fed research staffers.

Yet, Fed Chairs Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell did not believe the Fed’s own studies.

in March of 2017, then Fed Chair Janet Yellen commented the “Phillips Curve is Alive“.

A Fed Economist Concludes the Widely Believed Inflations Expectations Theory is Nonsense

On October 21, 2021 I commented  A Fed Economist Concludes the Widely Believed Inflations Expectations Theory is Nonsense.

The research department had these two amusing quotes in its report.

• It is far, far better and much safer to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. John Kenneth Galbraith (1958).
• Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

May 2, 2024: Home Prices Hit New Record High, Don’t Worry, It’s Not Inflation

The Case-Shiller national home price index hit a new high in February. That’s the latest data. Economists don’t count this as inflation.

December 24, 2024: Dear Fed, Please Shut Up Already, Stop the Forward Guidance

Danielle DiMartino Booth claims the Fed should be cutting more, not less. I have a different suggestion.

Since the Fed has no idea, it should stop forward guidance that the market front runs thereby amplifying the feedback looks discussed above.

More accurately, there should not be a Fed at all. It’s proven clueless.

May 1, 2023: The Fed Admits a Mistake in Collapse of SVB, Seeks More Power Anyway

If I am not mistaken, that is a perfect example of Fed Uncertainty Corollary Number 2, Number 3, and Number 4.

Gold Hits New Record High, Dear Jerome Powell, Is Everything Under Control?

This post was triggered by reader responses to Gold Hits New Record High, Dear Jerome Powell, Is Everything Under Control?

Gold does not believe the Fed has things under control and neither do I.

Today’s Pertinent Conclusion

We are trapped in “Fedthink”, especially the nonsensical proposition that two percent inflation is a good thing despite the fact that the Fed is clueless on how to measure inflation in the first place.