RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-press-conference-dc-home-rule-crime-national-guard

In a Monday morning press conference, President Donald Trump announced new, decisive action to quell crime and violence in the District of Columbia. Flanked by Cabinet officials, the president indicated that he will not only deploy National Guardsmen to the city but also temporarily federalize the D.C. police department (MPD) under an obscure provision of the District’s home rule law.

Trump’s moves follow an assault last week on 19-year-old Edward Coristine, a Department of Government Efficiency software engineer, who was allegedly beaten by a group of 15-year-old assailants during an attempted carjacking. President Trump blamed the attack on soft-on-crime policies and suggested that he is considering reasserting direct federal control over the nation’s capital city. Congressional Republicans, who see the District as a convenient punching bag, eagerly voiced support for more aggressive action, including ending D.C.’s “home rule.”

Ending home rule is both unlikely and probably imprudent. But Congress and the president have many options to consider short of its revocation. From hiring more police officers to appointing a “control board” to run the criminal justice system, history and law present several levers that the Trump administration should consider pulling to improve residents’ lives.

For most of American history, Congress exercised its constitutional prerogative to govern D.C. through standing committees dedicated to overseeing its affairs. In 1871, Congress inaugurated an experiment in home rule but repealed it three years later amid financial mismanagement. Congress then established a three-member commission government, all of whom were appointed by the president. President Lyndon B. Johnson later replaced that commission with a nine-member council and a single commissioner, all appointed by the White House. Finally, in 1973, Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, delegating its authority to today’s local government.

This home-rule arrangement grants Congress and the president significant federal oversight powers that, until now, have gone largely unused. Some of these reflect Congress’s final lawmaking authority over the District—such as Congress’s right to review and veto laws passed by the D.C. Council and to approve the budget through annual appropriations legislation.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/12/just-how-bad-is-the-bls-at-its-job-the-answer-will-shock-you/

Yesterday, President Donald Trump nominated a high-profile critic of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EJ Antoni, to be its new commissioner, promising on Truth Social that under his leadership “the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.”

If confirmed, Antoni, currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, has his work cut out for him.

Last week, we pointed out glaring mistakes the Bureau of Labor Statistics had made in recent years and asked whether its foul-ups were driven by politics or ineptitude.

The issue came to a head after President Donald Trump fired the head of the BLS in the wake of its massive revisions to the two previous months jobs reports, in which it admitted to overcounting the number of jobs created by more than 250,000. Trump responded by saying the numbers were rigged.

The press, naturally, rushed to defend the bureaucrats, saying that revisions are normal and there’s nothing to get worked up about. The BLS routinely revises its initial monthly jobs estimate – based on a survey of 100,000 employers – over the next two months as more data come in. No biggie.

Is that true? We decided to find out and reviewed the BLS’s monthly jobs data going back to 2009. What we found was deeply troubling.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/11/whistleblower-ties-clinton-campaign-to-fake-russia-hack/

A whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign efforts to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them.

According to the report, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who investigated alleged Russian attempts to breach state voting systems during the 2016 election suspected the breaches may have been “related to activities” of the computer contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax, who were accused of manipulating Internet traffic data.

In that well-publicized case, a Clinton campaign lawyer worked with federal computer contractors and the FBI to create suspicions that Russia was communicating with Donald Trump through a secret server shared by Alfa Bank of Russia and Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The anonymous whistleblower – who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2020 – told Special Counsel John Durham he stumbled onto “enigmatic” data while leading the investigation of alleged Russian cyber activity for the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He said that his discovery took place in December 2016 when President Obama ordered the ICA.

After examining state-reported breaches of election networks, the whistleblower said, “It seemed only brief interaction was occurring – in some cases, no unauthorized access, or even attempted access, was detected on ‘victim’ systems.” Though the suspicious activity initially was attributed to Russian actors, further analysis raised doubts.

But when he brought his findings to his boss, ODNI’s national intelligence officer for cyber issues, he was ordered to stop investigating and not include his findings in the final ICA draft.

“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyber activity for the ICA, I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the whistleblower analyst said.

He added that his boss, whose name was blacked out in the whistleblower statement, “directed me to abandon analysis of these events, stating reports of Russia-attributed cyber activity were ‘something else.’”

While the names of the whistleblower and his boss are blacked out in the report, a RealClearInvestigations search of federal records shows Vinh Nguyen was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues at the time. The whistleblower would have been Nguyen’s deputy.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/11/voters-back-investigation-of-obama-white-house-role-in-russiagate-scandal-ii-tipp-poll/

Amid new revelations, spurious Russia collusion charges against President Trump have become both a major scandal and a grand jury investigation. Do voters want top spies in former President Obama’s administration investigated? Yes, the I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The national online poll was conducted from July 30-Aug. 1, with 1,362 adults taking part. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.7 percentage points. I&I/TIPP asked a total of five questions about what has been called “the dirtiest political trick in history,” and worse.

The first question asked: “Do you believe the Obama administration deliberately fabricated the Trump–Russia collusion narrative to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency?”

Among all who answered, 38% said “yes,” while 40% said “no,” a statistical toss-up given the margin of error. Meanwhile another 22% said “not sure,” which means they harbor some suspicions that the statement is true, just not enough yet to believe it.

The political affiliation breakdown is enlightening. Among Democrats, 16% answered yes, and an even-larger portion responded “not sure” to the question. So a third of all Democrats believe there’s at least something to the charges. That leaves only 65% of Dems answering no, they didn’t believe the Obama White House made the scandal.

Not a big vote of confidence from Obama’s own party.

Republicans, perhaps predictably, answered 66% yes, to 16% no, and 16% not sure, while independent voters were 27% yes, 40% no, but a sizable 33% not sure.

Among independents, just 27% said yes while 40% said no and a sizable 33% were not sure.\

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/10/why-derek-chauvin-will-languish-in-prison-regardless-of-the-facts/

I missed Rachel K. Paulose’s column about George Floyd—sorry, Saint George Floyd—when it appeared in The Spectator World at the end of May. Knowing of my interest in the case, a public-spirited individual brought the column to my attention. I thought it was an appalling regurgitation of the established, but erroneous, narrative about the larcenous, drug-and-woman-abusing miscreant George Floyd and the former police officer primarily involved in his arrest.

Paulose is worried that President Trump might pardon Derek Chauvin, the former policeman who is now rotting away in prison for a long list of federal and state crimes, including multiple counts of murder, manslaughter, and “civil rights deprivation.”

Paulose pretends to be concerned about Donald Trump’s legacy among blacks. He has made such impressive inroads with black voters, she notes. Pity to throw it all away by pardoning someone like Derek Chauvin, a brute who all the world knows callously murdered the noble George Floyd in cold blood by kneeling on his neck and depriving him of oxygen. “President Trump,” she writes, “should respect the verdict of the people and protect his own legacy by rejecting the ignoble calls to absolve the fired officer of his guilt.”

Paulose notes with satisfaction that Trump’s pardon power extends only to federal crimes. To be released from prison, Chauvin would also need to secure a pardon or commutation from the governor of Minnesota. Yes, the governor’s office is overdue for a serious upgrade. Currently, however, the position is held by the great hunter and dispenser of feminine hygiene products in boys’ bathrooms, Tim “Nimrod” Walz. The contingency of Walz granting Chauvin a pardon is, as Jeeves might put it, remote.

I wonder whether Derek Chauvin ran over Paulose’s bicycle when she was a little girl? In her column, she hauls out gigantic hairballs of evidence from Chauvin’s trial to remind readers of what a despicable chap he is. Her most prized evidence comes from Dr. Martin J. Tobin, “an internationally renowned doctor, pulmonologist, and academic” (well then!) who testified that “the cause of Floyd’s death was the position in which Chauvin detained him.” “A healthy person subjected to what Mr. Floyd was subjected to,” quotes Dr. Tobin, “would have died.”

Case closed? Not quite. As I noted in The Spectator in 2021,

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/08/08/doj-launches-explosive-grand-jury-investigation-targeting-letitia-james-n4942521

For years, New York Attorney General Letitia James has fancied herself as the scourge of Donald Trump, chasing him with a vengeance to fulfill her campaign promise of getting Trump at any cost. Now, in a stunning turn of events, the Department of Justice has launched a grand jury investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James over her sham civil fraud case against Donald Trump. The partisan hit job that scored James a bloated $454 million judgment against Trump is now facing the heat of federal scrutiny, and the tables may finally be turning.

Beyond the baseless 2022 civil fraud charges she leveled against him, James has been a key player in mounting legal attacks on the current administration’s executive actions. This isn’t about impartial justice; it’s political warfare by another name.

And now James herself is being targeted by federal prosecutors. 

Fox News Digital has the story:

The investigation is being run out of Albany, New York, and focused on possible deprivation of rights allegations, two well-placed sources familiar with the probe told Fox News Digital. 

The investigation is in an early stage, but Fox News Digital has learned that James’s office received subpoenas for documents this week, including for information related to her civil fraud lawsuit against Trump. 

James, a Democrat who was elected attorney general in 2018, has long been a target of Trump. James successfully brought civil charges against him for business fraud in 2022 and has had an instrumental role in challenging his current administration’s executive actions in court. [Fox News Digital]

What we’re seeing play out is the raw, ugly reality of Democrats weaponizing justice in America. James, who made her name by trying to destroy Trump’s business empire, now finds herself the target of federal subpoenas as the DOJ asks tough questions about her own conduct. 

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/09/thanks-obama/

Someday, when today’s young Americans look back in anger at what their country has become—and believe me, they will be angry—they will have their pick of culprits to blame for the sad state of affairs. If there is any justice in the universe, however, they will focus their resentment and frustration on one man: Barack Obama. Although the United States (and the West more generally) had been drifting toward collapse for decades, Obama’s efforts to “fundamentally transform” the nation were, in retrospect, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Now, to be clear, I’m not referring here to something as small and meaningless as policy, foreign or domestic. As Presidents Trump and Biden amply demonstrated, policy can be changed and then changed back again, over and over and over. To be sure, the effects of these changes may be deleterious, and they may create substantively different outcomes than would have occurred otherwise. For the most part, however, the effects of policy changes are limited and, if corrected, temporary. Obama, for example, may have thrown the entire Middle East into flux and threatened the very future of the planet with his policy of appeasing the Mullahs of Iran, but Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, between them, undid most of that damage and returned the region to its pre-Obama status quo.

And nor am I referring to Obama’s inarguable and inarguably troubling role in the scheme to undermine Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign (and, eventually, his presidency) by painting him as an agent of Russian influence. Russia-gate is ugly and treacherous, and a significant number of players—perhaps including Obama—should be held to account for what they did and how they manipulated the nation’s intelligence apparatus to serve partisan political ends. Some of them—perhaps including Obama—deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. This “scandal” is far more serious and far more perfidious than any other in American history—save, perhaps, the scandal of saddling the American people with an incoherent and incompetent president for a full four years, while others, still to be named, ran the country surreptitiously.

Nevertheless, Obama’s true offense is even more damning still.

As I have argued in these pages and elsewhere, none of the people who deserve to go to jail for the crimes involved in the scandals noted above will ever actually do so.