The Automatic Earth

Egon Schiele Port of Trieste 1907

Legacy media REFUSED to show you a SINGLE SECOND of President Trump's speech and historic state dinner with Xi Jinping tonight at the White House

So here's the ENTIRE thing, from start to finish, with translations for Xi's speech

DO NOT LET LEGACY MEDIA KEEP YOU IN THE DARK pic.twitter.com/jW6KZAFAnL

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 25, 2026

SpaceX and Tesla will win because they will own the most compute

xAI will beat Anthropic and OpenAI because they will acquire the most compute

Tesla Optimus will win because they will have more compute than Figure and Chinese competitors

Cybercab and Robotaxis will win… https://t.co/3vT6Ny3sz6 pic.twitter.com/dVlFW5kXSj

— Kyle Reidhead | Milk Road (@KyleReidhead) September 24, 2026

When you vote this November, understand you’re voting for our constitutional republic based on American values and a functioning rule of law (despite the challenges we still face in parts of our federal government).

If you don’t vote for those American values, we will eventually… https://t.co/rSUbuka3zK

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) September 24, 2026

“..Likely To Renew Bombing After Midterms..”

• Trump Rejects Iran’s 7-Day Ceasefire Proposal (ZH)

Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by December 31?

That was fast–huge late Friday night bombshell via The Wall Street Journal: President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said. Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.

But privately Trump is skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said. Where do we go from here? So much for oil prices being artificially kept down, as the entire Friday drop is set to be erased. Trump is reportedly expected to resume bombing Iran after the midterm elections, WSJ says. OR, is this a classic Trump ‘tough’ negotiating ploy? The hardliners in the IRGC are unlikely to play ball.

The Friday Afternoon Denial
Via state media Fars: “Axios and Al Jazeera’s claim about Iran-US talks denied, reports Fars; News regarding another round of talks is false, and claims technical experts from Iran were sent to NY to join the talks, is untrue.” This was either the result of more premature or false Axios reporting, or else there’s a possible in strategy divergence between IRGC vs. presidential delegation in New York. More from Fars: “IRGC Spokesperson says we will not stop punishing the US until Iran’s seven conditions are met; our missiles are capable of destroying America’s multi-layered defenses, Fars reports.”

‘Technical Talks’
Are we back to headline ping-pong pushing down oil prices? Latest: Iran-US negotiations in New York have moved beyond initial diplomatic contacts into a more detailed technical phase, with sources in Tehran describing the atmosphere as increasingly positive, CBS reports, citing Al Jazeera. And an official Iranian caution, or possibly even brush off, in reaction… Tehran signaling it intends to stick by its original conditions: Senior Iranian official says Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, no nuclear talks with US until Iran’s conditions are met, Reuters reports, citing sources; Iran will make no concessions on its nuclear program

AJ: A US official told Al Jazeera says Washington is in a strong position and controls the Strait of Hormuz, therefore we are not in a hurry to reach an agreement with Iran For a rehash of what’s played out over the last 24 hours on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting:

• Iran’s proposed seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US drops its blockade is being discussed as an accelerated version of a previously discussed 60-day process, and would include urgent measures to get both countries back into direct negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.
• The key Iranian demands under discussion include sanctions relief, the lifting of restrictions on oil exports and access to frozen Iranian funds.
• The two sides also continue to discuss arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz, including whether Iran and Oman could return to a form of joint management under an agreed framework involving regional countries and the United States, as well as arrangements governing the passage of US vessels.
• Despite the outstanding issues, sources in Tehran characterised the negotiations as making some progress, with talks continuing and Qatar working to bridge differences between the two sides.

Also, President Trump has just said he discussed the Iran conflict with China’s Xi.

“The country looks pathetic because too many of its men became pathetic first and then demanded the rest of us treat the collapse as a moral achievement.” —LHGrey on Substack

• The Deluge (James Howard Kunstler)

An abiding mystery of this lunatic Fourth Turning is how it came to be that the supposed intellectual elite of America was the class that so shamelessly lost its collective mind, got behind ideas that ranged from absurd to disgraceful — “Defund the Police,” “boys in the girl’s locker room,” “voter ID is unfair,” “dismantle capitalism,” “no one is illegal,” “mostly peaceful riots,” “Covid vaccine mandates” “CIA-run censorship,” — and finally decided to march under the banner of communism, history’s most floridly ruinous political program.

The answer is that intellectuals are in the employ of the racketeering operation that is Washington’s permanent bureaucracy married to the Democratic Party’s laundering of taxpayer dollars into all the parasitical enterprises that this combine feeds. And the more the money-flows get cut, the more the intellectuals fear losing their fat salaries and their status. In desperation, they are now trying to just burn the USA house down.

At least you don’t hear “Slava Ukraini,” anymore, since it’s so far beyond obvious that the EU has been using that sad-sack place as a launching pad for World War III, and evidently even “progressives” have decided that’s not such a hot idea. (The EU’s elites might even be crazier than America’s.)

History, I remind you, is a trickster. It’s also a cardinal irony of the times that this Fourth Turning’s “Gray Champion” role fell to one Donald Trump. He is at once cartoonish in speech, appearance, and predilections while being stunningly effective, indefatigable, and intrepid in his job as president. His mere presence on the scene drives his opponents to fugues of rancor. Their failure to eliminate him by either bullets or the most fantastically fallacious lawfare has led their favored political party to a frank break with reality, possibly close to suicide.

There was a silver lining to the ludicrous election shenanigans of 2020 that stuffed “Joe Biden” in the White House and marooned Mr. Trump out in the political wilderness. After being naively buffaloed by his Deep State enemies in Term No. 1, he got a great opportunity to stand back and see exactly how they operated with their hands on the levers of power, and then to map out the money-driven matrix of nefarious orgs that nourished these enemies. And even while getting dragged through the courts in one bogus case after another, and dodging bullets, Mr. Trump was able to lay coherent big plans to defeat these enemies.

Reality becomes ever harder to discern for a creature (the human being) who depends on a consensus about what’s real as driven by language, the engine of agreement. When you wreck language, you make agreement impossible, and reality turns to a gray ooze. The Lefty-leftists changed-up language like crazy until every word, every idea attached to every word, became the opposite of what everyone thought it was. The strategy backfired badly, because it was the Lefties who thereby destroyed their own reality, making themselves crazy as well as ridiculous. Imagine a Supreme Court nominee, a female, as it happens, who claims under oath that she can’t define what a woman is.

The Lefties who fell for this were trained up exquisitely by their own Leftie mentors in the universities, who were all in on Saul Alinsky’s depraved Bible of political dirty-fighting, Rules for Radicals, the number-one rule being: accuse your opponents of doing whatever you are doing. It helped their cause a lot that women were overtaking men demographically in higher ed and in the management jobs they segued into after college. Women, being smaller and not as physically strong as men, are more inclined to dirty fighting. That has been the sad recent history of the Democratic Party, and now it’s floundering in a netherworld of mental illness.

It was in the nature of conservatives to resist all the attempts at the language changes foisted on the country. They generally did not believe that men could become women by wishing it, or that the “diversity” provided by 20-million illegal immigrants was “our strength,” or that mothers had to be called “birthing people.” Their consensus about reality was not fractured.

The once-powerful elite can’t stand not having power. They still have plenty of money, but they probably want to keep what’s left of it, and now that all the laundering of taxpayer money through NGOs is ending, it will be ever harder to finance their power-grabbing with other people’s money. The midterms are more of a challenge for them than their official information channels let on, and the Woke slop on the Internet isn’t helping much either.

Apart from some traumatic “October surprise,” I now think it’s unlikely that the president will invoke a national security executive order to require anything like uniform voter ID across the country. Instead, it looks like several executive agencies will monitor activities at and around the polling places. Sec’y MarkWayne Mullin of the Department of Homeland Security stated that ICE agents could be present at polls. Lawsuits have been filed seeking to block that. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon declared that the DOJ intends to send 1000 lawyers and trained legal staff to select districts. The DOJ has also warned state and county election officials that fooling around with ballots will trigger a hard finding out this time.

If there’s trouble this year, it’s more likely to happen after the election, when Democrats refuse to accept the results. Lawfare ninjas Marc Elias and Norm Eisen will swing into overdrive attempting to paralyze the nation in post-election lawsuits. As for riots, the NGOs know that the FBI is watching their remaining money flows to outfits such as Antifa, or whatever remains of Black Lives Matter, or MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), or groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. Billionaires like Neville Roy Singham are reportedly getting the heebie-jeebies. Soros will fork over around $30-million in cash to candidates, but I doubt he’ll sponsor any street-fighting. He and his successor son, Alex, are already skating on thin ice.

Anyway, the intellectual elite have thoroughly disgraced themselves. The still-unfolding Covid-19 aftermath sets off a slow-motion train-wreck of disgraced experts, one after another. The spectacle of Dr. Fauci taking the 5th last month is not the end of that business. Almost certainly there will not be any indictments of the many Deep State traitors before November 3 — the president does not aim to be accused of election interference. But after the midterms, the deluge.

I’ll be speaking at the Prospects for American Renewal Summit in Bozeman, Montana, November 13, 14. The theme of the meeting is: What has America lost? What remains worth preserving? And what must be rebuilt if a healthy common life is to endure?

Good story. totally wrong headline.

• Trump Made Democrats Look Stupid Again (Matt Margolis)

When President Donald Trump announced a new helipad for the White House South Lawn, Democrats lined up to trash it as another monument to his ego.Boy, do they look stupid now.Trump announced the project earlier this year. The helipad, with an estimated price tag of $5 million to $6 million, would serve the new fleet of more powerful presidential helicopters. According to Trump, those aircraft generate so much force on landing that they’ve been chewing up the lawn.

He added that the pad could also host other White House events and press conferences. And what made it even better was that Sikorsky, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary that has built Marine One helicopters for decades, footed the bill. “They didn’t tell us how powerful these helicopters were and they felt a little bit guilty,” Trump said. None of that slowed down the outrage machine. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called the project a “joke.”

“Trump has refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill that would lower costs for working Americans, build more housing, and stop private equity from buying up homes. But he’s laser-focused on building a new helipad,” she said. DNC Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer piled on, calling the helipad one of Trump’s “endless vanity projects.” A vanity project? Not even close. In fact, the Washington Post reported that multiple administrations had considered building this exact helipad, because the new VH-92A Marine One helicopters could scorch the White House lawn.

Trump didn’t dream up the problem. He solved it. And guess who put those lawn-torching helicopters into service? Joe Biden. The VH-92A fleet entered service in 2024, and Biden took the first flight aboard the Sikorsky-built aircraft. That same year, the military announced that Sikorsky had delivered the last of 23 helicopters and touted the fleet’s “increased performance and reduced maintenance costs” compared with older models.

Democrats spent the summer blaming Trump for fixing a mess that Biden’s shiny new helicopters created. Sound familiar? The funniest part came from Connecticut, where Sikorsky happens to be based. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) released a joint statement that tried to have it both ways. They opened by gushing over their home-state employer.

“The men and women of Sikorsky produce the world’s finest helicopters, and their top-notch craftsmanship and innovation deserve to be celebrated,” the group wrote. “The issue of Marine One engine exhaust burning the White House South Lawn goes back years and must be addressed to bring Sikorsky’s next-generation Marine One helicopters into service.” So they admitted that the problem was real, had lingered for years, and needed fixing. Then they turned around and attacked the guy who fixed it.

“But once again, President Trump is rushing to complete yet another White House project without providing the American people with the transparency they deserve. It’s a slap in the face to workers who’ll have to work overtime and the taxpayers who may end up footing the bill,” the statement continued. Taxpayers who “may” foot the bill? Sikorsky covered the $5 million. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson told Time that “this specific contribution was made to the National Park Service,” adding, “Our engagement with the federal government is guided by rigorous ethics and compliance standards and conducted in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

The helipad had its ribbon-cutting earlier this week, and I don’t care who you are; it looks beautiful.

.@POTUS boards Marine One for the first time on the new helipad https://t.co/pW82yejM8h pic.twitter.com/8QbSohtMVN

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 21, 2026

You gotta admit, the new helipad looks awesome. pic.twitter.com/uYc1jPHX4d

— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) September 21, 2026

It was also obviously necessary, just like the White House ballroom project was necessary and even wanted by previous administrations. Democrats chose knee-jerk opposition anyway, because opposing Trump is the only move they have left, even when he’s right.

“.. telling reporters that handing over the underlying technology was “a hard thing to give away..”

• Zelensky Claims ‘Final Decision’ Made To Let Ukraine Build Patriots (ZH)

Back in July President Trump strongly signaled that he was greenlighting the ability of Ukraine to produce its own patriot anti-air defense missiles. Trump declared in the context of a Turkey-hosted NATO summit that Washington would give Ukraine “the right to make Patriots” – after Zelensky had been relentless in his requests, framing it as urgent and for the protection of cities and civilians.

But since then there’s been denials and ambiguity surrounding the pledge. President Trump had at the time of the summer NATO summit admitted the risks involved, also while trying to press ahead to get the warring sides to the peace table, conceding, “It’s an escalation but it’s also an escalation that can help lead to an end [of the war].” On Friday while attending the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, Zelensky told journalists that the White House has made its ‘final decision’ to okay the Patriot production scheme.

The Ukrainian leader claimed: “At our last meeting, President Trump emphasized to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licenses for the production of Patriot missiles.” However, the White House has yet to affirm this, and hasn’t issued comment on Zelensky’s latest assertions. It seems premature, and a ploy to pressure Trump into agreeing. The Guardian reviews that Trump had publicly backed down from the Patriot plan by mid-summer:

Donald Trump has backed off a promise to let Ukraine manufacture its own Patriot air defense interceptors, telling reporters that handing over the underlying technology was “a hard thing to give away” during a cabinet meeting at Camp David. The retreat, billed by the White House as “something different” for the cabinet to experience together, was the first such meeting at the presidential compound of Trump’s second term. It also became the venue for the US president to unpick, in real time, a commitment he made to Volodymyr Zelenskyy just a few days earlier.

Asked whether he was ready to grant Kyiv a license to build Patriots domestically – something he had suggested at a Nato summit in Turkey just this month, and which the Ukrainian president described as a productive topic in their White House meeting on Tuesday – Trump was noncommittal. “We have not agreed to that,” Trump had said at the Camp David meeting, reversing course. “We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.” Trump had said that an interceptor can go “8,600 miles an hour” – and that “Nobody else has that capacity” – strongly suggesting that he’s averse to giving away such technology to a foreign ally.

Zelensky reveals the number of Patriot missiles fired during Iran War:

Just between us, PAC-3 missiles in the Middle East — the countries there have used about 800 or more missiles during these attacks.

Ukraine has never had that many missiles during all this time to repel… pic.twitter.com/WUz9E4hait

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 5, 2026

But now Zelensky is claiming that Trump has reversed once again on the issue. Again, there’s nothing at all indicating that this is what has come from the White House, in any official capacity.

“Don’t get cocky, though. This non-presidential election cycle will come down to pure partisanship and voter turnout. The party with the energy will win.”

• The Economy Won’t Win The Midterms For Democrats (Joseph Ford Cotto)

The economy will not determine how the midterms play out. Coming from me, that may surprise a few people. In 2024, I created the Five-Point Forecast. This model asserted that household economics would decide the race between President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Its five points were economic sentiment and inflation; jobs and growth as voters actually felt them; energy prices and consumer confidence; public judgment of Washington’s economic responsiveness; and the exact polling which had earned trust.

That forecast correctly called Trump’s national victory and every swing state. It worked because a presidential electorate still featured enough movable voters for prices, wages, fuel bills, and distrust of government spending to cut through old partisan habits. The midterms are a different animal.mPresidential years pull in a gargantuan slice of the country. Midterm years do not. Since 1980, reported turnout among voting-age citizens has averaged 63 percent in presidential elections, but only 48 percent in midterms.

A 15-point drop-off changes who shows up. The remaining voters are older, more settled, and far less willing to split tickets over a jobs report. They vote because they already pledge allegiance to their side. Verified records prove the process. Sixty-eight percent of 2020 presidential voters returned in 2022. Trump’s 2020 supporters turned out at 71 percent. President Joe Biden’s supporters turned out at 67 percent. Among people who voted in both 2018 and 2022, 95 percent of 2018 Republicans and 92 percent of 2018 Democrats stayed with the same party. Switching was barely a ripple.

That is why the Five-Point Forecast does not travel. In 2024, inflation’s peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022, the lag between official cooling and household pain, weak feelings about real wages (despite a 3.8-percent unemployment rate), energy costs that hammered confidence, and skepticism over Washington’s spending binge were the levers that decided a presidential ticket. Midterms strip those levers of their audience. The people left on the field are rarely desperate for economic miracles. They are vigorously defending their camp.

Polarization made that inevitable. Issue divisions in the United States have widened 64 percent since 1988, with nearly all of the jump after 2008. Clustering of more than 35,000 American National Election Studies responses shows the left became 31.5 percent more socially liberal on abortion, family, equality, health insurance, and racial questions. The right became only 2.8 percent more conservative. Each side stayed roughly equal in size.

The gap exploded because one side sprinted leftward. Mixed views that used to be common have thinned out. People now take cues about which opinions belong together and vote as blocs. Democrats own most of that radicalization. A party that moved more than 10 times as far as its rival on core social questions should not get to pose as the country’s moderate default. Therefore, in a midterm, most voters do not need a forecast of gasoline prices to choose red or blue. They need a reason to defend their tribe. History already killed the idea that the economy automatically writes the midterm script.

In 2018, the labor market was tight, economic growth had accelerated, and a major tax cut was in force. Republicans still lost about 30 House seats. Losses ran through low-unemployment districts, manufacturing-gain districts, districts with voters who disproportionately benefited from tax breaks, and affluent suburbs that had recovered fastest from the Great Recession’s aftereffects. Prosperity did not save GOP candidates. Blue base energy did its intended damage, and then some.

In 2022, the economics-are-king argument failed again. Inflation hit 40-year highs. Electricity and fuel costs were alleged political poison for Democrats. The blue team nonetheless posted the strongest midterm showing in two decades for an incumbent president’s party. Democrats held the Senate and won key governorships. Fiscal discontent was real. Yet, it did not kneecap the donkey, as analysts had expected. The blue faithful who showed up voted their side, regardless of green.

The out-party has a longtime structural tailwind. Since 1946, the president’s party has lost an average of 25 House seats in midterms. Presidents under 50-percent approval have seen losses near 37 seats. Only two modern presidents saw their party gain seats, and both had approval in the mid-60s. That penalty is real. The Five-Point Forecast cannot cook up some economic theory to override reality. The plain truth is that midterms traditionally punish the White House by galvanizing its opposition’s loyalists.

Polling, on the whole, will not provide the clarity that so many desperately seek as November nears.

Republicans now answer surveys at lower rates than Democrats, even after ordinary demographic weighting. That partisan nonresponse helped miss Republican strength in 2016, 2020, and 2024. The 2026 primaries showed a rot that has grown by leaps and bounds since 2016, the drop-off point for polling reliability. In recent months, double-digit leads vanished, races deemed safe went the other way, and a pollster altered responses to its client’s favor.

One surveyor was revealed to be a complete sham. From the start, it was meant to test how fast and far fake polls could run. Its numbers dovetailed with those of “respectable” firms. They were all wrong in a key gubernatorial primary. That says something about the real-world value of “legacy brand” pollsters.

Therefore, treat most polling stats as arguments, not measurements. Needless to say, these arguments often, and increasingly, are not worth hearing.

These midterms are not one national referendum. They are hundreds of separate contests for the House, Senate, governorships, legislatures, and local offices. High polarization means fewer genuine swing voters. Closer results than the loudest, typically Democrat, voices expect are the rational baseline.

A party can create the noise, win the volume contest, and still lose a statewide race. Three suburban districts can outweigh a national talking point. A lazy county operation can blow a winnable legislative seat while a disciplined machine holds a tossup. “Prestigious” forecasters (who claimed Vice President Harris would defeat President Trump), well-paid consultants (who have blown their paymasters’ races), and social-media personalities (who cash in on doom-scrolling) shall not decide how the midterms go.

Americans should not twist November into a rerun of 2024. The Five-Point Forecast worked then because inflation scars, wage frustration, energy costs, and distrust of government overreach still reached enough movable voters to decide a presidential map. That movable middle barely exists now. The people who will decide this cycle have long since joined a tribe.

Motivation beats message-testing. Organization beats vibes. The party that treats its voters as optional will lose the elections that matter. I called 2024 when the data said economic pain would cut through. I will not boil 2026 down to the same five points. The midterms are fundamentally about turning a base out in the places where two or three points decide who writes the laws.

Election night will be close and stomach-churning. Count on that. The Five-Point Forecast called 2024 because prices still moved a nation. They will not move America in mere weeks. Midterms belong to tribes, not ledgers. Democrats sprinted left. The middle collapsed. Whichever party motivates enough of their own voters to the polling station will govern America’s future.

The stakes are sky-high. Whoever best understands this shall win.

“.. in July 2018, the Robert Mueller special counsel then did something that was unprecedented. The Mueller team released the Title-1 TSCI Carter Page FISA application to the public. Never before had anyone ever seen a Title-1 warrant released to the public.

This leak on March 17, 2017, is the thread that binds the entire Russiagate narrative together.

• Suggestion to Prosecute a ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy (CTH)

After writing the lengthy outline about the problem faced by Joseph diGenova, a Reagan-era former U.S. attorney and longtime Trump ally who served as counselor to Attorney General Todd Blanche and exited over strategic differences, several people provided feedback, generally expressing understanding and agreement. A few asked for suggestions.

Having looked at the challenges from every direction, and having a deep understanding of the complications within any prosecutorial effort on this highly complex ‘conspiracy’ case, I am going to outline my best advice. This is how you arrange the case.

In any successful endeavor like this, you need the hook. You need a central point of focus that brings the entire operation into a clearer view. Stories like this are not told in a linear fashion; you need a central point of focus and then you build out the storyline from there. So, what it that inflection? What is that moment that establishes the point from which everything else falls into place?

First, look at the requirements. The central event needs to encompass the foundational unlawful activity. The event needs to be clearly unlawful in nature and highlight the mindset that existed within each of the participants. The evidence must have a clear, distinct and actionable set of facts that can be directly proven beyond doubt.

The event needs to have been previously investigated, so that time is not wasted repeating a lengthy and exhaustive investigation around the fact pattern. The event needs a specific set of witnesses, who cannot escape being truthful about the preexisting irrefutable facts. And the event needs to highlight a conspiracy by every participant who cannot deflect their participation by claiming they were unaware of the intent of every action within the process.

Those are the predicate requirements that establish the value of the central point of focus. This is what makes a grand jury or criminal case jury have a consistent reference point. If this fact pattern is demonstrably true, then that action or outcome is incontrovertibly self-evident.

That moment I am describing is March 17, 2017, when the Top-Secret Compartmented Intelligence (TSCI) product, a Title-1 Surveillance Warrant, a FISA warrant, was unlawfully leaked to the media with a very specific intent. There is no statute of limitations on this event. It was unlawful when it took place and it is unlawful today.

The leaking of the March 17, 2017, Carter Page FISA warrant is the moment that establishes evidence of a larger conspiracy to manipulate the legal apparatus of the United States government and weaponize an effort to impede then remove a sitting U.S. President from office.

SUMMARY: FBI Washington Field Office Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan picked up the ‘read and return’ FISA warrant from the FISA Court and delivered it to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) on March 17, 2017, where he handed it to SSCI Security Director James Wolfe and awaited it for return. SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner then reviewed the warrant. James Wolfe then took 82 individual pictures of each page of the warrant, and sent the images via a Signal encrypted app to Buzzfeed journalist Ali Watkins.

After Ali Watkins wrote an article in early April 2017, using Wolfe and the FISA leak as her anonymous source, she became a target for investigation. Washington Field Office FBI Agent Brian Dugan investigated James Wolfe. FBI Agent Jeffrey Rambo investigated Ali Watkins.

The leak of the FISA warrant is not in question. The warrant was leaked by James Wolfe, and Wolfe was indicted for the event. However, this is where the conspiracy expands. Following Wolfe’s legal team informing Main Justice DAG Rod Rosenstein, and Washington DC U.S Attorney Jessie Liu, who was prosecuting the case, Wolfe’s defense would bring the senate intelligence committee into any trial, a decision was made to drop the classified leak charge and a deal reached to prosecute Wolfe for a single 18 U.S. Code § 1001 violation of lying to investigators.

The judge in the case was, wait for it, US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who is now a Supreme Court Justice. Nothing about these events is in doubt. There was an 8-month FBI investigation which culminated in an indictment assembled in Jan/Feb 2018, processed through a grand jury and sealed until June 2018 when it was unsealed and made public.

In reaction to the Wolfe indictment, within a month in July 2018, the Robert Mueller special counsel then did something that was unprecedented. The Mueller team released the Title-1 TSCI Carter Page FISA application to the public. Never before had anyone ever seen a Title-1 warrant released to the public.

This leak on March 17, 2017, is the thread that binds the entire Russiagate narrative together. Three days later on March 20, 2017, FBI Director James Comey appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and admitted for the first time publicly that President Trump was under an FBI investigation since July 31 of 2016.

James Comey could not explain why the Gang-of-Eight oversight had never been informed of the FBI investigation in the past 8 months. Instead, Comey arrogantly -albeit nervously- shrugged and said, “because of the sensitivity of the matter?”

If the Dems get in power, it’s the end of America.

• Kevin Roberts Makes the Case for Keeping Conservatives in Power (Malia Loock)

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts says Congress has delivered key policy wins during President Donald Trump’s second term on issues ranging from the economy to border security. Roberts joined cohost Larry O’Connor, on the latest episode of “The Kevin Roberts Show” to tout conservative legislative accomplishments, which could play a decisive role in Republicans’ quest to keep their congressional majority in the upcoming November midterms.

In particular, Roberts emphasized how well Congress has aligned with the Trump administration’s legislative agenda. “This Congress, this administration,” Roberts said, “are implementing exactly what they said they would in 2024.” Specifically, Roberts pointed to congressional approval of over 700 miles of border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, substantial immigration security personnel increases, and, most notably, the Laken Riley Act, which passed less than a month after its introduction.

“It puts real teeth into the enforcement,” Roberts said. “The kind of thing that ought to transcend so much our partisan politics, but there’s no doubt that if a Democrat Socialist of America Left comes into power in Congress, they’re going to work to chip away at it.” On the economy, Roberts said the greatest thing Congress did was pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, also known as the Working Families Tax Cuts Act “Had they not passed the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Roberts said, “there would have been a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people—the bulk of that would have gone to working-class and middle-class American families.”

The law renewed and permanently established Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as law, including a tax cut, a standard deduction for single and married couples, and a child tax credit. “That would not have happened were it not for, not just a conservative majority in Congress,” Roberts said, “but the most conservatives of the conservatives in Congress.” Roberts and O’Connor lauded House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for his role despite a narrow congressional majority—one of the smallest ever for a speaker to manage.

“The thing he has been emphasizing for the last few weeks,” Roberts said, “the contrast between, not just the aspirations of conservatives on Capitol Hill, but what they’ve actually done with what the Left wants to do.” Roberts warned that Democrats, if given power, would almost immediately undo all the progress advanced by conservatives. “All the economic benefits, that is going to go away,” Roberts said. “It is the economic policies of the Left that will arrest that trajectory [of growth] and actually reverse it.”

The best thing for America, Roberts said, would be even more conservative wins on the border and economy. “We want conservative policymakers in D.C.,” Roberts said. “It’s vital that we maximize the number who are so willing to fight on a good policy that they would take barbs, and slings and arrows from the press.” While recent polls and history suggesting the opposing party will make gains in this year’s midterm elections, Roberts painted his best-case scenario of the next few years should conservatives score an upset victory in November.

“What if we’ve got a decade to work on this, and grassroots activists and the American people are able to hold our politicians’ feet to the fire, including and especially those on our side?” Roberts proposed. “Man, this might just be the golden age of America.”

“Canadian Prime Minister Tells New York Times He’s Prepared Military Combat Operations Against USA, Plans Closer Ties with China, and Wants Alternate Global Reserve Currency to U.S. Dollar”

• Carney Saya He’s Prepared Military Combat Operations Against USA (CTH)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney left the United Nations General Assembly and went directly to the New York Times for a pre-scheduled interview with fellow leftist travelers intent on influencing the U.S midterm election. Carney having previously appointed Clinton/Obama Democratic operative Maia Johnson as his Chief Operating Officer within his office, obviously had one agenda in mind as he strolled into the Times office for his pre-planned operation.

Within the hour-long conversation, the Canadian Prime Minister had several key points of emphasis in his objective. The top-line hook to draw in the audience was his first statement about having prepared for military combat operations against the United States. Key points below:

(1) Carney developed contingency plans to use military combat operations against the United States. Yes, it is transparently obvious this is a political statement. His mentioning of this is meant to create the traditional leftist victimhood position used in all psychological operations. Carney follows this outlandish statement by saying these military plans are no longer needed because he now feels he has “a good relationship” with President Trump.

[…] “Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said that he had prepared over the past year for the “extreme tail risk” that President Trump might order military action against Canada but disclosed that the two men have spoken “frequently,” even since trade talks collapsed last month, describing a tense, evolving relationship.

Mr. Carney suggested that he had carefully examined the possibility of U.S.-led military action, but declined to discuss in detail what that involved. “I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” said Mr. Carney, a former central banker for Britain and Canada. … “That’s just risk management. That’s not a base case, but it would be irresponsible not to” prepare.”

(2) Carney outlines how he intends to build a closer economic relationship with China as a hedge against Canadian dependency on the United States. Given the statements made by Carney in Beijing, this does not come as a surprise; however, it is the expressed open intent to further attach Canada to China that should raise eyebrows.

“He talked about a focus on deepening economic — though not defense — relationships with China.”

Carney couched his Chinese intentions by saying he wanted closer relationships on all facets except military cooperation, as if that makes the proclamation less concerning. Given the pre-existing influence already achieved by China in Europe and the U.K, Carney’s statements are in alignment with his EU-centric vision for the Canadian people.

(3) Against the backdrop of Elon Musk refusing to permit Ukraine to use Starlink satellite capabilities to strike Russia, Carney now says the U.S. satellite communication system is not reliable, and he is seeking to use European and Korean satellites to build out his strategic defense initiatives.

“Starlink, we will diversify away from, no question,” Mr. Carney said, referring to the American-based cluster of communication satellites, run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, that have revolutionized the industry. He alluded to past disruptions and to Mr. Musk’s reluctance to provide Ukraine with data that would enable it to target parts of Crimea and Russia.

He acknowledged that other satellite network options are still less capable and resilient, but added that “from a defense perspective, and certainly pooled with other partners, Europeans, Koreans potentially, you get to scale and you cut that dependency.”

Obviously, the stenographers from the New York Times did not challenge Carney on how this position would align with NORAD or the enhanced golden dome security defenses recently proposed by President Trump. It would be uncomfortable for the ideological and intensely political Prime Minister to have to square that logic.

(4) The former Bank of England manager also repeated his intention to replace the U.S. Dollar with an alternative global reserve currency, indicating that China could be the replacement as soon as “proper liberalization of China’s currency and financial system” could be achieved.

Mr. Carney on Wednesday also reiterated his long-held view that a global financial system wholly dependent on the U.S. dollar was unsustainable. A move to a multipolar system in which there are several reserve currencies would “provide more flexibility,” he said. … any pivot would be limited until there was “proper liberalization” of China’s currency and financial system.

This outlook is in alignment with his handlers in Great Britain, specifically the banking interests in the City of London, who now view economic nationalism as a threat to financial globalism. President Trump’s position of sovereign national interests and respectful bilateral trade between nations runs counter to the multilateral mechanisms of globalist control.

This may be more serious than you think. Imagine them starting a project together.

• Dmitriev Discussing Potential Economic Cooperation With US — Kremlin (TASS)

Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian Presidential Special Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), is continuing contacts with US negotiators and focusing primarily on issues of potential economic cooperation, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “He [Dmitriev] is continuing his contacts with American negotiators and remains focused on issues of potential economic cooperation, which is currently absent. Yet there is an understanding that it could be mutually beneficial. Such discussions regarding possibilities are taking place,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“..In an Age of Tribalism, ..”

“Why Bill Maher’s Apology Matters More Than You Think..”

• Bill Maher Just Did Something Radical: He Admitted He Was Wrong (Sheffield)

“I was wrong” is one of the rarest sentences in American public life. Standard practice is to double down, spin, or wait for the news cycle to move on.So it’s worth noticing when Bill Maher said it anyway, on his own show, to his own audience, about a claim he’d made about President Donald Trump. On a recent episode of “Real Time,” Maher walked back something he’d said the week before: that Trump was “winning almost none” of his primary endorsements. Trump, unwilling to let the line go unanswered, texted Maher directly.

Maher checked the numbers. He found he’d spoken wrongly. The actual record, Maher said, was just nine of the 260 candidates Trump endorsed this cycle have lost—a 97 percent win rate. Instead of quietly letting this falsehood slide, Maher acknowledged this on the air: “I did overstate it. That wasn’t true. Overstated. There, was that so hard, to not be a d— about everything?” He’s right. It shouldn’t be such an act of courage—correcting the record when proven wrong should be standard for anyone with a microphone.

But in 2026, an established media figure saying “I was wrong” about a claim involving Trump, without a lawsuit, a legal settlement, or a network’s PR department wrath, is exceedingly rare. Most people in Maher’s position would bury the correction in a mumbled aside, or not correct it at all. He didn’t. This is the same instinct that’s made Maher difficult to pigeonhole for thirty years, verbally punching both Democrats and Republicans alike. I experienced that when I was a guest on his program years ago.

Yet when the facts didn’t back him up, Maher didn’t protect his side of the argument. He fixed it. That combination—willing to hit hard, and just as willing to correct himself—is what intellectual honesty looks like.

Six people stand together smiling in front of a U.S. time zone map on a TV studio set. They are dressed in business and semi-formal attire, with arms around each other, suggesting camaraderie and a group photo. It’s fitting that Maher picked up the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center this summer. Twain’s whole career said the truth is funnier, and more useful, than comfortable lies. Maher spent his career making the same case, often to the fury of people on every side of the aisle. Maher earned his trophy.

I interviewed Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who came to support Maher, during the red carpet interview line the night of the Mark Twain award ceremony. Fetterman said he was disappointed that fewer than a third of Democrats in national polling said they were proud to be American. “That’s crazy,” Fetterman told me. “I’m insanely proud to be American, and of America. It’s the best country on the globe, history–you know, without a doubt. If Democrats continue to become more anti-patriotic, then now you’re putting up these terrible candidates that are full-on anti-American.”

Fetterman’s cut from Maher’s cloth. He’s a Democrat willing to break with his own party’s consensus in public, take heat for it from his own side, and say plainly when he thinks his party turns wrong. Fetterman described himself as “an independent voice in the Democratic Party” who isn’t “going to be afraid of people,” wrote that “my party cannot simply be the opposite of whatever President Donald Trump says.”

Fetterman made a surprise video appearance at the Republican National Midterm Convention on Thursday. Calling himself a “common sense Democrat,” he praised Republican colleague Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., and vowed to work with the president. Democrats spend enormous resources trying to win back independents and disaffected moderates. Focus groups, expensive messaging consultants, fake rebrand after rebrand. But voters are smart—they can tell the difference between a party that talks about independence and people who actually practice it.

Maher and Fetterman both are more convincing to skeptical, non-tribal voters in five minutes than a hundred coordinated talking points, precisely because they’re willing to say the inconvenient thing about their own side. If the Left wants to rebuild trust with voters it’s lost, it could do worse than study what Maher and Fetterman actually do: say what you believe, correct yourself when facts say otherwise, and stop treating party loyalty as a substitute for honesty. It’s not a complicated formula. It’s just a rare one.

“Tribalism Doesn’t Work.”

• Tribalism Is Tearing America Apart (Victor Davis Hanson)

I think we should entitle our short video today “Tribalism: Tribalism Doesn’t Work.”

And what do I mean by that? The ancient prejudice that people would identify largely with people who resemble them, whether that’s in terms of religion or gender or sexual orientation or superficial appearance, and that they would have cliques or cohorts or tribes does not work in a consensual society in which all groups vote for an elected government. And when we see this in Rwanda or we saw it in Iraq or we see it in Lebanon or we see it in some places in large democracies like Indonesia or the caste system in India or racial tensions in Brazil, it does not work.

So, what’s going on right now? Well, if you look at the nature of the United States right now, we are seeing one tribal group pitted against the other, and they’re jockeying for political power. They’re jockeying for share of government expenditures. They’re jockeying for everything, admissions to college, and it’s accentuated by our establishment, whether it’s racial quotas or uneven application of the law based on a person’s race or superficial appearance. Just take a couple examples.

As I speak right now, the black community in Detroit is galvanizing against the Arab immigrant community. Apparently, there was an incident in which an African American woman was surrounded by Arab men, and words were exchanged, and her purse was stolen, and she was intimidated and called for help. And the result of that is long-simmering anger against the Arab immigrant community, the Muslim community in particular, because they are on the front line of 7-Eleven-type stores, gas stations, small stop-and-go markets in which many of the majority population of African Americans in Detroit use, and there has been tension.

Now that tension is boiling up to abject violence. At York College, in an off-campus home, a group of African American girls were walking by. Words were exchanged with the people residing in the house, and before we knew it, there was a swarm that went up on the porch, grabbed two or three of the white girls, beat them to a pulp, knocked them unconscious.

Part of the problem is social media. Now, for the first time in recorded history, you can take any event, film it without context or commentary, and put it on YouTube or TikTok or X. And so, what’s happening is all over the 7 billion-person planet, but particularly in Western countries, when they see, when the public sees an incident, they capture it and they post it.

And the more that they can do this and the more clicks, perhaps they can get advertising revenue. So, there’s incentives. That said, the government since 1965, though, has accentuated not unity but diversity, and now we’re bearing or suffering through the effects of those policies. Again, as I’d mentioned earlier, part of the problem also is that the Obama administration did something that was not noticed at the time.

It was unheralded, but it was probably the most divisive thing, act, protocol, attitude, ideology we’ve seen in recent history. They took the old affirmative action binary of 89%, 90%, 88% white so-called versus 9%, 10%, 11% black, and we framed that in the context of slavery, Jim Crow, reparatory admissions, affirmative action, and there was an economic element to it.

People said, “Well, the black community is on a per capita basis less affluent because of the white community, and that’s because of the discrimination of the past.” The Obama people came in and said, “Well,” and now I’m extrapolating, “that constituency that has claims against the majority is a lot larger than 10% or 11%. “We’re going to include anybody, Indian immigrants from Mumbai, aristocratic children of professionals in Chile that have an accent on their name, members of the Middle East.”

And now I’m just going to give you some names. Hasan Piker, a multimillionaire family, drives a $200,000 Porsche. Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan immigrant who’s very, very wealthy. Ro Khanna, his in-laws are worth probably a quarter of a billion dollars. I could go on and on and on. Barack Obama, who is now a multimillionaire, many times over. .

The Socialist Chic

• Almost Half of Americans Now Hold Positive Views of Socialism (Turley)

Karl Marx believed that “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Socialists seem to have found a generation of dupes to buy their ahistorical, fanciful pitch. A new poll shows 43% now have a positive view of socialism. An astonishing 65% of Democrats have a positive view. Socialism is now the rage on the left. Like clothing styles, if you wait long enough, socialism tends to come back into style with generations with no memory of past failures. However, it is an astonishing trend in one of the most prosperous nations on Earth that outlasted a history cluttered with the broken failures of socialist and communist systems.

A new slick packaging of socialism has emerged with leaders such as Zohran Mamdani offering to teach people of the “warmth of collectivism.” The Democratic Socialists of America are enticing voters with narratives like “Imagine the end of capitalism.” Those words promise voters that there is a brave new world without landlords, debt, mandatory work hours, and “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation… are common goods and utilities.” What is incredible is that many are buying this pitch.

It is also ironic that this is happening not just on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence but also on the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. As I write in Rage and the Republic:

“While he never visited the United States, his theories seemed quintessentially American to many of his generation. For a revolution that was triggered by tariffs and fueled by events like the Boston Tea Party, Smith’s general principles read like an economic version of Common Sense. It was a type of declaration of independence not just from the British policy of mercantilism (emphasizing British exports over imports) but from economic controls over individual productivity and self-determination….

In summary, Smith was first and foremost viewed as a political theorist, and his economic theories were closely tied to his views on the natural liberties of humanity. He saw capitalism as a liberating system for individuals to allow them the wealth and resources to pursue their own chosen paths. Conversely, he saw government controls and subsidies as forms of control and potentially forms of suppression of the human will. If people are to be truly free, they must have the resources to pursue that freedom. The government dole can become a type of servitude or at least a subterfuge for citizens. If they are dependent on the government, they are never truly free.”

The book compares many of these proposals to identical policies of the Jacobin movement in the French Revolution. Both the American and French revolutions arose during the same period, but one became the world’s oldest democracy while the other became the blood-soaked “The Reign of Terror.” Notably, the Jacobins pushed for the same unicameral system that the socialists are now advocating as well as attacks on the wealthy. The DSA is the direct descendant of the Jacobins in seeking to tear down moderating institutions and replace the president and justices with democratically elected figures by a Congress composed only of the House of Representatives.

As with the original Jacobins, those demanding these changes are not the working class but professors, pundits and young college-educated voters. Pushing this analogy to a more menacing level, another poll shows that roughly 60 percent of Democrats now would support a military coup to remove President Donald Trump. The return of socialism is like the reappearance of low-rise jeans. You are left mystified by anyone who believes that this is a worthy theory to emulate after consistent and catastrophic failures. Long forgotten is the disaster of the socialist government of François Mitterrand in France.

Most recently, Prime Minister Andy Burnham condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.” What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977–78 during the so-called “winter of discontent,” which I also discuss in the book. Perhaps Marx was right after all: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”

Voter ID.

• Supreme Court Approves Expanded Voter Verification Program (Salgado)

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed that the Trump administration can move ahead with a program expanded to help identify illegal aliens or other noncitizens registered to vote.

It’s about time SCOTUS made one constitutional decision about elections, given its ridiculous seal of approval on “counting” (i.e., stuffing) ballots for days after Election Day and refusal to allow executive regulation of fraud-riddled mail-in ballots. Even a couple of the supposedly most reliable constitutionalists on the court have made wacky decisions about ballots lately. So the latest ruling is a drop of much-needed sanity in an ocean of legal chaos that threatens to protect mass midterm election fraud.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume its expanded voter citizenship verification program, which lets states use Social Security records to check voters' citizenship. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented. pic.twitter.com/jEhmk13Om2

— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) September 25, 2026

The three Gorgons of SCOTUS, namely, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all made the wrong decision, of course.

Election integrity warrior Scott Presler is thrilled about the new decision, which allows comparison of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database with voter registration records. Presler called the ruling a “HUGE win for the American people & we will find out if any non-citizens vote this November.” Of course, it would be nice if we found out ahead of the midterms which noncitizens are on voter rolls instead of afterwards, given that no matter how egregious the election fraud, certified results are never overturned.

I’M SCREAMING!

The Supreme Court is allowing states to use the SAVE database to verify the eligibility of voters on the rolls.

SAVE = Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements

This is a HUGE win for the American people & we will find out if any non-citizens vote this… pic.twitter.com/zwstmyyP8b

— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) September 25, 2026

The Trump administration has made quite a few arrests or secured indictments for illegal voting or other election-related offenses recently across multiple states, including California, Pennsylvania, and Utah.cv

DOJ announced charges for 16 individuals for ILLEGAL VOTING, illegal voter registration, and related election-fraud schemes across the country.

If you are not allowed to vote in our elections, you shouldn’t. And if you do, that’s a CRIME. This isn’t a partisan issue!

Read… pic.twitter.com/klmlulomps

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) September 19, 2026

If only SCOTUS were reliably interested not only in the Constitution but in addressing entrenched corruption. The Supreme Court also just refused to intervene in the case of Baby Gabriel, whose donor parents first demanded his death by abortion and are now simultaneously demanding custody while suing the surrogate who refused to kill him. So SCOTUS has really been handing lefties victories lately. So much for that theory of Trump’s “lapdog” court. Hopefully the new ruling indicates a return to common sense.

“..if AfD party controls Saxony-Anhalt..”

• Germany: Merz Government May Use Radical ‘Federal Coercion’ Power (RMX)

The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the Saxony-Anhalt state election by a wide margin but fell short of an absolute majority. Nevertheless, the party may still come to power if it can garner enough support from BSW or peel off a few MPs from rival parties. This possibility has thrust an unused and radical clause of the German constitution, federal coercion or “Bundeszwang,” to the center of a fight over how far Berlin can go if the right-wing party takes power.

The AfD took 43.8 percent of the vote in the Sept. 6 election, but the AfD remains three seats short of an absolute majority. However, Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s 35-year-old lead candidate, could still become minister-president. The German government has plenty of tools for dealing with Siegmund if he steps out of line.

Germany’s establishment threatens to use “federal coercion” clause
Federal coercion is one of the most radical mechanisms in the German constitution. Article 37 allows the federal government or a representative it appoints to issue binding orders to the states and their agencies. The Federal Republic of Germany has never resorted to this clause before.

Anna-Bettina Kaiser, a law professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, told Deutsche Welle the bar is extremely high. “The term ‘dramatic’ is most apt here. This is why federal coercion has never been introduced in the history of the Federal Republic — it is treated as a last resort,” she told Deutsche Welle, a state outlet that receives approximately €415 million a year in taxpayer money. Until now, fights between Berlin and the states have been settled mainly in court.

“It is usually assumed that in the event of a specific legal dispute, the case will go to the Federal Constitutional Court and the given state will comply with the judgment issued by that body,” Kaiser said. Deutsche Welle reported that an extreme use of Article 37 could include naming a federal representative with power to issue binding orders in specific areas. “Article 37 actually provides for the appointment of such a representative who has the power to issue binding orders,” Kaiser said.

Any step would have to match the violation and meet constitutional tests. However, Article 37 lists no catalog of penalties. It speaks only of “necessary measures,” leaving the article vague and open to interpretation. Bundesrat consent would be essential. Under the chamber’s rules, the affected state keeps its vote on Article 37 decisions.

Union parliamentary leader Thorsten Frei has since called Article 37 an option of last resort if an AfD state government acted against the constitution. Social Democratic floor manager Dirk Wiese said it was “good to know” the Basic Law allows constitutional conduct to be compelled by instruction if an “AfD-BSW Putin coalition” installed a far-right politician as premier. The Greens and the Left have not ruled the tool out. Saxony-Anhalt’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the state AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”

Cutting funding to an AfD government
On top of the constitutional power that Article 37 offers, the tried-and-tested method of cutting funding is also being discussed and it is not even clear yet if the AfD will be able to assume power in the state. German officials have also discussed suspending some federal budget transfers to Saxony-Anhalt, which is still dependent on such transfers to prop up its economy. Tagesschau reported that structural funds could be frozen if an AfD government breached EU fundamental rights or rule-of-law conditions.

However, beyond these federal transfers, powerful German Green MEP Daniel Freund said after the vote that the European Commission should, if necessary, withhold money if an AfD-led state government acted against EU principles. Freund was a notorious foe of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and a longtime advocate of the EU cutting funding to Hungary while his government remained in power. Freund not only succeeded in lobbying the EU to cut funding but this tool is generally seen as one of the primary contributing factors in toppling Orbán from power.

The reality is that this method of cutting or freezing funds has worked remarkably well for the EU, also in the case of Poland’s previous conservative government. When funding is cut, the population suffers, and when they suffer, they punish politicians at the voting booth. Orbán could point the finger all he wanted at Brussels. It did him no good in the end. If the EU or the German federal government cuts funding, Saxony-Anhalt will suffer, and there is nothing an AfD government can do about it.

For now, it appears for the EU establishment has a virtually fool-proof method for dealing with any voter rebellions or unfavorable democratic results.

I am from Norway – Russia is not my enemy. The enemy is the UN, NATO, EU, WEF, and the WHO – as well as our governments and the media – not Russia! pic.twitter.com/oZnBPM78aD

— Trude Helén Hole (@truhole) September 24, 2026