Zerohedge

Freedom Is Much More Important Than Democracy Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker, Democracy invites despotism. When understood as majority rule, democracy means that fifty-one of every hundred citizens can have their way with the other forty-nine. "But I want to keep my possessions, weapons, and children." Too bad, the majority have decided to redistribute your property to those lazy bums over there, disarm you before you can do anything about it, and indoctrinate your children in public schools, so that they learn to resent you and love the State. Democracy is dangerous without guardrails. Unless a society has a strong sense of moral virtue that fosters personal discipline, duty, and honor, base selfishness becomes the driving motivation behind all political action. Unless certain constitutional protections exist to safeguard each individual's inviolable rights, democratic majorities devour those rights whenever expedient. This should surprise no-one. Political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke described humans' pre-government "state of nature" as a chaotic, violent clash of self-interest. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" regards self-interest as the engine of free markets. Consequently, it is easy to understand why forms of democracy that are unshackled from both moral and constitutional restraints prompt a society to descend back into a state of nature in which humanity's worst impulses are again indulged. When Western leaders speak adoringly of "our democracy," citizens should prepare to guard their freedoms. My goodness, there is nothing inherently virtuous about democracy. North Korea's Kim Jong Un runs the most repressive regime on the planet, but his country is known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea! China's Xi Jinping is the general secretary of the oppressive Chinese Communist Party, but his nation remains officially the People's Republic of China! Dictatorships around the globe claim to govern in the name of the people. One might think that the blurry line between democracy and despotism would make Western leaders wary of singing democracy's praises. Defenses of majoritarianism embrace the notion that the votes of a hundred people will lead to a more prudent outcome than we could reasonably expect from the decision-making of a single person. But that doesn't make any sense. Would you rather live in a kingdom with a benevolent king or in a democracy filled with rapists, thieves, and murderers? If there is a 50/50 chance that any single dictator is good or bad, would there not be a 50/50 chance that a majority of citizens are good or bad, too? If one communist would take everything you have, wouldn't fifty communists do the same thing? Democracy is a coin toss. It is the veneer of legitimacy that makes authoritarianism look shiny and sparkly. That hardly feels like something worth celebrating. Democracy is just a process. It shouldn't be idolized for its own sake. It can lead to just or unjust outcomes depending upon the moral virtue, shared culture, and general wisdom of the voters. Aside from these cultural attributes of a society, there is nothing more essential to a nation's long-term peace and happiness than the recognition of and protections for inviolable, natural, God-given rights. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, the right to self-defense - these rights and other natural liberties do not come into existence because of majority rule. Our natural rights exist despite majority rule. As the Founding Fathers articulated in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." We aren't equal because of democracy; we are equal despite any democratic vote that might claim otherwise. Our lives, personal liberties, and connections to God exist because of His will, not the government's. The idea that rights and liberties exist separately from the promulgations of government forms the foundation of our constitutional system and, more generally, of human rights. The U.S. Constitution spells out quite succinctly what powers each of the three branches of government - Legislative, Executive, and Judicial - shall have. From where do our three branches of government get these powers? The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the source of government power plainly: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In other words, the government's legitimacy comes directly from the people. Every power that one of the three branches exercises is a power that arises from and is borrowed from the individual citizens of the United States. Any power not specifically delegated to the U.S. government remains with either the individual state governments or individual American citizens. This is profoundly important. The Constitution is not a document that empowers the federal government to do whatever it wants. It is a document that says, "You get to do only these discrete things. Everything else is off-limits!" During the Constitutional Convention, there was significant debate among the Founding Fathers about the need for a Bill of Rights explicitly defending the inalienable liberties of American citizens. Since the text of the Constitution clearly limits the delegated powers of each branch of government, some Founders resisted the inclusion of a Bill of Rights because they feared that later generations might incorrectly interpret Americans' inviolable freedoms to include only those rights specifically listed. Other delegates feared that, without a Bill of Rights, later generations might incorrectly reimagine the Constitution's limited delegation of powers to include additional authorities that directly infringe upon Americans' personal rights. Both fears proved prescient. In order to clearly state their intentions to maximize the size of Americans' personal liberty and to minimize the powers of the federal government, the Founding Fathers gave us the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as part of the Bill of Rights: Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Taken together, these two amendments provide a redundancy within the U.S. Constitution that is meant to preserve human liberty. First, the text of the Constitution restricts the authority of the federal government to a small number of specifically delegated powers. Second, the Bill of Rights repeats the framers' intent to reserve all other powers for the people or their individual state governments. With this understanding in mind, a reasonable person should ask: How is it possible that the federal government is now so large and powerful that it encroaches upon nearly every aspect of our private lives? How is it possible that tens of millions of Americans either work directly for government agencies or receive taxpayer dollars in some form? How is it possible that there are too many administrative agencies, committees, and bureaucratic groups for any one person to name? How is it possible that three federal branches with a small number of delegated authorities have been replaced with a growing number of government programs with seemingly unlimited authorities? The answer to each of these questions is the same: The generations between the Founding Fathers and our own progressively traded freedom for democracy. In the name of the people, lawmakers, presidents, and judges ignored the plain text of the Constitution - including the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights - to steal our inalienable rights and liberties. In order to reject democracy's despotism, the American people will have to demand their rights and liberties back. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 23:40

Dr. Robert Malone On Well-Being & 'Mental Illness' In Women Authored by Dr. Robert W. Malone via Malone.news, Back in 2020, Pew Research Center surveyed more than 11,000 Americans. Political scientist Zach Goldberg subsequently examined the underlying data and broke the results down by age, sex, race, and political ideology. What he found was rather remarkable. Among white women ages 18 to 29 who identified as liberal, 56.3% reported that a doctor or other health-care provider had diagnosed them with a mental health condition. Not 15%. Not 25%. Fifty-six percent. For white moderate women of the same age, the number was 28.4%. For white conservative women, 27.3%. In other words, young white liberal women were more than twice as likely as their conservative counterparts to report having received a mental health diagnosis. Now, correlation is not causation. Perhaps liberals are simply more willing to seek psychiatric care. Perhaps conservatives are less willing to admit that they have a problem. Perhaps political ideology attracts people with particular personality traits rather than creating those traits. All perfectly reasonable possibilities. But here is where it gets interesting. Five years later, the numbers have not exactly moved in a reassuring direction. Gallup found that only 15% of American women ages 18-29 surveyed from 2020 through 2024 described their mental health as excellent. In 2010-2014, that number had been 48%. That is not a small decline. That is a collapse. And the ideological divide is still there. The 2024 American Family Survey found that only 12% of liberal women ages 18-40 described themselves as "completely satisfied" with their lives. Among moderate women: 28%. Among conservative women: 37%. Liberal women were also nearly three times as likely as conservative women to report feeling lonely several times a week or more: 29% versus 11%. So perhaps endlessly telling young women that they live in an oppressive society, that the world is on the verge of climate catastrophe, that words are violence, that disagreement is dangerous, that our President is evil, that the patriarchy is lurking behind every corner, that Western civilization is fundamentally corrupt, and that their personal unhappiness is caused by vast structural forces over which they have virtually no control is not actually a recipe for human flourishing. Who could have guessed? There is an important caveat. A 2025 study found that some of the apparent liberal-conservative mental-health divide may reflect differences in how people think and talk about "mental health." When researchers simply asked people about their mood, rather than their mental health, much of the ideological difference disappeared. Fair enough. But that doesn't explain away the extraordinary collapse in reported well-being among young women generally, nor does it make the life-satisfaction and loneliness data disappear. Maybe the question isn't whether liberalism causes mental illness. Maybe the more interesting question is whether a culture built around grievance, victimhood, fear and powerlessness is particularly attractive to unhappy people, makes unhappy people unhappier, or both. That seems like a question worth asking. Even if asking it makes someone very, very upset. There is, however, an uncomfortable counterpoint to all this discussion of female unhappiness and mental illness. Men are far more likely to actually die by suicide. In the United States, the male suicide rate is nearly four times the female rate, and men account for roughly four out of every five suicide deaths. The disparity exists globally as well. Perhaps that exposes a deeper truth about the modern cult of victimhood. We have created a culture extraordinarily skilled at teaching certain groups to name every grievance, diagnose every distress, identify every oppressor and demand that society recognize their pain, while other forms of suffering remain remarkably easy to ignore. Young women may be reporting extraordinary levels of anxiety, depression and psychiatric diagnosis, but men are quietly killing themselves at vastly higher rates. That does not diminish women's suffering. It suggests that our entire framework for understanding suffering may be badly distorted. A society obsessed with determining who is the victim and who is the oppressor can become remarkably blind to the human being who doesn't fit the approved narrative, particularly when that human being is male. There is another possibility here that deserves far more attention: the diagnosis itself has become part of the epidemic. When more than half of young women in a political demographic report having been diagnosed with a mental health condition, the appropriate response is not simply to declare that half the population is mentally ill. It is to ask what the hell the health-care system is doing. Psychiatry has steadily expanded the boundaries of pathology, medicalizing distress, grief, anxiety, loneliness, adolescent turmoil, and ordinary difficulty as diagnosable disease. A system that can convert normal human suffering into a billing code, a prescription, and a lifelong medical identity should not be treated as a neutral observer of this crisis. At some point, an exploding diagnosis rate stops being proof of exploding disease and starts becoming evidence that the diagnostic machinery itself may be broken. Consider what we are now being asked to accept as normal. The 2026 Lancet Global Burden of Disease study estimates that 1.17 billion human beings, roughly one person in seven on Earth, are living with a mental disorder, and mental disorders now account for 17.3 percent of all years lived with disability worldwide, making them the single largest source of nonfatal disability. Women carry an even greater burden than men, with the female age-standardized mental-disorder burden about 18 percent higher. This is insane, not because hundreds of millions of people do not genuinely suffer from serious psychiatric illness, but because at some point a civilization has to ask what these numbers actually mean. Did humanity suddenly become catastrophically mentally ill, or have we built a medical system that increasingly converts sadness, fear, loneliness, grief, adolescent turmoil and difficulty coping with life into psychiatric pathology? When one in seven people on the planet fits into the modeled category of mental disorder, the diagnostic framework itself deserves scrutiny. A medical system cannot simply keep expanding the definition of sickness and then point to the resulting mountain of sickness as proof that it was right. Toxic Feminism There was a feminism that told women they should have choices. Then there is the more modern version of feminism that increasingly seems to tell women which choices an enlightened woman is supposed to make. Career is achievement. Marriage is dependence. Motherhood is unpaid labor. Men are potential oppressors. Traditional families are suspect. Finances should always be kept separate, plan for a divorce, financial independence is a must. Independence is liberation, and needing another human being is somehow weakness. Delay marriage. Delay children. Establish the career. Find yourself. Become independent. Never settle. Put yourself first. There is just one rather awkward problem with this prescription for female happiness: human beings are profoundly social animals, and the scientific literature keeps rediscovering the importance of precisely the relationships that modern culture has spent decades teaching women not to need. Femininity is Real There is also an uncomfortable biological reality that modern ideology would prefer to treat as an inconvenience: women are not simply smaller men with different reproductive organs. Progesterone is central to female reproduction, but its effects extend into the brain and behavior. Human research has associated higher progesterone with affiliation, social bonding, sensitivity to relationships and even greater willingness to sacrifice for another person. Estrogen, particularly estradiol, does far more than regulate reproduction. It acts throughout the female brain, interacting with oxytocin and other neuroendocrine systems involved in mood, sexuality, emotional processing, social attachment, and stress. Together with progesterone and oxytocin, estrogen contributes to the biological systems underlying bonding, maternal behavior, and caregiving. And that capacity for nurturing does not suddenly switch off when there is no baby in the room. Women show stronger tendencies toward caregiving, empathy, and relational investment, although there is enormous individual variation. Biology is not destiny, but neither is it imaginary. To dismiss these deeply rooted female tendencies as merely products of the patriarchy, or to teach women that caring for and depending upon others is somehow incompatible with independence, comes at a real psychological cost, and we are witnessing this worldwide. A feminism that requires women to deny important parts of their own biology is a strange definition of female liberation. The female impulse toward attachment, relationship and nurturing cannot simply be dismissed as a patriarchal social construct. There is biology underneath it. A culture that tells women that caring for others is servitude, that motherhood is an impediment to achievement, and that putting another human being ahead of oneself represents oppression may therefore be fighting something considerably older than the patriarchy. It may be fighting female biology itself. Psychology even has a validated instrument called the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory, developed specifically to measure hostile prejudices and stereotypes about men. And the hostility is measurable. In a subsequent study of 488 college students, women scored significantly higher than men on the instrument's Hostility Toward Men scale, 2.76 versus 2.25 on a 0-to-5 scale. How a broader culture came to normalize the sweeping negative generalizations about men, male sexuality, male power and masculinity that would immediately be recognized as prejudice if the sexes were reversed is an interesting question. Hostility between the sexes is not liberation. It poisons precisely the trust, affection and intimacy upon which successful relationships depend. The evidence surrounding work, family and mental health should make us reconsider what women have been sold as liberation. In one nationally representative study of 4,714 working women, high work-family conflict was associated with 2.29 times the odds of depressive symptoms, with some of the strongest associations occurring among younger, highly educated, higher-income and never-married women. Studies of female physicians and longitudinal studies of working women tell much the same story: when professional life and family life are placed into sustained conflict, mental health suffers. The mistake was never telling women that they could become physicians, scientists, executives, farmers, entrepreneurs or anything else they were capable of becoming. Of course they could, and they should have been free to do so. The mistake was turning independence itself into the objective, as though dependence upon people who love us were some sort of character defect. A husband and wife depend upon one another. Children depend upon parents. Parents eventually depend upon their children. Families are elaborate networks of mutual obligation. That isn't oppression. It is much of what gives human life meaning. And perhaps most poisonous of all is the idea that relations between men and women should be understood primarily as a contest for power. Teach a generation of women to approach half of humanity with suspicion, to interpret ordinary disagreement through the language of oppression, and to view compromise as surrender, and then act surprised when relationships become difficult. Whatever one chooses to call that worldview, it is a miserable foundation upon which to build intimacy. Girls do not generally sit through a classroom lesson entitled Marriage Is Bad. The message is subtler than that. From school through college, the language surrounding female success increasingly emphasizes independence, autonomy, empowerment, career, individual rights and self-realization. What is striking is what receives far less emphasis: interdependence, marriage, sacrifice, obligation, motherhood, building a household, choosing a good husband and creating a stable family. Dependence itself has acquired an almost pathological meaning, as though needing a husband, wife, children or extended family represents personal failure rather than the normal condition of human beings. A girl is repeatedly asked what career she wants when she grows up. How often is she asked what kind of marriage she hopes to build, what kind of mother she hopes to become, or what sacrifices a lasting relationship will require? The lesson does not have to be written on the blackboard to be learned: success is something you achieve individually; family is something you fit around it later, and you would be stupid not to be financially independent before having children, cause men generally aren't to be trusted to hang around long enough to raise a family. There is an enormous difference between telling a woman you do not have to marry or have children and telling her, explicitly or implicitly, that marriage and motherhood represent lesser ambitions than professional status. Biology also imposes a deadline that corporate advancement does not. A promotion can arrive at 42. A first child may not. Women deserve to know that when they are 22, not discover it when they are 39. In our lives, we know two women in their thirties who are in the process of freezing their eggs; evidently, they believe that when they are forty or fifty, they will be in a better position to have a child? And we have another single friend, who at fifty, has decided she has aged out of ever being a mother. All of these women are college-educated professionals, never married, and are coming to terms with their biological clocks running out. A culture that encourages women to postpone permanent relationships, prioritize professional status, regard dependence as weakness, and treat men principally as a source of danger or oppression should at least be willing to examine the results. If the promised liberation ends with unprecedented numbers of young women anxious, depressed, medicated, lonely and unable to form the families they later discover they wanted, declaring the experiment an unquestionable success is not feminism. It is marketing. The Big Lie And then there is the part nobody is supposed to mention: this arrangement is extraordinarily good for industry. The intact family is an economic institution as well as a social one. Husbands and wives share labor. Grandparents care for grandchildren. Families cook meals, repair things, care for the sick and elderly, grow food, teach children, share houses, lend money, pass down skills and provide an enormous amount of economic activity that never appears on a corporate balance sheet. Break those bonds apart and suddenly nearly everything has to be purchased. Two adults maintaining two households need two rents or mortgages, two sets of utilities, two kitchens and twice the household goods. Put both parents into full-time employment and families purchase more childcare, prepared food, transportation and other substitutes for work once performed within the home. Send rural children hundreds of miles away to college and then into metropolitan corporate employment, and another generation is separated from grandparents, land, community, and the informal economy of extended family. None of this requires a conspiracy. It requires only incentives. And corporations benefit enormously from this arrangement. Corporations benefit when people become workers first, consumers second, and family members somewhere farther down the list. The Big Lie was convincing women (and men) that exchanging dependence upon people who loved them for dependence upon employers, banks, universities, childcare companies, and the consumer economy was somehow independence. The destruction of family and community did not make people independent. It merely changed whom they depended upon, and unlike a family, the corporation collected the dividends. The Result is "Mental Illness" Going back to those numbers at the beginning of this essay, perhaps we have been asking the wrong question. When 56.3 percent of young white liberal women report having been diagnosed with a mental health condition, the immediate assumption is that something must be terribly wrong with these women. Maybe instead, something is terribly wrong with the culture they have been raised in. For decades, young people, and young women in particular, have been sold a remarkably destructive definition of success. Leave home. Go deeply into debt for college. Build the career. Delay marriage. Delay children. Treat dependence upon another person as weakness. Treat compromise as surrender. Regard traditional institutions with suspicion. Learn to identify grievances. Put yourself first. And when the loneliness, anxiety, purposelessness and unhappiness arrive, there is an enormous medical industry waiting to provide the diagnosis and, frequently, the prescription. Then we marvel at the epidemic of mental illness. Perhaps a significant portion of what we are calling a mental-health crisis is actually a crisis of meaning, belonging and human connection. A pill cannot provide a husband or wife. Therapy cannot manufacture grandchildren around the Thanksgiving table. A diagnosis cannot replace friendship, faith, family, community, useful work, children who need you, parents who depend upon you, or the knowledge that one's life matters to people other than oneself. Medicine can treat disease. It is considerably less capable of treating a culture that has systematically stripped away many of the institutions that once gave ordinary people purpose. And men have hardly escaped this experiment. While women report extraordinary levels of anxiety, depression and psychiatric diagnosis, men are killing themselves at vastly higher rates. That should be the flashing red warning light. The ideology of victimhood may teach women to describe their suffering endlessly while feminist teachings overlook the suffering of those assigned the role of "oppressor." None of this means returning women to some imaginary 1950s existence or denying anyone education, independence or a career. It means admitting something considerably more radical in 2026: human beings need one another. Men need women. Women need men. Children need parents. Parents need children. Families need communities, and communities need people who remain invested in them. Independence was never the highest human good. That may be the real Big Lie. We were told that liberation meant needing fewer people, carrying fewer obligations and being free to put ourselves first. Instead, we became more dependent upon employers, corporations, universities, government programs, therapists, pharmaceutical companies and the marketplace to provide things that families and communities once provided for one another. And now 1.17 billion people are estimated to be living with a mental disorder. Perhaps the strangest response imaginable is to look at that number and conclude that the problem is simply that humanity needs more mental-health treatment. Maybe people need more life. More family. More marriage. More children. More friendship. More community. More responsibility. More people depending upon them, and more people upon whom they can depend. That isn't oppression. It is called being human. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 22:30

Nick Shirley Sues California Over 'Stop Nick Shirley Act' Independent investigative journalist Nick Shirley spent the better part of a year investigating alleged fraud at nonprofits accused of diverting taxpayer funds meant for immigrant services. California responded by passing a law that makes it harder to look at those nonprofits at all. Now he is suing to have that law thrown out.  Shirley filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California on September 4, arguing that Assembly Bill 2624, nicknamed the Stop Nick Shirley Act, violates his First Amendment rights by restricting his ability to investigate and report on immigration-related service organizations. Critics gave the bill a blunter name months ago.  Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2624 last month. The law, which doesn’t take effect until October 1, 2027, expands California's existing Safe at Home program, a shield the state originally built for domestic violence survivors, to cover nonprofit employees who help people navigate the immigration system. Anyone who distributes information or images of a covered worker under circumstances the law defines as inciting violence or threats faces a penalty of $4,000.  “Now, in a world where we all want more transparency and not less, it is more critical than ever that we do not just sit back and do nothing,” Shirley asked in a video posted to X announcing the lawsuit. “That is why I am filing this lawsuit against the State of California. Because why would they create a law that pushes for less transparency when all we want is more transparency, especially when it comes to our tax dollars being defrauded? And why specifically make immigration support service providers a protected class inside of California?” Under the law, a worker at a covered organization, or an entity acting on their behalf, can submit a written demand blocking publication of certain identifying information about them. Shirley and other critics say that provision hands anyone under scrutiny a built-in kill switch for the story, and thus any accountability for fraud. According to the bill’s language, "A program participant or an individual entity or organization authorized to act on their behalf may make a written demand to a person, business or association to not publicly post or publicly display, disclose, or distribute on the internet the personal information or image of the program participant," he said, reading from the statute. "California has decided to push for less transparency and create laws that penalize citizens and journalists for looking into potential fraud inside 'immigration support services providers,'" Shirley wrote in the X post announcing the suit. Shirley traces the bill's origin to January 31, when he announced that he was in California investigating alleged fraud. Days later, Newsom said the San Diego Somali community felt "under siege" from what he called "right-wing provocateurs," a comment Shirley says was about him. On February 5, California Attorney General Rob Bonta held a news conference dismissing the fraud allegations, calling them "reckless, false, outrageous, and ridiculous." Fifteen days later, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, who happens to be married to the attorney general, introduced AB 2624. "They needed the Stop Nick Shirley Act, AB 2624, to protect the fraud and stop people from exposing these locations inside of immigration support providers," he said. The bill's text defines immigration support service providers broadly enough to include legal services, healthcare, and nonprofits generally, and one of the organizations that helped push the legislation has itself pulled in tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for immigration legal work in the state. Shirley's history with this beat predates the California fight.  Shirley's lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. “We're not suing for a single dollar,” he explained. “We're suing simply on the fact that they're taking away your First Amendment, right with this new law. In fact, I might spend months, I might spend years fighting this lawsuit for so long, think about it for so long. These corrupt politicians have been able to push and shove us around and receive no consequences for their actions.” I'm suing California... California has decided to push for less transparency and create laws that penalize citizens and journalists for looking into potential fraud inside "immigration support services providers." A written demand is all it takes to stop the publishing of a… pic.twitter.com/nFnfDUff0h — Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) September 4, 2026 Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 20:45

"Hurry Up And Die": Michigan Democrat Joins Other Radicals In Scrubbing Past Social Media Statements Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org, A certain pattern is emerging on the far left. Political figures spend years currying the favor of other extremists with outrageous commentary, proudly proclaiming their commitment to eliminating the Senate, opening the border, and other measures. Then, they delete all of the comments and declare themselves mainstream. The idea is to run in the center but govern from the far left, the so-called Spanberger strategy. The latest example is William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan's 7th Congressional District. However, Lawrence's prior self reveals just how radical this movement could prove. Like many professors, pundits, and politicians on the left, Lawrence has called for sweeping changes in our constitutional system. Lawrence reportedly has demanded a "fundamental overhaul" of the Constitution while calling for the elimination of the Senate, police, prisons, and borders. He has even denounced the nuclear family as an "isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society." Notably, he is the latest radical to show that the "Big Tent" party has little room for moderates. While establishment figures like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seek to use this mob, radicals have made clear that they will be next. Darializa Avila Chevalier is the latest Democratic Socialist to mock the establishment's pitch of a Big Tent party: "A big tent doesn't pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does." In Lawrence's case, he even put this feelings to music, writing a song a few years ago that calls for the death of moderate former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, declaring, "Our generation says f**k you for everything...Hurry up and die so that we can get started." He has also denounced capitalism and the very concept of the nation-state. Lawrence was previously arrested for resisting police officers while protesting a pipeline. As discussed earlier, candidates like James Talarico in Texas have scrubbed their social media accounts or dismissed their earlier radical claims, including attacks on capitalism. Supporters view these candidates as already proving their bona fides and understanding that they are just sanitizing their records for voters who want the illusion of a moderate. Accordingly, many applaud figures such as Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, dismissing her own extremist statements just a few years ago as "Woke 1." like some distant childhood stage. These radical figures are learning that their views are distinctly unpopular with American voters so they are perfecting stealth socialist candidates who can run a type of Spanberger campaign while later pursuing a socialist agenda. Lawrence's past positions show little nuance and closely track the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. Destroying the constitutional system, rejecting the nation-state, eliminating prisons, and other radical positions propelled these candidates through the primaries. The effort to now scrub the records shows the utter contempt that many have for average voters. Lawrence shows the delusion of establishment figures such as Gavin Newsom that they can use a mob to gain power without being eventually devoured by it. In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. What became known as "The Terror" was started not by the working class, but by educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement. These are hardcore revolutionaries with an agenda that would destroy the world's oldest and most successful democratic system in history. Party leaders facilitate them because they can only think about the next election, not the next generation. Lawrence is a cautionary tale that Benjamin Franklin remains correct, this is our Republic but only if we can keep it. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 19:00

Army To Spend $465 Million On 'Group 3 Killer' Anti-Drone Laser Authored by Jeff Schogol via Task & Purpose, The Army has awarded a $464.8 million contract for a laser weapon designed to destroy the type of drones that Iran has launched against U.S. troops and partner nations in the Middle East for more than five months. The Army has awarded a $464.8 million contract to AeroVironment, Inc. for the LOCUST X3 laser system. Image via AeroVironment, Inc. The service has selected the LOCUST X3 laser made by AeroVironment, Inc. for its Enduring-High Energy Laser program, according to a company news release. The 30-kilowatt laser is specifically designed to counter mid-sized drones that the U.S. military refers to as Group 3 unmanned aerial systems, said John Garrity, vice president of directed energy systems at AeroVironment, Inc. One such unmanned aerial system that has frequently been used against U.S. troops in the Middle East is Iran's Shahed-136 one-way attack drone. "LOCUST X3 is intended to be the Group 3 killer," Garrity told reporters on Aug. 7. "When we talk about Group 3, that's just one of the more prevalent threats that you see in warfare today, seen in conflicts in Iran and in Ukraine with Shahed drones." The laser allows U.S. troops to destroy drones at greater ranges than other types of weapons, and the LOCUST X3 can bring down targets in seconds, Garrity said. Those attributes allow the weapon to rapidly destroy drone swarms. "When you talk about a LOCUST laser weapon system, you're able to put effects on target at wide ranges at the speed of light," Garrity said. "If you're able to kill off drones in single-digit seconds or less, depending on the range and the type of material, you're able to jump between targets quite effectively and efficiently." The laser is also meant to destroy smaller drones, which the military calls Group 1 and 2 unmanned aerial systems, he said. "Unfortunately, all three classes of those drones can do a tremendous amount of harm to our assets and our servicemen and women," Garrity said. The LOCUST X3 is meant to be "the apex predator" of the Army's layered defenses against small to mid-level drones, said Aaron Westman, senior director for business development at AeroVironment, Inc. "It can really kill a lot of threats," Westman said during the media roundtable. "Its job is to really, let's say, thin the herd to be able to kill high volumes of threats." That allows the military to save its more expensive interceptors for specific threats so that its system of layered defenses "doesn't run out of bullets," Westman said. Currently, the U.S. military's inventory of ground-based air defense missiles has been so depleted during the Iran war that experts estimate it will take years to replenish all the interceptors that have been fired. The LOCUST X3 laser is designed to be mounted on Army vehicles. Image via AeroVironment, Inc. Westman added that a missile can miss its target, but with a laser, "as long as you can see something, you can hit it." AeroVironment, Inc. will deliver dozens of LOCUST X3 lasers to the Army over the next few years as part of the contract, a company news release says. The laser is designed to be mounted on vehicles, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. Efforts are ongoing to determine if the laser can also be mounted on the Infantry Squad Vehicle. An Army spokesperson previously told Task & Purpose that if the laser were approved and fielded as planned, it would become the service's first directed-energy program of record. Over time, the company expects to field higher power versions of the lasers, Garrity said. Earlier versions of the LOCUST laser have already been fielded, with some laser systems deployed within the continental United States, Garrity said. One feature common to the company's lasers is that they use an Xbox controller. "To a young soldier, sailor, airman, guardian that's using these systems, it's not unlike what they're using at their own house for video games," Garrity said. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 18:00

Ex-CNN Propagandist Don Lemon Mulls Presidential Run Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA, The Democratic Party has long attracted peculiarly strange individuals who have been floated as potential presidential candidates, including convicted felon Michael Avenatti, disgraced former first son Hunter Biden, Jerry Springer and anti-Trump filmmaker Michael Moore. Add former CNN anchor Don Lemon to that list. Lemon, now a YouTuber whom CNN fired amid allegations of misogyny, toxic workplace behavior and friction with female coworkers, hinted at a potential presidential campaign in a Thursday interview with Politico. "I'm not a politician. I'm a journalist. But now I get to learn about maybe what's to come and how to do it," Lemon said. "And maybe how to do it better." He later added that he would run for president if enough people ask. "I'm an American patriot. I'm a son of the South, and if people call on me to do it, I'll do it." Lemon previously flirted with the idea of running for president on the July 15 episode of the Can't Be Censored podcast, where he said he was "totally serious" about mounting a presidential campaign in 2028. In response to a question about whether he has political ambitions, Lemon claimed that people have been asking him if he is running for president. "And I don't know. I might. I'm serious. I don't know. I might, because people keep asking me to do it, or if I'm going to do it," Lemon said. Don Lemon says he's seriously considering a run for president in 2028. pic.twitter.com/8vxyueRWta — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 19, 2026 In another interview with Vox, Lemon appeared to make the case for why he would be a better candidate than the politicians expected to join the crowded Democratic field for president in 2028. "I'm not an insider and I am not a Democrat. I'd have to register as a Democrat in order to run," Lemon claimed. Asked if he believed voters wanted an outsider, Lemon replied, "I think people want independence." Lemon has long claimed to be independent but has widely embraced policies heralded by the Democratic Party. For instance, he publicly voiced his support for the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. "I'm not a Democrat," he said at the time during an interview on NewsNation. "Not a Democrat. Not a Republican. I'm an independent. ... Some political leanings that are conservative and some that are liberal, like most people." A potential Lemon bid, however, would have to overcome some hurdles in his legal, professional and personal life. Lemon is facing federal civil rights charges after he allegedly participated in a 2025 anti-ICE riot inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lemon has pleaded not guilty. NEW: Don Lemon tries lecturing a pastor on the First Amendment after a mob of far leftists stormed a church in Minneapolis. Pastor: "This is unacceptable. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship..." Lemon: "Listen, there's a constitution, the First... pic.twitter.com/joHdCvaXe6 — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 18, 2026 Lemon hosted a primetime CNN show from 2014 until 2022 before he was publicly moved to a morning show. His stint as co-host of CNN This Morning fell apart after he said women in their 40s are past their "prime." He also repeatedly clashed with his co-hosts live on-air. Separately, an explosive Variety exposé accused Lemon of "diva-like behavior," while describing tensions between him and colleagues. CNN's Don Lemon returns Wednesday after being absent on air for several days following sexist remarks he made about presidential candidate Nikki Haley. As part of his return, the co-anchor has agreed to participate in "formal training." pic.twitter.com/sShqjIAGN7 — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 22, 2023 In 2019, former bartender Dustin Hice filed a federal sexual assault lawsuit against Lemon, accusing the then-CNN anchor of fondling himself and putting his fingers on Hice's face. Hice later dropped the lawsuit in 2022. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 17:00

Biggest 'Go Woke, Get Broke' Story Of A Generation: S&P Nukes Nike From Elite Blue-Chip Index S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Friday that Nike is being booted from the S&P 100 after nearly two decades, another sign of how America's most exclusive blue-chip benchmark is being reshaped by the artificial-intelligence spending boom. But that's not the entire story...  Perhaps what really happened with Nike is that it lost its way. Instead of focusing on basketball shoes and athletic leisure, it pursued the whole woke culture, which damaged the brand. Injected itself into far-left politics.  And this ...  BREAKING: Nike is set to be removed from the S&P 100 after nearly 18 years. The stock is now down almost 80% from its 2021 peak, turning one of the market’s most iconic consumer brands into one of its biggest recent disappointments. pic.twitter.com/3uJNIxcg4j — I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 5, 2026 Via Fox News... Not surprising whatsoever who accelerated Nike's demise.  LMAO, look at the marketing & strategy officers for Nike. Don’t worry, guys; I’m sure Nike will climb out of the huge woke hole they are in 🥴🫠 pic.twitter.com/7CXinp8VUA — Mrs B (@attackdogX) September 6, 2026 S&P Dow Jones Indices noted that Nike will remain in the broader S&P 500. Nike's peak was in late 2021, when it sported a $280 billion market cap that has since crashed to as low as $56 billion following Friday's close, its lowest market capitalization since 2013. No longer a growth story?  Nike's upcoming demotion from the S&P 100, set to take effect on Sept. 21, comes after a series of missteps as the sportswear giant struggles to revive sales and has lost market share to rivals including On and Hoka. Perhaps management should not have focused on left-wing cultural issues but instead on clothing and sneakers. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 15:30

A GoFundMe In Support of Lindsay Clancy Nears $1.2 Million After Mistrial A Massachusetts jury deliberated for roughly 38 hours over seven days and failed to reach a unanimous verdict in the case against Lindsay Clancy, resulting in Judge William Sullivan declaring a mistrial on Friday due to a holdout juror.  Clancy has admitted to strangling her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, with exercise bands inside the family's home in Duxbury, Mass., in January 2023 after sending her husband out to pick up dinner. She then cut her own wrists and neck, then jumped from a window, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. Reddington built his case on a claim of severe postpartum psychosis, worsened, he argued, by a combination of prescription medications. Prosecutors rejected that framing entirely and argued Clancy understood what she was doing and planned the killings in advance. Clancy had not been diagnosed with psychosis before the murders and reportedly had not told any doctor she was hearing voices. Judge Sullivan has scheduled a status and trial assignment hearing for Sept. 29. Lindsay Clancy's supporters are clearly expecting a new trial. The Musgrove Family Fund, a GoFundMe campaign supporting Clancy's parents, Michael and Paula Musgrove, surpassed $1.16 million in donations from more than 33,000 donors within hours of the mistrial. Organizer Brandee Mulligan, a 42-year-old mother of three, raised the fund's goal to $3 million that same day and told supporters the extended legal process means the Musgroves will need help for a while longer. "The original purpose of this fundraiser hasn't changed - it's simply to take one thing off their plate while they continue to show up for their family. If they have to keep showing up longer, I want to make sure the support does too." The Musgroves left Wallingford, Connecticut, and moved roughly 150 miles to stay near Duxbury. Clancy's sister, Allison Ozga, appeared at the proceedings alongside them. GoFundMe's page states the Musgroves are the named beneficiaries who receive the money themselves, that Mulligan has no access to any of it, and that both the parents and Reddington knew about the campaign before it went live. Mulligan, who is from Wisconsin and launched the fund on Aug. 11, previously told the Daily Mail that she had no contact with the Musgroves when she first created it and "did it without even asking permission." A GoFundMe spokesperson has confirmed the campaign is verified and that all funds go to Mike Musgrove as the intended beneficiary. "In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy was accused of killing her three young children in the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts home," the GoFundMe page reads. "More than three years later, her case is now being tried in court. Throughout those three years, Lindsay's parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, have continued to show up for their daughter." "And that is who this fundraiser is for, Mike and Paula, who have spent years traveling back and forth, staying in hotels, attending court proceedings and ultimately relocating from Connecticut to Massachusetts so they could remain close to Lindsay," the page continues. "Their lives have largely been put on hold while they have continued doing what parents do: showing up for their child during the unimaginable. That has come at an enormous financial cost. This fundraiser is not asking anyone to agree on Lindsay, her case, or what the outcome of her trial should be. People will have different feelings about all of those things." The new donations range from five dollars to three hundred, one-time gifts sitting beside recurring monthly pledges, though some of the biggest donations to the fund are in the thousands. One anonymous donor gave $5,000. One donor wrote that their heart was with Lindsay and her parents and that they could not imagine the pain the family has endured. Another, on a fifth contribution, wrote that they could not imagine what Lindsay and her family are feeling right now. The fund's success has spawned imitators on the platform, both for and against the family, including pages titled "Lindsay Clancy is an awful person!" and "Against the Musgrove Family Fund." GoFundMe told CT Insider it is monitoring and "reviewing" all Clancy-related fundraisers, and that "any found to be in violation of our terms of service will be removed." Copycat The trial appears to have produced at least one copycat. Corie A. Walsh, 38, of Frankfort, Illinois, was charged Friday with three counts of first-degree murder after her 2-year-old son Barrett was found hanging in the basement of the family home, a ligature around his neck. A 17-year-old neighbor was performing CPR when police arrived. Officers found Walsh upstairs in a bathtub, surrounded by bloody water, with cuts to her wrists and thighs. Her three other children were unharmed. Her husband was out of town. Prosecutors said in a court proffer that Walsh "had recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial" and had been "actively discussing the case via group text message with her friends" until hours before her son was found. The boy died Tuesday afternoon, while the Clancy jury was still deliberating. Walsh told officers she killed him because he was the "devil" and the "anti-Christ." Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 14:30

AfD Sweeps Saxony-Anhalt Election In First "Far Right" Victory Since WW2: "Signal To Berlin" Update(1400ET): In a political earthquake, the AfD has taken a massive lead, per exit polls, at the Saxony-Anhalt election in what the party's state leader hailed as sending a resounding "signal to Berlin." This moment marks the first time what has been dubbed a German "far-right party" taking power at a state level since World War II. This is absolutely historic. "The exit polls, published by German public television stations, suggested that the party, known by its German initials AfD, would win between 39 and 41 seats in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt," NY Times reports. "That would leave it just short of an absolute majority of 42, but far ahead of its nearest rival." But it remains unclear whether it will be able to form a government. Below is the latest via Deutsche Welle: Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Tino Chrupalla  says his party secured a mandate to govern with its strong election result in Saxony-Anhalt. "We have halved the CDU, so from that point of view it’s a great evening," Chrupalla told journalists in Magdeburg, referring to an earlier remark by Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and chancellor Friedrich Merz that AfD's result could be cut in half. Chrupalla called the outcome "sensational."  "Ulrich Siegmund will be the new premier of Saxony-Anhalt," he said. "From here, we will change Germany." If the party falls short of an absolute majority, Chrupalla said it would be open to talks and even suggested an AfD minority government could be tolerated by other parties. AfD has signaled it is open to a coalition partner that would be open to changing its migration and energy policy - though this option doesn't seem to be on the political map realistically at this early point. Youth turn to AfD in droves... Bei den jungen 5%! pic.twitter.com/W7Mb67WpRc — Anosteras (@anosteras) September 6, 2026 AFP/Getty Images *  *  * Voters in Saxony-Anhalt head to the polls today in an election that could deliver Germany's most massive political shock in decades, with the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland on track to beat Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats. AfD is the only hope for Germany https://t.co/6ONn1LOipE — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2026 Final polling estimates put the AfD at 40% to 41%, nearly double the CDU's 23%. The party's lead candidate, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, has ruled out governing in a coalition, suggesting the AfD would need an outright majority to take power of its first German state government. 🚨 BREAKING: Germany's right-wing anti-mass migration AfD party backed by Elon Musk is poised for a HISTORIC VICTORY in the Saxony-Anhalt elections — with polling showing them over 40% support, a STUNNING LEAD of close to 20 points CDU at just over 20%, and other parties near… pic.twitter.com/HnYvxgKlQr — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 6, 2026 About 1.7 million people are set to vote today, with polls closing at 6 p.m. local time. AfD's rapid ascent comes as voters are furious over Germany's stagnant economy, deindustrialization, energy costs, and the Third World migrant invasion. The Polymarket bet on how many seats the AfD is expected to win today assigns a 74% probability to 38 to 41 seats, with 42 to 45 seats at 16%. Ahead of the historic election, thousands of far-left Antifa crazies took to the streets wearing all black and holding Antifa and LGBT flags. Others were seen carrying signs reading "FCK NZS" and "FCK AFD." EIL: Schwere Krawalle in Halle, Antifa-Demo eskaliert! 🚨 Am Vorabend der Landtagswahl hat die linksextreme Szene nach Halle mobilisiert. Die Demo versinkt in Gewalt, es werden Unmengen an Pyrotechnik gezündet und teils auf die Polizei geworfen. Straßenkampf mit Ansage. Und ein… pic.twitter.com/k2bwEQtZ8N — COMPACT-Magazin (@COMPACTMagazin) September 5, 2026 A reported 15,000 left-wing activists joined a so-called pro-democracy festival in the state capital, Magdeburg, on Saturday, organized by the "Saxony-Anhalt Open to the World" alliance. Yet the whole globalist cult in Germany has likely run its course. It has been nothing more than what some call a nation-killing experiment, pushing uncontrolled mass migration and deindustrialization policies that have sent Europe's largest economy into a tailspin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Saturday threatened the AfD, saying, "We will not let these people, who trash Germany and everything we have achieved in recent years and decades," before adding, "We will not let these people talk our country into ruin!" 🚨🇩🇪 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is once again threatening to ban the AfD?! "We will not let these people — who trash Germany and everything we have achieved in recent years and decades." "We will not let these people talk our country into ruin!" pic.twitter.com/3iiyrwBRV2 — Mario ZNA (@MarioBojic) September 6, 2026 German politics coverage: Germany Braces For AfD Election Breakthrough In Saxony-Anhalt Germany's Anti-Immigration AfD Party Reaches Record Support Days Before Pivotal State Election "Citizens Want Political Turnaround": AfD Now Polls At 43% Across Eastern Germany Merz Warns Right-Wing Victory Will Hurt Germany, But Nomura Says Investors Aren't Buying It What Nomura analysts see over the next 18-month election cycle across Europe:  "Seeds Of Political Change": Nomura Sees Europe Lurching Right, And Markets Are Fine With It Yet what did Merz actually achieve? Destroying Germany's economy? That is something he certainly accomplished. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 14:00

Diplomatic Blitz: Witkoff, Kushner Hold "Substantial" Ukraine Talks After Putin Meeting President Trump's diplomatic sprint shifted from Moscow to Kiev over the weekend, with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner arriving in Ukraine for talks with senior officials. The visit came one day after the pair met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian state media outlet TASS cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said Putin's meeting with Witkoff and Kushner had created an "atmosphere of trust, at least through this channel of communication." Putin meets Witkoff and Kushner for peace talks. pic.twitter.com/NqqAelwuEG — Clash Report (@clashreport) September 5, 2026 "The very fact that the meeting is taking place means that an atmosphere of trust does indeed exist, at least through this channel of communication, and that it is strengthening. As a rule, however, expanded exchanges of such welcoming remarks emerge when there are messages that the head of state considers necessary to convey," Peskov explained to the outlet. A White House official said Witkoff and Kushner's three-hour meeting with Putin "discussed substantive plans for next steps, which will be announced in the coming weeks." Last week, Reuters cited Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, who said Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping may hold a trilateral meeting at the next Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November. After the Moscow meeting on Saturday, Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Ukraine for the first time during Trump's second term as part of his pledge to bring the conflict to an end. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Ukraine by train. They were greeted by senior Ukrainian officials. pic.twitter.com/KLRk9796Zf — Clash Report (@clashreport) September 6, 2026 Bloomberg reported early Sunday that Witkoff and Kushner's first round of talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other high-level officials had ended. Witkoff was quoted by the outlet as describing his talks with Ukrainian officials as "substantial," although no further details about what was discussed were released. "We all want to end the war, and we are on the same page here," Zelenskyy said in brief remarks to reporters after the first meeting. "Every such meeting gets us closer to peace." Steve Witkoff to Zelensky: We're having a great time here, and the hospitality is unsurpassed. The President wanted Jared and I to come here. We had a great trip, took the train, and as you said, it was a delightful trip. pic.twitter.com/QTFxcdlwdT — Clash Report (@clashreport) September 6, 2026 Zelenskyy was expected to speak to the reporters later in the day alongside the US envoys. The push for a diplomatic end to the four-and-a-half-year conflict began with CIA Director John Ratcliffe's unexpected visit to Moscow nearly two weeks ago. Ahead of the weekend meetings, Bloomberg reporters were increasingly less optimistic about a breakthrough peace deal, saying the prospects for ending the war remained low. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/06/2026 - 13:05