Welcome again, my dear readers, to Asylum. Seldom has the establishment been so brazenly transparent in its devious and dishonest machinations to retain power than we are seeing now. While most of my examples will be of Democrats and Liberals, there are also RINOs in the mix, like Mitch McConnell, who voted for the confirmation of some of the least qualified and most bizarre cabinet choices in history with Biden but voted against Tulsi Gabbard this week. This isn’t an original position As far back as Lincoln and FDR, the establishment reflected its hatred for the Constitution, the rule of law, and anything that didn’t give them their way.
When faced with the possibility of his actions being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Lincoln had an arrest warrant issued for the Chief Justice as confirmed by a friend, bodyguard, and US martial Ward Hill Lamon (here). There has been some dissent among Lincoln apologists, but I find contemporary criticisms of a verified primary source hard to accept. Then we have FDR, whose New Deal (exacerbated and extended the Great Depression here) was being dismantled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (their job is to stop the government from acting unconstitutionally). Rather than accept his plan was illegal per the constitution and abide his oath of office, FDR came up with a plan to pack the court from 9 judges to 15 with the intent of having any totalitarian policy he wanted rubber-stamped. FDR took a beating politically for the plan, but in proposing it, FDR intimidated the court into playing along with his unconstitutional overreach (here and here). I am sure all of you, my dear readers, can remember not too long ago when the modern establishment was again wanting to pack the court (here and here). This time, just as when FDR first proposed it, the goal wasn’t to uphold constitutional checks and balances or to protect the rights of the people. The goal was to increase the power of the establishment and get their way no matter what they wanted to do. The fact that the Supreme Court hands down widely unpopular rulings for the political class indicates that it works as designed.
Now, the establishment beast is seriously and grievously wounded (not dead by a long shot but hurt). Trump getting a mandate with both a popular and electoral vote victories and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress was a problem, but Trump following through with all his campaign promises is catastrophic. He has nominated a very diverse group of anti-establishment cabinet members, including women, gays, and minorities, by their merit rather than their position on some imaginary intersectional chart. This includes people who fled the Democratic party because it has gone insane, libertarian-minded people, and others making it the least “conservative” Republican administration ever. This is a good thing because mainstream Republican conservatives are just establishment shills and act as controlled opposition when a Democrat is in office. The reverse is also true of the mainstream Democrats. Both sides are just part and parcel of the establishment.
The establishment is still trying to fight the 5th generational civil war we have been in for over a decade. All the reports of Trump’s deporting immigrants fail to mention that only the illegal ones are being sent home. They are even going so far as to suggest those who haven’t committed a crime are being targeted when the fact is only criminals are being deported because entering the country illegally is a crime (here, here, and here). They are wailing about some mythical loss of rights; apparently, all women will be chained neck and foot naked in the kitchen or something. These people are quite literally insane (here, here, and here).
While it seems to me that Trump is perhaps the greatest hero of women’s rights in the last score of years. Seriously, he has protected the rights and person of women and girls by prohibiting men from women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. He has also required that all government-issued Identification represent a person’s sex. This is important to the safety of everyone, especially in emergencies because regardless of how far you have gone into modifications there are significant differences in how doctors need to treat the biological sexes. If a victim is unconscious, emergency personnel need to know and not have to guess or be misled to provide proper care. They say this is for their safety both with sport and jail, so what about women’s safety when it comes to transwomen? Nearly 40% of sex crimes
committed in women’s prisons are committed by biological males claiming to be female, and there have even been cases of rapists, who didn’t discover they were trans until they were arrested, being put in women’s prison. In sports, there are countless occurrences of women being seriously injured by biological men competing in their divisions. It is also patently unfair for biological men to compete in women’s sports, and as proof of the performance gap, the best women’s soccer team in the world was soundly beaten by a U15 boys team (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). These policies are not genocide or erasing people. They are acknowledging biological reality and moving to restore fairness and safety to women’s sports.
The outrage continues as Trump dismisses top government people, including generals (as is his right as chief executive). Nobody complained when Obama purged 197 of the military's top brass of old school hard-bitten warfighters, and replaced them with diverse hires and political allies (here, here, and here). This opened the way for all the changes we saw in Obama's second term. Some rolled back in Trump's first term and expanded under Biden that left our military a social experiment that had trouble finding volunteers. Since Trump has been doing his own purge of the entire executive branch, he has forced out political operatives and either does not replace them or replaces them with public servants. When I look at the makeup of Trump’s cabinet, it is hard for me to believe that he is just swapping one operative for another, as some would have you believe (here, here, here, and here). In the past, I have pointed out that while the president does have great power, the Supreme Court has ruled that there are limits (here). In a nutshell, to fire a top official out of hand the president needs to be able to show cause in the way of wrongdoing or dereliction of the duties of the office. I think with all the investigations going on in most cases that won’t be an issue.
This brings us to Elon Musk and his auditors of DOGE. We spoke a bit about it last week (here). This too has been met with wailing and gnashing of teeth by people who don’t understand the constitution or how the government is supposed to work. They complain that Musk wasn’t elected, while not acknowledging neither were any of the people he is auditing. They complain that he doesn’t have the clearance (here, here, and here). Unfortunately for them, all classification authority is vested in the president and anyone who classifies, declassifies, or approves access to classified information is only exercising delegated authority from the president (here). As such, what the president says is classified is classified and what he says is declassified is declassified. The same goes to clearance. The president can grant or pull any level of clearance at will. So, if Trump set DOGE on its course, then yes, they have the clearance.
The other complaint is the Trump administration doesn’t have the authority (here and here). Fortunately, they are wrong. Congress does get to pass laws and control the purse strings, but that is all. Once a law is enacted it is up to the executive to carry out and enforce the law. Per the constitution, all executive powers are vested in the president. Article 2 Section 1:
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
From a cabinet position down to the newest customer service clerk of any executive agency, whatever authority they have is delegated from the president because the executive power is vested in his office. Typically, there is little management beyond bigger-picture concerns of if some issue catches the public’s attention, with the executive branch bureaucracy handling the minutia of day-to-day activities. That, however, doesn’t mean he cannot. As such, the President has elected to contract Musk and his crew to investigate the entire executive branch and report back. He is doing this by using AI tools and computer engineers to make it much faster. So far as budgets and spending go, Congress votes to fund XYZ agency X billion dollars. At that time, the agency in question can access and spend those funds for its operations with no further congressional oversight. The exception is if some funds are earmarked for a specific use. While an earmark doesn’t increase spending at all, it does cause a portion of the X billion dollars to be spent in a particular manner. This doesn’t mean the agency has to spend all the allowed funds. Any agency can return unutilized funds to the treasury. The other part of this is Congress has gotten very sloppy since the end of WWII and writes a lot of very vague laws that will state a goal, and then rather than explicitly stating how a goal should be met, will say XYZ department can set all required regulations it sees fit to achieve the goal.
This kind of vague law writing Is how we now have over a hundred and fifty thousand pages of regulations (here), most carrying criminal penalties and none voted on by an elected official. This has resulted in an admin state (deep state) with more power than the elected government bodies (here, here, here, and here). Sadly, this has resulted in such morass of “laws” that nobody voted for it is said everyone commits multiple felonies a day (here). So even if Trump can’t solve the deficit (he can’t without cutting into “mandatory spending”), if he manages to reign in the admin state by removing departments and curtailing regulation, he will have done the Lord's work. With all the graft, corruption, and shenanigans found in USAID and the discovery that all invoices were just paid without verification, who knows how deep the corruption rabbit hole goes? I think it's probably deep. On a funny side note, internet searches for defense attorneys have spiked in the area of Sodom on the Potomac to 500% of the next highest region in the country (funny enough, Utah). So, many folks are worried (here).
I could go on about what Trump is doing and what is being discovered more and more every day, but I try to keep these under 3000 words, so between Trump's cabinet picks chosen to destroy the existing system and root out corruption in the machine (most having been confirmed already), the DOGE auditing and the destruction of the false social narrative of the last decade a lot of people and organizations are going to lose a lot of power and influence. They will not go quietly. Kennedy and Reagan were the last two presidents on this kind of track. One was assassinated, and the other seriously changed his tune after an assassination attempt. So far, they are trying media psychological operations in the media, and lawsuits all run through a very liberal activist Judge in Delaware (here, here, and here). This is the same judge who has singlehandedly destroyed Delaware's primary industry (hosting major incorporations) by overturning a shareholder's vote and denying Elon Musk his agreed-on and shareholder-voted-for pay package. Now, major companies are moving their incorporations out of Delaware as fast as they can (here, here, and here). I anticipate most of those rulings being tossed out by the Supreme Court, so they are temporary setbacks. There have been clear calls for violence by Democratic leaders (here, here, here, and here), that would see a Republican crucified. There has also been the start of a ripple with left-leaning press talking about how the Democrats were tricked into thinking the economy was terrible and the people were right (here). I believe this shift is positioning for an attack in the future where they use actual numbers to attack Trump while comparing them to the cooked numbers before. However, if none of this works, I don’t know how much longer the establishment will let this go or how deep Trump’s people will get to cut before the spooks in the security industrial complex or the ag-pharmaceutical complex take more drastic actions. Sadly, they will because they stand to lose billions of dollars and massive control if they don't.
John 10:10-11
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
God Bless you,
-Sam
Excellent column this week. Also, I’m sending you a PM …
Excellent column this week. Also, I sent you a PM …