How the Media is Gaslighting You About Trump Derangement Syndrome

How the Media is Gaslighting You About Trump Derangement Syndrome

Matt Margolis  

It's an older meme but it checks out.

The media has a formula whenever Trump Derangement Syndrome comes up, and it never changes. We all know exactly what it is and what it means. The media clearly knows it, too, but doesn't report on it accurately. Instead, they try to take the term and reframe it as an insult to those who use it, rather than to those the term is actually about.

The latest example came this week from the Buffalo News, in a story about a police union warning its own officers ahead of Saturday's "Freedom Rally" in Niagara Square, where City Hall is. The Buffalo Police Benevolent Association sent members a text message Thursday laying out the threat in blunt terms, according to a copy that the paper obtained.

"Officers working the Trump rally be aware of people with extreme TDS as they pose a threat to people trying to peacefully assemble and voice their right to free speech," the union told members. "This current city administration values the libtard ways more the (sic) celebrating this great nations (sic) 250th birthday."

I could write a whole article about this story on its own, and I was going to, until I read the following line in the story:

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a phrase used by Trump supporters about people who criticize the president.

Excuse me? There may be competing definitions of TDS, but it is not a universal term for anyone who simply criticizes President Trump.

This week alone gave two more examples of the same trick after President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself as a doctor treating celebrities for TDS, and HuffPost described it as simply a video "depicting himself as a doctor treating celebrities who have criticized him." Forbes framed it the same way: "TDS is a reference to 'Trump Derangement Syndrome,' an insult the president regularly uses to attack his most prominent critics."

Under that definition, disliking Trump's policies makes you a TDS victim. But, I’m sorry, it’s not simple. Over and over, these outlets treat TDS as a slur Trump supporters throw at anyone who disagrees with him. Rosie O'Donnell, who left the country over Trump over absurd claims she no longer felt safe in this country, has TDS. Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who pardoned a child rapist rather than let Trump's immigration policies allow him to be deported, has TDS.

If you can healthily disagree with Trump’s policies, then you don’t have TDS. The problem is that so many on the left don’t. And they’ve let what amounts to basic policy disagreements with a politician overwhelm their entire existence, compelling them to do things most people would consider crazy.

ICYMI: Need Another Reason to Loathe Michelle Obama?

Manhattan-based psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert says Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, and he sees it in his office constantly. Alpert recently made the case on Fox News, on Harris Faulkner’s show, that what he sees goes far beyond garden-variety political dislike.

"This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far to call it the defining pathology of our time," Alpert said.

Patients arrive fixated on the president, and it doesn't take long for it to surface. "People are obsessed with Trump, they're fixated, they're hyper-fixated on Trump," Alpert said, adding that it takes "probably five minutes" before their feelings about him dominate the session. The symptoms mirror clinical anxiety and obsessive-compulsive patterns. "They can't sleep, they feel traumatized by Mr. Trump, they feel restless," he said. One patient couldn't even enjoy a vacation. "I had one patient who said she couldn't enjoy a vacation because anytime she saw Trump in the news or on her device, she felt triggered," Alpert said.

And this just wasn’t happening under Joe Biden with people on the right. ”I had patients who hated Joe Biden, but it never rose to the point where they wanted him dead or would stay up at night, obsessing over Joe Biden the way that they do over Trump," he told Peter Doocy on The Sunday Briefing in November. "And that's where I think the pathology comes into play, if it's affecting your life that profoundly. And I would even go so far as to call this a mental health epidemic, and in some ways the defining pathology of the past decade."

Trump "dominates probably about three-quarters of the sessions,” Alpert holds with patients, he said, and his job is helping them separate "what's fact and what isn't." That includes talking patients down from conspiracy theories. "If you think that Trump is going to round up the gays and send them off to an island, or if you think that Trump is a Nazi — look, these things are not proven, they're not fact at all," Alpert said.

The media knows exactly what Trump Derangement Syndrome is, and it's pretending it’s just a slur used against anyone who disagrees with Trump in order to protect the people who have it.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/07/04/how-the-media-is-gaslighting-you-about-trump-derangement-syndrome-n4954657?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

Trump’s DOJ Tells the ICC: Americans Answer to America, So Pound Sand!

Trump’s DOJ Tells the ICC: Americans Answer to America, So Pound Sand!

David Manney  

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't dress up the message in diplomatic lace. In a June 29 letter to Judge Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court, Blanche told The Hague what President Donald Trump's administration had already made clear: Americans answer to American courts.

A foreign tribunal the United States never joined doesn't get a roving claim over its liberty. The legal language was polished, but the meaning was blunt enough.

The Hague can go pound sand!

The DOJ said the United States isn't a party to the Rome Statute, never consented to ICC authority, and will not accept ICC jurisdiction over U.S. people anywhere in the world. 

“The ICC has acted in an increasingly lawless and illegitimate manner,” writes Blanche in his letter to Judge Tomoko Akane, President of the International Criminal Court. “Its record of selective enforcement and credible allegations of internal misconduct raise serious doubts about the ICC’s impartiality, credibility, and legitimacy.” 

In 2002, Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act which expressly repudiates ICC jurisdiction over U.S. persons, including U.S. servicemembers, government officials, and civilians. The statute prohibits cooperation with the ICC and authorizes the President to use all means necessary and appropriate to secure the release of any U.S. person detained pursuant to any ICC warrant or request.

Going forward, the United States will not cooperate with any ICC investigation, inquiry, summons, or proceeding. This includes the extradition or transfer any U.S. person to the ICC. The Department will also oppose any effort by other countries to do so. 

“The Department of Justice is fully committed to defending our Nation’s sovereignty and protecting the rights of U.S. persons against unlawful international overreach,” the letter continues. “Our Constitution — the supreme law of the land — vests the judicial power of the United States in its own courts, and our legal system is the envy of the world. The United States will not subordinate the liberty and security of our people to a foreign tribunal in The Hague with no accountability to any electorate or fidelity to the Constitution.” 

Blanche also wrote that DOJ will not cooperate with ICC investigations, inquiries, summonses, proceedings, extraditions, or transfers involving Americans.

For once, Washington said the quiet part in plain American terms. Sovereignty isn't a mood; it's the hard border around who may judge our soldiers, our officials, and our people. 

If the Constitution vests judicial power in American courts, then no unelected panel in The Hague gets to borrow that power because it prefers a different answer.

Congress drew the same line in 2002 with the American Servicemembers' Protection Act. The law blocks U.S. cooperation with the ICC, bars extradition from the United States to the court, and prohibits support for the transfer out of U.S. people or lawful permanent residents to ICC custody. 

It also gives the president authority to act to secure the release of protected Americans held by or for the ICC.

Blanche's letter also accused the ICC of selective enforcement and raised concerns about internal misconduct. Those words landed while ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan KC remains under a cloud of disciplinary trouble. From the Associated Press:

In an unprecedented move, the embattled chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was suspended from his duties late Monday, after the court’s oversight body referred British barrister Karim Khan for disciplinary proceedings.

The 56-year-old is facing allegations of sexual misconduct with a female aide, in a scandal that has dragged on for more than two years. He has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

A final decision on Khan’s fate is now up to the Assembly of States Parties, the body that oversees the ICC, which will hold a special session to decide if Khan can remain in his job at the global court.

The Bureau of the Assembly of States parties — the executive committee of the court’s oversight body — said in a statement that it based its decision “on the report of an investigation undertaken by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the underlying evidence, the advice of an ad hoc Panel of judicial experts, and written submissions.”

Khan has denied the allegations, but the court's own oversight process has moved against him, and deputy prosecutors have handled his duties during the fight over his future.

The ICC's reach hasn't been aimed only at America. President Trump's 2025 executive order imposed sanctions after the court targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The order said the ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, because neither country is a party to the Rome Statute, and neither has accepted the court's authority.

Critics will call Blanche's letter defiant.

Good.

Defiance has its place when foreign institutions act as if consent is a small detail. America can punish war crimes, and we can hold our own accountable.

America can work with allies and still refuse to hand its people to a court that answers to no American voter, no American jury, and no American Constitution.

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2026/07/04/trumps-doj-tells-the-icc-americans-answer-to-america-so-pound-sand-n4954663?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

Conviction vs. Contempt: Why the Left Can't Match Trump's Moral Clarity

Conviction vs. Contempt: Why the Left Can't Match Trump's Moral Clarity

Eric Florack  

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Hello and welcome to the day after the big day. It's July 5, 2026. My calendar says it's National Bikini Day, National Graham Cracker Day, National Apple Turnover Day, National Workaholics Day, Algeria Independence Day, and Mechanical Pencil Day — so pick your fighter today: sunbathe in swimwear invented as a nuclear metaphor, eat one-third of a s'more, or finally finish that email you've been "getting to" since Tuesday, but not all three, because even a made-up holiday deserves your undivided attention.

Today in History:

1687: Isaac Newton publishes Principia Mathematica, laying out the laws of motion and universal gravitation. 

1775: The Continental Congress adopts the Olive Branch Petition, a final appeal to King George III to avoid war. He rejects it and threatens to execute the people who wrote it. 

1811: Venezuela declares independence from Spain, launching its war for independence. 

1852: Frederick Douglass delivers his landmark speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" in Rochester, N.Y.

1865: President Andrew Johnson signs the order confirming the convictions of the conspirators in Abraham Lincoln's assassination. 

1911: A deadly heat wave peaks in the northeastern U.S., with temperatures reaching 106°F in Nashua, N.H. 

1948: The United Kingdom's National Health Service begins operations, offering universal healthcare funded by taxation.

 1954: Elvis Presley records "That's All Right" at Sun Records, a session often cited as the birth of rock and roll. 

1962: Algeria gains independence from France after 132 years of colonial rule. 

1971: The 26th Amendment is certified, lowering the U.S. voting age to 18. 

1975: Cape Verde gains independence from Portugal. 

1975: Arthur Ashe defeats Jimmy Connors to become the first black man to win Wimbledon. 

1994: Amazon is incorporated, beginning as an online bookstore. 

1996: Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, is born.

Birthdays Today Include: P.T. Barnum (circus entrepreneur, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus); Georges Pompidou (former president of France); Jean Cocteau (poet and filmmaker, known for Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus); Robbie Robertson (musician, guitarist for The Band); Huey Lewis (musician, frontman of Huey Lewis and the News); Bill Watterson (cartoonist, creator of Calvin and Hobbes); Edie Falco (actress, known for The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie); Kathryn Erbe (actress, known for Law & Order: Criminal Intent); Katherine Helmond (actress, known for Soap, Who’s the Boss?); RZA (musician and producer, member of Wu-Tang Clan); François Arnaud (actor, known for The Borgias).

* * *

I got to thinking last night after I watched President Donald Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore, followed by the left's bedwetting response — the kind of reflex a bad meal at the local diner triggers right before it comes back up. And the thought landed with brutal clarity.

Trump said: "The American dream still lives, and the American flag still flies more proudly than ever before over the people who will not quit."

He also said, "The nation that will not fail, the country that will not fall no matter how hard the enemy tries — we cannot be beaten."

The contrast between the president’s speech and the leftist reaction was a stark one.

It's a little early yet for the full picture of the left's response to emerge, but we have New York City's Mayor Zohran Mamdani's. He has been a target of Trump of late, and justifiably so. He gave a competing July 4th-eve speech that didn't name Trump directly but seemed aimed at his rhetoric, invoking the idea that American ideals "are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them." The point Mamdani misses, of course, is that ever since Marx put pen to paper, socialism has proven itself to be the very definition of authoritarian.

Sure, the left insists it can't stomach the president because of its perception of the yawning gap between what he preaches and what he does. But here's the uglier possibility keeping leftists up at night: maybe they can't stomach him because of themselves — because of the gap between his willingness to act and their willingness to actually confront evil. The evil they themselves have championed.

My take: the left has marinated so long in ambiguity and inaction both on the world stage vis-à-vis Iran, and the socialism that has become so loud recently, that Trump's call for decisive action — and his habit of actually taking action against that evil — doesn't register as leadership. It reads as an insult to their treasured sense of nuance, their preference for negotiating with and capitulating to that evil instead.

Here's what Trump's critics won't say out loud: they've convinced themselves and are trying to convince you that opposing him with everything they've got is the defining moral fight of our era. It isn't. He already named the real one, and it was never about him. And keep in mind, it's a little hard to argue from a moral perspective when you’ve spent the last five decades arguing against the very concept of morality.

That's exactly why he's so hard to beat, and why his supporters won't flinch no matter how ugly his approval numbers get. (They haven't budged, by the way — but that's a separate topic.)

Trump’s opponents run on moral certainty that he's the villain: remove him, defeat him, shame him. He runs on moral certainty that the mullahs and the IRGC, Palestinian militant factions, and Communist movements are the villains — and that defeating them is the point. Set those side by side, and it’s clear Trump’s position is driven by conviction. The left’s constant whining sounds like a grudge wearing a suit.

That gap hands ammunition to every conservative who's ever argued that liberals traded real conviction for something cheaper: distaste. Distaste doesn't demand courage. Distaste doesn't require a plan. It just needs someone disliked loudly enough, for long enough, that the dislike starts masquerading as principle. They’ve been doing it so long, it’s all they’ve got left, and it shows. All they have left after so long of it being the core argument is stubbornness and hatred. And that’s never going to sell.

It's one reason I remain confident regarding the mid-terms, assuming the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also called the SAVE Act or SAVE America Act) is passed.

Maybe someone ought to get John Thune to read this piece.

https://pjmedia.com/eric-florack/2026/07/05/conviction-vs-contempt-why-the-left-cant-match-trumps-moral-clarity-n4954686?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

Trump's Mount Rushmore Speech Outrages the Media Like Nothing Since the Days of Reagan

Trump's Mount Rushmore Speech Outrages the Media Like Nothing Since the Days of Reagan

Robert Spencer  

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Speaking at Mount Rushmore on Friday to commemorate the 250th anniversary of our nation, President Donald Trump sounded the alarm: “As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack.” He observed that “a generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.”

There was no doubt whatsoever that what he was saying was true, and that thirty-five years after the end of the Cold War, communism is indeed resurgent in the U.S. The establishment media confirmed this by falling easily back into its old Cold War habit of sneering at foes of communism as if patriots were fabricating the threat entirely, or at very least wildly exaggerating it in order to advance their own agenda.

The New York Times report was dripping with so much contempt that you’d think it was the good old days again, when they were sneering at Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “Mr. Trump,” sniffed the Gray Lady, “read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln looked on. He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.” You'd think Trump had done something really gauche like ask Mr. Gorbachev to tear down this wall. (Back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan actually called on Soviet top dog Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the Times complained that the president was "using this speech to portray Moscow as the villain in the arms race.")

Trump, the rootless cosmopolites continued, was — horror of horrors — “not subtle.” He declared that communism was “‘the enemy of July 4, 1776.’ He called it a bigger threat than Pearl Harbor and even 9/11. He name-checked Karl Marx.”

As well he should, for Marx is the intellectual godfather behind the communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s petulant 250th anniversary remarks, in which he whined that “the powerful” view America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

Trump didn’t address Mamdani’s remarks directly, but he made it very clear that he knew what they represented: the politics of envy and hatred, which leads to social upheaval, total government control, and the state’s enslavement of its citizens. “These are not mere political disagreements,” Trump said, “like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country.”

Speaking accurately about communism in a way that the New York Times hasn’t done since its Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Walter Duranty covered up Stalin’s Ukrainian famine, Trump said that it was “the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.” He added: “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

That is undeniable, both because communism is an internationalist system that rejects all nationalism, and because it considers allegiance to anything but the international working class (which is in reality the bosses of whatever communist system is at hand) to be an unacceptable attachment to bourgeois capitalism.

Related: Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech, and Boy, Does This Guy Hate America

Continuing in his classic Trumpian fashion, the president said that “the Communist Party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals, and everybody that doesn’t want to work. Communism is a loser. It always was, and it is. Right now, it’s a big loser. Look at the people that are promoting it.” Trump has called a lot of people losers over the years, and in this case his usage may seem odd, given the fact that Democratic Socialists of America candidates have just won some impressive victories, and the Marxists appear to be on the march in America.

Trump is, however, entirely correct. Communism is an ideology for losers, as it punishes the productive for their productivity and rewards the thugs who manage to seize and hold power, all while presenting itself as the triumph of social justice and equality of rights for all. Only losers would fall for that lie, and only slaves would submit to it, and Trump doesn’t want to see America become the land of either one.

“Tonight,” the president said, “we gather on the eve of one of the most extraordinary days in the history of the world. Tomorrow we mark 250 years of glorious independence and 250 years of majestic American freedom – nothing like it.” Indeed there isn’t. And now that we have come this far, it would be a world-historical tragedy to lose it all to the most obviously failed ideology in the history of the world.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2026/07/04/trumps-mount-rushmore-speech-outrages-the-media-like-nothing-since-the-days-of-reagan-n4954672?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Wind and Solar Finally Meet the Taxpayer’s Breaking Point

Wind and Solar Finally Meet the Taxpayer’s Breaking Point

David Manney 

A family paying the electric bill doesn't care how noble a subsidy sounds in Washington. They care whether the lights stay on, the furnace runs, the air conditioner works, and the bill leaves enough money for groceries.

President Donald Trump's tax law set July 4, 2026, as the deadline ending federal tax credit subsidies for new wind and solar projects not already under construction. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright called the deadline the end of roughly 35 years of federal support for wind and solar, and he noted that in 2025 they comprised about 3% of total U.S. primary energy consumption. From Just the News:

The Working Families Tax Cuts, a signature piece of President Trump's tax legislation signed a year ago, set Saturday as the deadline for federal tax credit subsidies on any new solar or wind projects not currently under construction.

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright touted the subsidy deadline and criticized solar and wind energy projects in a video posted to social media Thursday.

"The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine," Wright said. "They drive up the system costs and increase Americans' electricity prices."

From 2010 to 2023, solar and wind energy projects received more than $141 billion in government subsidies combined, according to an analysis by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The projects received more in government subsidies than any other energy source in the United States, the group reported.

"Beyond their direct costs, subsidies are causing artificially low or negative wholesale prices, scarcity prices during periods of high demand and low wind and solar generation, inefficient use of existing assets, and increased transmission costs," Brent Bennett, a researcher at the Texas foundation wrote.

The original argument for subsidies was patience. Give the industry help, let technology improve, then let the market decide. After decades of federal support, taxpayers were still being asked to finance energy sources that need backup, transmission buildouts, land, materials, and favorable rules to compete.

Patience became a policy shift; policy drift becomes a bill the public never really got to vote on.

The White House executive order signed July 7, 2025, said federal policy would rapidly eliminate market distortions and taxpayer costs tied to green energy subsidies. The order directed the Treasury Department to strictly enforce the termination of clean electricity production and investment tax credits under sections 45Y and 48E for wind and solar facilities. 

It also directed the Interior Department to review policies that favor wind and solar over dispatchable energy sources.

A Just the News report placed the cost in plain sight. Wind and solar subsidies were estimated at more than $141 billion from 2010 to 2023, more than any other energy source. Before the cuts, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the two programs would increase the federal deficit by $308 billion from 2026 through 2035.

Those figures should settle the basic question. Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to bankroll electricity that still struggles when demand peaks and weather refuses to cooperate. America needs power that can run steel mills, hospitals, data centers, farms, factories, and homes without asking families to pray for sunshine or a breeze.

Wind and solar have a role where they make sense. Let them compete; let investors risk their own money; let customers decide what they want to buy.

A market can handle that, but a rigged market can't keep asking the waitress, welder, truck driver, and retiree to carry favored industries on their backs while Washington calls the burden “progress.”

The next honest fight should include ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard isn't the same kind of tax credit, but it still uses federal power to force a market.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin finalized 2026 and 2027 Renewable Fuel Standard volumes at the highest levels in history. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the rule is expected to create a $3 billion to $4 billion increase in net farm income, while the EPA said it would maintain the 15 billion gallon conventional biofuel level for 2026 and 2027.

Today at the White House Great American Agriculture Celebration, President Trump announced that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized the historic Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) “Set 2” final rule. The final rule realigns the program with Congress’ original intent—increasing the use of homegrown American biofuels—putting American farmers first and promoting American energy independence. In the 20th year of the RFS program, “Set 2” establishes the renewable fuel volume requirements for 2026 and 2027 at the highest levels in program history. EPA’s final rule demonstrates the Trump administration’s ongoing commitment to America’s farmers and unleashing American energy by reducing America’s reliance on foreign oil, delivering long-term certainty and stability for America’s farmers and biofuel producers, and ultimately creating a path for rural economies to boom.

“President Trump promised a Golden Age of American agriculture. Once again, his administration is delivering. Overall, ‘Set 2’ creates a larger, more stable, and more reliable domestic market for U.S. crops, strengthening farm income and rural economies,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “For 20 years, this program has diversified our nation’s energy supply and advanced American energy independence. EPA is proud to deliver on this mission and to do so at historic levels.”

“Today’s announcement is truly historic for our nation’s farmers and energy producers. These numbers represent the highest levels of biofuels ever required to be blended into our fuel supply,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “With President Trump and Administrator Zeldin’s leadership, these historically high volumes are expected to create a $3 to $4 billion dollar increase in net farm income. The Renewable Fuel Standard Set 2 Rule will create a $31 billion dollar value for American corn and soybean oil for biofuel production in 2026, which is $2 billion more than in 2025. Our farmers are stepping up to grow American energy dominance.”

Under Administrator Zeldin’s leadership, the agency has been working tirelessly to further America’s energy independence and future, and these new requirements are another major step in that direction.

Farmers deserve respect; corn growers aren't villains; rural America has been battered by fuel prices, fertilizer costs, interest rates, and years of policy chaos. Respecting farmers doesn't require pretending every mandate is wise forever.

If Washington is finally willing to question subsidies for wind and solar, it should also question every energy mandate that hides costs inside fuel prices, compliance credits, and political favors.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said higher blending targets drove Renewable Identification Number prices close to record highs in 2026. It also forecast record-high production of fuel ethanol and renewable diesel because of high blend mandates, high gasoline and diesel prices, and rising production capacity.

America doesn't need an energy policy built around sacred cows. Wind, solar, ethanol, oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and hydropower should all face the same hard test: can they deliver reliable, affordable energy without turning taxpayers into unwilling investors?

Trump's July 4 deadline is a good start because it treats taxpayers like citizens with rights instead of wallets with legs.

Now keep going.

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2026/07/04/wind-and-solar-finally-meet-the-taxpayers-breaking-point-n4954653?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

The FBI’s Georgia Probe Asks the Question 2020 Critics Tried to Bury

The FBI’s Georgia Probe Asks the Question 2020 Critics Tried to Bury

David Manney  

AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

The FBI just put hundreds of people on a question much of Washington has spent five years trying to shame out of existence. If Georgia's 2020 presidential election was clean, a full review should prove it. If something went wrong, America needs to know that, too.

The bureau has directed 260 investigative analysts and staff operations specialists from field offices across the country to help review records tied to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. 

Each is expected to check about 708 records by July 17, and the work has been described inside the FBI as a “priority investigation.” From the Associated Press:

FBI agents in January seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of Atlanta. A Fulton County spokesperson declined to comment citing a pending investigation. The contents of the memo were first reported by MS NOW.

President Donald Trump and his allies have made false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election. Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The Justice Department has previously said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County.”

President Donald Trump has long argued that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. His critics have spent just as long insisting the subject is closed, settled, buried, sealed, and morally off-limits.

They don't merely disagree; they often demand a loyalty oath: say there was no fraud, say it clearly, and say it before you're allowed back into polite conversation.

But questions don't become dangerous because someone powerful dislikes them. They become dangerous when the system refuses to answer them. The country was told Georgia counted the presidential vote three times, including once by hand, and each count showed Joe Biden ahead.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the 2020 hand audit reaffirmed the machine count and showed Biden leading Trump.

Those facts should be included; so should another fact: audits and recounts don't automatically answer every question about chain of custody, ballot handling, election procedures, memory cards, recordkeeping, or whether any illegal conduct occurred around the process.

A tally can confirm a number, while an investigation asks how the system operated around that number.

That's why the FBI's move matters. It doesn't prove fraud, doesn't overturn anything, and doesn't rewrite history by itself. It asks whether federal investigators believe there's enough unresolved material in Fulton County to justify a major manpower surge.

In a free country, that shouldn't terrify anyone who says the records are sound.

The court record from 2020 also deserves more honesty than the public usually gets. Many election lawsuits turned on timing, standing, certification, jurisdiction, or requested remedies.

Some claims were rejected because courts found them unsupportive. Other cases never became full public trials on every factual allegation. The popular claim that “the courts reviewed all the fraud evidence and settled everything” flattens a much messier record.

Trump critics will point to Georgia's recounts, audits, certification, and recertification. They have every right to do so; those are part of the record. 

Trump supporters will point to unanswered questions, sudden resistance to deeper reviews, and the strange rage that erupts whenever anyone asks for another look.

They have every right to do that, too.

The healthiest answer is daylight, not slogans, gag rules, social punishment, or pretending that half the country should simply swallow doubts because institutional voices sound impatient.

Elections are the machinery of consent. If people believe the machinery is clean, they accept defeat more readily. If they believe questions are being buried, suspicion grows.

The answer isn't less scrutiny; it's more.

Fulton County has been at the center of America's 2020 argument for years. Now the FBI, led by Director Kash Patel, is putting hundreds of analysts on the records. The DOJ has already acknowledged an investigation into “irregularities” tied to the county's 2020 presidential election.

If the probe finds nothing, say so clearly and release as much as the law allows. If it finds misconduct, clearly name it and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Either result is better than a country where election questions are treated as heresy.

Our country can survive hard answers, but it can't survive a ruling class that tells people to stop asking.

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What One Secret Service Agent Was Really Doing (Googling) As Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Opened Fire

What One Secret Service Agent Was Really Doing (Googling) As Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Opened Fire

By Rusty Weiss  

    

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

A new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general report reveals that a Secret Service counter-drone operator was actively Googling the location of the rooftop where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was perched at the exact moment he opened fire on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Instead of quickly coordinating with officers on the scene, the operator resorted to an internet search while the gunman took aim from just 155 yards away, one of several catastrophic failures detailed in the blistering report.

Perhaps more alarming, local law enforcement had identified Crooks on the roof two minutes before the first shots rang out — yet the then-presidential candidate's protective detail was never alerted. 

President Trump was the target at the Butler campaign rally where he was shot and wounded. The assassin's bullet would strike Trump's ear, leaving him bloodied. Corey Comperatore, a retired volunteer fire chief, was killed in the assassination attempt as he protected his wife and daughter, and two other men were seriously wounded. 

Multiple agents were suspended without pay in connection with their response to the attempted assassination.

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The new DHS IG report, released on Thursday, shows the counter-drone operator was still Googling the location of the American Glass Research (AGR) building when Crooks opened fire.

You know, as opposed to asking someone about his location or where he had been spotted.

Local law enforcement at 6:09 p.m. called Secret Service and the Pennsylvania State Police communications room, “warning them of a suspicious person on the AGR complex’s roof."

“Instead of asking local law enforcement personnel for the AGR complex’s location, the counter drone operator searched online for it, and was still searching when Crooks fired his first shots,” the report states.

As a result, the president’s team remained completely unaware of the armed gunman just 155 yards away until bullets were already flying.

Just two minutes later, at 6:11 p.m., Crooks opened fire with eight shots. Despite that narrow window, the president’s own protective detail was never warned that an armed gunman had a clear line of sight to the stage.

Furthermore, a Secret Service site agent proposed using trucks already on location at the Butler Farm Show grounds to block the line of sight from the AGR building to the stage, but campaign staff rejected the idea because the vehicles would be “too close to [President Trump’s] press shot.” 

However, the agreed-upon alternative placement was never implemented, and supervisors failed to follow up after being told that local law enforcement would handle the AGR complex. That miscommunication left Crooks with an unobstructed 155-yard view of the podium.

The IG report also highlighted that the lead agent at the event, Miyo Perez, was relatively inexperienced, while the two supervisors overseeing her planning faced no discipline and later received promotions from Sean Curran, the agent ultimately responsible for signing off on the Butler site security plan. Curran is presently the Director of the United States Secret Service.

Law enforcement was eventually able to neutralize Crooks, shooting and killing him on the rooftop after he opened fire.

"The Secret Service’s overall lack of policy and processes, coupled with limited intelligence sharing and poor collaboration and communication with protectee staff and state and local law enforcement, set the conditions that led to missing opportunities to prevent and detect the attempted assassination," the report reveals.

It was a cascade of inexcusable failures. A man died in this attack, two others were severely wounded, the future President was almost killed, and the nation would have almost surely been plunged into absolute chaos.