The Power of the Sword: Who Wields This Awesome Power?
President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear plants and missile sites has once again unleashed a furious constitutional debate over presidential/congressional war powers. A full treatment of this issue is beyond the scope of this report. However, we have discussed this subject in depth in many previous issues of The New American. As to be expected, much of the fury has aligned along the partisan divide. Many Democrats calling for Trump’s impeachment over the action were all on board with President Obama taking military action in Libya. And many Republicans who support Trump were outraged over Obama’s actions. We are providing links to the following articles to help provide the historical background and constitutional principles necessary to have a proper understanding of war powers.
Proper Use of the U.S. Military (2010)
Congress Lets Obama Ignore War Powers Act in Libya (2011)
Clinton: Obama Will Ignore Congress on Libya War (2011)
Obama, Clinton, and Biden Agree: War on Libya Is Unconstitutional (2011)
Afghanistan: Will War, U.S. Occupation Continue in Perpetuity? (2011)
Obama Asks Congress, but Claims Power to Launch Syria War Anyway (2013)
The War Power Belongs Only to Congress (2015)
McConnell Would Give President Sweeping War Authority (2016)
Little Known Episode in U.S. History Explains Executive War Powers (2017)
Who Wields War Powers? (2018)
The War Powers Act: Another Congressional Abdication of Constitutional Duty (2025)
— William F. Jasper
CCP Funding Enviro-Leninist Lawfare to Cripple U.S. Energy Production
Communist China has been engaged in “Unrestricted Warfare” against the United States for several decades, even before Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) came out with their book of that title in 1999. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging “asymmetric warfare” against us: political, economic, social, and moral. Their ongoing full-spectrum attack utilizes espionage, technology theft, propaganda, cyber sabotage, market penetration, bribery, extortion, subversion, and lawfare. The CCP’s lawfare agenda was the subject of an important U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 25, 2025 titled “Enter the Dragon — China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,” chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
The Beijing regime knows full well that geopolitical strength and military dominance are impossible without a robust and diverse manufacturing base, and that base is not possible without access to plentiful and affordable energy. So, while China is busy gobbling up all the global fossil-fuel supplies it can, it is also doing everything possible to curtail America’s access to our own abundant domestic energy supplies. It is doing this by funding the “green” lawsuits of radical activists that are aimed at depriving Americans of affordable oil, coal, natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear energy.
The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) (a New York nonprofit) and Energy Foundation China are two of the ChiCom-funded entities Senator Cruz and committee witnesses pointed to that have funneled millions of dollars into the coffers of enviro-lawfare activist groups such as the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The Senate hearing also exposed another important component of the lawfare scheme, the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which boasts that it “has provided training and resources to more than 3,000 judges across 28 countries.” So, not only are the CCP and the far-left enviro-activists they bankroll bringing lawsuits to tie our energy producers in knots and drive up U.S. energy costs, they are also indoctrinating our leftist judges in their novel legal theories. It’s a one-two lawfare punch.
The Republican majority witnesses included Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a watchdog organization that has investigated the funding and influence strategies of the eco-activist networks. The Democrats’ witness, David Arkush, was a daring choice, as he is one of the greenies’ extreme-left, fringe legal theorists. He is the Climate Program director at Public Citizen (one of Ralph Nader’s socialist vehicles) who advocates prosecuting and jailing executives of fossil-fuel companies for “climate homicide.” (See “Ted Cruz Shreds Witness Who Wants Oil Execs Jailed For ‘Homicide.’”)
Of course, the CCP is only one source of funding for the red/green litigation; the usual foundations (Gates, Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, MacArthur, Hewlett, Tides, etc.) and usual fedgov agencies (Energy, State, Transportation, EPA, etc.) have also provided millions of our tax dollars to the lawfare revolutionaries.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee held a similar hearing titled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild” on June 4, 2025, chaired by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)
“Our witnesses today will describe how the Left has funneled hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars through NGOs, discuss the destructive policies this has enabled, and detail the damage done to our country,” Chairwoman Greene said. “So-called green energy NGOs are among the worst offenders. They have used federal dollars to destabilize the U.S. power grid and energy dominance — while raising energy costs for Americans.”
“The Biden EPA steered billions in U.S. tax dollars to leftist climate NGOs via a $20 billion dollar slush fund known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF),” Greene noted, adding, “Like-minded nonprofits were enlisted to implement President Biden’s Green New Deal scam.” — William F. Jasper
CCP Funding Our Border Invasion and Migration Lawfare
China’s unrestricted warfare against the United States, as we have previously reported, includes social destabilization through massive migration. The above-mentioned House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee hearing titled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild” on June 4, 2025, chaired by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), provides more insight into Beijing’s migration offensive.
The New York City-based Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) has received millions of federal tax dollars through various agencies. In fiscal year 2022 alone, CPC reported revenues of $97.4 million. This same organization that has aggressively promoted the Biden-Beijing agenda to cripple America’s energy sector is also promoting the Biden-Beijing agenda to destroy our borders and flood our nation with a migrant tsunami. Is anyone surprised then that the CCP-funded/Biden-funded CPC has been caught actively involved in the militant anti-ICE, anti-deportation movement? (See here,here, and here)
But, the Chinese-American Planning Council is just a tiny tip of the migration network iceberg. The March 11, 2025 testimony of Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, provides a sobering perspective. The Biden administration, Howell notes, distributed “an estimated $6 billion to a conglomerate of 15 UN agencies and 230 NGOs” that were carrying out Biden’s call for migrants to “surge to the border.” And surge they did — by the millions! The treachery and treason are mindboggling! As Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote in 2021, “Biden called for the border surge. And now he owns it.” Yes, but we paid for it — and are continuing to pay for it. Meanwhile, “Autopen Joe” is wandering around in his closet with the Easter Bunny or the Ice Cream Fairy. All of the Biden administration officials and all of the members of Congress who enabled the migrant invasion must be made to “own” this treasonous debacle.
— William F. Jasper
Public Lands Selloff in “One Big Beautiful Bill”
One of the many moving parts in the budget reconciliation bill that has stirred a firestorm is a proposal to sell millions of acres of “federal” public lands in the Western states. The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) plan set off alarms not only among the fanatical enviros who would like to lock up all of nature and restrict all human activity (except their own), but also among many Western rural populations that would be most affected. The New American has repeatedly pointed out the unconstitutional and unfair federal domination of the Western states and has advocated in favor of “disposing” of federal lands to the states, as specified by Thomas Jefferson and the Admission Acts of the various states. However, as we note below, the OBBB scheme is not the way to go about it.
As we have reported: “Even a quick glance easily reveals there is a striking difference between the federal government’s claim to physical real estate in the states of the East and the Midwest versus those of the West. In Maine, for instance, federal agencies occupy only 1.1 percent of the state’s land area; in New York it’s a mere 0.8 percent. The federal government claims only 1.8 percent of Indiana, 1.6 percent of Alabama, and 1.7 percent of Ohio.”
“But in the Western states,” we noted, “the federal footprint covers from nearly one-third to over four-fifths of the area of the states. Consider and contrast the rest of the country with the federal government’s ownership in the Western states: Nevada: 84.5 percent; Alaska: 69.1 percent; Utah: 57.4 percent; Oregon: 53.1 percent; Idaho: 50.2 percent; Arizona: 48.1 percent.”
Thus, we have Chuck Schumer, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, and their ilk who represent New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and other urban blue areas totally controlling the Western states. This violates the “equal footing” principle under which the Western states were brought into the Union and which was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1845 decision in Pollard v. Hagan. The federal government was to “extinguish title” and allow the Western states to determine their own destinies. There is strong sentiment in the Western states to follow the examples of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Hawaii, who successfully fought in court to claim their lands illegally held by the federal government. As expected, every effort in this direction is immediately portrayed by the lavishly funded Big Green militants and their media comrades as an attempt to rape Mother Nature. Horrors! We would see strip-mining of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and clear-cutting of the Giant Redwoods! Only the all-wise, all-beneficent federal government can care for our “national treasures,” they insist. Really? As we have reported, one study after another has exposed the massive environmental damage and economic waste caused by the mismanagement and malpractice of our federal bureaucrats of the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and National Park Service.
Obviously, the hysterical responses of the Left are aimed at subverting any attempts to remove the federal boot from the necks of the Western states. They also are aimed at stopping any efforts to prevent America from accessing our abundant gas, oil, coal, uranium, and strategic minerals (including rare earth elements) now locked up on our “public lands.” Nevertheless, as Joe Wolverton reports below, the public lands sale proposal in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is a misguided effort.
For an understanding of the crucial issues involved in the ongoing “federal lands” fight, see:
Victims of the Federal Bootprint
Hage Family Vindicated by Court Victory
Last Man Standing: Nevada Ranch Family in Fedgov Face-off
VINDICATION: Bundys Walk Free!
The citizens of the Western states are just as capable of balancing environmental, recreational, agricultural, and developmental concerns as are the citizens of the Eastern and Midwestern states. The millions of acres of Western lands that are currently locked up can be tapped for many useful purposes without jeopardizing the natural environment as the fright-peddlers claim. But the OBBB plan is not the way to do it. — William F. Jasper
Illegal Land Grab Dressed in Greenwashed Propaganda
Senator Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) land-sale scheme is nothing more than a sleight-of-hand designed to reward developers and bankroll Washington’s runaway spending — it will not help the states. By restricting sales to a handful of Bureau of Land Management parcels near population centers, and excluding the larger, more valuable Forest Service and Wilderness lands, Lee’s plan strips public access while leaving states with management headaches rather than meaningful autonomy. What he peddles as a boon for affordable housing is a Trojan Horse: Markets will siphon off the cheapest or most opportunistic lands, converting them into private enclaves or luxury developments — not genuine relief for struggling families. Meanwhile, states are left to pick up the tab for roads, fire suppression, and infrastructure — all the costs Lee conveniently omits.
The Constitution makes it crystal clear how the federal government may come into lawful possession of land within a state’s borders — and that process was flagrantly ignored in nearly every acre of today’s sprawling federal land empire. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 requires that the federal government purchase land from a state, with the consent of that state’s legislature, and only for very limited purposes, namely “forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.” Yet Washington has seized control of vast swaths of the American West under the pretext of “national parks,” “protected forests,” or “wildlife reserves” without following this explicit constitutional procedure.
It’s an illegal land grab dressed in greenwashed propaganda. The Founders never authorized the feds to act as national landlords, squatting on more than 80 percent of some states such as Nevada and 45 percent of Utah. Lee’s proposal doesn’t return those lands to the states; it merely rearranges the deck chairs on a sinking constitutional ship. True constitutionalists don’t shuffle stolen land between federal agencies or auction it off to developers — they demand restoration of rightful state sovereignty over lands never lawfully ceded in the first place. — Joe Wolverton II, J.D.
RFK: From MAHA to Total Surveillance Tracking State
What’s happened to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.? Has he pivoted from Big Pharma nemesis to Big Pharma/Big Tech champion? It certainly looks that way, as Veronika Kyrylenko’s articles “RFK Jr.’s Wearables Agenda: Empowerment or Surveillance?” and “The ‘New FDA’: Faster, Smarter, Friendlier to Pharma” indicate.
According to Kennedy, HHS is rolling out a program for universal adoption of biometric wearable devices as “a key part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.” “My vision,” he says, “is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.” Hmm, that’s interesting — and alarming. What, exactly, are these “wearables” he wants all of us to use?
Smartwatches, rings, patches, and home devices will all feed into the Internet of Things (IoT). These will monitor all our bodily functions, ostensibly to help make us healthier. All of this data will feed into the Internet of Bodies (IoB). These devices will be worn, implanted, or ingested to monitor — and potentially modify — human behavior. Sounds slightly Orwellian, no?
This is beginning to look like the Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid that Catherine Austin Fitts has been warning about. — William F. Jasper
More Notes on Bilderberg 2025: Palantir, AI Surveillance State
As we noted last week, the ultra-elite, ultra-secret annual Bilderberg Meeting took place June 12-15 in Stockholm, Sweden. Among the topics on the official agenda: Depopulation and Migration; Authoritarian Axis; Transatlantic Relationship; Ukraine; Middle East; AI, Deterrence and National Security; Geopolitics of Energy and Critical Minerals.
Apropos of the digital control grid mentioned in the article above, the presence of Thiel Capital LLC CEO Peter Thiel and Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp is particularly concerning. As we reported in 2023 (In-Q-Tel: Big Tech & the Surveillance State) Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data-mining/surveillance system, is a collaborative effort of Thiel and the CIA/DOD military-intelligence-industrial complex. Put that together with Bilderberg and you have the very definition of Deep State. See: Palantir’s Database Would Gut the Fourth Amendment, Palantir to Build Centralized Database on Americans, and “Detachment 201”: Big Tech’s March Into the Military.
But, wait, there’s more! Among the other Big Tech Deep Staters at Bilderberg were Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI; Eric Schmidt, CEO, Relativity Space Inc (and former Google CEO); Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO, Google DeepMind; Jack Clark, co-founder, Anthropic PBC; General Christopher Donahue, commanding general of the United States Army Europe-Africa and Allied Land Command; Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify; Michael Kratsios, director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO, Mistral AI; Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; Brian Schimpf, Co-Founder & CEO, Anduril Industries; and Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation.
These are the folks who are all gleefully excited about implementing a global surveillance system similar to the “social credit system” they’ve already helped to install in Communist China. — William F. Jasper
Congress Attempting to Repeal Biden EPA “Climate” Program; 45 States Still Participating
As the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act (H.R. 1) makes its way through Congress, efforts are underway to potentially repeal the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program, enacted under the ridiculously named 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
As The New American reported in June 2024:
Under this program, the EPA will distribute “$5 billion in grants to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement ambitious plans for reducing greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions and other harmful air pollution.” Participants, including state governments, are required to create two “Climate Action Plans” that will “incorporate a variety of measures to reduce GHG emissions from across their economies in six key sectors (electricity generation, industry, transportation, buildings, agriculture/natural and working lands, and waste management).”
Nearly every state is participating in this program. Only five states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Wyoming — declined to participate. Meanwhile, dozens of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), tribal governments, and territories are also participating.
In other words, this program requires participating states to implement central planning on large sectors of their economies, affecting the lives of millions of their citizens — and nearly every state is voluntarily participating, despite the unconstitutional program’s clear dangers to state sovereignty, the economy, and individual freedom. Furthermore, the CPRG program helps implement the UN’s Agenda 2030, specifically Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) and Target 13.2 (“Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning”). Furthermore, aspects of the CPRG program help implement SDGs 7 and 9.
H.R. 1, as passed by the House, would repeal the CPRG program and other sections of the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate; it is unclear whether senators will keep the provision repealing this program.
In January, President Donald Trump briefly suspended funding for the CPRG and other IRA programs, which the Office of Management and Budget briefly implemented then rescinded. Since then, the EPA appears to have been implementing the program as intended under the IRA.
Regardless of whether Congress succeeds in repealing the CPRG program, the states should fully withdraw their participation in it and all other federal programs. The CPRG program threatens state sovereignty, since by participating in this program, the states act as water carriers for the federal government, helping the latter carry out its agenda. However, under the American form of government, the states are not tools or subdivisions of the central government. Rather, they created the federal government and are sovereign.
Contact your state legislators and executive-branch officials. Urge them to restore state sovereignty by completely ending acceptance of federal funding, including via the CPRG program, and to nullify every program connected to the UN’s Agenda 2030.
— Peter Rykowski
Texas Defunds Border-wall Program
Texas has defunded its state border-wall program, implemented in the state’s fiscal 2026-27 state budget, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on June 22. The Texas Tribune reports:
State Sen. Joan Huffman, the state’s lead budget writer, confirmed to The Texas Tribune on Thursday that none of that money will go toward the wall. Instead, the funds will flow largely to the Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard, the agencies tasked with apprehending migrants under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
“It’s not that we don’t think it’s an ongoing need to secure the border,” said Huffman, R-Houston. “It should have always been a function of the federal government, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really being done.”
Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s spokesman, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s work to secure the southern border have allowed the state to adjust its own efforts. He did not specifically comment on the border wall program, but said the military and public safety departments would carry on their border-related missions.
Since the program’s creation in 2021, Texas constructed 65 miles of border wall, and the Texas Facilities Commission set a goal of building “at least 100 miles of wall by the end of 2026.” By contrast, The Texas Tribune notes, “during President Donald Trump’s first term, when wall building was his top priority, his administration completed just 21 miles in Texas — about a third of what the state was able to build over the past four years.”
Border-wall funding is not the only affected border-security-related program. The Texas budget appropriates just $3.4 billion for border security, nearly half of the $6.5 billion originally proposed earlier this year. This is not a complete surprise; Texas officials had floatedcutting border funding shortly after Trump’s reelection in 2024.
Although critics of Texas’ border spending had criticized its expense and effectiveness, the reductions — motivated by Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office — are a step in the wrong direction. States have sovereign authority over immigration, and have a duty to secure their borders. States have allowed the federal government to unconstitutionally usurp their authority on a wide range of topics, including border security, and they must reclaim that authority — as Texas briefly did during the Biden administration.
Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that future presidents will support border-security efforts. Just as Trump quickly rescinded former President Joe Biden’s pro-open-borders policies, a future president could just as quickly restore them. Texas and other states must continue to vigilantly secure their borders with Mexico and Canada and eliminate all incentives that encourage mass migration. — Peter Rykowski
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