TheNewAmerican.com

John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | Rutherford.org

“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” —Justice Hugo Black, New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)

“National security” has become the government’s all-purpose permission slip to behave badly.

They have become the magic words that can make constitutional restraints disappear—especially when the courts defer to claims of national security. Courts have historically been reluctant to second-guess the executive branch when government officials invoke military necessity, classified information, foreign affairs or national security.

Given the judiciary’s longstanding reluctance to second-guess presidential power grabs involving national security, the national-security state has repeatedly used that deference to expand both its own reach and the power of the presidency.

Call something a matter of national security and the normal rules start disappearing: Courts defer. Congress retreats. Secrecy expands. Executive power grows.

“National security” has been used as the justification for surveillance, secret courts, classification, warrantless spying, military intervention, watchlists, detention, border searches, censorship claims and the concealment of government misconduct.

That game is hardly new.

Nixon played it. Bush played it. Obama played it. Biden played it.

Trump may not have invented the national-security dodge, but he has taken it to increasingly absurd extremes.

Under Trump 2.0, almost everything gets branded a matter of national security in order for the president to sidestep as many parts of the Constitution as he finds inconvenient.

At one point, the government even invoked national security to justify proposed tariffs on trumpets, trombones and tubas because the instruments depend on foreign copper alloys.

This would almost be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

Trump wants greater control over the U.S economy? Declare a national emergency and seize the power to levy tariffs in the name of national security.

Trump is disgruntled over relations with Canada? Declare a national security threat and claim executive authority to levy tariffs without going through Congress.

Trump wants to build a lavish ballroom? Stick a bunker below it and a droneport on top, and call it national security.

Trump wants to erect a massive ceremonial arch? Turn it into a military installation, complete with drones, snipers and ammunition, and chalk it up to national security.

Trump doesn’t like unfavorable press coverage? Ban reporters from the White House and characterize the press as a national-security threat.

This is not merely another Trump deflection.

It is the logical culmination of decades spent allowing presidents of both parties to invoke national security whenever they want more power, more secrecy and less accountability.

Trump is demonstrating just how much damage can be done once a president decides that virtually anything he wants can be recast as necessary for national security.

Consider how far down the road we have already traveled under the Trump administration.

Tariffs on allies have been justified as national security. Annexing Greenland has been characterized as vital to national security. Offshore wind projects have been halted on national-security grounds.

Coal plants have been kept operating longer in the name of national security.

Artificial-intelligence infrastructure and massive data centers have been elevated to matters of national security.

Even federal workers’ collective-bargaining protections have been stripped away after agencies were classified as performing national-security work.

And the list keeps growing.

National security has become Donald Trump’s fail-safe strategy for defying the Constitution.

As Sophie Hurwitz writes for Mother Jones, “Trump is using agencies and emergency powers that sprung up in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks—and have never been abolished or repealed—to threaten domestic dissidents and anyone else he views as an enemy, claiming that those who oppose his policies constitute threats to America.”

Shortly after returning to office, Trump invoked emergency powers to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, declaring drug trafficking and illegal immigration an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.

Then came the White House ballroom.

What began as a proposal for a lavish space to entertain dignitaries eventually became, amid legal challenges over presidential authority to proceed without congressional approval, a “desperately needed National Security structure” containing hardened construction, bomb shelters, military facilities, drone defenses, sniper positions and other protective features.

Now Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington—a monumental project conceived in connection with America’s 250th anniversary—is also being recast as a national-security necessity. According to Trump, the arch will double as a “top grade Military Complex” capable of housing large numbers of drones, snipers and ammunition.

And now the logic is being turned against the press.

After barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over coverage he labeled “fake news,” Trump insists that what he calls “fake news” is “a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

The move prompted CNN, MS NOW and Politico to sue, while the major television networks—including Fox News—suspended their participation in pooled presidential coverage in protest.

The press dispute may be resolved quickly enough.

The courts, historically inclined to defer to the government when national security claims are invoked, have shown a glimmer of backbone in challenging Trump’s most far-reaching claims of national security.

In February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Trump’s imposition of global, reciprocal tariffs under an emergency powers law.
In August 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump Administration’s national security justifications for demolishing the East Wing of the White House and replacing it with a ballroom. “While this court accords great weight and deference to invocations of national security and the safety of the President, such arguments are not an automatic get-out-of-law-free card,” Judge Patricia Millett wrote for the majority.

That ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped Trump from attempting to use national security concerns to sidestep the law at almost every turn. As Axios journalist Avery Lotz explains, national security has become “Trump’s executive sledgehammer.”

Say the magic words and an ordinary policy dispute becomes a national emergency. A legal obstacle becomes a threat to the nation. A constitutional restraint becomes a luxury the president claims the country cannot afford.

For decades, Congress has helped build this monster, repeatedly surrendering extraordinary powers to the Executive Branch whenever presidents invoke war, terrorism, emergency or national security.

Secrecy reinforces the problem.

When the government claims that revealing evidence would itself threaten national security, the public may never know enough to challenge the claim. When courts defer because judges supposedly lack the expertise to evaluate security judgments, meaningful judicial review can shrink. When Congress hands presidents open-ended emergency powers, legislative oversight becomes an afterthought.

The result is a dangerous constitutional equation: the more serious the government says the threat is, the less accountable the government becomes for proving that the threat actually exists.

That turns the constitutional order on its head.

In a free society, extraordinary government power should require extraordinary justification.

In the national-security state, merely invoking an extraordinary threat increasingly becomes the justification.

And that brings us to the far greater danger: a government that can declare anything a national-security concern can eventually declare anyone a national-security threat.

Because the question is no longer merely what constitutes a threat. It is who gets to decide who is one. Who decides who is an enemy? Who decides who is dangerous? Who decides when the normal rules no longer apply?

Once you accept that the president may invoke national security to move outside the ordinary restraints of the criminal justice system, everything depends on who gets classified as a threat.

Governments are always expanding both the definition of “threat” and the universe of people who fit the label. First, it was foreign terrorists. Then sympathizers and associates. Then domestic extremists. Then protesters, journalists, whistleblowers, immigrants, activists and political dissidents.

The targets may change from crisis to crisis, but the machinery for labeling someone a threat remains.

This is why the language matters.

The government does not have to call you a criminal if it can call you a threat. And once you are classified as a threat, the government does not necessarily have to wait for you to commit a crime before it begins treating you like one.

That is the danger when “national security” becomes the exception that allows the government to bypass the rule of law.

The fact that the government does not have to build that machinery from scratch—it already has it—makes our current state of affairs that much worse.

Long before “national security” became the justification for presidential ballrooms, triumphal arches and retaliation against unfriendly journalists, the government had already spent decades constructing a machinery for identifying, monitoring and neutralizing people it deemed potential threats.

Connect the dots.

Start with the Patriot Act and the surveillance powers unleashed after 9/11.

Add the government’s ever-expanding definitions of “extremism” and “domestic terrorism.” Add the NDAA and the normalization of military detention authority in the name of national security. Add the NSA, fusion centers, and government watchlists.

Then layer on facial recognition, artificial intelligence, biometric surveillance, automated license plate readers and predictive-policing technologies capable of identifying and tracking people at a scale unimaginable a generation ago.

What emerges is not merely a government capable of investigating crimes after they happen. It is a government increasingly capable of identifying people as potential threats before they have committed one.

That distinction matters.

Criminal law traditionally asks what you did. The national-security state increasingly asks what you might do, who you associate with, what you believe, what you say, where you go and whether someone inside the government considers you dangerous.

That is the essence of precrime.

It substitutes prediction for proof, suspicion for guilt and risk assessment for due process.

And we have already seen where that mindset leads.

In the years after 9/11, the government loosened investigative safeguards so that national-security investigations did not always have to begin with evidence that a crime had actually been committed.

The focus increasingly shifted from investigating wrongdoing to identifying people and communities thought to present a potential risk.

Muslim Americans were subjected to sweeping surveillance, questioning, watchlisting and infiltration of mosques and community organizations. Government programs attempted to identify supposed warning signs of future radicalization even while acknowledging there was no reliable way to predict who would become a terrorist.

Racial justice protesters were monitored under the banner of counterterrorism. Political movements were scrutinized as potential sources of domestic extremism. Scientists and academics with ties to China found themselves subjected to heightened suspicion in the name of protecting national security.

The groups change. The rationale does not.

Label a group potentially dangerous. Invoke national security. Loosen the rules. Expand surveillance. Insist that the threat is too serious to wait for an actual crime.

That is how a free society becomes a suspect society.

And once government is permitted to investigate people not because of what they have done but because of who they are, what they believe, whom they associate with or what officials fear they might someday do, the distinction between protecting national security and policing dissent becomes dangerously thin.

Government agencies already possess the technology and legal authorities to identify, label, track and target individuals viewed as potential threats. With every passing day, the technology becomes more powerful, the surveillance more pervasive, and the language of national security even more elastic.

That should concern us far more than any single ballroom, tariff, monument or press dispute.

Because once the government has both the power to define the threat and the machinery to act against it, the most important question is no longer what constitutes a threat.

It is who gets to decide.

This is where Americans make a dangerous mistake when they treat abuses of presidential power as partisan questions.

If you approve of the president, you may not care how broadly he defines national security. If you trust his judgment, you may not object when he stretches emergency powers, sidesteps Congress, attacks the press or argues that the courts should defer to him.

But presidential power does not disappear when your preferred president leaves office. It passes intact to the next one.

Every shortcut becomes a precedent. Every emergency power becomes part of the presidential toolbox. Every expansion of surveillance becomes available to the next administration. Every definition of “threat” can be rewritten. And every power surrendered to a president you trust does not disappear when a president you distrust takes office.

That was the danger embedded in the national-security state long before Trump returned to office.

Trump is simply showing us how far the logic can be pushed.

A ballroom becomes national security. A monument becomes national security. Trade policy becomes national security. Journalists become national-security threats.

Where does it end?

Government critics? Religious groups? Political opponents? People whose online activity triggers an algorithm? Americans whose associations, purchases, travel patterns or communications cause them to be classified as suspicious?

The question is not who has already been swept into this machinery. It is who will be targeted next.

Because, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, once the government gets a taste for tyranny, there is always a “next.”

Trump will not be president forever. The powers he is expanding will outlast him.

That is the danger.

What we must ask ourselves is whether constitutional government can survive when the government is permitted to decide for itself when the Constitution becomes inconvenient.

The Constitution was written precisely because the Founders understood that government officials cannot be trusted to determine the limits of their own power.

That is why power was divided.

Congress makes the laws and controls the purse. Courts review government action. The First Amendment protects critics. The Fourth Amendment requires government to justify its searches. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process.

None carries an asterisk reading: “unless the president invokes national security.”

Yet that is increasingly how the government behaves.

National security is supposed to protect the constitutional republic. It must not become the excuse for dismantling the constitutional restraints that make the republic worth protecting.

Follow this logic far enough and eventually the issue is no longer what the government wants to build, tax, censor, surveil or conceal.

The issue is whom the government decides it must target and control.

A government that can declare anything a national-security concern can eventually declare anyone a national-security threat. And once “national security” becomes the magic phrase that makes constitutional restraints disappear, all of us are potential threats.

Source: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/when_everything_becomes_a_national_security_threat

Original Article: https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/when-everything-becomes-a-national-security-threat/

Gary D. Barnett | garydbarnett.com

“The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.” ~ Rudolph Rummel

Government and death go hand in hand, and death by government is the mainstay of power and control by the State. It should be noted that in today’s world, wars should not be considered defensive, as most all wars and conflicts are planned in advance, fraudulently structured, conspired by the major players involved, economically fashioned, and used in order to enrich the rich, advance nefarious agendas, all at the expense of the people on all sides. This is ‘modern’ war; psychological manipulation, psychological operations, universal oppression, persecution, and depopulation efforts meant to solidify global rule.

‘Modern’ war is not only about fighting off and destroying (killing) enemies, as most so-called ‘enemies’ (those at the top at least) are working together at this stage of the game in order to build out a one world government technocracy, vastly enriching those at the top of the pyramid, and capable of having regional control over populations by multiple technates. The Ukraine/Russia ‘war’ is an example of this dynamic, as nothing is as it seems. Putin wrote an essay in July of 2021 titled: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” He stated:

“First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy.”

“The formula they (the West) apply has been known from time immemorial – divide and rule. There is nothing new here. Hence the attempts to play on the ”national question“ and sow discord among people, the overarching goal being to divide and then to pit the parts of a single people against one another.”

“We are one people. Today, these words may be perceived by some people with hostility. They can be interpreted in many possible ways. Yet, many people will hear me. And I will say one thing – Russia has never been and will never be ”anti-Ukraine.”  And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide.”

This is quite a contrast considering what is actually happening, but how real is it, and what is Putin’s real agenda? While horrible drone (machine) warfare is destroying both countries, Russia is shipping oil and gas through Ukrainian pipelines to the European Union unimpeded. This exposes the fraudulent nature of this proxy war between the players in Russia, Ukraine, and the West. Obviously this is not organic, but staged so that the real agendas can be solidified in the midst of this manufactured conflict.

The U.S. and Zionist Israeli war with Iran is no different. It is staged and likely fake as well, even though there are certainly deaths in the process. While the U.S. Israel, and Iran are trading missile attacks, they are destroying energy infrastructure purposely, which can only harm the people in all these countries and more around the world. Why would this outcome be sought unless that was the goal all along? Food, energy, and water have been horribly affected, this being used to harm the masses, but enrich the warmongers as they attempt to reset the world governing structure into a monstrous technocratic new world order.

In the meantime, the evil Zionists in Israel are continuing to genocide the entire Palestinian culture, a true holocaust, all with the help of the U.S., Europe, and the rest of the West. All of this seems clearly to be orchestrated among all these players, with the exception of Gaza and possibly Jordon, and not defensive at any level whatsoever. This means it was all planned in advance, is conspiratorial, and is meant to achieve specific ends advantageous to the ruling elements of the collusive war States involved.

All is headed in the same direction, just as was the case during the fake ‘covid’ pandemic farce. What seems to be the final push toward global technocracy, is well underway, and the lowly and brainwashed masses are running in every direction, looking for the next bogeyman or distraction, as defined by the mainstream narrative machine.

I consider this akin to the insanity of World War I, where men were told to occupy mud trenches, and to line up to charge machine gun strongholds in waves, one after another until they were mowed down. It was a slaughter of humanity at the whim of the rulers, and an exercise of using all the order followers as pure cannon fodder. Now, the slaughter in the future will be due to machine warfare using armed autonomous drones to wipe out much of humanity. Whether dumbed-down Americans accept it or not, this is all coming to this country soon. The U.S. is not immune to the heinous eradication methods being employed around the Middle East and eastern Europe today. It will eventually, and likely in the near future, be at your doorstep in one form or another; whether by domestic threat or other, due to government antagonism and plotted schemes meant to harm.

Already, your energy, food supply, and water are increasingly threatened, and this I believe will get worse. The destruction of infrastructure will not continue to only be in foreign lands, and the depopulation efforts will most certainly accelerate as things worsen in this environment of aggression, theft, murder, and control.

Remember, all that is happening is not accidental, it is not organic, and it is not defensive; it is intentional and meant to achieve a particular agenda of monetary upheaval, shortages of life-sustaining needs, all-consuming surveillance, and massive restrictive measures used to control this population. Wealth transfers to the rich and powerful will continue, while poverty and possibly famine among the general population will become more evident.

Wars in one form or another, whether hot, warm, or cold, will not subside, as the real ruling class continues its drive toward globalization. Psychological warfare will increase as well, as fear will be used as a weapon more and more as time passes. This can come from multiple fronts, as single events, or in waves of terroristic narratives meant to divide even more this already fully divided and pathetic proletariat class.

Man is the only animal in nature that seeks out non-self-governance. This to me appears to be entirely foreign, and completely unnatural. Maybe it is time for man to catch up with the rest of the animal kingdom, and rely on self- governance and self-preservation, instead of voluntarily seeking rule and false authority from those who would choose to rule and control their fellow men. That which is necessary for a natural and free existence is to abolish government!

“During the first eighty-eight years of [the 20th] century, almost 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The dead could conceivably be nearly 360 million people. It is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power, not germs.”~ R. J. Rummel (Death by Government)

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

Image: Source [Edited]

Original Article: https://www.garydbarnett.com/genocide-democide-and-mass-murder-populations-as-cannon-fodder/

The Noticer | noticer.news

Canada’s controversial Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program killed more people in 2024 than gun homicides did in the United States, statistics show.

According to the latest official Health Canada data, a record-high 16,499 people were killed by the Canadian government in 2024, amounting to about 5% of all recorded deaths. The vast majority, 95.6%, were White.

During the same year, 15,364 people died in the US by firearm homicide, a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions shows, 1,135 fewer than the MAID death toll despite the US population being about eight times larger than Canada’s.

The statistics were highlighted in a map posted on X on Tuesday an account called The Art of Purpose, which was shared by Republican senator Mike Lee.

“State-administered death is now more common in Canada than gun homicide is in the US. That didn’t happen by accident,” he wrote.

Canada’s MAID program was launched in 2016 for people whose death was “reasonably foreseeable”, but was expanded in 2021 to make those with chronic diseases and other physical conditions eligible, and advocates now want people suffering only from with mental health issues to be included.

On Sunday the family of an 83-year-old woman who was killed by the MAID program on July 10 spoke out and alleged she was euthanised against her will.

Brigitte Kranendonk told the Daily Mail that her grandmother Brigitte Stegemann cried “I’ve made a mistake” and failed a cognitive test which is supposed to determine whether she was able to consent to MAID, but was killed anyway, and died covered in blood due to a botched first IV attempt.

“She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity,” Ms Kranendonk said.

“No one had ever done MAID at this residential home before: this was their very first MAID procedure. So I don’t know if they just dropped the ball, because they didn’t know what they were doing.”

In 2024 a woman who was paralysed after taking her third Covid vaccine was twice offered MAID, and in 2022 a Canadian Forces member alleged he was offered MAID after asking for support for PTSD.

A month later a paralympian veteran testified that she was asked if she wanted to be euthanised while fighting to have a home wheelchair ramp installed.

Source: https://www.noticer.news/canadas-maid-more-deaths-us-gun-homicides/

Image Source: The map showing MAID and gun homicide deaths (The Art of Purpose – X).

Original Article: https://t.me/therealcanadianpatriots/167489

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