Opinion
By Jeff Childers
3/27/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup today includes: updates on the continuing saga of the Signal scandal, with ALL text messages now out in the open; massive Trump revitalizes election integrity and tees up midterm gains; and the day we’ve long waited for finally arrived, as the President re-declassified the most mysterious, most contentious documents in modern history.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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Yesterday, from DC to Brussels, progressives tried to seize the Signal moment and sink the Trump Administration, or at least torpedo it amidships (or words to that effect). PoliticoEU ran the story under a headline meant to ooze fancypants British sneering but actually made me laugh out loud: “‘Why don’t you go back to your country?’ Marjorie Taylor Greene snaps at top UK reporter.” After the initial chuckle, I enjoyed the sub-headline’s guffaw: “We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting,’ the staunch Trump supporter told journalist Martha Kelner.”
Maybe it’s my middle-school sense of humor, or perhaps my undying affection for southern ladies’ blunt perspectives. But c’mon. That’s MTG gold. Bless your heart.
In the wake of Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s sly Signal slide-in to a national security chat, Democrats have demanded resignations, barked at Cabinet members during Congressional hearings, blasted poor Katherine Leavett, and flung poo all around their cages. But so far, they don’t seem to be gaining any real traction. Maybe that’s because two years ago, former SecDef Lloyd Austin mysteriously went walkabout for several weeks during a particularly difficult period in the Proxy War and the left swooned at his bravery and cunning. That will show the Russians who they’re dealing with!
For its part, the Atlantic piled on yesterday, feigning altruistic motives. It released the entire Signal chat archive— despite having high-handedly argued two days ago it withheld those other portions for national security. Surprise, surprise, nothing in the additional texts revealed any national security secrets, and just made the Trump national security team look even better.
But a more entertaining possibility for the new text dump was a different kind of self-defense. The Atlantic seems to have tripped over the National Espionage Act, which criminalizes sharing national defense information. Yesterday the Atlantic, still defiant, began pivoting wildly. It defenestrated its original label for the texts as “secret war plans.”
Suddenly, for some reason (to cover its butt) the Atlantic has started insisting that Golberg never even saw any classified information.
Meanwhile, in related news, another sketchy Democrat NGO sued the Trump Administration over its long-approved use of Signal, as a violation of the official records act. I’d say it was going nowhere fast, but the case was randomly assigned to cadaver-like Judge Boasberg, who is already embroiled in a battle over Tren de Aragua deportations. So who knows.
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President Trump just threw a monkey wrench into the left’s vote-by-mail vending machine—with a new executive order that enforces existing law, protects against foreign influence, and de-certifies shady voting tech. This morning, far-left Vox ran an unintentionally encouraging story, headlined, “Trump is threatening states to change their election rules.” The sub-headline explained, “In a new executive order, Trump made demands about citizenship verification and mail ballot counting.”
Trump signed the terrific new executive order on Tuesday. It was titled, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” It began by noting that America is far behind the rest of the world in commonsense electoral reforms. “India and Brazil,” it pointed out, “are tying voter identification to a biometric database.” Germany and Canada require paper ballots that are counted in public by local officials.
And, “Denmark and Sweden sensibly limit mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and do not count late-arriving votes regardless of the date of postmark.”
Then, sharpening its legal teeth, the order cited a list of unenforced federal laws governing federal elections. One establishes a single national Election Day, which should prohibit late-counted ballots. Another bars foreign nationals from registering to vote or donating money. Others require states to keep accurate, up-to-date lists of legal voters.
But, the order explained, the federal government has long slept at the enforcement switch. Many (blue) states don’t require proof of citizenship to vote. Others count ballots late. Foreign nationals skirt campaign finance laws using domestic shell companies and cutouts.
🔥 Then the order got down to business. Sections 2 and 3 required Homeland Security to ensure that only citizens can vote in federal elections. It ordered the federal government to provide an easy and free way for states to verify citizenship and that voters are still breathing. It updated the national mail-in ballot form to require proof of citizenship via passport, REAL ID, military ID, or any valid photo ID confirming U.S. citizenship.
The order required HomeSec to review each state’s voter database, and ordered DOJ to “take appropriate action” to ensure state compliance with federal rules.
Section 4 asserted Executive branch control over another “independent agency” called the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which dishes out election-related grants to states and certifies election equipment. The order required the EAC to update its guidance with ’radical’ reforms like banning inscrutable systems recording votes in barcodes or QR codes, and requiring “a voter-verifiable paper record to prevent fraud or mistake.”
The EAC was directed to withhold federal funds from states not in compliance.
Voting systems that do not meet the guidelines must be de-certified. Vox described these commonsense provisions as terrible, horrible, and the worst ideas ever. Section 6 required HomeSec and the EAC to “assess the security” of any voting systems that can connect to the Internet, and to review the “security of all electronic systems used in the voter registration and voting process.”
Section 5 required DOJ to aggressively prosecute elections crimes. It ordered DOJ to negotiate “information sharing agreements” with states, and focus enforcement on states refusing to play ball. Section 7 ordered DOJ to prosecute states violating Federal Election Day by late-counting mail-in ballots. Section 8 ordered DOJ to prosecute foreign nationals circumventing campaign finance and lobbying rules.
🔥 Vox said that litigation was likely, which seems easy to predict, since they’d sue Trump if he ordered a spicy chicken sandwich, much less ordered changes securing the country’s voting system. Elections are progressives’ electrified third rail of politics, and all these unremarkable upgrades threaten to put Democrats out of business.
Progressives’ palpable fears popped up in the headlines. For example, far-left “watchdog” Democracy Docket ran this horrifying headline:
Only slightly more restrained, the New York Times’ headline described it this way:
Remember what I’ve always told you about headlines that ask questions. The Times reported, “several experts predicted that provisions of the order might well be found unlawful, though they said that others, like directions to Mr. Trump’s attorney general and other cabinet members, fell within legal bounds.”
To the Times’ credit, far down the article, right at the very bottom, it finally quoted a conservative expert. Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, correctly pointed out the executive order simply enforces laws already passed by Congress. “The executive order is acting well within the four corners of those existing laws, so we’re not breaking new ground in terms of legal authority,” Snead explained.
After judges finish ordering President Trump to switch from Diet Coke to Coke Zero, they’ll get around to tackling this new order. But there remains plenty of time before the midterms to sort it all out. We’d prefer, of course, that Congress pass these commonsense reforms as laws that the next Democrat president can’t immediately reverse, but we’ll first need 60 GOP senators.
It is looking very much like Trump’s goal is to make sure that happens in 2026.
I probably don’t need to tell you this. But if you live somewhere with interim elections, it’s critical that we all keep voting. Remember what happened in 2020 to all the good stuff Trump ordered in his first term? Biden swept it all aside. If we can hold the line through the 2026 midterms, we can turn these temporary fixes into permanent reforms. Stay frosty.
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Finally! And, I told you so. On Tuesday, Trump opened a new front in his declassification war against the deep state when he signed another electrifying executive order. The Hill ran the story headlined, “Trump orders declassification of FBI’s Russia investigation.” It’s not quite the full Crossfire Hurricane story, not yet, but we’re getting there.
On January 19, 2021, his last full day in office, President Trump issued an executive memorandum ordering the re-declassification of materials related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation— the FBI’s covert investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, which later proved to be a politically driven hoax propped up by Clinton-funded oppo research and rubber-stamped by a complicit intelligence apparatus.
In other words, the “RussiaGate hoax.”
It’s not unreasonable to say that Trump and his team spent their last days and hours in a mad scramble to get these materials out to the public.
With time running out, Trump signed the memo —accepting DOJ’s proposed redactions under protest— and authorized the declassification “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
Then he was gone. And as you know, Biden infested the Oval Office (for a maximum of three days per calendar year).
🔥 Despite Trump’s crystal clear declass memo, the materials were never actually released. For four years during the Biden era, Merrick Garland’s DOJ successfully stymied and stonewalled repeated Republican demands for disclosure. DOJ never explained why they defied Trump’s memo, or where the documents were, or what was happening with them. They just refused to respond.
Helpless Republicans in Congress could do nothing about it.
Over the next weeks and months, the story evolved into a real-life spy thriller. A mysterious missing copy of the binder, presumably unredacted, became the target of a massive, secret recovery effort by the CIA and FBI —including the now-infamous Mar-a-Lago raid— under President Cognitive Cabbage and AG Grandma Garland.
Two days ago, President Trump signed a second executive memorandum, this time to AG Pam Bondi, re-declassifying all the unredacted parts of the “materials referenced in the Presidential Memorandum of January 19, 2021.” In other words, Crossfire. The President again accepted the FBI’s proposed redactions in full, noted that some other parts remain covered by undisclosed orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, and ordered that “personally identifiable information” (names, telephone numbers, etc) should be blotted out.
We cannot possibly predict how much, or how little, we’ll get to see.
There was, however, a signal of hope. When Trump signed the memo, he told reporters, “you’re not going to like what you see.” Assuming they even look at it, of course. Their dislike is our like.
Anyway, subject to the stated exceptions, Trump ordered AG Bondi to “make declassified materials described in this memorandum available to the public immediately.”
It was briefly extremely exciting.
Now, two days later, the documents have yet to be released. It is becoming painfully obvious there seems to be some debate over the meaning of the word, “immediately.” DOJ is immediately planning a meeting for sometime in the fall to organize a committee that will review the President’s memo and consider questions about the project.
I jest (I hope). It would be a grotesque understatement to say I’m counting the seconds. I may even have to take some time off work, to review the documents myself, since I can’t stand the idea of waiting for somebody else to tell me what’s inside.
This could be the most historic declassification in modern history. Entire books have been written about Crossfire. The Biden regime went all-out to protect these documents from disclosure —even with the proposed redactions— by defying a presidential directive, unleashing a hornet’s nest of lawfare upon the former president, and —some people darkly suggest— trying to take him out in other ways.
The long-feared day is finally about to arrive. Sometime “immediately.” I pray we’ll finally learn what all the excitement was about. How about you?
Have a terrific Thursday! Trundle back here tomorrow morning, for another installment of essential news and commentary in the same unique C&C style.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
