THIS woman is trying to prevent ELECTION FRAUD in 2024. Here's how YOU can help.

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Glenn asked the question on everyone's minds heading into the new year: "How will 2024 end?" The impending 2024 election has Americans on both sides of the aisle holding their breath, bracing for what many believe will likely be an even more contentious election than in 2020.

The questionable voting practices during the 2020 election resulted in one of the most divisive and contested elections in U.S. history, creating record-high distrust in our electoral system. One thing is clear: unless our elected officials work to reinstate trust in the integrity of our electoral system, 2024 may very well create even more division than 2020.

That raises the critical question: what are our elected officials doing to rebuild trust in the electorate? Is the GOP doing anything to reform the contentious voting laws to avoid repeating the chaos of 2020?

The short answer is: No.

A grassroots initiative to prevent election fraud

Last week, Glenn had Cleta Mitchell from the Election Integrity Network on the Glenn Beck Program (01/05/2024) to give his listeners an insider's view into the state of our electoral system. What she said will shock you.

Cleta founded the Election Integrity Network in 2021 in response to the 2020 election with one goal in mind: "To build a permanent infrastructure of citizen volunteers to be involved in their local election offices" to keep our elections above board starting locally. They are doing this by using an often-forgotten right that every U.S. citizen holds: the ability to contest voter rolls that appear to be fraudulent.

The questionable voting practices during the 2020 election resulted in one of the most divisive and contested elections in U.S. history.

Voter rolls are the lists of registered voters in election districts. During an election, electoral committees check all ballots against the voter roll to ensure that all ballots cast aren't fraudulent—at least that's what they're supposed to do.

Cleeta's organization has uncovered thousands of cases of fraudulent voter rolls, from voters who have moved away and are still registered in a previous district, to voters who are deceased and haven't been taken off of the voter roll. This is especially problematic in states that have universal absentee ballots, one of the most controversial practices during the 2020 election.

The Election Integrity Commission has uncovered thousands of cases of fraudulent voter rolls.

In these cases, absentee ballots are sent to every address on the voter roll. However, as Cleeta points out, this results in hundreds, if not thousands of duplicate ballots. The Election Integrity Network has evidence of deceased voters "coming back from the grave" to cast their vote in the 2020 election, a practice that the Left brazenly dismissed as "misinformation."

The Left fights back

Election Integrity Network's thousands of volunteers across the country aim to help local districts clean up their voter rolls to protect our country's foundational commitment to "free and fair elections," and they have even developed a software called EagleEye that compares voter rolls to other databases to detect cases of voter fraud. However, though they are a bipartisan resource, it comes as no surprise that the Left has pushed back against their efforts.

The Election Integrity Network has evidence of deceased voters "coming back from the grave" to cast their vote in the 2020 election, a practice that the Left brazenly dismissed as "misinformation."

Cleeta told Glenn that "it's hard to describe the intimidation that has gone on by the Left." Most notably, notorious Democratic election litigator Mark Elias threatened Fulton County with litigation to keep them away from the Election Integrity Network's data, although the network uncovered 11,000 citizen challenges of duplicates to voter roll in Fulton County alone.

"It's hard to describe the intimidation that has gone on by the Left."

If you would like to learn more about Election Integrity Network or volunteer with their nationwide effort to clean voter rolls, click HERE where you can find additional information, including guides for local electoral committees to reinstate election integrity.

The Election Integrity Commission has uncovered 11,000 citizen challenges of duplicates to voter roll in Fulton County alone.

Below you will find a selection of emails compiled by Cleeta detailing the Election Integrity Network's nationwide effort at the local level. From Dekalb County, Georgia to Rock Island County, Illinois, this list will give you exclusive insight into the state of our electoral system.

Virginia

Redacted email below:

Here are the major categories of voters removed from the Virginia Voter Rolls in 2023.

  • Purged - 61,111
  • Deceased - 79,867
  • Felony - 8,512
  • Out of State - 54,701
  • Voter Choice - 10,988
  • Total Removed - 215,179

2022 Total Removed - 128,245

2021 Total Removed - 283,390

2020 Total Removed - 68,933

Warwick, Rhode Island

Redacted email below:

There are 3 of us in Warwick, RI starting to work with our Board of Canvassers to clean our rolls. At the moment we are getting signatures to get the Republican candidates on our ballots.

Dekalb County, Georgia

Redacted email below:

You might hear from others here in Dekalb County, GA. Dekalb is 80% Democrat. Our attempts to clean the rolls constantly are denied 3:2 because our independent BoE member is a Leftist. Our Dekalb Voter Roll Research Team of 7 average citizens won't stop. We keep trying to wear them down. We heard that Mark Alias sent letters to all counties in GA saying do NOT accept the challenges. Even Fulton is hitting a brick wall.We have ~89 people in DeKalb > 115 years old on our rolls!

The board says we must prove the 115+ purposely entered the wrong birth date. But we are not allowed to contact voters. No lawyers wants to get involved for fear of the Fani Willis tactic. Our team is working with Dr. Rick Richards. As you know, the software is not yet complete. And even if it were, Dekalb County denies, denies, denies. Wish I had better news. THANK YOU for all that you do!

Frederick County, Maryland

Redacted email below:

I am the cochair of the Frederick county Election Integrity network with [REDACTED] and we gave a presentation to the Frederick County Board of elections today. Four people shared three-minute segments about going to paper ballots and getting rid of machines and we had some elected officials there and we had county council members there and we had the Frederick news post that interviewed me afterwards and I told them that we need to treat our vote like a crown jewel and put it in a safe and get rid of the machines and, we had a great turnout and we are making the same presentation to the Frederick county council next Tuesday, January 9 at 5:30 PM and we are having more elected officials come there and I’m giving this presentation to two mayors within the next two weeks. Don’t tell me we’re not doing anything!

St. Louis, Missouri 

Redacted email below:

CheckMyVote formally launched in 2023 and following is what we’ve accomplished so far. I’ll share detailed metrics in a subsequent email.

(1) First-of-its-kind tool that connects citizens and engages them with their PDs to clean-up voter rolls (2) Launched Voter-roll integrity scorecard (concept credits: Pat Colbeck)(3) Invited to present our work at Election Crime Bureau in St. Louis, MO(4) Expanded footprint into Ohio(5) Launched tool for Royal Oak residents to check their vote.

Rock Island County, Illinois

Redacted email below:

2021 to early 2023 approx. 85,000 registered voters at that time - identified roughly 850 duplicates/deceased/moved voters with success in correcting roughly 2/3 of that list. We also pointed out to our election authority that our own county election laws were not being followed regarding removal of voters that had moved that registered in another state, along with not following her own procedures regarding mailings to voters requesting updating their information- this is now being done.

There were many other local election laws not being followed that we reported to our local DA, AG and Illinois State Board of Elections. We believe that the fact that they know we are watching makes a difference. I am no longer involved in voter roll maintenance in this county, as I moved out of state. I am unsure if anyone else has stepped up to lead this initiative after I left.

A volunteer from another Illinois county thought her county would be fine because it was conservative with a population of only 15,000. She initially discovered over 300 deceased voters; some had died 20+years ago. The last I spoke to her she was still working on her county finding deceased and now she has identified duplicate voters. She has a great relationship with the election authority (conservative), and they appreciate her help. She is doing this all on her own - one person, cleaning the voter rolls in her county.

Hope this helps.

Lincoln County, Tennessee 

Redacted email below:

I have found in my county (Lincoln) Tenn, they do not realize a problem. They think the voters [rolls] are good, and the voters machines are all perfect. When the problem is I feel like no one is accountable to anyone anymore including these corrupt politicians. I have a voter [roll] that [has] over 1/4 of the people on it, [who] are not actively participating or inactive in the elections. I was told 1- not enough staff to take them off 2- they have to have a reason to remove them. Even though they have never voted. When I tried to sign up to work as a worker they told me they didn’t have any openings, later to find out they did. I finally found a way to be a watcher. Not with the help of the election board. Those are just a few of my thoughts.

Prince William County, Virginia

Redacted email below:

In my county the process has been agonizing because our Registrar simply does not wish to do voter roll cleanup on his end, BUT we recently submitted reliable evidence on over 200 registrants with more to come using VA code 24.2-429.He responded, in time and in no hurry at all, with a 2015 ELECT guidance on applying the NVRA in certain circumstances.I attached that guidance. We develop short lists based on databases from the RVL, undelivered mail, NCOA, etc. Then those lists go to a trained genealogist team lead before distribution to a larger team to do guided research which is returned back to the team lead for final review. Those that make it through that process are submitted to the election office, but we are now only submitting about 40 a week or the office balks.So that, compared to a 318,000-voter registrant list, seems to not make a dent, but the GR is finally admitting he can move forward without waiting for the state.

There are still county resources that the election office could draw from, like local property tax and personal property tax records from the county Finance Department. The Loudoun County election office does this and sends notices accordingly. I am not aware their EI group uses the 24.2-429 but their GR seems more responsive to other means of removal or sending notices.

Having more involved would be a huge help so people do not get burned out.

Navajo County, Arizona

Redacted email below:

I don't have the numbers, but here are the main voter roll maintenance projects from Navajo Co, AZ

  1. Project: Name by name check of every voter who is listed as "active" who has not voted in the past 10-40 years Results: Lists of likely deceased voters with documentation Identification of maiden/married name changes which created duplicate registrations Identification of voters who have active voter registrations in other states Identification of voters with data entry typos in their registration Follow-up: A recent spot check of this list of voters shows improvement. Some names have been removed, others have been merged with records in other counties, others have moved from "active" to "inactive" status putting them in line for future removal.
  2. Project: Check voter list for duplicate registrations within the county Results: Over 100 duplicate registrations after 2020 election, reduced to 35 prior to 2022, which were flagged for the county before any voting occurred.
  3. Project: Check voter list for invalid voter registration addresses Results: Identified voters who were registered at mail facilities Identified addresses that were typed incorrectly or non-existent, based on comparison with county property records Follow-up: the county started using parcel numbers to identify voter locations where addresses are not yet assigned. Voters registered at mail facilities have been moved to "inactive" status unless they corrected the registration address.Good luck on your interview!

North Carolina pt. 1

Redacted email below:

Per your request, some bullets on the voter roll cleanup.

  1. We are using the NIST Election Model to map election risks, such as voter rolls with ineligible voters, including underage, deceased, felons, non-citizens, and non-residents
  2. We are reviewing State policies on voter roll maintenance in order to identify poor practices and seek to have them improved.
  3. We are researching blockchain and immutable database systems that provide a permanent record of voter roll changes.
  4. We are investigating the use of Artificial Intelligence to quickly identify ineligible voters on the rolls.
  5. We are developing auditing practices compliant with accounting standards and ISO election standards (ISO/TS 54001) to audit and identify ineligible voters.
  6. We are researching the use of statistical analysis including Benford’s Law to identify anomalies and zero in on the high-risk areas.
  7. We are investigating poll book computer systems to ensure that they meet the cybersecurity standards as prescribed for election systems under the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) and NIST SP800 series requirements for Federal systems.

North Carolina pt. 2

Redacted email below:
  1. We have an NC Data Team independently analyzing voter rolls and identifying duplicate entries and registrants who have moved. This team has identified 200,000 registrants missing federally (HAVA) required identifying information of last four of SSN or Driver's License. The team continually challenges bad entries at county level up until 90 days prior to each election.
  2. [REDACTED NAME] and PILF sued the State of NC to remove non-citizens it identified on the voter rolls less than 7 years ago. The state settled out of court and removed tens of thousands of them.
  3. At NCEIT's urging, the State of NC passed an omnibus elections bill this year that detailed new provisions to clean up the voter rolls. It spelled out methods for cyclical identification and removal of non-citizens.
  4. NC is one of several states who have fielded and began using Eagle AI, a commercial business intelligence tool that analyzes and compares voter rolls against other legitimate data sources to assist boards of elections in removing ineligible registrants. That includes registrants who are non-citizens or duplicated ,or who have moved, died, or committed felonies.
  5. Our training for thousands of poll observers across the state includes teaching methods for identifying and challenging ballots from those who vote in person or by mail, but who are not eligible to vote. We do this by extracting "suspicious registrants" from our voter registration list for each county that is used to match against those who present to vote.
  6. NCEIT task forces closely monitor same day registrations to ensure their addresses are verified via USPS mail prior to their votes being counted.

New Jersey

Redacted email below:

We recently turned on a Blockchain-based database tool to evaluate our New Jersey voter rolls. Our “golden record” was created with our 9/2/23 data load. Since then we have added a 10/29, a 12/2 and, just yesterday, a 12/29 data set.

Each data set has approximately 6.5 million voters and their entire voter history. We receive the data directly from the state of New Jersey on the last Friday of each month at no charge. As each dataset is ingested, the records are connected with the OPRA reference # associated with the request of the state.

We can identify every single change to every single data element for every single voter. We have developed a dashboard to identify trends and a series of reports that allows us to evaluate more closely exactly what is changing. We believe we are well position[ed] to closely evaluate how New Jersey manages their voter rolls leading up to the general election in November.

Cobb, Georgia

Redacted email below:

I don't have the whole state for Georgia numbers removed but in Cobb, [REDACTED] got our new supervisor to remove 60 dead people just before Christmas and there are thousands more in Cobb waiting on Dr Richards software to become active again.

[REDACTED] in Fulton has got 20k removed and is working on submitting another 2 to 4k. Spalding is a small county but working on it and Chatham county as well. Forsyth County has been trying but slow.Thanks Cleta for fighting. Now that we have this WIN in Georgia, the rules for removing voters from the list are being finalised and sent to counties to have EVERYONE follow the rules.

Mustang Ridge, TX  

Redacted email below:

In 2023 I got a copy of our county's voter roll. I'm not good with databases, so I just did this the old-fashioned way by sorting the spreadsheet different ways, then eyeballing as I scrolled through the list.

FOR DUPLICATES, TRIPLICATES, AND MORE
First I sorted the list by DOB. Then as I scroll through the names column and I look for similar names and make a separate list of all that are hard matches or soft matches.
Then I sort the list by residence address and look for similar names. Many families have similar names registered in the same household, but they are Jr/Sr or daughters named after their mothers. So when you find similar names at the same address, you have to also check the date of birth.
I sent in over 300 duplicates, triplicates, or quadruplicates.

FOR DECEASED
I keep the obituaries from the local paper. When there is a hard match - both name and at least month and year of birth, I send those in. There were at least 40 that I caught that were still on the voter roll.

Montgomery County, Maryland

Redacted email below:

Last September, my Montgomery County, MD, crew identified 700 deceased registrants who were on the county’s registration list to the Montgomery County Board of Electons.

Michigan

Redacted email below:

It would be great if you could plug in PILF's Michigan case concerning more than 25,000 deceased registrants on the voter rolls. Both sides have submitted motions for summary judgment. But, we expect the case will go to trial this year. Additionally, if you are looking for a win. In 2021, Pennsylvania signed a settlement agreement with PILF to remove more than 20,000 deceased registrants from their voter roll.

Pennsylvania

Redacted email below:

Part of the settlement agreement was that the PA Department of State provide PILF with copies of the full voter export at three-month intervals on three separate occasions. By the last mandated sharing of this voter roll data, they had removed the more than 20,000 deceased registrants we had flagged.

As for the non-citizen case, we won in the lower court, but the Secretary of State appealed it to the Cricut Court of Appeals. Unbelievably, they continue to try and hide the mistakes that led to foreign nationals getting on their voter rolls. Even the DOJ, filed a brief supporting PILF's right to see documents relating to these foreign nationals being registered to vote.

Americans expose Supreme Court’s flag ruling as a failed relic

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

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The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

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Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.