Protecting democracy and the Constitution from Donald Trump and the “MAGA extremists” is a major theme of President Biden’s reelection campaign. As is often the case in American politics, President Biden is just as, if not more, guilty of posing an “existential threat” to the Constitution as those he smears as “extremists.” For example, President Biden and members of his administration have waged a campaign to undermine the First Amendment by “encouraging” companies to suppress the expression of “unapproved” views online.

The latest example of the administration trying to get a private internet company to censor Americans may be the most outrageous of all. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan recently released a series of emails between Biden administration officials and Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer. The government officials wanted Amazon to remove from its online catalog books containing “misinformation” regarding the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines, meaning anything questioning the government’s pro-vaccine propaganda.

While Amazon did try to push back some against the administration, it did remove at least one “anti-vaccine” book from its online catalog. Amazon also manipulated its search results to make sure books expressing skepticism of vaccines were buried under books touting the pro-vaccine line. The company probably hoped that by “burying” these “dissident” books Amazon could make the administration happy without actually removing all books that question the covid vaccines. The company also promised the administration that it would expand use of a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warning for books promoting “anti-vaccine” narratives.

Some libertarians say that Amazon should not be criticized for its decisions. These libertarians point out that, as a private company, Amazon has the right to decide what books to sell and also has the right to decide to make it difficult to find books expressing viewpoints the company finds dangerous or distasteful. This is true but ignores one important fact: Amazon’s decision to suppress books critical of covid vaccines was not done to attract consumers who would not shop at a site that sells “anti-vaccine propaganda” or “conspiracy theories.” Instead, Amazon acted at the behest of government officials who were seeking to prohibit Americans from accessing alternative views.

Amazon may have been eager to cooperate with the government to avoid being subjected to antitrust litigation. At the very time the administration was demanding Amazon suppress covid dissidents, President Biden was preparing to appoint Lina Khan, an advocate for antitrust litigation against Amazon, to lead the Federal Trade Commission.

It is clear that the US government has been a major spreader of covid disinformation, while those challenging the government’s pro-mask, pro-vax, and pro-lockdown propaganda have been the truth-tellers. Covid is an example of why protecting the First Amendment is vital to protecting not just liberty, but also our prosperity and health.

Congress should prioritize its investigation into the Biden administration’s efforts to silence Americans because of their views. Congress should then impeach all high-level federal officials, including President Biden, who took action to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.

There has been much written and said about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. As of this writing the video on Twitter alone has been viewed nearly 200 million times, making it likely the most-viewed news event in history.

Many millions of viewers who may not have had access to the other side of the story were informed that the Russia/Ukraine military conflict did not begin in 2022, as the mainstream media continuously reports, but in fact began eight years earlier with a US-backed coup in Ukraine. The US media does not report this because they don’t want Americans to begin questioning our interventionist foreign policy. They don’t want Americans to see that our government meddling in the affairs of other countries – whether by “color revolution,” sanctions, or bombs – has real and deadly consequences to those on the receiving end of our foreign policy.

To me, however, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Tucker Carlson interview with Putin was the US mainstream media reaction. As Putin himself said during the interview, “in the world of propaganda, it’s very difficult to defeat the United States.” Even a casual look at the US mainstream media’s reporting before and after the interview would show how correct he is about that. In the days and weeks before the interview, the US media was filled with stories about how horrible it was that Tucker Carlson was interviewing the Russian president. There was the danger, they all said, that Putin might spread “disinformation.”

That Putin might say something to put his country in a better light was, they were saying, reason enough to not interview him. With that logic, why have journalism at all? Everyone interviewed by journalists – certainly every world leader – will attempt to paint a rosy picture. The job of a journalist in a free society should be to do the reporting and let the people decide. But somehow that has been lost. These days the mainstream media tells you what to think and you better not dispute it or you will be cancelled!

What the US mainstream media was really worried about was that the “other side of the story” might start to ring true with the public. So they attacked the messenger.

The CNN reporting on Tucker’s interview pretty much sums up the reaction across the board of the US mainstream media. Their headline read, “Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin.”

By merely doing what used to be called “journalism” – interviewing and reporting on people and events, whether good or bad – one is “doing the bidding” of the subject of the interview or report?

No wonder fellow journalist Julian Assange has been locked away in a gulag for so many years. He dared to assume that in a free society, being a journalist means reporting the good, the bad, and the ugly even if it puts those in power in a bad light.

In the end, the massive success of the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin demonstrates once and for all that the American people are sick to death of their mainstream media propagandists and liars. They are looking not for government narratives, but for truth. That’s the really good news about this interview.

A rare instance of an unexpected consequence of a bad policy advancing liberty is the growth in private schools enrolment and homeschooling that occurred as a result of the covid lockdowns. An October 2023 study by Eloise Burtis and Sofoklis Goulas of the Brookings Institution found that 79 percent of American school-age children were enrolled in government schools in the 2021-2022 school year, down from 84 percent enrolled in government schools in 2019-2020. The decline in children attending government schools accelerated because of the lockdowns, and enrollment in government schools continues to decline.

Other researchers have found similar results. For example, the Urban Institute’s Thomas Dee found that during the pandemic hundreds of thousands of children left government schools for private schools and homeschooling.

In October of last year, the Washington Post reported that since before the covid lockdowns there was a 51 percent increase in homeschooled children. The Post labeled homeschooling “America’s fastest growing form of education.“

The lockdowns served no public health purpose. In fact, the social isolation imposed on children by the closures of schools and even playgrounds did more damage to children than covid ever could.

However, the lockdowns did have a long-run benefit by increasing the number of parents rejecting government schooling. The school closures allowed many parents to see for themselves the problems with government-controlled education. Parents were horrified to witness their children logging on to Zoom and then being force-fed woke propaganda instead of receiving a quality education. Parents realized they had a choice: either allow their children to continue to receive an inferior education or seek out an alternative that would provide their children a quality, woke–free education.

Many parents were inspired to seek alternatives to government schools when teacher union officials used their political clout to keep government schools closed even after most business and government offices were open. It turns out that actions of Dr. Anthony “I represent science” Fauci, teacher union officials, and authoritarian politicians who worked to keep government schools closed ended up advancing the popularity of alternatives to government schools.

Parents looking to provide their children with a quality home-based education that promotes real learning that does not push a political agenda but does instruct in the history and philosophy of liberty should look into my homeschooling curriculum. My curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes rigorous courses in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Another feature of my curriculum is that it provides students the opportunity to create and run their own businesses.

The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize free-market economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never sacrifices quality education to promote a political agenda. Interactive forums allow students to engage with and learn from each other and give them an opportunity to interact with their peers outside of a formal setting.

I encourage all parents looking at alternatives to government schools — alternatives that provide children with a well-rounded education that introduces them to the history and ideas of liberty without sacrificing education for indoctrination — to go to RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information about my homeschooling program.

The clash between the Biden Administration and Texas spilled out into the open last week, when the US Supreme Court ruled that Federal authorities could remove razor wire that Texas Governor Greg Abbott had been installing along the border with Mexico to stop the millions of illegal immigrants from crossing over to the United States.

This time Abbott did not back down. Instead, he issued a statement declaring that “an invasion under Article I, Section 10, Clause 3” of the US Constitution is underway and invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”

Here Governor Abbott answers an important question I brought up back in my 1988 US Presidential run: at what point do open borders and mass illegal immigration into the US become an “invasion,” which would grant governors the authority – and obligation – to take action?

By some estimates, more than six million illegal immigrants have crossed into the United States during the three years of the Biden Administration. These illegals likely mostly come from Mexico and Central America, but the fact is we have no idea how many of them may be arriving from, for example, the Middle East or other war-torn areas of the world. Last month even the New York Times wrote of the disaster on the US border that, “thousands of migrants are arriving at the border every day, trekking from the farthest reaches of the globe, from Africa to Asia to South America, driven by relentless violence, desperation and poverty.”

With the world awash in US weapons, it’s not hard to imagine the danger of the situation.

It is a problem that the Biden Administration is not willing to tackle, likely for political reasons particularly in an election year. And Biden found an ally in the US Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Roberts with the ruling that Federal agents may begin removing barriers set up by Texas authorities. But the intensity of the dispute became apparent this time when 25 Republican-led states issued statements in support of Texas.

It began to look like a showdown and many even began to invoke words like “secession.”

However, if the Biden Administration intends to use the Supreme Court ruling to take action against the Texas border barrier there are more immediate ways of defending the border. Rep. Thomas Massie took to Twitter last week to recount a meeting he and a group of US House Members had with the late Justice Antonin Scalia. At the breakfast, Massie wrote, Justice Scalia told the group to quit complaining about Supreme Court rulings and start defunding rulings they oppose.

As Massie explained in another Tweet, “Congress can render the 5-4 Supreme Court decision against Texas IRRELEVANT by simply refusing to fund Biden’s removal of border security measures.” Nullification through the “power of the purse” is an important tool given to Congress in the US Constitution and it could be easily exercised in this case.

Biden is clearly playing politics with the immigration crisis, claiming last week that as soon as Congress passes yet another immigration “reform” bill – one that includes $100 billion in military welfare for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan – he will take steps to address the Border. Congress should reject this blackmail and US states should continue to take measures – including nullification of the Supreme Court ruling – to protect against invasion.

Select politicians, government officials, economic elites, and experts arriving at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland were greeted with an open letter signed by more than 250 billionaires and millionaires. The signers request their respective governments raise their taxes.

The letter signers are concerned about “inequality” that they say “has reached a tipping point.” The cost of this inequality “to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk,” the letter continues, “is severe — and growing every day.” They may have a point. Since the 2008 market meltdown, resentment against those at the top of the income ladder has been growing. However, this is not because people are envious of those able to profit in a free market. Rather, the resentment is rooted in the corporatist system that rewards those who manipulate the political process.

If the signatories to the letter want to truly end the type of inequality that fuels populist rage, they should stop calling for tax increases and instead call for an end to government programs and policies that benefit the rich and powerful. Included are programs like the Export-Import Bank that subsidize large corporations, health and safety regulations that cartelize markets while failing to protect consumers, and interventionist foreign policy that enriches the military-industrial complex while making the rest of us poorer and more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

The Federal Reserve is the leading cause of inequality. This is not surprising considering it was created at the behest of bankers and rushed through Congress just before Christmas when few Americans were paying attention. Many Americans became aware of how the central bank tailors its policies to benefit the financial elites following the 2008 meltdown. Then, the US government, enabled by Fed money printing, bailed out large financial institutions while average Americans suffered.

The Fed had been helping big firms for many years. In the 1990s it was common for the Federal Reserve, then under the leadership of Alan Greenspan, to pump money into the market in response to apparent crises. This was named the “Greenspan put” by the financial press. The new money would help some companies and their wealthy owners, while reducing most Americans’ purchasing power.

Middle- and working-class Americans suffer the brunt of inflation, which is properly defined as the central bank pumping money into the economy thus reducing the dollar’s purchasing power.

In a free market, most people will be able to have a satisfactory standard of living and recognize that the “super rich” earned their fortunes by offering goods and services that served the needs and wants of consumers while providing good jobs at good wages to fellow citizens. In contrast, in a “mixed economy” supported by a fiat money system, the average person will suffer a steady erosion of his standard of living thanks to the central bank’s inflationary policies, while the crony capitalists prosper. This is a recipe for social instability.

Those concerned with the detrimental effects of rising resentment of income inequality should support repealing all federal programs that reward crony capitalists — including programs masquerading as providing national defense. They should also work to audit then end the Fed.