04b Theory and Analysis
Originally published March 27, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” – Samuel Adams
Our Hope Castle Project, which now includes Riqueday Castle and our Harrisburg project, is about to go into overdrive as the winter comes to a close. In Harrisburg, Bill has made advances towards readying his apartment space so he can stay there more often to get more work done.
In Canton, we have been monitoring the thawing out of our pipes after the ice disaster and have found no major problems (so far). We will be doing a complete test of the system next week.
We will have a more thorough update in the May 1, 2026, issue, which will be the April 2026 Monthly review.
We want to remind our readers that there will be no issue next week. This is a scheduled off-week (to see our 2026 publishing schedule, go to the back page of this issue) which coincides with Passion Week for my household. This year, my wife and I will be doing a daily bible study plan together covering the last 12 chapters of the gospel of John (two chapters a day).
We will be returning on April 10, for our first ever Quarterly Review. In this issue, we will offer our Predictive Analysis for the next three months. We will also have news on the ministry of our founder, Don McAlvany, which recently went through a great trial that ended in triumph.
The title of this final thought, Shifting Tones, is our next topic. We will end with an update about our website, mindfulintelligence.news.
For the past couple of years, we have endeavored to express our news analysis in the language of the prophetic, seeking to call what we see by what we consider to be the most viscerally accurate descriptions we possibly could. While that prophetic voice is not going away completely, we believe we have entered a new season, one that compels us to shift our tone.
The purpose of our prophetic tone is two-fold, to jar the “sinner” into a candid awareness of the nature of the “sins” they are committing and to bring to raw awareness what we believe to be the current spiritual state of our land to those who continue to deny it. The latter audience would be horrified if they believed the depraved nature of the crisis we face was true.
We believe we have now entered a new season, one in which, for the most part, the “sinner” is aware of their “sins” and has only doubled down on them. We also believe that those who continue to deny the depth and depravity of the crisis we face have a vested interest in the power created by that same depravity. They are mostly locked in to the faction they have chosen, come what may.
While some people will yet repent and turn away from the patterns of death, and some will newly become aware of the depth and depravity of the crisis we currently face, we believe the major factions are mostly set, at least for the next 3-5 years. This assumes there is no unforeseen ecumenical catastrophe or technological breakthrough that radically alters the realities of power.
The time for geographic consolidation is coming (blue and red state migrations). It has already begun. It will only be accelerated.
The major factions in this country are roughly three, with the third not yet self-identified, and certainly not organized at any level.
The first faction will be referred to from here on out simply as the Progressives or the Democrat Party. The second group will be referred to as the Conservatives. The Republican Party represents a mix of these two major factions, and perhaps a handful of people from the third major faction.
While I have chosen to use the term “conservative” to describe the second faction, I do not want to suggest that this an actual conservative faction. Rather, it is a term the majority of the people within this faction call themselves. Yet within that group are American leftists (not Progressive leftists), pragmatists, and simple Americanists (who usually refer to themselves as constitutionalists and are largely registered independent).
This faction is the Not-Progressive faction, the faction that recognizes the anti-Americanism of the Progressives without necessarily understanding Americanism beyond freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and having the most powerful military in the world.
A large portion of this faction are potential Americanists, even if they’re not fully aware of it yet, but not all of them are. Some of them are as anti-American as the Progressives. Generally, the further “right” you go, the less American you get (at least within this faction).
A lot of standard terms that we have been using you will either no longer see or rarely see. Here is one example that demonstrates how we applied our prophetic tone principle and how we are changing it:
We have referred to the Democrats, or Progressives, as the DNC-CCP, which we will rarely do in the future. This decision is NOT because we believe that term is inaccurate, but because at this point it should be redundant to anyone paying attention for the last two years. It is also not fair to the Republicans, who seem to have their own CCP connection issues.
Donald Trump himself, at least publicly, portrays China sometimes as a great adversary and sometimes as a fair competitor. He has freely and openly complimented Chairman Xi, for instance. His unwillingness to end Chinese student visas in the tens of thousands annually reinforces our suspicion that Trump sees China as a “useful” polar power in a future world.
China’s influence in America might only be rivaled by Israel at this point. That influence crosses party lines, in both cases.
In the case of Israel, it should be noted that we are not dealing with an adversary who wants our very form of governance annihilated, they mostly want our military might and funding of their military might. We have also benefited from military technologies our tax dollars helped them develop.
China sees America as the last impediment to the establishment of a social-first worldwide governance standard, ending every human’s hope of escaping to an individual-first governance standard since there would be no such governance left standing. Yet China has more favor with U.S. politicians than tax paying Americans do.
This example is one of many terminology changes we will be making as we shift away from a primarily prophetic tone to a preparatory tone. At this point, we assume our readers, and future readers, already understand the depth of the crisis we face. They don’t need to be reminded of the depth of that depravity anymore.
In addition to recognizing that the “teams” are mostly set for the next few years to come, we also recognize the ratcheting up of violent rhetoric on all sides, and do not wish to unnecessarily fuel those flames.
From a Christian perspective, the only authority that can use violence to challenge civic authority (the state) is civic authority, not rogue actors, self-declared “militias” or violent mobs. If civic authority fails to challenge unjust civic authority, we should consider this God’s choice. We should consider an unjust civic authority a righteous punishment on the land.
His works will not be counted as righteous, as surely as the work of the Assyrians and the Babylonians were not considered righteous in their favor. But the punishment they inflicted on Judah and Samaria was a righteous judgment on an unrighteous land.
We are not pacifists. Christ did tell us to buy a sword, and two swords were enough, In that spirit, we advocate people fighting civic authority that is seeking to come to kill them. We simply DO NOT advocate for violence as a means of replacing their authority.
David evaded Saul’s attempts to kill him, taking a whole retinue with him to do so. Whenever he had a chance to strike Saul, he refused. He would not use violence as a means of usurping civic authority outside of civic authority itself (which he lacked at the time).
We hope to grow our audience over the coming months, and we want to cultivate a new audience that has the spirit of the one we already have, a spirit of doing the hard work it takes to be self-stewards while under assault from factions that seek to aggressively kill that spirit in this land once and for all.
That audience already understands the nature of the enemies we face, enemies we are yet called to love, enemies we are called to invite to repentance and restoration (not perpetual condemnation). They no longer need any more shock and awe reminders of the depth and depravity of the crisis we face, nor will any but a very few of the progressives be the least bit moved or shocked into repentance by hearing the nature of their depravities plainly spoken.
The third major faction in this country is one I believe most of our readers belong to, and one I self-identify with, the Americanists. We are those not afraid to let our neighbors be wrong in public. We are those brave enough to allow our competition to beat us fairly and squarely.
Among the conservatives (the Not-Progressives) there are plenty of Americanists, and even among the progressives there are still a few Americanists not yet convinced the progressives ARE what we tell them they are.
I believe most Americanists are out of the party game altogether. They are mostly independents or people not even registered to vote. I am one of these people. I let my registration lapse and refused to renew it as I began to believe there were no “American” choices being offered. My non-registration is an act of protest against a voting system I have no faith in anymore.
This is the audience we are seeking to grow so we can expand our publication’s support. This is the audience we think primarily represents the audiences we mostly already serve, Christian Americanists, Americanist “Independents,” and Christian conservatives.
Our analysis of the news will continue to come from the same perspective, Christian Americanist, and it will continue to have a prophetic perspective as well. The language, however, will mostly change to accommodate the new season we believe we have entered for the next handful of years (barring an unforeseen dramatic anomaly).
As a final note, I want to encourage our readers to visit our aggregation research site, mindfulintelligence.news. We have regular updates on the site, which include the blurbs you eventually see in our weekly publications, and some that don’t get selected as well.
We also archive our past reports and articles on the site.
This is the hub we will be using to build our audience through. This audience is grandfathered into the subscription package it has. The new audience will have different package deals offered. For instance, they will pay $22.95 a month to receive a monthly, quarterly, and yearly publication. They will not receive the weeklies or our four special reports like our legacy subscribers (you) do.
For now, people can still sign up for the $22.95 a month plan and receive the full slate of content you receive now, but that window will be closing soon. We will let you know a month before it closes.
If you want to gift a subscription for someone, now is the time to do it.
We will see you again on April 10 for our Quarterly Report. Until then, have a wonderful and fulfilling Passion Week and Easter Holiday.
Originally published March 27, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
STAFF
“This month has seen the quiet advance of the new reality of power, one framed around AI infrastructure and need. While we see parts of it emerging, and some of the new battles begin to emerge as well, the old battles are still raging, concealing what’s emerging beneath our very feet.” – MIA
INTRODUCTION
This is not a full analysis of world events, but rather an analysis of bellwether events, regions, trends, and countries that tell the overarching story of the world in March 2026.
Our analysis is from an Americanist perspective, nested within our Christian belief system.
This month, America saw congress continue to ignore public support for the SAVE Act, the start of a war with Iran, an economy sending mixed signals (with increasingly bad ones), and a surging Democrat Party.
American courts have been delivering major victories against progressive woke policies while also delivering major impediments to the Trump administration’s agenda (which you can read more about in our Bellwether Deepdive on pg. 2).
Democrat-held states have only been doubling down on progressive woke policies, with California continuing to lead the way.
The Progressive-Muslim experiment in New York continues, with Mamdani seeking to aggressively establish Islam as the socially preferred religion of the city. While he builds power locally, he makes the Islamist invasion and takeover strategy more apparent as well, which could ultimately bring more resistance to Islamism than it will win converts.
The geopolitical landscape is murkier than it was last month, with the west increasingly wavering in its support from the U.S., while America gains new allies closer to home in Venezuela, and in the Middle East through the Iran War.
A. AMERICA
- 2026 ELECTION – The progressives appear poised for a strong midterm showing if trends continue to follow as they have. They lead the polls and now their funding is returning as well. They scored a stunning state election victory in President Trump’s own district, flipping a red seat to a blue one.
On the gerrymandering front, Virginia polls suggest the progressives might lose there, but Colorado, a progressive-controlled state, hopes to liquidate three GOP House seats in its gerrymandering efforts.
The progressives have been selling themselves as better economists, as defenders of abortion, and protectors against white supremacism. That combination has been working among Americans because the anti-American nature of the progressives is not plainly seen by these same Americans.
The lack of American political parties to offer Americans some of the cultural and economic choices the progressives offer, without also including their anti-American policies, is making it difficult for Americans to see the anti-Americanism inherent in the party’s values.
The cost of losing the Democrat party, for these people, is perceptively too high. Deep down, they hope the progressives aren’t who they imagine the white supremacists and their allies say they are, ethnic global nationalists every bit as authoritarian as the Nazis many of these Americans believe they are really fighting.
At this point, the GOP is far more of an impediment to forming effective resistance to the Democrat Party, the flagship of the progressives, than it is an impediment to the Democrat Party itself.
The failure by the GOP-controlled Senate to pass the SAVE Act, an act that would require Voter ID and cancel on-demand mail-in voting, backs up this assessment of the party. Americans can only hope SCOTUS strikes down on-demand mail-in voting so at least one major part of the progressives’ election fortification machine gets dismantled.
The fact that a Democrat beat a Republican in a seat that had been won by the now-retired incumbent by over 10 points should tell you Democrats can win elections without cheating, even after all this, because the GOP gives Americans no real choice. The Republicans just stay home. The Democrats can win just through this alone.
The GOP’s refusal to deliver decisive action against the Democrat party is the main factor keeping Republicans home, enabling Democrats to win EVEN in districts where election integrity is NOT a critical issue.
- TRUMP DEPORTATIONS – As the deportations continue, the DHS funding crisis becomes more profound. The Democrats continue to refuse to end the government shutdown. President Trump has responded by sending ICE agents to help deal with the one area where Americans are feeling the DHS shutdown the most, in our airports.
The move is proving, so far, to be positive for ICE agents, who are seen as heroes by most of the people at the airports they’re helping to get through security.
The recent announcement by Trump to declare an emergency that will allow DHS to pay TSA agents may or may not circumvent the shutdown, but legal challenges most likely have already been filed (or are about to be).
The deportations are not without real violations by ICE agents, as the DOJ even recently acknowledged. There are also constitutional issues emerging with how the FBI is buying our location data from 3rd parties in the name of finding illegal immigrants.
The most concerning development in the deportation process is the proliferation of detention centers, which are becoming a bipartisan source of resistance to the large-scale, rapid deportation strategy the administration appears to be deploying (or attempting to deploy).
Judicial roadblocks continue to be thrown at the operation, but victories have come as well. Read our report on Judgefare in our Bellwether Deepdive on pg. 2.
Progressive institutions like teachers’ unions have been aiding the ICE interference operations. This is a strategy to use a certain number of paid disruptors to help lead a larger group of volunteers to essentially do two things, help illegal aliens escape capture and force ICE agents to do something violent that will cause the whole country to turn on them.
They know in advance that the corporate media, what we call the progressive media, will give them the most favorable, even doctored (if needed), coverage to drive the “ICE are Nazis” narratives. They also have protection from progressive DAs and judges who will do what they can get away with to assure there are no serious repercussions for their “work.”
Stories of illegal immigrants harming or killing Americans, including children, continue to happen, while Democrats continue to soft-pedal the violence and stigmatize any public effort to point it out.
This strategy is alienating not just conservatives, but black Americans who are growing increasingly frustrated with illegal immigrants perceptively receiving more government benefits than they do.
- AGIT PROP – These are the Top 5 Headlines About or from the Progressive Media:
Trump Administration Accused of White Supremacy and DEI Rollbacks on PBS – newsbusters.org
FISA Fearmongering and Disinformation: Presidential Edition – Cato Institute
SAVE Act Creates Massive Unfunded Mandates On States – crooksandliars.com
B. WORLD
- IRAN – While the Democrats’ attempts to force an early end to the Iran War keep failing in the Senate, economic pressure from the war is only building. The U.S. and Israel have failed, so far, to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Their allies in the west do not appear eager to help, while the Mideast allies appear as if they are preparing for a significant, possibly boots-on-the-ground response.
The U.S. itself is considering the use of ground troops to secure Kharg Island, Iran’s oil refinery hub.
Iran’s top leaders continue to get killed, but the resolve of the regime appears not to have wavered, even as assassinations in the country are only increasing, including drone assassinations of street security forces.
The absence of the world’s most advance carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, must surely be taxing the American effort. The carrier remains docked out of theater, still getting repaired and recovering from its already historically long deployment.
The progressive media is aggressively pushing an anti-Israel narrative. It seems they recognize the fall of Iran as a critical empowering of American global power, an impediment to the broader progressive global vision.
They will do whatever they can get away with to turn the American people against the war, though that hasn’t significantly moved the needle, yet. The longer the war goes on, the more likely the progressive media will be successful in its efforts.
China and Russia are doing what they can to help Iran, but their options are limited. China appears busy creating an energy pipeline that makes the Strait of Hormuz a moot point; It already is for the U.S., a fact not lost on President Trump, who appears anxious to end this war, but not without a decisively crippled Iran.
- CHINA – Chairman Xi’s purging of subversives continues, as more top leaders are either disappeared or charged with corruption, or worse.
The longer Iran holds on, the more China is likely to attempt to support the regime. Losing Iran to American influence would set China back significantly in the Middle East, though continuing to support Iran in the face of growing hostility against it by the whole region might compound that loss should the regime fall.
From China’s Two Sessions came two new bills that accelerate China’s ethnic state nationalism, one that forces more Han cultural harmony and less ethnic diversity and one that creates even more surveillance and censorship powers for the state, moving China even closer to North Korea in terms of everyday thought control of its citizens.
- UKRAINE – The on-again, off-again peace talks between Russia and Ukraine appear to be mostly off at present. The two sides have been trading blows, targeting each other’s energy infrastructure using drone, and now robot, assaults to do so.
Tellingly, the EU has once again delayed its proposal to ban Russian oil.
The frontlines continue to show inconstancies, with Russian advances here and Ukrainian advances there. No one appears to be able to break through in any significant, sweeping campaign.
The war is becoming a training ground for drone warfare, and Ukraine’s and Russia’s growing expertise are being exploited in the Iran War, with the U.S. borrowing not only from Ukraine, but from its own opponent, Iran.
- ABORTION – There have been a number of victories for the pro-life movement this month. Planned Parenthood has to pay $500k for holding racist training sessions, California can no longer use tax dollars to pay for abortions, and a New Hampshire bill that would have made abortion a state constitutional right was defeated.
The abortionists scored a big win in the UK, with House of Lords passing a bill that legalizes abortion up to birth. In America, the College Fix pointed out that while every university in the state of Illinois MUST provide abortion care, NONE of them offer prenatal care for mothers intending to give birth to their child.
1.1 million unborn children were terminated through abortion in America last year, which is statistically nearly the same as last year’s. One abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell, died in prison, having been convicted of numerous murders of unborn children.
Operation Rescue Troy Newman released this statement on Gosnell’s passing: “Gosnell was famous for murdering hundreds of late-term babies who struggled for life after failed abortion attempts, though he was only convicted of three. Within his ‘House of Horrors’ abortion facility were found unspeakably filthy conditions that revealed a gross disregard for the lives of his patients.
Bodies of babies dating back 30 years were stored in freezers and stashed in trash bags throughout his clinic. Dismembered feet of large babies were displayed floating in specimen jars in a cupboard as if they were trophies. The world has been rid of a man that can only be described as a monster, and we are better off now that he is gone.”
- EUTHANASIA – Canada appears to be leading the world in euthanasia, with the country now allowing “same-day” suicides to its citizens, as well as forming a committee to consider allowing mentally ill patients, the poor, and children to consent to “medically assisted” suicide.
Nearly 100,000 Canadians have died by euthanasia since it was legalized. Scotland will not be the next euthanasia incubator, having defeated the latest efforts to legalize it.
- WOKENESS – The UN is still hoping to codify a racial cast system with its latest resolution calling the enslavement of Africans the “gravest crime against humanity.” Progressive institutions are still hoping for relief from progressive judges against orders to stop allowing men to play sports with women.
Progressive institutions are forming strategies to continue to practice unconstitutional standards like DEI by concealing them under new labels. Progressive media continue to push the white devil narrative, with PBS calling DEI rollbacks simply “White Supremacism.”
This disconnect from American values is all the more profound because progressives no longer recognize it as being anything but “American” (to view the country as fundamentally a white devil’s vehicle of power).
A California University, USC, delivered a prime example of that disconnect. The university cancelled a California gubernatorial debate because all the candidates were white.
Coloradans will now have an opportunity to vote on transgenders in sports and transitioning children thanks to two resolutions that got on the ballot. The push to transition children’s gender with surgery was one well-funded by major corporations.
Another BLM activist was recently convicted of fraud, throwing more dirt on the already dead movement.
China’s recent Ethnic Unity law makes it more apparent why the Democrat Party and its GOP rear guard protectors are such a natural frenemy fit with the CCP. The Bill unmasks China’s ethnic nationalism, a trait we believe the progressives now share with the Chinese.
D. MARKET
Between the Iran War and the Ai-disrupted shifting jobs market, President Trump’s pre-election strongpoint, the economy, is buckling under the pressure. An economy that, at the beginning of February appeared poised for takeoff, is now struggling under this one-two punch.
The U.S. is securing more options for rare earths resources, including striking a deal with Chile this month. It has also moved significantly towards energy sovereignty with the announcement of a new nuclear power plant and oil refinery this month.
While the short-term prognosis for the American economy is unstable, the country is positioning itself to have a future bounce-back that will come through smart early investing in energy sovereignty and AI infrastructure and resources, the emergence of new AI-related jobs for humans (many of which will be as much of a surprise to you as they will for us), and the hopeful early end of the Iran War.
The White House has JUST RELEASED its much anticipated “Artificial Intelligence Framework,” which is intended to form the foundation for future federal AI legislation and regulations. Expect an analysis of the framework in an upcoming issue of MIA. ‘
AI’s expansion into world militaries is only accelerating, with questions still looming regarding how much agency do you give to an AI-run machine that has the capacity to kill? It appears, for now, the “urgency” of the times is pushing militaries to move faster than prudence might otherwise suggest we would.
While AI remains very unpopular, humans are yet using it more and more. Its content, now referred to often as AI slop, is testing the bounds of Intellectual Property laws, both in terms of what it draws from to create its own content and whether its creations warrant copyright protections.
With OpenAI cancelling its billion dollar Disney deal, along with its video AI app Sora, and social media companies suffering major lawsuit losses connected to children’s safety, the legal landscape for the AI industry, and tech industry as a whole, looks increasingly expensive, which could have an overall slowdown effect on AI development as well as a scaling back of free social media services.
SYNTHESIS SUMMARY
This past month we have seen what we believe to be a transition for President Trump, from an extraordinary charismatic outsider shaking up the establishment, to a politician.
His invincibility is gone, but his formidability is not. He is no paper tiger, but he is not immune to effective counterattacks.
Yet we say this with one major caveat, should Iran crumble out of nowhere and Trump achieve the installment of a pro-American regime in a still-contiguous Iran, his invincibility might very well quickly return.
From an American perspective, this outcome would most likely produce an economic boom that could change the very political dynamic of the country, which seems to be mostly concerned about economics, not culture, nor the constitutional crisis.
But that outcome, we believe, is not likely, unless the U.S. unveils a new weapon that changes the very nature of war itself. There are no credible rumors such a weapon exists (thought there are SOME rumors).
Americans seem to believe we have won the culture war, and the Democrat Party wasn’t the primary driver of the ideology they imagine we have defeated. They are either turning back to the Democrats or opting out of voting altogether. Either way, the Democrats win, a party whose ideology is fundamentally opposed to Americanism.
We believe the absence of an effective opposition party to the progressives is protecting them from American accountability. So long as Republicans continue to block any effective action to blunt progressive power, they continue to be a de facto rear guard of the progressives.
Even as we finish this report, the GOP is continuing to impede resistance to the progressives, whom they still treat as if they are Americans when only progressives don’t know they’re not American anymore.
This month has seen the quiet advance of the new reality of power, one framed around AI infrastructure and need. While we see parts of it emerging, and some of the new battles begin to emerge as well, the old battles are still raging, concealing what’s emerging beneath our very feet.
Remember, next week is a scheduled off-week for us, but the following week, Friday, April 10, 2026, be sure to read our quarterly Situation Report, which will include our Predictive Analysis for the next three months.
On Monday, April 12, 2026, watch our show “From the Belltower,” where we will cover the Quarterly Report.
You can watch us at noon ET on our YouTube channel, @mindfulintelligencepodcast.
Originally published March 27, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By STAFF
“When we removed our country’s corrupt judges, we faced a strong backlash from the so-called ‘international community,’ including the Biden administration. We did it anyway, because it was the only way to save our country.” – El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele
INTRODUCTION
ED. NOTE: We want to offer this caveat; Not ALL rulings against Trump are unjust progressive rulings, even from progressive judges. President Trump himself is a precedent breaker and sometimes he breaks Americanist standards himself. He also has a bad track record picking competent prosecuting attorneys, which has also empowered progressive judges to easily halt prosecutions of progressives.
GET THE LATEST ON JUDGEFARE HERE
This month’s bellwether could have been Iran because it is certainly the biggest story of the month. We recently did a report on Iran in our March 13, 2026, issue of MIA. While plenty has happened since then, the fundamental state of the war hasn’t. You can read an analysis of the current state of the war in our Situation Report for this month on page xx.
The Iran War remains THE bellwether story for global geopolitics, but at home, the emerging bellwether story is about the growing divisions between the progressive judiciary and the conservative executive. Acts by the progressive judiciary appear to be attempts to expand their powers until they become the de facto policy makers of the executive branch.
They might do this through direct orders or through selective ethics violations charges of those who dissent from the progressive program.
Recent rulings by what we would classify as progressive activist judges have only widened the divide between the conservative executive and the progressive judiciary.
We believe the judiciary is mostly controlled by progressives, directly through progressive activist judges and indirectly through bar associations, law schools, and other judicial enforcement institutions. This control is not absolute, nor are the progressive activist judges always in agreement with one another.
Their values, as a whole, are unique to their people, and alien to Americans, for they rest on the assumption that the social usurps the individual and social status usurps American rule of law. When it comes to “rights,” they tend to favor the weak individual over the social strong, but the social weak to the individual strong (at least their perceptions of the people who fit those categories).
A white middle-class American will be assumed to have less rights expectations than a non-white middle-class American because of the status of the group they belong to, the white middle class.
Equality will matter when it comes to limiting the rights of the strong against the weak, while individual liberty will matter when it comes to limiting the power of the strong and protecting the rights of the weak.
Remember, “the strong” is assessed according to the progressive hierarchy, not an Americanist one. A poor white orphan is in “the strong” category while a black middle class college student with loving parents is in the “weak” or “protected” category.
These are the values that drive these judges, and this is what makes them a consensual participant in what we see as a deliberate act to replace Americanist values in our courts with Progressive values, not through amendment changes properly ratified, but through sophistry executed by progressive judges.
We call this part of the progressive revolutionary war machine, Judgefare, the use of judges and the judiciary to stifle dissent and complete the transition from “Progmerica” to the Progressive U.S., now free to openly practice progressive values and bury Americanist values once and for all.
They will no longer be required to use American terms. They will no longer be required to act with restraint until they have more power. They will be free to be what they’ve always been, anti-American, Progressive.
In this report, we’ll highlight the recent rulings that triggered this analysis, we’ll spell out the Judgefare plan, the use of bar associations in this war against the republic, the SCOTUS defense of Judgefare, how the pushback has begun, and finally what might come next in the war between the progressive judiciary and the conservative executive.
A. RECENT RULINGS
A recent slate of decisions has come down from the courts that overwhelmingly rules against President Trump’s actions. While the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a victory to President Trump, allowing the deportation of illegals to third countries to continue, and the 8th Circuit has now allowed illegal alien detention without bond, they would be the only favorable ruling from the progressive-dominated judiciary.
Mostly Biden-appointed Judges have shut down numerous major Trump policies, including freezing federal funding, shutting down Voice of America, halting DEI investigations of progressive schools, stopping ICE detention facilities from opening, and even more.
Here are details of three examples from this month alone:
- PROTECTING “WOKE” ANTHROPIC – U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has issued a ruling that prevents President Trump from ordering the Pentagon to sever ties with the AI company, Anthropic. The Trump administration has determined Anthropic’s governance standards are not aligned with America’s standards.
The Federal judge has essentially ruled she knows better than Trump if Anthropic is aligned or not aligned with American standards. She said in her ruling, “Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”
- DEI PROTECTION – U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor has ruled the Department of Education cannot receive student admission data from colleges and universities. The Department was seeking information on race, gender, standardized test scores, and GPAs of applicants. The data would be collected and reviewed in a way that does not expose student IDs.
The data is needed to determine whether colleges and universities are complying with a SCOTUS order ending affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling will be appealed. The lawsuit was initiated by 17 Progressive states. We believe they are seeking to protect their Progressive institutions from an American plumb line.
- ICE STAND DOWN – A progressive activist judge has made another questionable ruling that seems as if it is intended to prevent ICE officers from effectively protecting their facilities from “protesters.”
Progressive judge Michael Simon has ruled that officers cannot use non-lethal means of crowd dispersal or control unless the crowd poses an “imminent threat of physical harm.” Non-lethal crowd control is a means of preventing protests from becoming riots.
This ruling effectively assures violence will happen at ICE facilities as ICE officers will only be able to respond AFTER the escalation has gotten out of control, meaning lethal force will be required.
This is exactly what they want, ICE officers killing protesters, who will all be portrayed by the progressive media as choir boys and girls that didn’t do no harm…all with children and mothers and fathers…
Judge Simon is married to a militant anti-ICE Progressive, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. That fact was not enough to warrant his removal from this case, because the decision makers are all Progressives themselves, so no action was taken against what seems to be a clear violation of constitutional standards.
Fortunately, a recent 9th circuit ruling has reversed this decision.
B. THE PLAN
- THE CONFERENCE – In July 2025, we covered a Judicial conference in Washington, D.C. that, in part, telegraphed the plan by the judiciary to assure its power was not usurped by an aggressive executive.
We reported at the time: In another blow to the perception of Rule of Law, The Federalist has discovered a memo that reveals a D.C. Judicial Conference in March turned into a cabal to undermine President Trump. The conference introduced inherent biases into their judgements before a case ever came before them.
At the center of the cabal is Chief Justice John Roberts and Judicial Supremacist D.C. Circuit Judge James Boesberg. The latter, Boesberg, would be the one who said the quiet parts out loud.
From the memorandum obtained by The Federalist, “… District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg next raised his colleagues’ concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis.”
- THE JUSTIFICATION – Progressives fundamentally believe conventional Americanist views, like being against abortion, or viewing homosexuality as a sin, or not believing in government welfare program efficacy, or being in favor of gun possession, are dog whistles of white supremacism. This is a view we believe is either shared or accepted by progressive activist judges.
ED. NOTE: It is not anti-American to believe in abortion, celebrate homosexuality, or believe in government welfare programs. It IS anti-American to be against your neighbor’s right to basic self-defense, which MUST include the right to bear arms. It is also anti-American to try to create a corporate-state governance standard that unpersons people with these anti-progressive views.
Through this ideology, progressive activist judges can view their trampling of the constitution as a better outcome than empowering evil to take over the land.
Nothing signals this better than a recent editorial in a progressive information war machine, The Nation. The title says it all, “Why Does the Supreme Court Treat Trump Like a ‘Regular’ President?”
The writer, Ellie Mystal, captures the depth of the delusion of the progressive and the nature of the war they think they are fighting. That war is a winner-take-all war, and the enemy, anyone not progressive, is literally the devil who, if he wins, WILL KILL US ALL.
She claims, “The Donald Trump who exists in the real world—the racist, fascist sexual predator who happily tweets out the illegal and unconstitutional motivations for his policies—does not exist according to the Supreme Court. Instead, the court has invented a different Trump, one who does not speak, does not lie, and adheres to the well-established norms regarding the use of executive power. It has dreamed up a normal US president, grafted this creation onto Trump’s legal filings, and then ruled as if this fiction were reality.”
- THE EXPANSION – Not only do progressive have progressive activist judges willing to subvert Americanist standards using sophistry as their dissecting tool, but they are also working to train progressive activist jurists to further subvert Americanist standards and undermine the republic by destabilizing its judiciary.
A left-wing activist network is training liberals how to slip onto juries in federal cases and then vote “not guilty” to derail prosecutions brought by the Trump Justice Department.
Recordings and training materials tied to the group Freedom Trainers show activists being coached on how to conceal their left-wing views during jury selection and then use jury nullification once they are seated on a jury. The webinars, slide decks, and pamphlets behind the effort all push the same approach: Blend in during selection, say the right things to get seated, and use the jury room to block convictions.
The premise is straightforward. Look like any other potential juror, avoid signaling their radical political agenda, and make it through voir dire, the jury selection process, without raising suspicion. Once deliberations begin, however, the guidance shifts sharply.
The method of moving into an Americanist institution and corrupting it from within is perfectly encapsulated in this jury nullification technique. Jury nullification in and of itself is a fine American tradition when it is used to challenge unconstitutional laws, but it is deliberate insurrection when done to fundamentally derail the whole American judiciary altogether.
It is only fitting that the Progressives would use a tool created to serve Americans and turn it into a bludgeon against the host nation they fed off until the time was right to assert their own nationhood, freed from Americanist trappings. This is exactly what the progressive “jurist” does once we let them inside the jury room, inside our American institutions.
C. THE BELLWETHER BOASBERG
James Emanuel “Jeb” Boasberg is the current Chief Judge of the United States District of Columbia. He was appointed to this position by former President Barack Obama in 2011. In 2014, Boesberg became a presiding judge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). On January 1, 2020, he became the presiding Judge of the court. He served on the FISC court in 2021 and still has some involvement with the court.
He represents the quintessential Judgefare Judge, the judge who assumes the most judicial authority he possibly can. He could be viewed as the Charles II of the Judiciary. Charles II wanted the English crown to follow the French model, the model of absolute power for Kings.
Boasberg’s judicial history is FILLED with unprecedented claims of judicial authority, the very authority the progressives needed to consolidate power when Trump was out of office and prevent a long-term loss of power while Trump is in office.
Boasberg may yet warrant a full report on his own in the future, should events warrant it (and that looks increasingly more likely, but not inevitable).
Here are a few of his most impactful cases to illustrate what we mean when we claim Boesberg is a judicial absolutist. Let the reader decide for themselves if these actions match that assertion.
- THE “DUTY OF CANDOR” – 2019 – When Boasberg determined the FBI had “breached its duty of candor” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, he ordered the FBI to provide for the court a detailed explanation of how the FBI would assure there would be no more errors in their investigative reports.
The ruling was called “unprecedented.” It was an assertion of judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before.
- BANNING AGENTS FROM FISC COURT – 2020 – Boasberg issued a strict conduct order that banned the FBI agents who handled the Carter Page applications in the Crossfire Hurricane Report from ever participating in the FISC court again. Once again, the ruling was called “unprecedented.” It was an assertion of judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before.
- THE VENEZUELA RULINGS – These rulings could merit their own lengthy analysis as they serve as a Bellwether for judicial absolutist sophistry that will help Americans understand the nature of the opposition to their republic (and Boesberg most assuredly is no friend of Americanist standards).
The most startling ruling was Boasberg’s order to turn a plane around that was already on its way to deport Venezuelans. From this, Boasberg has sought to charge Trump officials with contempt of court. SCOTUS chose to somewhat hem him in, but not entirely, and the constitutionality of Boesberg’s actions remains unsettled.
These rulings were “unprecedented,” and they asserted judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before. Like we said, Boasberg is the ideal Judgefare Judge for the progressive revolutionary cause.
D. BARFARE
Ben Weingarten, writing for The Federalist, summarized “barfare” in his report on the latest use of this political weapon to target another political opponent. He wrote, “By making life hell for conservative counselors, by hitting them with such complaints, the idea is to pick such legal talent off the playing field — while spooking others who might otherwise enter it — and thereby eliminate the left’s legal opposition.”
Barfare is the use of bar associations to bring frivolous, dubious, and outright false charges against non-Progressive government attorneys, as well as any defense attorney who might represent them. They mostly target attorneys who aggressively advance policies the progressives oppose.
The latest victim of Barfare appears to be U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, who allegedly violated ethical standards by enforcing President Trump’s constitutionally approved executive order ending DEI practices in government-funded schools. Martin now faces ethics violations charges by the bar authority in D.C. (the DC Disciplinary Counsel), the very authority he had been questioning and working to begin investigating.
Another victim of this barfare association was Jeff Clark, a former regulatory officer in the Trump administration. He said of the latest barfare assault on Martin, “Lawfare/Barfare is alive & well. Apparently, DC’s Disciplinary Counsel cares not that 1) DEI is an unconstitutional violation of equal protection of the laws; & 2) the President had issued an executive order banning it if an institution takes federal money. Blatantly political.”
The Trump administration is fighting back against this, which we’ll cover in the PUSHBACK section of this report.
E. SCOTUS PROTECTION
We wrote this news blurb on March 19, 2025. It encapsulates both SCOTUS’ protection of progressive activism in the judiciary and also Judge Boesberg, our bellwether progressive activist judge:
Chief Justice John Roberts injected himself into matters not directly in front of his court in defense of a district judge being threatened with impeachment for ruling against President Trump’s deportation operation decisions. Specifically, the district court judge ruled that a planeload of Venezuelan convicted felons should be immediately returned.
Chief Roberts wrote, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
It should be noted Roberts didn’t say it was illegal, only that it was “not an appropriate response.” His argument is for precedent, while the argument itself is in defense of a man who has demonstrated a dangerous lack of restraint regarding that same guiding judicial standard, “precedent.”
After Roberts’ missive, Representative Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against that same federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge James Boesberg. He is the same judge that gave tough sentences to convicted j6 protestors while giving alleged FBI plant Ray Eppes a lenient sentence.
A year later, there has been no substantive move against Boesberg’s “unprecedented” rulings, and John Roberts is still defending Boesberg from attacks.
Roberts took a public stance against the outrage being directed at progressive judges in general, saying “You see, from all over … [there’s] not just any one political perspective on it, that it’s more directed in a personal way, and that, frankly, can be actually quite dangerous. Judges around the country work very hard to get it right, and if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism. But personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”
Critics responded that had SCOTUS reined in rogue progressive activist judges who demonstrate repeatedly legal standards inconsistent with Americanist standards, the “rhetoric” he called dangerous would end, for it is only “dangerous” if it is inaccurate, not if it is true. It would be dangerous to try to chill such speech, as Roberts appears to be doing.
His public action also signals to lawyers in the executive what little protection they have against rogue progressive judges and the associations they control (such as the bar associations).
F. THE PUSHBACK
Starting from the top, there has been increasing pushback against progressive activist judges. The Trump administration itself is finally pushing back against the barfare assault on non-progressive executive legal officers and advocates.
The administration’s DOJ has proposed a rule change to curb barfare’s power: The Department of Justice proposes to establish a process for reviewing bar complaints and allegations against its attorneys.
Under the proposed rule, before a current or former Department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the bar disciplinary authority of a State, Territory, or the District of Columbia in response to allegations that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s federal duties, the Department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the bar disciplinary authority suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the Department’s review.
This would provide a major impediment to the progressive association’s power to impede oppositional policy through selective and overreaching ethics violations charges that diminishes executive power while creating a de facto policymaking tool for progressive activist judiciary supremacists to wield arbitrarily (as it has been in recent years).
Outside of Trump’s increasing willingness to characterize progressive activist judges as being something approaching insurrectionist, no other substantive action has been taken by the administration to curb progressive activist judiciary supremacist power.
The more the judiciary’s power grows, the more American liberty is threatened by progressive courts that not only no longer recognize American rights, they also actively work to subvert them (when and where they can).
At the local level, police departments are defying judicial orders. In one case, the Las Vegas Police Department refused to release a serial violent criminal despite another criminal-enabling ruling by a progressive activist judge, who sought to release the criminal despite his violent and police-evading past.
In another instance, the Riverside County Sheriff’s office seized 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 election, alleging there were thousands more ballots cast than there were eligible voters. While the Progressive Activist DA has attempted to stop the investigation, the sheriff’s department, so far, has refused to comply, claiming the DA has no authority in the matter. The DA has made the same claim about them.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
While rank-and-file conservatives seem to recognize the existential threat that a progressive activist judiciary poses to the American republic, elected Republicans have mostly refused to go beyond challenging their constitutionality. So far, every effort to censure or impeach a progressive activist judge by congress has ended in failure.
President Trump has no real power to blunt the judiciary outside of replacing it, and even then, he would not replace the progressive activists still dominating legal institutions, like bar associations and law schools.
The executive could have some power to check the power of progressive-controlled institutions, especially with a conservative court. We doubt, however, that a conservative court would give the executive as much power as it might need to remove the progressive threat from her American womb.
Furthermore, the GOP-majority Senate has been sitting on new judicial appointees by the Trump administration since his 2nd term began, even though the GOP allowed the Democrats to rush through a slate of Biden judges near the end of his term. Many of those same judges are leading the Judgefare assault on the American republic.
More and more, we suspect President Trump is looking to preserve anti-American power, like judicial overreach, for what he presumes will be the next regime in power, the faction we are loosely simply referring to as the “conservatives” (see our Final Thought on pg. xx for more on what “conservative” means in this context).
He isn’t existentially threatening progressive power, even as he seems willing to existentially threaten globalist power. At home, he has far more patience with the Democrat Party than he does the globalists of Europe. But he also has far more patience with China than he does some Republicans within his own party.
He seems to be far more pragmatic than idealist, and far less concerned with preserving and restoring American rights than with preserving American geopolitical and economic power.
For this reason, we doubt the Judgefare assault will change anytime soon. If anything, it will only get worse, until one ruling is so far beyond the pale, failure to act will immediately undermine the whole Federal government’s legitimacy as a representative of an American republic.
This is not to say such a ruling is inevitable, but only that it will take a rash decision made in anger by a narcissistic progressive activist judge that critically affects American security to compel the President to act in a substantive way to remove progressives from the courts altogether.
We do not think such a ruling is likely before the general election this year. If the polls start to turn on the Democrats, the likelihood of such a ruling increase before the election. If the Democrats win both the House and the Senate, expect activist judges to file contempt charges against Trump officials for a myriad of “reasons.”
President Trump does not appear to have the real stomach for the existential fight he would trigger if he moved as aggressively against the activist judges as the El Salvadorans did when reclaiming their country from another parasitical faction, the cartels, natural allies of progressives.
Trump would need a smoking gun to act, like a video recording of activist judges conspiring to undermine Trump policies knowingly using “word games” to invent legal standards on the fly so they can effectively contain and eventually destroy the evil that is Trump
This smoking gun video, or evidence like it, is not likely to come out anytime soon. Until it does, expect the Trump policies to slowly wind down, and some to get reversed, as activist judges will only be emboldened by the lack of decisive action from the Trump administration and the GOP’s congressional leadership.
SCOTUS is divided into three camps, the progressives, the Americanists, and the pragmatists. There are three members in each camp. So long as the court has a minority of Americans, but also a minority of progressives, expect some checks on progressive power to continue, but hardly decisively.
The continued allowance of lower court serial constitutional abuse and overreach by SCOTUS will also add to the emboldening of more clearly unconstitutional rulings in the name of stopping the devil, Donald Trump.
We will continue to watch our bellwether Judgefare judge, James Boesberg, as well as all the other Judgefare judges plotting deconstruction of American Rule of Law in the name of stopping Hitler (Trump) even as we close this report.
Let us pray a smoking gun is delivered that allows the President to act decisively to end the progressive activist threat within our judiciary.
ED. NOTE: In our Quarterly review, scheduled for release on Friday, April 10, 2026, be sure to check out our Predictive Analysis for the next three months in our Situation Report.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
A History of American Law – Lawrence M. Friedman
Judicial Activism and the Assault on Christianity – Greg Bredemeier
Originally published March 27, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
Recapping Trending, World, U.S., Political, Market, Culture, Sci-Tech News from March 1-26, 2026
Here are the TOP 10 NEWS TAGS for this Time Period:
- Iran War
- 2026 Election
- Wokeness
- Judgefare
- Progressive Media
- Abortion Watch
- AI Watch
- Trump Deportations
- Voter ID
- Mamdani Terror Attack
For regular news updates throughout the week, go to mindfulintelligence.news, our news research hub, curated news aggregate center, and MIA report archive site.
A. TRENDING
- TRUMP PUSHES FOR END TO IRAN WAR AS MARKETS FEEL BURDEN OF BLOCKED STRAIT – President Donald Trump has put together a 15-point peace proposal to what’s left of the Iran regime. Alleged representatives of the regime are telling corporate news media they have already rejected the deal. The President has fired back, threatening he will “unleash hell” if Iran “fails to understand that they have been defeated.”
President Trump announced, “As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time. Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.”
Read more about the Iran War in our Situation Report on pg. xx.
- DOJ CLOSES BIDEN AUTOPEN INVESTIGATION, SOURCE CLAIMS – After another round of much sound and fury signaling nothing, the GOP’s Department of Justice has allegedly quietly shut down its Biden autopen investigation in much the same way it has tried to bury the Epstein Files investigation. The claim comes from the Washington Examiner, which cites an anonymous source. The Department of Justice has refused to comment when asked by the press about the claim.
- FBI ADMITS MORE THAN 100 TERABYTES OF EPSTEIN EVIDENCE WERE DELETED – Whatever the DOJ has on hand that it is calling the “Epstein Files,” it is hardly as much as what it could have been. According to a just-now discovered testimony in 2024 by FBI Agent Aaron Spivack, a hack into their NY Field Office during the 2023 Superbowl led to the FBI losing access to more than 500 terabytes of data. 100 Terabytes would turn out to be lost for good.
- EPSTEIN WAS A FINANCIAL BOUNTY HUNTER FOR THE U.S.? – Jeffrey Epstein was officially a U.S. government agent according to a memo released among the Epstein Files. The claim comes from an unsigned memo that states, “At some point in time, Jeffrey Epstein worked for the United States government as a financial bounty hunter. He has retained significant political connections with both Israel and the United States.”
The memo’s credibility comes from another part of the note recommending further information about Epstein from other federal agencies. It also accuses Epstein of violating child exploitation and sex offender traveling laws, The memo gives more credence, though not a smoking gun, to the claim Epstein was a government agent.
B. DOMESTIC TERROR
- ISLAMIST SHOOTER KILLS 3, INJURES 17 IN TERROR ATTACK ON AUSTIN, TX BAR – 53-year-old Islamist Ndiaga Diagne opened fire on an Austin, Texas bar, killing 3 and injuring 17 others before being killed himself by the police. He was wearing a “Property of Allah” shirt and has connections to a local Islamist community with suspicious ties to Islamist terrorist organizations. The attack came just after the Ayatollah Khomeini was confirmed killed in aerial strikes, leading many to believe this was related to the war on Iran.
GO DEEPER ON AUSTIN IRAN SHOOTER
- MEDIA, MAMDANI PROTECT ISLAMIST IED ATTACKERS WHILE VILIFYING WHITES, CHRISTIANS – The media coverage of the IED attack by two Islamists on a Christian anti-Muslim rally not only accused the Christians of being white supremacists (which they appear to actually be, in this case), they also accused the Christians of throwing the IEDs themselves. Mayor Mamdani of New York focused his ire on the “white supremacists,” while only condemning the IEDs being tossed. He failed to mention the Islamists behind the attack.
The attack was caught on video, so the internet already knew the Islamists were behind the attack, The two suspects are Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, both of whom come from wealthy immigrant parents. They screamed “Allahu Akbar” when they threw the IEDs, which were all verified to be real. Had any one of them gone off (there were three total, two near the mayor’s mansion), it is highly likely there would have been multiple casualties. We covered this story in more detail in the Final Thought of our Friday, March 13 MIA Issue.
GO DEEPER ON MAMDANI TERROR ATTACK
- ISLAMISTS ATTACK AMERICAN SYNAGOGUE, UNIVERSITY ON SAME DAY – On Thursday, March 12, 2026, two separate Islamists attempted to murder Americans, with one succeeding and the other being stopped before he could do further harm. Islamist Lebanese “immigrant” Ayman Mohammad Ghazali attempted to murder Jews at a Michigan synagogue. He was killed by security after driving his car into the synagogue.
Islamist Mohamed Jalloh was successful in his attack on Old Dominion University. He killed one and injured another before ROTC members stopped him and killed him with their bare hands, according to reports. The Islamist killed one man, Lt. Colonel Brandon Shah.
C. U.S. ELECTIONS
- FBI SEIZES 2020, 2024 ELECTION RECORDS FROM NOTORIOUS MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ – Maricopa County, AZ is seen as the epicenter of 2020 election fraud suspicion, surpassing its closest rival, Fulton County, GA, in evidence that is difficult for skeptics to simply dismiss. Now that county is under an FBI microscope, with the announcement of election records being seized from Maricopa County from the bureau.
Republican State Senate President Warren Petersen confirmed the action by the FBI, posting on X, “Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County. The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news.”
GO DEEPER ON 2020 ELECTION FRAUD
- DEMS FLIP FLORIDA STATE HOUSE SEAT IN TRUMP’S MAR-A-LAGO DISTRICT – The Florida state house district President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate resides in will now have a Democrat representing it after a special election saw Democrat Emily Gregory narrowly beat Trump-endorsed Republican John Maples. Trump won in this same region by 11 points in 2024. The special election was needed to replace retired Republican Mike Caruso, who won his last election by 19 points in 2024.
- TEXAS PRIMARY FINISHES CROCKET, KEEPS CORNYN ALIVE – The Texas Senate Primary races were the main feature of March 3, 2026’s midterm primaries, which were also held in Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. In Texas, DNC race hustler Jasmine Crocket lost to James Talarico, a far-left “Christian” who claims God is non-binary and ok with abortions.
In the GOP race, Senator John Cornyn failed to get a majority vote, so a run-off race between himself and his closest challenger, Attorney General Ken Paxton, will happen in May. Paxton had offered to drop out of the race if Cornyn commits to passing the SAVE Act, even if it means voting to change the filibuster rule to require it to be verbal, not merely procedural. That offer is now void because the deadline for Paxton to withdraw has passed.
D. U.S. POLITICS
- VA DEMS MOVE TO TAKE GUNS, CONTROL HISTORY NARRATIVES, AND CODIFY ANTI-WHITE RACISM – The Democrat Party of Virginia has moved aggressively to make the state in Progressive US’s image, passing numerous bills aimed at curbing American liberty. They passed one bill that freezes white men out of government contracts, another bill that takes “assault weapons” from Americans, and another one which mandates J6 be taught to children as only being an insurrection.
The three bills reflect Progressive US’s anti-white racist ideology, its disrespect for freedom of thought, and its fear of an armed citizenry it knows it is preparing to attack.
GO DEEPER ON VIRGINIA INSURRECTION
- JUDGES SET FIRE TO TRUMP AGENDA IN A SERIES OF BRUTAL RULINGS – Mostly Biden-appointed Judges have shut down numerous major Trump policies, including freezing federal funding, shutting down Voice of America, halting DEI investigations of progressive schools, stopping ICE detention facilities from opening, and more.
In the wake of a slate of questionable rulings, SCOTUS Chief Judge John Roberts has encouraged what we consider insurrectionist rulings (with some exceptions) by Democrat activist judges while shaming any critique of these same rulings. Read more about Judgefare in our Bellwether Deepdive on pg. 2.
- ANOTHER VICTIM OF FISA DECEPTION, THIS TIME BY THE MUELLER TEAM INVESTIGATING FISA DECEPTION – Walid Phares faced a 12-month period between 2017 and 2018 under a scrutinizing FBI microscope empowered by a deceived FISA court. The prosecutors withheld evidence that would have exonerated Phares and rendered the FBI’s search warrant requests invalid. The prosecutors were attorneys of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating the Russian Collusion Hoax.
An investigation into why this evidence was withheld was never included in the team’s final report, even though it is directly tied to it. This deception mimics the very deception that triggered the Russian Collusion Hoax in the first place, manipulating and withholding evidence to FISA court judges to get the results the prosecutors wanted, the power to spy on domestic political opposition.
Newly released transcripts of a testimony from an unnamed FBI agent reveals his attempts to include the anomaly of the Phares case in the report was rejected by a senior member of Mueller’s team, Kevin Clinesmith. After the agent attempted to include not just the Phares FISA anomaly, but others, Clinesmith told him, “We can’t send this to DOJ.”
GO DEEPER ON RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX
- MULLIN CONFIRMED HEAD OF DHS, HIS SENATE SEAT GIVEN TO ENERGY EXECUTIVE – The now former Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has been confirmed by the Senate in a 54-45 vote to take over as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security. He takes over for Kristi Noem, who was reassigned to a South America project.
The Governor of Oklahoma, Republican Kevin Stitt, has chosen an energy executive, Alan Armstrong, to take the now-vacant seat. Stitt said of his selection, “He’s a strong business leader who understands the power of free markets and limited government. He’s spent his career fighting for Oklahoma’s energy industry and providing affordable, reliable energy to all of America.”
- FBI RAN ROUND RIVER CAMPAIGN TO DISCREDIT CLAIMS OF THE BIDENS’ UKRAINE CORRUPTION – Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) claimed in a press release that the FBI ran a disinformation campaign in 2020 to protect the Biden family from potential prosecution. This operation was called Round River. It was so secret not even the then FBI Director, Bill Barr, knew of its existence.
Grassley claimed, “in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters (‘FBI HQ’) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.”
E. WORLD
- VENEZUELA BECOMES A DE FACTO U.S. ALLY – The United States and Venezuela have officially restored diplomatic and consular relations that President Trump claims will lead to favorable oil and rare earth mineral deals for the U.S.. These deals freeze Russia and China out of the Venezuela equation.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said of the agreement, “When we are working together it can only mean two things, which is prosperity for the people of Venezuela and for the citizens of the United States, and it also brings peace and stability for the world.”
- AS RUSSIA RACES TO SAVE CUBA WITH OIL, CUBA NEGOTIATES WITH THE U.S. – Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canal has affirmed former President Raul Castro has been negotiating with the U.S. about making the changes the U.S. is requesting in order to lift the decades-long embargo on the island nation. As Cuba struggles to keep the lights on, Russia has sent oil tankers to rescue them, tankers expected to reach Cuba early next week.
- CUBA TOTTERS ON DISSOLUTION, BUT LEADER REMAINS DEFIANT AS RUSSIA, MEXICO RUSHES TO ITS RESCUE – Russia is sending oil tankers to Cuba to rescue it from its crippling energy crisis that has left the island in a blackout condition. As dissent grows from within, the Trump administration hints it could take Cuba whenever it wants to. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel responded that any act of aggression “will clash with an impregnable resistance.” Mexico has just announced plans to attempt to “come to Cuba’s aid,” sending a relief supply flotilla and promising to figure out how to get oil to the communist country.
- EU COURT COMPELS ALL MEMBER STATES TO “RECOGNIZE” TRANSGENDER IDENTITIES – The highest court in the EU, the Court of Justice of the European Union, has ruled that all 27 members states of the union must allow all citizens to have photo IDs that match their “lived gender.” The ruling is sure to bring the differences between progressive globalism and traditional Europeanism to a head.
- ENCRYPTED MESSAGES FROM IRAN MAY BE ACTIVATING SLEEPER TERROR CELLS IN U.S. – American intelligence agencies have intercepted encrypted messages from Iran that appear to be “operational trigger(s)” for “sleeper assets.” In the wake of the massive illegal alien invasion under the Biden administration, there is reason to believe this message could be reaching hundreds of teams. DHS Security advisor and Secret Service supervisor Charles Marino suggested the size of those teams could be as much as 20 people.
F. MARKET
- CONSEQUENCE OF SCOTUS RULING ALREADY HITTING COURTS AS TRUMP ADMIN PLEDGES IT WILL PAY INTEREST ON TARIFF REFUNDS – Should the Trump administration lose in the courts and be forced to refund “American” businesses, they are committed to pay interest on the refunds, they informed the courts.
Judges have already signaled a willingness to fast-track the process, as we predicted would happen in our Bellwether DeepDive from our March 6, 2026 MIA issue. In addition to the refunds for U.S. companies, foreign companies are also lining up for their cut of the SCOTUS plunder. Revenues collected through these struck-down tariffs are estimated to be around $170 billion.
- SOCIAL MEDIA HIT HARD IN TWO LANDMARK U.S. CASES, BOTH ADDRESSING CHILD SAFETY – Meta and YouTube have each faced legal setbacks that could portend badly for the social media industry as a whole. The first case saw Meta lose a $381 million lawsuit over child exploitation and safety, the second saw YouTube and Google lose $3 million each for not preventing child addiction. Both cases are expected to set off copycat cases, including against other social media platforms.
- OPENAI ENDS BILLION DOLLAR DISNEY DEAL, SHUTS DOWN VIDEO AI APP SORA – OpenAI is facing existential pressure after having to cancel a $1 billion Disney deal that would have allowed the media company to use their video AI app Sora to develop content. The app was ended due to an inability to prevent it from creating dangerous deepfake videos, including pornographic ones.
Disney said of the severed deal, “We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
G. HEADLINES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
- NEW MIT STUDY GIVES CREDENCE TO 2020 ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS – MIT Data reveals the Democrat Party saw a 23 million vote drop in mail-in ballot votes from 2020 to 2024. Meanwhile, its other voting data mostly held steady from 2020 to 2024. The spike in Democrat votes in 2020 has never been explained. This recent finding suggests the answer may be where many thought it was the whole time, in the post-election-day ballot “counting” behind windows covered with pizza boxes.
GO DEEPER ON 2020 ELECTION FRAUD
- CHINA’S NEW ETHNIC UNITY LAW READS LIKE NAZI LAW – China’s National People’s Congress approved a new law called the “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress.” The law aims to harmonize the country’s 55 state-recognized ethnic minorities with the Han majority. The law was passed on March 12 and was signed into law by Chairman Xi. The law takes effect on July 1st.
It is feared that the law will be used to further crack down on these minorities, leading to more genocidal pogroms such as were carried out against the Uyghurs (and are still going on). Some of the tactics of the past include forcing minority groups to have more abortions, taking children and raising them as Han, and banning the use of the minority group’s languages and artistic traditions.
GO DEEPER ON CHINA ETHNIC UNITY LAW
- UK MOVES CLOSER TO SHARIA AS IT MOVES CLOSER TO CRIMINALIZING DOGS – The United Kingdom has fallen to Sharia. The evidence becomes more and more clear as the tiny island nation may have surpassed China in arrests of people for saying bad things online. The top protected class in the UK is the Muslim, then the Islamist immigrant, then the Rainbow Coalition, with Trans and non-binary as the stars of that group.
Now, the UK wants to make dogs illegal for the sake of its growing Muslim nation within, a nation that despises dogs. To prepare the British for the loss of their dogs, Starmer’s cabinet is working on legislation that would ban 67 dog breeds in the name of safety and health.
- KIDS ARE CHEMICALLY “TRANSITIONING” THANKS TO ONLINE PHARMACIES – The Daily Caller Foundation has released a report that exposes “online pharmacies” as being sources for children to get access to “transition” drugs. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at DNH, summarized the report, claiming it “reveals how online pharmacies may enable minors to obtain cross-sex hormones with alarming ease.
“From websites listing online vendors across the globe to marketplaces for ‘homebrewed’ hormones, we found a multitude of troubling pathways that appear to bypass basic safeguards and regulatory oversight. Gender-confused kids should not be able to purchase potent, experimental medications with just a few simple clicks. These hormones carry significant risks, including effects that can be irreversible.
We urge the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] and other federal agencies to investigate any potential unlawful sellers and, where appropriate, for states to do the same when their laws are being violated,” Miceli continued. “Protecting minors from unsafe and unregulated access to powerful cross-sex hormones must remain a priority.”
GO DEEPER ON TRANSGENDER IDEOLOGY
- CANADA APPROACHES 100K EUTHANIZED, WHILE THE POOR ARE NOW ELIGIBLE FOR MAID, AND CHILDREN MIGHT SOON BE – Amir Farsoud, 54, is being guided towards state-assisted suicide through Canada’s MAiD. While he suffers from chronic back pain, his reason for applying for MAiD was because he can no longer work, and Canada does not give him enough money to avoid becoming homeless. He’d rather die than become homeless, and now, in Canada, you can legally be killed for that fear alone.
So far, almost 100,000 Canadians have been murdered (aborted) by the state, legally, according to a report by the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. That same group is now recommending “mature minors” be allowed to consent to suicide as well.
- RING’S SEARCH PARTY IS A POLICE STATE TROJAN HORSE – Amazon’s Ring Camera has added a Search Party feature critics say enables Amazon to build a pre-crime database that the state (or the corporation) could use to quickly tamp down dissent. An email from Ring Founder Jamie Simonoff is giving credence to those concerns.
He wrote, “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission. You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there, but for the first time ever, we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”
- 9TH CIRCUIT BLASTED BY OWN JUDGE FOR RULING THAT ALLOWS MEN IN RELIGIOUS WOMEN’S SPACES – After the U.S. 9th circuit court ruled religious groups cannot keep trans men out of women’s spaces, they received a fiery dissent. 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke began his dissent with the phrase, “This is a case about swinging d#%ks.”
He then added, “The fact that the religious owners of a traditional Korean, women-only, nude spa are prohibited by law from preventing a naked adult male, who remains sexually attracted to women, from exposing himself to thirteen-year-old girls tragically illustrates the sick and twisted consequences of erasing sex as a coherent legal category
My distressed colleagues appear to have the fastidious sensibilities of a Victorian nun when it comes to mere unpleasant words in my opinion yet exhibit the scruples of our dearly departed colleague Judge Reinhardt when it comes to the government trampling on religious liberties and exposing women and girls to male genitalia. That kind of selective outrage speaks for itself.”
Read more about Judgefare in our Bellwether report on pg. 2.
- DNC MAYOR STAYS IN OFFICE AFTER FIANCÉ CONVICTED OF BEING CCP SPY – The Mayor of Arcadia, CA is a naturalized U.S. citizen from China, whose fiancé was recently convicted of being a CCP spy. The fiancé, a green card holder named Yaoning “Mike” Sun, was the fiancé of Mayor Eileen Wang, a Democrat and potentially STILL a member of the CCP. She emigrated from China more than 30 years ago.
So far, Wang has refused to resign. This type of CCP activity is only a small part of the rising evidence of widespread CCP influence across both political parties, but significantly more substantively among Democrats, their natural “allies.”
- NASA WANTS A MOON BASE – NASA has announced plans to build a moon base that will cost the U.S. $20 billion, according to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. A moon base could replace the need for space stations. The moon base will also be a research and testing facility preparing the technologies needed for an eventual Mars occupation. It will also serve as the eventual departure point for the first landing. The race to Mars appears to be on.
- NEA TRAINING ANTI-AMERICAN INSURRECTIONISTS, NOT TEACHERS – The National Education Association recently held a training session called “Advocacy and Free Speech Rights for K-12 Education” that seeks to establish the oughtness of woke ideology as the oughtness of human life.
This action is sectarian in nature, which is troubling given the nature of the organization. It is one of the largest teachers’ unions in America, with over 3 million teachers. The question is not if the organization crossed the line into political activism, but what, if anything will be done about it.
- MINNESOTA TEACHERS’ UNION SPENDS TIME, MONEY COORDINATING TERRORIST ATTACKS ON ICE AGENTS – According to an investigation by Defending Education, a teachers’ union called “Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (MFPS)” has been coordinating an initiative to effectively help teachers organize resistance to ICE arrests of illegal aliens.
The “initiate” is called “TakeAction Minnesota.” On the website, they claim “We will teach and demonstrate resistance tactics that can be replicated elsewhere, leaving no community undefended. We hope to force an end to ICE’s unprecedented siege of Minnesota — and further the movement to abolish ICE altogether while we do it,”
Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, stated “The teachers unions continue to prove they are rotten apples that only care about far-left street activism, to the detriment of educating children. Teachers and community groups should be dedicating time to improving learning outcomes for students, not creating strategies and lists of people to attempt to thwart law enforcement.”
GO DEEPER ON ANTI-ICE TERROR ATTACKS
- PSYCHIATRY JOURNALS HAVE AN UNDISCLOSED PAYMENTS PROBLEM – A study published in BMJ Open claims 14.2% of industry payments made to published authors were undisclosed in two major psychiatric journals. The findings put further doubt on the psychiatric industry’s integrity assurance standards. This finding follows a 2020 study that revealed 55.7% of U.S. psychiatrists have accepted pharmaceutical industry funding.
- FEMALE GENDERCIDE IN CHINA – China is committing female gendercide according to its own statistics, which shows there are 133 boys born for every 100 girls born. This statistic does not happen naturally, it only happens through selective abortions, specifically of girls. The statistics come from the country’s own just-released 2024 birth report.
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Originally published March 20, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“For those of us who are not black men, imagine watching the news and seeing how people who look like you are portrayed. Imagine seeing men who look like you executed by police, arrested in impossibly high numbers and seeing the entire political system of our nation fighting to keep it that way.
“Think about really what effect that would have on you and how you felt about this country and your participation in its institutions. It’s a centuries-old problem, but we can’t be centuries-old in the solution. We need to fix it now. We need to stop the efforts to make it harder for people of color to vote. We need to fix what’s broken in America.” – Alysa Milano, white millionaire Progmerican actress
“Imagine being a black man and being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal on TV are one and the same because you look alike. Imagine being told by society that white people can be all they can be, but you as a black man, the content of your character is completely irrelevant, you are the color of your skin, and that is all you’ll ever be.
“Imagine being told that you can’t figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. Socioeconomics affects everybody, but apparently you’re not as smart as the poorest white person.” – Savanah Edwards, black middle-class American woman
In past reports, we’ve talked about the concept of “language wars,” of using “language games” to create unwinnable outcomes for your opponent. It is the use of language wars that has largely led to the rise of a host of ideological constructs we will simply refer to as “woke.”
What all these ideological constructs have in common is this; the white heterosexual cis-gendered male created a whole host of institutions to assert and preserve his superiority over all other classes of people. This underlying assumption is implicit in some (they’ll even deny it) and explicit in others.
Systemic “whiteness” prevails, even when the standards are changed to no longer favor the white man, even when the institution’s leaders are replaced by “woke” leaders, even when the new standards now openly discriminate against the white heterosexual cis-gendered male.
This means the only way to end “whiteness” is to end the institutions altogether. Progmerica’s Harvard is gone altogether in Progtopia.
The language game they create for America is based on America’s sins. The “woke” serve as Absolom (2nd Samuel 15) outside the gates of Jerusalem, whose beauty and hair were the pride of Jerusalem.
The woke equip themselves in outfits and hair that appeal to children, their main source for recruitment. The schools, the kids’ shows, the news sources for their favorite influencers, are all spaces for wokeness to tell children there is injustice, but with them in power, there will be justice.
They tell the children enough truths, that America was born with slavery written into her constitution, to tell the children a whole series of lies. They whisper, shout, and subliminally imply, “Were we the new power, we would judge rightly with ‘social justice.’”
The root of all their lies that enables what follows (overt violations of American standards) is the lie that the white heterosexual cis-gendered male invented slavery. After they sell the lie that the white devil invented slavery, they then continue with the lie that the white devil invented Christianity. After that, the American republic itself falls under their flames.
These flames are created by the real fear of the white devil, who invented evil and intends on murdering all hope. These flames also create opportunities to pillage the white man, which gains them more recruits, recruits they desperately need to recruit the children, white middle-class women.
It is this class of woman, the Progmerican white woman, who is the primary enabler and driver of the lies being told to our children in public schools every day. They account for 62% of all public-school teachers, a 24-point majority built into the system, a system that is aggressively Progmerican in its teaching. I would argue they have also been the biggest benefactor of the new wokeness.
Their intended “allies’” benefits weren’t nearly as enriching to the communities as a whole as they have been to the white middle class Progmerican women’s community (this is in large part why transgenderism has gotten the check it has, for it began to threaten white Progmerican woman power).
Our public schools are leading children to believe they are either the victim of a white devil that is built into their very school desks or they’re born of a white devil whose skin covers their own bones, their own flesh, leaving them naked and exposed as an unredeemable sinner. Like the black man that could not hide in a white man’s crowd, the white child cannot hide in a “person of color’s” crowd.
The Progmerican language game began by feeding on America’s rightly earned guilt for having a couple of centuries of real white supremacist history that was only broken in the 1980s (the 50s-70s were the transition away from a fundamentally white supremacist culture).
The stewards of American power, the leaders of the institutions that train our teachers, were not able to keep the woke out of their institutions.
They had no mechanism to filter them with because they operated under largely Americanist standards. They also had no mechanism COMPELLING them to filter such anti-Americanists from their institutions. Dissenting views should be welcome in academia, so cutting out American citizens who happen to have some unamerican views would be antithetical to Americanism.
This is what let the woke in, but the woke do not share our views; the woke are NOT American.
When they entered our institutions, they quickly set about slowly freezing Americans out of their own institutions. Then the process of exaptation began, of repurposing a design to serve a decidedly different end.
Every American institution was converted to what we are calling a Progmerican one, which represents the scaffolding underneath, the bones of the American institutions, with their new head, Progressivism.
I chose the term progressive because it has been the most consistently used term by leftists who knew from the start that their project was about exapting America-making institutions so they become Progressive-making institutions. Neo-liberals and neo-cons alike have been variably comfortable with that term.
It is only the rise of disruptive decentralizing technologies that have prevented the project, Progmericanism, from reaching its fulfilment, its ability to shed the bones of America altogether.
It wants to openly be what it always was, Progtopia. This project will officially jettison the U.S. constitution and replace it with something radically different, something that allows central planners to move on the fly to dramatically alter human action, with violence, if necessary, for the good of the whole.
Progmericans are like the Iranian Islamists, who believe it is proper to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to usher in the age of Utopia. This makes it easy for them to use the language of Americanism, but with radically different definitions. This is pre-emptive deception.
They know they are attempting to alter your heuristics, without your consent, using de facto threats of social ostracism and market death to cement that heuristic conditioning in you. Now, without realizing it, you are already becoming a Progmerican in uncritical habits of being.
This ethical duplicity allows them to appeal to free speech in the American sense when the courts have an American judge, and THEY are the defendants.
Yet as prosecutors and judges in that same court, they will implicitly use the woke standard of “free speech.” The woke standard holds that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, and the consequences they are describing involves mob threats of gatekeepers to economically assassinate you. Any effort by an American to find relief in a Progmerican-controlled court is already doomed to fail before the case is ever heard.
When they say freedom of speech among themselves, they understand it means speech that aligns with the woke orthodoxy as mostly defined by academia (as I believe it still mostly is). That “freedom of speech” also includes the compulsion to speak when others violate the woke orthodoxy as defined by academia.
It also includes the compulsion to not call abortion murder or homosexuality sinful because that affects “marginalized” groups (meaning higher castes in the woke hierarchy of caste value).
Their language game allows them to chastise you ONLY if one of these conditions is true; 1. You seek to be justified according to their standards; 2. They have the power to compel gatekeepers to cut you out of public space.
For the former, if you are an Americanist, you understand what they’re demanding is a violation of the spirit of America, our bravery. We ARE the home of the brave so long as we have a people that are NOT AFRAID of losing fairly in the public square and are NOT AFRAID of others being wrong in public space.
Their standards require a denial of both. They require a gaming of the system by gatekeepers, from the top down, to assure only their kind gets through to the public space where the world might see them. They empower the mob and/or the gatekeepers to be the arbiters of “right” and “wrong” thought that should be tolerated in public space.
From a governance standards perspective, they are not Americans, right from the start. They refute the individual in favor of the social. This is why they say, “social justice” and not “American justice,” for “social justice” is based on caste-system justice, where the punishments and mercies are based primarily on your caste position, not the merits of the situation being adjudicated.
At this point, their only effectiveness over you is their ability to end your public face. Yet that isn’t going as well as it has in the past, but that doesn’t mean the future might not restore that power for them, or even increase it.
America had no defense against the wolf coming into the sheep pen. And now the wolf is just about out of his sheep costume altogether, ready to devour America from within and declare the sheep pen a den of wolves, Progtopia.
In future issues, I hope to expand on my thoughts for what we as Americans can do to at least create an invitation for the people of this land to choose Americanism over the competing new civilizations, which include Progtopia and what I am calling, for now, Trumpmerica (the liminal state between Progmerica and America that, if chosen, will collapse into Progmerica soon after).
I wanted to plant a seed, one that illustrates the critical fail problem of America, its inability to keep the wolves out. Our openness is our strength, but it is also our weakness.
We want to sustain and restore as much openness as possible without allowing closed system thinkers to enter into our institutions and shut the door behind them.
What I propose, in general is the creation of a Bill of Rights coalition of people willing to plumbline their local, state, and national leaders with a questionnaire on whether or not they support the Bill of Rights. From this, we begin to identify Americans, not just among the leaders (there are still a few) but also among ourselves.
The leaders we will target will be market, social, civic, and sacred leaders. We will make their views known, and their refusal to participate in the survey known.
Our purpose is to find Americans among our leaders and make it visible to everyone who is in defiance of these standards. Our secondary purpose is to find enough Americans to form two political parties, both of which agree to run in a special primary open to the general public. The losing party will support the winning party in the general election.
One party will be the Americanist Right. It will support conservative ideas, limited government, strong military, etc., but all within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights.
One party will be the Americanist Left. It will support leftist ideas, like taxing the rich more, having more government social welfare programs, but ALL within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights.
BOTH parties should be pro-self-defense.
The state’s position on abortion, within the Americanist framework, is ambiguous, therefore abortion should be settled by the states, preferably through direct voting by the people, not the legislatures.
This writer holds that states that legalize abortion undermine the fundamental Americanist presumption, that ALL individuals have self-stewardship “rights” given to them by someone/something outside of creation itself. Let the states bear the fruit of allowing or preventing abortions. Let the states that thrive lead the other states to follow their lead.
BOTH parties would be committed to rallying support to pass two amendments, one which would make citizenship a consensual contract the resident must decide to enter into. There would be no more birthright citizenships, not even for children born to American citizens.
The resident would have to go through a form of Americanist “catechism” of sorts and demonstrate in some form a profound understanding of what it means to be citizen in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
This amendment would take effect 6 months after final ratification. It would not be retroactively applied.
Residents would have all the basic rights of citizens other than facing limitations on free speech, having the right to bear arms, and voting in most elections. Residents can vote in any election in which a tax rate that affects them is being voted on.
Residents would pay less taxes than citizens, they couldn’t serve in the military (or be drafted, if we preserve that anti-American standard), nor could they be compelled to serve on juries.
The second amendment would make it a citizenship violation to express gatekeeping standards in the civic, market, sacred, or social public space that would fundamentally impede the ability of Americans to participate in these public spaces or practice their own standards in private spaces.
If you call for gun control laws outside of calling for an Amendment to change our 2nd Amendment standards, then you have committed a citizen violation. There would be levels of punishment based on the severity of the offense and the frequency of offenses. Most offenses would require a fine and some form of remote training in citizenship standards.
One basic requirement for a charge would be having an audience of a certain number (whatever that might be) to protect citizens from private secret-police-type machinations. The speech in homes, for instance, is not intended to be monitored, nor is public speech to a handful of people (other than the limits that are already there, like making death threats).
Above all else, the mechanism must have a path for restoration for all but the most egregious and repetitive offenses.
Any creation of any tool risks exaptation, meaning this tool in the hands of progressives would be used to eliminate Americans from the citizen roles PERMANENTLY. Such a tool has built-in risks.
But what we can see today is that having NO MEANS of filtering out from citizenship privilege the truly anti-American subversive is absolutely unsustainable.
What I propose here might not be the optimal solution (if there is one). The challenge is significant. It is to sustain as broad a coalition of people without becoming so indistinct it collapses into nothing. With no real barrier to natural-born citizenship, and no real standard for excluding citizenship, our enemies have no need for Trojan Horses.
All they have to do is wave the American flag coming in, saying “equality,” not liberty, and once they are in, wave their Progtopian flags (they have many, including the flag of Hamas).
But with these two amendments, they now must publicly CHOOSE American standards and CHOOSE to be held accountable by them, else they lose the privilege of being an American citizen, the “right” to be a self-stewarded individual (for they demonstrated no respect for the self-stewardship capacity of their neighbors).
I have a domain name, Americanist.Party, which could be used for this project should it gain enough traction. If you have your own thoughts on what we can do to restore, fulfill, and preserve Americanism in these lands, write to us at MIAMailroom@gmail.com
Originally published March 20, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” – Hosea 13:11
INTRODUCTION
The nation of Israel began as a household of some 70 souls entering the land of Egypt. These peoples were the descendants of a Chaldean named Abram, who answered the call of God to become a sojourner in a land his descendants would one day possess.
Abram became Abraham, who begat Isaac at the age of 100. Isaac would give birth to Esau and Jacob, with Esau building his own household that later became the nation of Edom. Jacob had 12 sons from four women; The 12 tribes that make up the nation of Israel come from these children.
It should be noted that God chose to create a people by first selecting two nonagenarians to be the mother and father of those people, a sure sign God chooses the weak to give his power perfection, which testifies to his greatness to all of creation.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9
One of those sons, Jospeh, would be ostracized by his brothers, sold to Midianite traders, only to become the second most powerful man of Egypt. He would prepare Egypt to become the incubator for the nation of Israel, a nation that would be born under slavery.
Jospeh’s small household would enter Egypt as free men, become enslaved, and exit Egypt as free men. After establishing a nation of Judges, the people one day called for a King, and God said yes, but not out of kindness.
This report focuses on the transition from Judges to Kings, their major similarities and their major differences. We’ll start off outlining how the nation of Judges was born and end that outline with the sanctification of the first temple by Solomon. We’ll end the report with an analysis of the similarities and differences between these two nations.
A. THE SEED
- ENTERING EGYPT AND BECOMING SLAVES – When a famine hit the land of Canaan, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy provisions. The sons could not know Joseph had already prepared Egypt for the famine by interpreting the dreams of the pharaoh. This is how he became Pharaoh’s righthand lieutenant (Genesis 41).
Five chapters later, the nation of Israel began. It began when Joseph finally gave favor to his brothers, welcomed his father, and set aside land especially for them to govern over, the land of Goshen. It began when he exhorted them to take on an identity that would separate them from Egypt:
“When Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,’ in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”’ – Genesis 46:33-34
Joseph compelled them to identify in such a way that they would naturally be separated from the nation of Egypt, even though, by his example, they are also called to serve her.
This is the model that is also illustrated in the captivities of Daniel, Esther, and Mordeci, all of whom were good servants to their captive nation while also being faithful first and foremost to their God (though in Esther that is never explicit since it is the only book in scripture not to mention or refer directly to God).
I theorize by this time this little band would have had the oral traditions of Genesis leading up to Jacob and possibly the book of Job, in oral form, not written form. If I am right, then this little band already had a sacred script to unite them that, by its claims, goes back a few thousand years.
This is how the seed of Jacob entered Egypt, as free people willing to be good servants to their host nation. This is NOT how they would exit.
- EXITING EGYPT – The arrangement between Egypt and the Israelites held for a couple of centuries before the Egyptians began to be threatened by Israel’s prosperity and numbers. They grew from a nation of 70 people to hundreds of thousands (or more).
The Egyptians chose to put them under bondage, and eventually sought to kill the male babies in what can only be described as an attempted genocide. One male child, Moses, was set adrift on a river, to be rescued by the Egyptians, an Egyptian princess who took Moses in for herself.
He grew up a servant of Egypt, but in the Pharaoh’s court. As he saw his people enslaved, he turned against them. His first effort at rebellion was a failure, and it would send him into the desert for 40 years before God called him to try a different way.
It is during this process that Moses began to build a unique law for the people. This law includes instructions for feast days and sacrifices, the first one being the Passover. The people learned that the source of their Law was God, the same God who delivered them from slavery using supernatural signs and wonders, as well as words directed to them (and chiseled, written down) through his servants Moses and Aaron.
The foundation of the Judges nation had already been set. It would be governed by the law of God as delivered through Moses his true prophet, and righteous judge of the people. But Moses from the start was also a General, so he fulfilled both the civic and sacred leadership role of the people, though he was no King and no royal inheritance was assumed for the role he was foreshadowing, the role of the Judge anointed by God to lead.
Their full exit from Egypt before they first came to the Promised Land took two years. At the end of those two years, the people would rebel from God and assume they knew more than him, questioning the soundness of attempting to conquer a people as powerful as what they saw.
By this time, Moses had already given them the ten commandments (twice, for good measure), the laws for sacrifice and feast days, the tent of meeting, including the inner sanctuary which included the ark of the Covenant, and even the divisions of labor and camp arrangement for the 12 tribes, especially for the Tribe of Levi, the now-priestly class.
B. BECOMING THE NATION OF JUDGES WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD
- ENTERING THE PROMISED LAND – The first attempt to enter the promised land was felled by human fear overcoming God’s promised certainty. After 38 years in the desert, anyone who was 20 years or older was dead, outside of three men (which would be only be two before they cross over the river Jordan). Those three men were Moses, Joshua, and Caleb.
The people entering into the promised land would have been young by this fact alone. Counsel from elders would not be readily available as all of the elders were dead, save for the three mentioned. Yet this generation would conquer the Promised Land in less than 20 years and stay true to the teachings of the Law given to them by Joshua, who received it from Moses,
It was not until this generation died out that the cycle of rebellion, repentance, deliverance through a chosen Judge, followed by rebellion, etc., would begin.
“And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.” – Judges 2:7
- THE RIGHTOUES GENERATION – While the generation that conquered Canaan was faithful until the end, it did not act with complete faithfulness. As a result, the Promised land was not fully conquered.
The tribe of Dan is a good example of how Israel failed to conquer what they should have, and how rebellion was not completely absent from them either. Dan was intended to take a coastal land on the southwest corner of the boundaries of Israel, but ended up failing to take that land, so they set up at the northeast corner of Israel instead (Judges 17-18).
They also set up their own temple worship system and chose the line of Moses through his son Goshen to be their priestly line. Jonathon, the son of Goshen, was the first chosen in the Goshen line by Dan in Judges 18.
By this time, they had their Pentateuch and the book of Job. Through the Pentateuch, they had basic laws for governance, a complex temple system, a national identity, and a national story. They were the people God chose to demonstrate to the world his glory through. Already they understood that through them would come deliverance for the whole world.
They also had distinct tribal identities, which also included prophecies from both Jacob and Moses specific to each tribe. Judah already understood its special prophetic narrative, that Judah would hold the scepter of the nation (Genesis 49).
- ISRAEL EMERGES – For over 300 years, the tribes were run by chiefs. The only documented case of a successful attempt at Kingship is in Judges 8, when Abimelech, the son of the judge Gideon, killed all of Gideon’s sons and proclaimed himself King of Shechem (though scripture “credits” him with ruling over all Israel).
He ruled for 5 years before he was killed by an old woman during a siege.
For the most part, this was a land which prided itself in being different than all the nations around them, a nation without a King, whose tribal allegiances through one shared father, Jacob, was enough alone to make them a nation in their hearts, without a king.
During times of rebellion, after the nations around them oppressed them for a season, they did not cry for a King, they cried for God, who delivered them over and over through numerous Judges, starting with Moses, a Judge-Priest, and ending with Samuel, a Judge-Priest, in 1st Samuel 8.
C. THE TRANSITION
While Samuel is considered to be a righteous judge, and justly so, he was not immune to the same vulnerability the man who trained him, the penultimate judge of Israel, Eli, would fall prey to. Eli’s great sin was in not punishing his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who were being unrighteous priests, taking parts of sacrifices they were not entitled to (1 Samuel 2).
It would be through the ongoing sins of his sons that Eli’s priestly line would be cursed, the line from Ithamar, which would come to an end a few generations later, leaving only the line of Eleazor to continue.
The ark of the covenant itself was taken from a battle led by these same unrighteous priests, both of whom would die in the battle. Yet, before this moment came, Samuel had been brought to Eli by his mother Hannah after Eli prayed for her to have a son. He recognized Samuel had the Holy Spirit in him and so he personally instructed him in his formative years (1 Samuel 3).
Eli transferred the nation of Judges to Samuel, who would prove to be the transition to the nation of Kings.
Samuel himself had two sons, Joel and Abijah, whom had been appointed judges in Beersheba and appeared to be next in line to be Judges of Israel. The people protested, considering the sons’ rule a burden on them, so they cried out for a King.
“‘… Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’” – 1 Samuel 8:5-7
Whereas previously they cried out to the Lord, this people cried out for a King. The people had spoken, and even the Lord was inclined to give them what they wanted, but they should have heeded the warning Samuel gave them through God in 1 Samuel 8: 10-18, Samuel’s warning against Kings.
But Samuel wanted to assure parts of the Judges foundation remains the foundation of the Kingdom nation.
“Then Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship, and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. Then Samuel sent all the people away, each one to his home.” – 1 Samuel 10:25
In Samuel’s farewell speech to Israel, he reiterated the Nation of Judges foundation and combined it with the new Nation of Kings.
“If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.” – 1 Samuel 12:14
He bounded Kingship under God’s law and established God as the source for the legitimacy of Kingship, and even the plumbline for it.
With a nation of Kings, the Kingdom of Israel had greater central identity as well as greater standing with the nations around them. Their adoption of divine monarchy was less of a threat to the kingdoms around them than their Judges nation had been. Now, their kingdom “justified” their neighbors kingdoms.
While Israel had a story, the story was not fully aligned with the Word, for the house of Benjamin through Saul would be picked by God, not the house of Judah. The nation of Kings that would be Israel was not fully formed. Under Saul, this was still a nation in transition, with a story not FULLY aligned with their reality.
D. THE HOUSE OF DAVID
“‘Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.’” – Genesis 49:8-11
All of Judah would no doubt know the prophecy of Jacob, which preceded Moses words and also suggested a much greater promise. Moses said Judah, “Hear O Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him to his people. With your hands contend for him and be a help against his adversaries” (Deuteronomy 33:7).
Moses reserved his greatest prophetic glory for Joseph and his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim (who were destined to become the half-tribes of Joseph), in Deuteronomy 33:13-17.
He says blessed be Jospeh “with the best gifts of the earth and its fullness and the favor of him who dwells in the bush. May these rest on the head of Jospeh, on the pate of him who is prince among his brothers” (Deuteronomy 33:16).
Yet the nation of Israel just watched God select Saul as King, of the tribe of Benjamin. Saul was a good-looking man who stood head and shoulders among other men, but his tribe was considered the least of the tribes of Israel, and his father’s house, Kish, considered the weakest. God anointed Saul before the people by leading him to prophecy rightly like the prophets.
Samuel validated Saul’s anointing by acknowledging Saul was the man God chose to be the first King of Israel (if you don’t count Gideon’s rebellious son, Abimelech). Saul had an opportunity to build a lasting kingdom that his son, Jonathan, might one day take over.
In the days of Judges, Benjamin was almost destroyed. They had to be saved by allowing Benjamin to “steal” virgin girls from Manasseh and Ephraim (Judges Chapters 19-21). They were a lowly tribe, both in terms of reputation and numbers.
Yet Benjamin’s choice by God to hold the kingship was not unsimilar to Israel’s own story, for they were a small household of 70 who entered the land of Egypt as dependents and would become a nation as slaves to that same nation. God chooses the weak to confound the strong.
This notion of God working through weakness would carry through to followers of Christ, through Paul:
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9
Still, the prophecy of Jacob must have gnawed at some of them.
As it would turn out, Saul would not be the righteous King he was set up to be. Rather, he chose human approval over God’s approval; He acted in fear of men rather than fear of God; But above all else, he refused to execute God’s command to destroy the Amalekites and not take possession of the spoils.
Whenever life got in the way of following God’s laws, Saul found ways to circumnavigate those laws. Even when it became apparent to Saul that David was God’s new anointed one set to replace him, he yet plotted to kill him.
David modeled for Christians how to both obey God’s commands and civic authority’s commands. David understood full well the unrighteousness of Saul; even Saul’s own son, Jonathan, recognized this reality. Jonathan himself serves as a shadow of John the Baptist, eschewing his own potential authority in favor of the authority he is seeking to help usher in.
For John, that authority is Christ. For Jonathan, that authority is David, a shadow of Christ, and from the same tribe, the same line as Christ.
While David would not allow Saul to hunt him down and kill him, David would also not take up arms against Saul. Twice he had opportunity to strike Saul down, and twice he delivered mercy, witnessing to Saul his own unrighteousness, which Saul also acknowledged, but in both times to no avail.
Saul would end his days on the mountain of Gilboa, felled in battle by the Philistines. Along with him would fall Jonathan, leaving the path open for David to take the throne. Yet while David was proclaimed King in Hebron, Ish-bosheth, son of Saul, was declared King in Israel.
David would have to wait seven more years before he was finally crowned the King of all Israel, all 12 tribes, having previously only ruled over Judah alone. It was shortly after David was anointed King in all of Israel, in Hebron, the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that David finally took Jerusalem from the Jebusites, a Canaanite people who founded the city.
From David to Solomon, the foundation of the Judges nation was set.
That foundation is this: God is the law giver whose authority is greater than the King’s and that he has left us a law that servants of Kings can use to hold the Kings accountable. Scripture is a plumbline of the King.
David would conquer the land that would give great treasure to Solomon, who would use it, in part, to build the first temple of Jerusalem.
The nation of Judges was nearly 400 years. The transition to the new nation, the Kingdom nation built on the bones of the past nation, took roughly 90 years. During that transition time, within our experience of creation bound by time, space, and place, the nation could have leaned more completely into the kingships of the lands around them.
These nations offered no way for the people to plumbline their Kings, other than through violent revolt.
Fortunately for them, and us, the Israelites preserved the most essential part of their nation of Judges, earthly authority bound by a law outside themselves, a law that prophets and priests can appeal to when the King oversteps his God-given authority.
Now, with the ascendance of Judah as the kingship, the nation of Israel had a story more in sync with their reality, which certainly must have fostered a great national identity.
While this national identity still exists to this day, the state unity of the nation would dissolve within a generation. This left them with two kingdoms, Samaria and Judah, and one nation, Israel. These two kingdoms would drift further apart until Samaria’s unrighteous culture absorbed Judah.
Yet the foundational principle that held Israel together during Judges would never fully disappear, an earthly authority bounded by a lawgiver who left a plumbline that his anointed, his priests and prophets, can use to check the power of the King.
This seed will one day become the “western civilization” seed that America herself would emerge from.
E. JUDGES VERSUS KINGS
- JUDGES – The nation of judges exists roughly from the 14th to the 11th Centuries BC. This period of time is defined, in Mesopotamia, by the rise of global diplomacy and treaties, the birth of the world bureaucratic class.
While the nations around Israel all operated primarily on the Bronze Age governance model, the justification of authority through a local god and through the blood of the chosen family, the nation of Judges had no King but God.
Their governance was mostly adherence to and enforcement of the laws of God by non-government-acting agents. Murder, for instance, was expected to be adjudicated by the offended family, not the state.
Another major difference between the nation of Judges and the nations around them is the source for truth. For the Bronze Age Kings, truth was declared by the only truth teller in the Kingdom or the Empire, the King or Emperor himself (or herself). Truth was defined by the truth teller, not by a plumbline anyone could apply.
The nation of Judges had truth tellers, Judges, but they themselves were plumblined by the Word of God itself, and anyone could rightly challenge their truth claims using scripture as their standard. To be fair, “anyone” would be a small group of people as the printing press would not come into existence for another two millennia.
As we have no record of scripture before the 10th century BC (and that is merely a fragment), it is difficult to know how many complete books of the Pentateuch would have existed, or how many smaller books or collections might have existed.
In material reality, most Israelites would have to rely on the testimonies of priests and rabbis to understand scripture, having little to no access to the text in and of itself. But in the spirit, the idea of a state authority being limited by a text provided by the one True God was most assuredly part of the spiritual DNA of the Israelites.
This made them radically different than the nations around them, and that’s before you consider their mostly decentralized authority being led in times of crisis by God’s anointed Judges. While scripture doesn’t show it, one cannot help but believe there were many (or at least a few) false judges, with scripture only telling us about the true ones.
Perhaps we can say Abimelech is the one example of a false judge, so false he tried to take a kingship God did not grant and only Shechem (Ephraim) cried out for).
This civilization is one based on a sacred script that gives them the means to govern and mitigate sin. Its authority comes from its adherence to the laws of God. Its governance is primarily at the familial, not state level, though state authority comes more directly into play during times of war and conquest.
The holiest of holies for this nation was the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Book of the Law in it. The temple had not been built; Jerusalem hadn’t even been conquered. David would conquer it shortly after he was declared King of ALL of Israel in Hebron.
The tent of meeting was a mobile shadow of the temple to come, and it was not fixed to one place, though it spent most of the time during Judges in Shiloh up until the death of Eli and his sons (1 Samuel 4).
Still, there was no official centralized site for worship in the Judges nation. Jerusalem itself was still occupied by the Canaanite tribe, the Jebusites. During the time of Judges, no one even knew Jerusalem would be the final choice for God’s “earthly dwelling.”
From the Jebusites would come Araunah (2 Samuel 24), or Ornan (1 Chronicles 21), who would sell his threshing floor to David. This would be the site for the temple.
As the 12th Century BC approached, the whole region went through what was called the Bronze Age collapse, which would lead to the emergence of a new civilization to replace the old, the Kings civilization of Israel.
This civilization was radically different than the Judges civilization, but yet was built on the foundation of that Judges civilization, a foundation that remained for the new civilization, the Kingdom civilization.
- KINGS – The transition from Judges to Kings lasts roughly 90 years, culminating in the sanctification of the temple by Solomon, the son of David. By the time we get to Solomon, we have the new civilization of Kings fully formed.
Like the nation of Judges, the Kingdom derived its authority from the one true God, not a local god recognizing the authority of other local gods. Like the nation of Judges, the Kingdom had a sacred script that served as the ultimate plumbline for state authority. The script was assumed God-given, reflecting the wisdom and will of God.
By Solomon’s time, they would have more of a script to meditate on, mainly Judges and Ruth (in addition to the Pentateuch), if my assumptions are true.
While the nation of Judges and the Kingdom of Israel are significantly different, they had far more in common with each other than they did with their neighbors. What makes them still similar with each other and radically different from their neighbors is the foundation of a divine law in text form assumed given to them by the one true God of all creation.
Yet their differences were still profound.
First and foremost, Kings were sometimes chosen by God in a transparent way, like he did with Saul and David, but mostly Kings were chosen by blood, making them more like the nations around them (and, as I stated earlier, probably less of a threat to their neighbors because of it).
And even when God prophesies downfalls and new Kingships, these events would have been experienced at the time simply as violence overcoming authority, which they ultimately allowed, having rewarded some vanquishers, like Omri, with dynasties (which, for Omri, included Ahab).
Kings also had far more authority than Judges, both in terms of earthly realities of power and even as far as what God ordained for them. There were no Judges’ palaces, for instance.
Kings were always intended to be plumblined by scripture, and sometimes by divine Words from God through prophets. Both things happened, but more often than not they didn’t, even when they should have.
When Jeremiah confronted one of the last Kings of Judah, Jehoiakim, with God’s newly received Word, the King had God’s Word burned, which symbolizes the final break from that foundation at the end of the Kingdom.
Kings became more and more absolute and authoritarian. The ideal of earthly authority checked by divine wisdom that anyone could use to challenge authority with was still a key part of the Israel story, but in practice, it was happening less and less, and then not at all.
Under Solomon, the centralized temple system was established. Jerusalem became the fixed center of their worship. Once the House of Judah claimed the whole kingship of the 12 tribes of Israel, the Kingship was aligned with the prophecies of Jacob, making the Israel story a more complete one through the state.
SUMMARY
The most significant difference between the two civilizations is the fixed centralized authority and worship of the new civilization, the Kingdom, versus the mostly decentralized authority and worship of the old civilization, Judges.
The Kingdom still ostensibly claimed God as King, but their King would, more often than not, gain more praise from the people than God would. While God ordained it and allowed it to happen, it was not his desire. He knew the hearts of men. He knew one day his own people would call for a King even after they had one supernaturally deliver them from slavery.
“I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” – Hosea 13:11
While they held on to the foundation of the Judges nation, what they built on top of it, kingship, would ultimately undermine the foundation that gave them legitimacy, which ultimately led to the death of the Kings nation and the eventual rise of the 2nd Temple province of many Empires (save for the era of the Maccabees).
The differences between the two are, to me, radical enough to identify them as two civilizations (but one people). The second civilization sought to compromise with the civilizations around it. The kingdom sought the approval of neighboring Kings, not that of the King of Kings they once declared their sovereign.
The Judges nation lasted nearly 400 years. It was mostly united in the broad sense of the term, with some internecine wars, but mostly it fought together against other nations and kingdoms. The 90-year transition from Samuel to Solomon’s temple sanctification led to almost 400 years of the Kingdom civilization. The two civilizations existed for almost the same number of years. The Kingdom civilization was finally felled by Babylon in 586 BC.
The Kingdom as the culmination of the promise iterated by Jacob would fall not soon after Solomon died, with his son Rehoboam losing 10 of the 12 Kingdoms to Jeroboam of Nebat. He is the one who set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan, dividing worship into three places, Jerusalem, Dan, and Bethel.
The sin was so egregious that the tribe of Jeroboam of Nebat, Ephraim, and the tribe of Dan are BOTH removed from the call to the 12 tribes in Revelation 7.
Though from a Christian perspective the Kingdom of Israel leads to the birth, execution, and resurrection of our King of Kings, Christ, the Kingdom’s replacement of God as the direct sovereign with a direct sovereign King who submitted to the true sovereign, was a failed experiment.
Ironically, at a time when superpowers like Midian, the Hittites, and Egypt roamed the deserts, the decentralized Judges nation was able to hold together and resist the onslaught for nearly 400 years. The Kingdom model IMMEDIATELY produced a schism less than 20 years after the new Kingdom civilization was fully established.
Judah became just the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with its kings more faithfully following God than the Israelite kings would (not that Judah was without unrighteous rulers).
That schism was never restored. To this day, the nation of Israel under Solomon would never be found again after the schism between Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Even today’s Israel is not unified, for it has no possession, directly, or completely, even of Samaria and Jerusalem, let alone Gilead, the former home of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh (in present-day Jordan).
For the purpose of this series (leaving theology out of this), this is a transition that saw the new civilization build on the old in a way that eventually undermined that same foundation, leading to its ultimate collapse.
The Kingdom civilization would almost survive four centuries, but those centuries would be filled with even more turmoil than the time of Judges (not that the Judges were without turmoil).
In striving to be more like their neighbors, they lost what made them so powerful, their differences from their neighbors.
Their insertion of what was an effective mediator between the authority of God and man empowered that same man to become, more and more, a law unto himself. In the time of Judges, each man did as he pleased, meaning his unrighteous actions, when he took them, didn’t affect the whole kingdom. When kings do as they please, whole peoples become corrupted by that action.
In the Christian Kingdom, we are all Kings and Priests, which makes none of us uniquely King as you saw in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In the prophecies, from Old to New, there is no future for a King of Israel, only a King of Kings, Christ, through which we will all rule in the new earth to come.
The Israelites asked for a King, and God gave him to them, to demonstrate to them that the path to salvation, the path to flourishing on earth, is only through God, not man. The less you trust in God, the more you trust in men. The more you trust in men, the further you are led from God, until your kingdom is consumed from within and without. Such a thing happened to Israel. Such a thing is happening to America.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
The Religion of Ancient Israel – Th. C. Vriezen
Ancient Israel (A New History) – Niels Peter Lemche
Ancient Israel: The Old Testament In Its Social Context – Edited by Philip Esler
Ancient Israel and Judah – Beth Tanner
The National Education Association recently held a training session called “Advocacy and Free Speech Rights for K-12 Education” that seeks to establish the oughtness of woke ideology as the oughtness of human life. This action is sectarian in nature, which is troubling given the nature of the organization. It is one of the largest teachers’ unions in America, with over 3 million teachers. The question is not if the organization crossed the line into political activism, but what, if anything will be done about it.
Teachers’ Union’s Far-Left, Anti-Trump Agenda Exposed in Leaked Training Session – slaynews.com
A major teachers’ union representing millions of educators in schools across America is under fire after a leaked training session revealed heavy political messaging targeting President Donald Trump and conservative policies, fueling concerns that classrooms are being used for far-left activism instead of education.
The National Education Association (NEA) is one of the largest teachers’ unions in the United States, with roughly 3 million members.
The NEA conducted a February 23 training titled “Advocacy and Free Speech Rights for K-12 Educators.”
The leaked material is now raising major concerns about teachers being used to indoctrinate children with leftist ideology.