Whenever leftists say something is “for the kids,” you know that your constitutional rights are under attack.

It is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. Anytime a Democrat politician looks into a television camera and declares a new policy is “for the kids,” history tells us it is time to do three things: grab your Bill of Rights, lock your wallet, and check your firearms.

The political left has mastered the art of semantic camouflage. Because leftists’ true intentions—total state control and the systematic dismantling of individual liberty—are entirely unpalatable to the average citizen, they must cloak their radical agendas in the warm blanket of public safety.

We are seeing this exact misdirection play out today across two seemingly different battlefronts: the push for Universal Background Checks (UBCs) on firearms, and the sudden, “bipartisan” stampede to pass online child safety legislation. Under the microscope, however, they share the exact same DNA. They were never about protecting children. They are about building lists to target political opponents. Period.

Currently making waves in Congress are the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) in the Senate and the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS) in the House. On paper, the marketing pitch is flawless. Proponents claim these bills will shield innocent children from online predators, groomers, and illicit adult content.

At face value, it sounds reasonable. Who could possibly oppose protecting children?

The answer lies in the structural mechanics of the legislation. Just as gun control advocates use “safety” to pierce the veil of constitutional privacy, digital regulators are using children as human shields to bypass the First Amendment.

To understand the trap being set online, one must first look at the ongoing battle over Universal Background Checks. Under current federal law, licensed firearm dealers must maintain physical ATF Form 4473.

Crucially, under the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA) and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) regulations, the federal government is strictly prohibited from centralizing these forms into a master database. If a firearm is used in a crime, investigators must work backward—from manufacturer to dealer to buyer. It is a localized, investigative process that protects law-abiding gun owners from mass government discovery.

Enter the left’s obsession with Universal Background Checks for private transfers. Proponents claim this keeps weapons out of the hands of criminals—ignoring the obvious reality that criminals, by definition, do not obtain weapons through legal channels.

The real objective is structural. A Universal Background Check law is completely unenforceable unless the state knows who owns every firearm in the country beforehand. The law has no teeth without a mandatory, centralized gun registry. It is the ultimate camel’s nose under the liberty tent.

This brings us back to the digital arena. Changing the law would mean de facto digital ID for every American. The database concept that makes UBCs so dangerous is the exact same mechanism driving KOSA and KIDS.

To enforce age restrictions online and block youth from specific platforms, websites cannot simply rely on the honor system. Platforms must mandate strict age verification. To prove your age, you must verify your legal identity. Proponents make it sound like it’s just the kids who must register. 

However, they conveniently fail to mention the rest of the action.  In order to prove they are not children, adults will be forced to upload government-issued identification simply to access standard political commentary, religious forums, or independent news sites. Platforms will choose the path of least resistance, implementing blanket identity checks to avoid massive federal fines. The immediate casualty of this regime will be political anonymity.

The author has personally witnessed this phenomenon, having friends in the UK with whom we’ve corresponded for many years. They have become extremely guarded in answering certain political-type questions in the past couple of years, basically avoiding commenting. And we all read now about British subjects being arrested for making comments in public or posting online viewpoints that oppose official positions.

Independent outlets like American Thinker rely heavily on robust, pseudonymous comment sections. Thousands of everyday Americans utilize digital pen names to engage in fierce partisan debates. They do not do this out of cowardice; they do it to protect their careers, their livelihoods, and their families from targeted harassment campaigns by the radical Left. KOSA and KIDS would mean the end of the dissident commenter.

If KOSA and KIDS become law, the era of the pseudonymous internet is dead. Email providers, forums, and social platforms will require positive legal identification just to open an account.

When you strip away the emotional appeals, the underlying architecture becomes clear:

• Step 1: Force the population into centralized databases (whether via gun registries or digital IDs) under the guise of public safety.
• Step 2: Eliminate the anonymity that allows for free, uninhibited political dissent.
• Step 3: Weaponize those databases when political fortunes shift.

If progressive Marxists secure unchecked power over the administrative state and the judiciary, they will no longer need to hunt for dissidents. The compliance architecture currently being built in Washington will hand them a pre-verified list of their political opponents on a silver platter. And since they would have already emptied all the prisons, they’d have plenty of beds to hold us all.

By Lewis Dovland for American Thinker – https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/07/the-left-is-using-kids-as-a-trojan-horse-for-total-online-surveillance/

Former President Joe Biden has dropped his legal fight to keep the audio recordings and transcripts sealed. The materials come from interviews he did with his ghostwriter. On July 24, 2026, his lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in federal court, which means the Justice Department can now hand over the redacted versions to the House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation, as reported by Just the News.

There are approximately 70 hours of recordings from conversations Biden had with Mark Zwonitzer at his home in 2016 and 2017. Those talks became the basis for Biden’s 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose, which focuses in part on the death of his son Beau. Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained the audio during his 2023 investigation into whether Biden improperly held onto classified materials from his time as a senator and vice president.

Hur’s report from February 2024 found that Biden had deliberately held onto classified materials and, at times, shared them. Still, Hur decided not to push for charges. He said there wasn’t enough solid evidence to win a case in court, and he portrayed Biden as a well-meaning elderly man with a diminished memory.  The report kept bringing up the Zwonitzer materials as part of the evidence they looked at, as reported by Politico.

During the Biden administration, the Justice Department refused to release the recordings, pointing to privacy concerns and FOIA exemptions.

The Heritage Foundation began pushing for them through FOIA lawsuits around 2024, saying the tapes were important for examining Special Counsel Hur’s conclusions on the classified documents and what they revealed about Biden’s mental state at the time. After the change in administrations, the Trump Justice Department reversed that stance in early 2026 and informed Biden it intended to provide withheld versions to both the Heritage Foundation and Congress.

Biden filed a lawsuit in May 2026 to stop the release. His lawyers claimed the conversations were private and meant to stay confidential. They said putting them out would violate his privacy, especially when it came to personal family matters. They also argued the Justice Department was ditching its earlier positions for political reasons, and that turning over materials from a law-enforcement investigation could discourage people from cooperating with investigators in the future. The department pushed back, saying the heavy redactions already handled the privacy concerns and that the strong public interest made the release worthwhile.

In mid June 2026, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, appointed by Trump, denied Biden’s bid for a preliminary injunction. She concluded the public’s right to see the materials which were central to Special Counsel Hur’s choice against filing charges carried more weight than Biden’s privacy interests which remained significant even if they had eased somewhat. After examining the documents in private, Friedrich observed that they held no references to Biden’s relatives or other private people nor any highly personal topics involving illness or death. Still she put a temporary hold on the release so an appeal could be filed.

On July 21, 2026, a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided against Biden in a 2-1 decision. The majority said he hadn’t cleared the high bar needed for an injunction, and that whatever privacy issues remained with the materials just didn’t outweigh the public’s right to see them. They put the ruling on hold until August 3, though, so Biden has time to try for a rehearing or take it to the Supreme Court.

Biden’s legal team filed a voluntary dismissal on July 24, officially ending the former president’s court fight.

That means the Justice Department can now move ahead with releasing the audio and transcripts as planned. Both the congressional committee and the Heritage Foundation should receive the materials within the next few weeks.

Judge Friedrich concluded: “The harm to Biden’s diminished privacy interest is outweighed by the public’s interest in the Zwonitzer materials. As now redacted, the Zwonitzer materials contain no information about Biden’s family or other private persons. And while public figures maintain certain privacy rights, the Department did not abuse its discretion in finding that nothing in the remaining Zwonitzer materials is sensitive enough to outweigh the public’s unusually strong interest.”

This outcome shows the Trump administration following through on its transparency pledges by releasing the recordings once the legal barrier was removed.

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — The United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois has ruled in favor of the federal government in a lawsuit against the State of Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker, and multiple state entities, declaring key state education policies unconstitutional as applied to aliens who are not lawfully present in the country.

United States Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft announced the decision on July 24, 2026. The court denied the State’s motion to dismiss and granted the United States’ cross-motion for summary judgment.

At issue were the state’s rules granting in-state tuition rates at public universities and community colleges, along with the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act. The court declared these measures “unconstitutional and invalid” under the Supremacy Clause when applied to aliens not lawfully present.

“Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” Weinhoeft said. “This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.”

Federal law under 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a) prohibits a state from granting postsecondary education benefits to illegal aliens on the basis of residence in that state unless the same benefits are made available to every United States citizen and national, regardless of where they live. Illinois provided preferential treatment based on residence to those present illegally but did not extend equivalent benefits to American citizens residing outside the state.

Yet several states continue to allocate taxpayer funds for these benefits despite the federal prohibition. The Department of Justice filed the Illinois lawsuit in September 2025 to halt the policies. In its ruling, the court permanently enjoined the State of Illinois and the named university and college boards from enforcing the challenged provisions against aliens not lawfully present.

The Illinois decision is the latest in a series of federal actions targeting similar state programs. In Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, state officials cooperated with the Department of Justice rather than defending the benefits. These Republican-led states entered consent judgments or accepted permanent injunctions that struck down their residency based in-state tuition and related financial aid programs for illegal aliens.

None of those states chose to appeal and preserve the policies.

In Texas, outside advocacy groups later tried to intervene and reverse the consent judgment, but both the district court and the Fifth Circuit rejected those efforts in 2026. The prohibitions remain fully in effect in all four states.

On July 23, 2026, the Justice Department filed a new lawsuit against Colorado, challenging the state’s ASSET Act and related policies that provide in-state tuition rates and state financial aid to illegal immigrants. Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has defended the policies as a matter of state authority.

Several other Democratic-led states continue to defend their laws or are positioned to appeal.  Minnesota successfully defeated the DOJ’s lawsuit at the district court level in March 2026, though the federal government has appealed.

Cases remain active in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Virginia.

Kansas presents a more complicated picture, the state’s Republican attorney general agreed to a proposed consent decree, while the Democratic governor has moved to intervene and defend the existing policy.

The Illinois ruling and the outcomes in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska demonstrate that federal courts are upholding the law and enforcing the limits Congress placed on these benefits. The Illinois injunction has been stayed for 14 days to allow the state to seek a stay pending appeal. While some states continue to resist, the legal trend is clear: preferential treatment of illegal aliens over American citizens will not stand.

Bernie Sanders appeared on Face the Nation this past Sunday and vehemently pushed back against a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published days earlier by Rahm Emanuel. The former Obama White House chief of staff had warned that “Bernie Bros” and Democratic Socialists of America candidates could damage the party’s chances in the midterms.

Emanuel argued that DSA-backed nominees in deep-blue districts force moderate Democrats in competitive races to answer for unpopular positions. “In the name of ‘authenticity,’ the DSA and others are burdening the Democratic Party with nominees whose wildly unpopular positions will protect Republicans from having to pay the price of Donald Trump’s corruption and economic incompetence,” he wrote.

What was once dismissed as fringe rhetoric now sits at the center of this actively growing intra-party fight.

The former Chicago mayor and Obama confidant added that candidates in swing districts waste precious time differentiating themselves from the DSA agenda instead of forcing Republicans to answer for their own record.

Emanuel linked the socialist wing to past efforts to defund the police, open borders, and abolish prisons, calling those positions electoral losers.

“If the Bernie bros were serious about growing jobs and wages, they would support candidates touting substantive ways to help families cover the mortgage or the rent, secure their retirement, and ensure no one is a single medical emergency away from bankruptcy,” Emanuel wrote. He noted that the party’s generic lead “has narrowed amid recent attention to DSA-led primaries,” warning that a continued focus on “defunding, decriminalizing and decolonizing” would highlight cultural issues that alienate many Democrats, independents (a record-high 45% of the electorate), and disenchanted Republicans.

On Face the Nation, Sanders aggressively rejected the view and described it as a split inside the party. “There is a strong division within the Democratic Party,” he told host Margaret Brennan. “You have an establishment like Rahm Emanuel, who are dependent on billionaire campaign contributors and want to maintain the status quo. Then you have a progressive movement, which, by the way, what is getting these guys nervous is we are winning all over this country. Suddenly, Mamdani in New York City, it’s in New Jersey, it’s in Ohio, it’s in Colorado.”

Sanders continued: “People are sick and tired of the Rahm Emanuels, and the Democratic establishment, and the Republican establishment. They are asking simple questions. The American people are tired of a rigged economy, a corrupt campaign finance system. They want real change. They don’t want a Rahm Emanuel and the establishment maintaining the status quo.”

Sanders has spent his entire career in government calling for the kind of political revolution that is now actively unfolding in real time. He has never been shy about his desire for political revolution or his open embrace of socialism and Marxist ideology.

For decades he has demanded radical change while praising Castro, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and aspects of Cuban society, positions consistent with the message he has carried for more than three decades.

The revolution is no longer theoretical, through a wave of DSA-aligned primary victories he is finally getting what he has long demanded, with a trajectory that many warn leads toward the same failed collectivist systems that have historically ended in communism.

The exchange reveals the active, ongoing conflict that has been playing out on the world stage for all to see. What is unfolding is not a simple party dispute, it’s the rapid advance of a failed Marxist ideology that is destroying institutions, norms, and the country’s political center. The results are already ugly, and the Democratic Party itself is being steadily eaten alive from within.

Progressives and DSA-aligned candidates have scored major primary wins this year in New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Sanders has actively campaigned for progressive candidates in Michigan and Minnesota.

Their core obsessions include the very positions Emanuel flagged as electoral liabilities: calls to defund or abolish the police, abolish ICE, open the borders, end U.S. military support for Israel (framed by many of these candidates as ending what they call colonization or occupation), and pursue far-reaching economic restructuring through Medicare for All, a shorter workweek, universal rent control, and public control of housing and major industries.

Centrists warn these policies only alienate moderates, independents, and swing votes, and worry it will cost the party seats. Sanders and his followers insist the party must reject both corporate influence and the current economic order if it hopes to connect with working-class voters.

As the midterms near, a sharp divide persists. One side sees political risk in the progressive surge; the other sees an overdue rejection of the status quo. Sanders has made his desire for socialism and revolution clear for years. This should surprise no one, and on Face the Nation he left no doubt that he intends to keep pushing it.

Voices from both sides agree the DSA is destroying the party. It can no longer merely influence the Democrats, it is steadily absorbing them, accelerated by deep, long-running infiltrations of college campuses and foreign influence operations. Rahm Emanuel’s Wall Street Journal piece simply put into writing what the public has already been watching unfold on the national stage.

These progressive primary wins, which Sanders enthusiastically celebrated live on national television, have left the party’s institutional center on the defensive in what both anxious centrists and triumphant leftists view as an existential threat to the party’s future.

Roger Stone on Thursday accused former special counsel Jack Smith of carrying out what he called one of the greatest abuses of power in U.S. history, alleging Smith improperly obtained and reviewed communications involving supporters of President Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress.

Appearing on Newsmax’s “Ed Henry The Big Take,“ Stone said he now views Smith’s investigation as more troubling than the FBI’s investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

“I used to think the Russian collusion hoax was the greatest single dirty trick in American history,” Stone said.

“But I now believe that Arctic Frost Jack Smith’s investigation could be the greatest single abuse of power in American history.”

Stone alleged the Justice Department used “the full authority of the United States government” to spy on members of Congress.

He claimed Smith had previously said he did not review text messages belonging to dozens of Trump supporters and lawmakers but that it has since emerged he did.

Stone did not provide evidence during the interview to support those claims.

The longtime Republican political consultant also contrasted Smith’s actions with his own criminal case.

Stone was convicted in 2019 on charges that included lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering stemming from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

His prison sentence was commuted by Trump in 2020, and Trump later granted him a full pardon.

During the interview, Stone argued that none of the inaccurate statements he made to Congress were material because, he said, there was no underlying Russian collusion.

“I was charged with lying to Congress,” Stone said. “Yet no misstatement I made under oath was material.”

Stone said Smith should face prosecution, arguing the investigation raised constitutional concerns over the separation of powers.

“He, as a member of the executive branch at the direction of Merrick Garland, who was denying it, was spying on Republican members of Congress,” Stone said.

Stone further described the alleged conduct as unconstitutional and accused Smith of engaging in what he called “treasonous” behavior.

Smith, who led federal prosecutions related to Trump’s handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election before resigning after Trump’s 2024 election victory, has previously defended his investigations as being conducted in accordance with the law.

Garland also has repeatedly rejected allegations that the Justice Department pursued politically motivated prosecutions.

According to files released by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), a Biden White House memo from the administration’s final days in January 2025, provided to Biden after the 2024 election, outlined options to expand or re-designate Temporary Protected Status in ways that could assist more than 3 million noncitizens, including roughly 1.5 million Guatemalans, 600,000 Ecuadorians, 464,000 Nicaraguans, 455,000 Venezuelans, and smaller groups from Ukraine, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allows eligible nationals of designated countries to remain and work in the United States when conditions in their home country, such as armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary crises, make return unsafe. Designations typically last 6 to 18 months and may be extended only if the conditions persist. It’s not a path to permanent citizenship and recipients are expected to leave once the designation ends.

The memo, obtained via the Archivist of the United States as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, framed the lame duck team’s actions as a deliberate barrier. 

Schmitt stated the document was erroneously dated 2024.

It explicitly discussed rushing TPS extensions, redesignations, and new designations before January 20 in order to protect people from “President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations,” while noting prior court challenges to Trump’s first-term TPS terminations and anticipated further litigation that could slow or complicate any future rollbacks.

The memorandum indicated that senior staff had received requests from “stakeholders,” including members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Democratic senators such as Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, and Catherine Cortez Masto, along with mayors and advocacy groups. These stakeholders sought the expansions and argued that granting TPS would protect people from President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations.

Excerpt from the January 2025 White House memo noting requests from stakeholders and arguments about protecting people from President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations. Released by Sen. Eric Schmitt via X.

The memorandum indicated that senior staff had received requests from “stakeholders,” including members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Democratic senators such as Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, and Catherine Cortez Masto, along with mayors and advocacy groups. These stakeholders sought the expansions and argued that granting TPS would protect people from President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations.

Schmitt labeled the gudiance an attempt to create a “3.1-million-person deportation shield,” potentially including members of groups like Tren de Aragua, and to “trap” the incoming administration in years of lawsuits. The most significant recommendations involved creating new designations, primarily for Guatemala and Ecuador, that would have covered roughly 2.1 million additional people.

“The most disturbing part,” Schmitt said, was that Biden’s “Senior Advisors” recommended he create 2.1 million new TPS designees in the last few weeks of his presidency, “despite admitting TPS applications take 6 months.” “Luckily, that never happened and we have been deporting Ecuadorians and Guatemalans.”

On January 10, 2025, the Biden administration extended TPS for nearly 1 million people from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Sudan. This limited action occurred in the final days of the administration, shortly after the document was provided to Biden. The much larger expansion outlined in the advisory, especially the new designations for Guatemala and Ecuador that would have covered roughly 2.1 million additional people, was never carried out.