The Durham Report rightly concluded that the Russia Hoax should never have made it out of the corrupt incubator. It highlighted a number of irregularities, some would even say illegalities committed by the FBI along the way — contending that the FBI “failed to uphold its mission of strict fidelity to the law.” It was similar to National Intelligence Director Clapper saying he gave the “least untruthful” answer possible.

One of the most audacious and consequential political scandals in our nation’s history, the Russia Hoax, was both simple and fantastical and had what most outside observers would have considered long odds for success.

The plan looked something like this:

Particularly given the preposterous premise upon which it was built, the scheme was hugely successful, no doubt wildly exceeding the expectations of its creators. They were, in fact, able to achieve all but step five above.

In retrospect, given the serious nature of the accusations — arguably rising to the level of treason — it raises an important question: Why weren’t the founding perpetrators more concerned with the hoax and themselves being exposed, and the repercussions that should have followed? It is likely because they were supremely confident that regardless of whether exposure materialized, no such repercussions were likely or even possible. Especially since Democrats possessed solid control of so many other political power bases — chiefly, The House of Representatives, the mainstream, social, and search media channels, and many top agents across a wide variety of governmental agencies, including the courts. While that control would be more pervasively and evidently wielded in the run up to the 2020 election, it was still a huge factor in 2016.

Insurance Policy #1

A small example of that control was hinted at in the texts exchanged by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in August of 2016 in which he assured her of an “insurance policy” in the unlikely event of a Trump victory. Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request for the additional texts exchanged by the two lovers that year. The request was initially denied by the FBI and appealed by Judicial Watch. Eventually, the FBI released a few pages of texts, but they were almost completely redacted — in some cases with, not merely names or titles, but entire conversations blacked out.

FBI agent Peter P. Strzok. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images.

Any further review may not even be possible at this point. Recall that more than two dozen cell phones of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team were wiped clean before the Justice Department’s inspector general could examine them. Deputy Andrew Weisman’s phone actually had the extraordinary experience of being “accidentally wiped” twice.

Insurance Policy #2

Fast forward a few years to Insurance Policy #2 as Donald Trump’s nomination for the Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election became increasingly likely. This strategy employed a familiar playbook with a few twists and looked something like this:

Once again, the perpetrators experienced a fair degree of success with their plan — accomplishing nearly all but step five above. In violation of countless legal and departmental precedents, and logic, candidate Trump was charged in various venues with attempting to overthrow the 2020 election, improper handling of classified documents, defrauding a lender in a commercial real estate loan, sexual abuse and defaming Jean Carroll decades prior, falsifying hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, election interference, and much more. In all, candidate Trump faced more than 90 different charges — with potential consequences of significant prison time and financial penalty (the latter of which he certainly experienced).

Unfortunately for Democrats most Americans saw the over-the-top lawfare for what it was — politically motivated and corrupt persecution. And they voted accordingly.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Insurance Policy #3

Now, here we are in 2025 with President Trump in office and hoping to execute the agenda on which he was soundly elected. We are now seeing Insurance Policy #3 unfolding. Not surprisingly, it has similarities to the first two, and looks like this:

Once again, Democrats are experiencing success with most of these. They have managed to block or partially block the following: termination of birthright citizenship; dismantling of the Department of Education; stoppage of federal funding to sanctuary cities; termination of a special counsel; stoppage of foreign aid; firing of “probationary employees” from several federal agencies; expedited removal of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members; and much more.

Jim WATSON / AFP

And since the Kennedy administration, no president has endured more injunctions than Trump. According to a 2024 article in the Harvard Law Review, “Just over half (64) of the injunctions issued since 1963 were issued against Trump Administration policies.”

Now, President Trump has barely been in office for 100 days and judges have already imposed 25 nationwide injunctions against his orders. Compare that to six over the course of George W. Bush’s entire eight-year presidency and 14 during Joe Biden’s single term. At this rate, his administration will have incurred some 360 nationwide injunctions during this term.

The Harvard Law Review article also points out that “Structural features of litigation exacerbate the politicization of the injunction.” Indeed, in his first term, more than 90% of the 64 injunctions issued against his administration were leveled by Democrat-appointed judges. They observe that judges who are “unelected and unaccountable” end up determining policy for the rest of the country concluding:

 … for each policy challenged, the asymmetrical effects of preclusion ensure that nationwide injunctions are a powerful tool for political opponents who can challenge the policy in multiple venues. Practically speaking, a successful defense against a nationwide injunction in one court is barely a win for the government at all: because that decision has no preclusive effect on new plaintiffs, other plaintiffs are free to bring the exact same lawsuit elsewhere and “[s]hop ’til the statute drops.

The irony of this quagmire is that the messes this administration is now trying to clean up — illegal immigration, violent crime, DEI discrimination, men in women’s sports and transgenderism, out of control federal spending and related issues such as fraud, waste and employee bloat, and much more were nearly all created without any legislation or votes, but by unilateral executive or agency order. Now, when the public and their elected president would like to correct many of those bad decisions, they are being hamstrung at every turn with legal tape and accused of acting unilaterally and unconstitutionally.

As Mark Levin observes:

These judges are abusing their power. They know they’re abusing their power. They’re issuing these national injunctions to cripple the Executive Branch, to overturn the results of an election. It is an insurrection. That’s exactly what it is.

Jonathan Turley calls this “chronic injuntivitis” and points out that Democrats and Republicans alike have long complained about out of control federal judges and their use of the national injunction to freeze an entire executive branch for years on a given policy or policies. He argues that it is time for the Supreme Court to end the ridiculousness.

In his well considered piece, “The Best Way to Fix National Injunctions” GianCarlo Canaparo at the Heritage Foundation observes that the power to issue a national injunction makes a single district court judge as powerful or more powerful than a majority of Supreme Court justices:“With that power, a single judge can block the government from enforcing a rule or policy as to anyone, anywhere, at any time.”

If this precedent is allowed to stand, it will essentially render elections moot. Any one of some 677 district court judges has the power to thwart and/or overturn the will of a president, of an entire branch of government, of an entire party, and indeed, the entirety of the U.S. voting majority with the stroke of a pen.

Absent a solution, Insurance Policy #3 will have accomplished all five steps of its mission. Canaparo says that there are only two fixes: legislation or a decree from the Supreme Court. Let’s begin pressuring our elected representatives to work for both.

* * *

Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for STARRS.US.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

WASHINGTON—NPR announced last week that it’s suing the Trump administration over an executive order slashing its congressionally appropriated funding — a case that could have serious ramifications for the future of publicly-funded media.

But if Kat Cammack has her way, it won’t really matter.

The Florida congresswoman joined Senator Jim Banks to introduce the Defund NPR Act, which, if passed would codify Trump’s executive order, and ensure that “no Federal funds may, directly or indirectly, be made available to” outlets like NPR and PBS. Taxpayers spend around $535 million annually on NPR and PBS through federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Speaking to The Daily Wire this week, Cammack noted the absurdity of forcing taxpayers to fund public media outlets whose news content is “one giant editorial.”

“They’re not just biased — it’s effectively state-funded propaganda at this point, for the progressive left,” Cammack told The Daily Wire in a wide-ranging interview. “At the end of the day, taxpayers should not be funding propaganda, particularly one that has such an obvious political slant.”

Cammack’s bill is one part of the Republican Study Committee’s Set In Stone Initiative, an effort to “to transform President Trump’s executive victories into permanent legislation.” Three of Cammack’s fellow committee members — Reps. Claudia Tenney (NY), Ronny Jackson (TX), and Dale Strong (AL) have also introduced bills that would defund NPR and PBS.

Trump defunded NPR and PBS earlier this month, writing that “government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” The president’s executive order followed the April release of a White House report cataloguing the “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news,'” that NPR and PBS produce.

The White House’s efforts to defund public media were turbocharged by NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s disastrous testimony at a March congressional hearing, during which lawmakers grilled her on past social media posts exposing the executive’s liberal bias.

Now, NPR is fighting back, claiming in its lawsuit that Trump’s executive order is tantamount to “the government [acting] with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment.” Cammack isn’t buying it.

“Spare me! You are the very same people who just said that the First Amendment is the largest impediment to censorship that they are trying to push. I mean, do they hear themselves?”

Cammack isn’t pulling punches — but that doesn’t mean she’s happy to see what’s become of American public broadcasting.

“I’m a millennial,” she says. “We grew up with Sesame Street, and it didn’t use to be this way where everything had a political slant.”

“It makes me sad,” Cammack adds. “You know, I’m seven months pregnant and I’m like, man, I’m gonna have to bust out old VHS tapes of Sesame Street or back when Sesame Street wasn’t so political.”

Ultimately though, it’s not so much the politics as the taxpayer-funded politics that irks Cammack. Taxpayer funding, she notes, “only accounts for such a small portion of [NPR and PBS’s] total overall budget, but that’s still too much, from a taxpayer standpoint.”

“They’re not gonna go straight off the air. And if they did, that would just be another ploy to try to gin up the public interest in this,” Cammack says.

“When we have $37 trillion in national debt, when Americans are struggling at the grocery store and the gas pump, we shouldn’t be on the hook” for public outlets that “want to push their continuous narrative and virtue signaling and make everyone feel like they’re a bunch of idiots.”

To Cammack, it all comes back to respecting and defending the taxpayers. Like any fiscal hawk worth their salt, she recoils at the notion that bureaucrats are held to different standards than the American people.

“I will always remember when I had to go get my first credit card,” Cammack says. “I was so religiously like, ‘I gotta pay this. I gotta pay it in full. I gotta do this.’”

Not so the federal government, who, Cammack notes, has “more credit cards and software licenses that are being used by government employees than there are government employees.”

“The math isn’t mathing!” she says.

“These are the unelected, nameless, faceless bureaucrats that basically run our government, like a shadow government,” she adds. “The scary part though, isn’t that that was happening. The scary part is that people are gonna fight us on cutting this out.”

People, perhaps — but not necessarily the American people. Even the most anti-Trump people she encounters in her district, she says, on some level admits “that there has just been rampant abuse across the board.”

“I still think at people’s core there’s a little bit of common sense,” she says. “I mean, the fact that you’re finding people on social security that are 167 — get me their nutritional plan!”

That core of common sense, she says, is why she has high hopes that the Department of Government Efficiency will continue to succeed long after Elon Musk’s departure.

“I think he has done a tremendous service to the country,” she says of Musk. “I mean, he really did it as a patriot.”

“He loves this country. But, let’s be real: the man wants to colonize Mars,” she says. “He started something. It’s now our job to finish it.”

It won’t be easy. Shortly before Cammack spoke to The Daily Wire, the United States Court of International Trade ruled that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were illegal. The White House and its congressional allies have a long battle ahead.

But Cammack is no stranger to a fight. Perched behind a laptop emblazoned with a Gadsden Flag, Cammack uses her time on the House floor to take Democrats to task — forcing Biden administration officials to confront the brutal reality of human trafficking at the southern border, and introducing a bill to ban lawmakers from displaying foreign flags, a rebuke of her Democratic colleagues waving Ukrainian flags to support foreign aid.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Once you’ve called Pete Buttigieg a liar on Face The Nation, calling out the federal judiciary is nothing.

“If we wanted judges to continually make all these decisions on behalf of the American people, we could just do away at that point with Congress and the presidency,” Cammack says, adding that the ability to levy tariffs is well within the president’s authority.

“The thing about judicial activism is it’s gotten more brazen over the years,” she adds. “And now you see it in full force.”

It’s serious stuff, and Cammack takes it seriously. But even she has to laugh at some of the reactions to Trump and his policies. Like the fact that Democrats and members of the media celebrating the tariff decision “never had anything to say when the Supreme Court ruled that Joe Biden couldn’t unilaterally forgive student loans.”

“This is what’s crazy to me: Joe Biden was spending money. Donald Trump is trying to save money. And so the courts are totally fine when you’re spending other people’s money.”

“But heaven forbid you get someone who’s actually trying to right the ship and save taxpayer money,” she laughs.

“Oh my gosh, the sky is falling!”

Shortly after the interview wrapped, a federal appeals court reinstated Trump’s tariffs.