What Else Is Hidden in Burn Bags and Secret Rooms?

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and “Deep State” or “swamp” are real. Ancient Americans such groups “secret combinations.” Many people hate President Donald Trump so much that they will oppos anything that he does. Other people thought TDS was just a figment of imagination, but it has proven to be real. It comes to different levels of severity. A mild case may simply be judgmental about Trump’s morality – two divorces, three wives, filthy mouth.

More severe levels affect the thinking: Whatever Trump says or does is wrong and must be opposed. Some people have such bad cases of TDS that they hope that Iran wins the war because they do not want Trump to succeed.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been instrumental in uncovering records proving that there is TDS. In his article published at The Daily Signal, Pedro Rodriguez explained that Gabbard declassified and released documents on Monday that “she says show that officials within the Intelligence Community mishandled and politicized a whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.” 

According to Gabbard, the newly released records allege that what she described as “deep state actors” collaborated with then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to advance what she called a “false narrative” surrounding the whistleblower complaint.

In a statement accompanying the release, Gabbard accused Schiff and Pelosi of withholding transcripts of closed-door congressional testimony from former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson – records she said would have undercut claims of Trump-Russia collusion dating back to 2017.

Gabbard said those transcripts were kept from the House Judiciary Committee until March 24, 2026, when they were released following a forced vote led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rich Crawford.

The declassified documents, Gabbard said, show that Atkinson departed from standard inspector general investigative procedures and relied on what she characterized as politicized and manufactured narratives when handling the whistleblower complaint tied to Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to the records, Atkinson’s preliminary inquiry involved interviews with only four individuals: the whistleblower, a friend of the whistleblower who assisted in authoring the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia and weas an associate of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, and two character references who lacked firsthand knowledge of the Trump-Zelenskyy call.

The documents further state that the whistleblower acknowledged having no direct, firsthand knowledge of the call. One quoted statement attributed to the whistleblower reads, “I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President.”

Gabbard said the records show that no formal or complete investigation was conducted before the complaint was transmitted to Congress. Despite lacking firsthand evidence, she alleged that Atkinson moved forward in a way that exceeded his statutory authority and “weaponized” the whistleblower process.

By disregarding guidance from the Department of Justice and relying on secondhand information, Gabbard said Atkinson facilitated the complaint’s transmission to Congress, its referral to the FBI, and its eventual leak to the media.

Gabbard argued that Schiff and Pelosi then used the secondhand allegations to drive media coverage and lay the groundwork for Trump’s impeachment by the House in December 2019. “The politicization of the whistleblower process by a former CIA employee who was working hand in glove with Democrats in Congress (is an egregious example) of the deep state playbook on how to weaponize the Intelligence Community,” Gabbard said.

“Exposing these tactics and showing how they undermine the fabric of our democratic republic furthers the critical cause of transparency and accountability and will help prevent future abuse of power,” she continued.

  

Can Improved Fencing Make Ranching Country More Friendly?

Tonight, I found an article that interested me and that takes my mind off the war in Iran, politics, and other such subjects that keep pounding like drums in my ears. This article has to do with ranchers, stock, fences, finances, conservatists, and numerous other topics.

Technology is helping ranchers and conservationists to work together rather than be antagonists. According to an article by Kevin Lind in the Deseret News, ranchers across the West are adopting technology to help control their animals. 

Most people know that dog owners use collars and virtual fencing to control their dogs. Now ranchers have an upgraded and much more useful version of that used with dogs. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars for fencing that is destroyed with the next elk herd or moose moving through the area, ranchers can use virtual fencing to keep their animals in an area, while allowing wildlife to move freely through the area. Lind reported, “Ranchers are using virtual fences to cut costs and use every inch of available acreage.”

Instead of wood, steel and barbed wire, all ranchers need are a hearty collar, some transceivers and a digital connection. It’s a tool one purveyor called an “unlimited fencing budget.” …

Rather than having to build miles and miles of expensive barriers that neither stock nor wildlife can get through, they manufacture variations of a collar that is affixed around a cow’s or sheep’s neck that carries a transceiver connected to a cloud-based software system. The collars emit light, sound, vibrations and – when necessary – a small shock.

Ranchers and the technology companies don’t love the comparison [with fences used for dogs] ….

In this case, however, the stock’s exact location is tracked and compared to the predetermined boundaries of a virtual fence. As the animal gets closer, it gets warned on the side of the boundary – the stimulus is delivered on either the right or left side of the collar – by sound, then vibration and, if ignored, shock.

The digital software part of the platform, however, really leaves that dog collar analogy in the dust. While it does many things, the platform’s most important function is to create virtual, uncrossable boundaries that ranchers can then set from the comfort of their own home, truck or horseback.

Almost like a video game, ranchers can design, change and move pasture boundaries with a few clicks of their finger in a user-friendly app. So long as they have a phone or tablet handy with a healthy wifi or cell signal, they can determine where to – and where not to – graze their herd.

The flexibility means that, depending on where there is healthier grass or more water, ranchers can move their “fences.” If there’s a particular parcel with great grass that cows don’t often frequent, they can ensure that the cows settle there. If there’s an overgrazed parcel, they can close it off. If they want to keep their cattle next to but not in their neighbors’ unfences silage patch, they can.

Virtual fencing is not cheap, necessarily, but some ranchers are penciling it out and finding the costs – considering fence maintenance, material, feed and time – are in the new technology’s favor.

The implications are not just exciting for ranchers, either. Conservationists and wildlife advocates also like the technology.

With 620,000 miles of fence criss-crossing the West on public and private land, there’s the potential to remove barriers that kill a large number of ungulates every year and disrupt the ecosystems reliant on those large mammals’ migrations. On public lands, cattle wearing collars can be corralled to help repair riparian areas, kept away from camping sites or used for various other regenerative efforts.

For the first time, virtual fencing allows livestock managers to manage only the animals in their keep, said Travis Brammer, the director of conservation for the Property and Environment Research Center, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on making conservation voluntary and economically sound….

Who Is Joe Tuia’ana?

My VIP for this week is Joe Tuia’ana who had his own mental health crisis when a dear friend died, but he saved another man from jumping off a bridge. Then he organized a support group for that one man. Lois M. Collins reported the incident in her article published at the Deseret News. 

Like many young boys, Joe acted the part of Superman by wearing a Superman pajama shirt and using a towel pinned around his neck as a cape. On January 29, 2022, he became a real-life hero. Even though he was struggling with his mental health, he was trying to be a good single dad to his three daughters. One day he was driving his youngest daughter to play basketball. He noticed a car parked wrong and impeding traffic. He squeezed past the car and glanced in the rearview mirror.

At the bottom, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the driver “kind of ninja jump over the protective fence.” The 20-something man was staring down at the highway below. By then, his kids were screaming frantically and Joe thought, “You’ve got to be kidding. I just don’t have any energy to put toward anyone but me, me, me,” he later said, before what he describes as a “come to Jesus moment.”

He went back, telling his oldest daughter … to call the police and [the two younger girls] to chill. Then he began to walk across the bridge.

He wanted to throw up. He was sweating profusely and having a panic attack. Two things were clear to him: He was not a superhero. And half Samoan and half Italian, he knew his size – 6-foot-3, 315 pounds – was intimidating. He was afraid he’d scare the guy.

“Please, please Lord,” Joe prayed, “let this man know he’s loved.” By then, he was close enough to see how sad the man looked and felt tears pouring down his own face….

Not sure what else to do, Joe threw his arms open wide, like a giant bear hug. Yelling over the roar of cars speeding by below, he approached, repeating over and over, “I love you, bro.” When he got close enough, he grabbed the guy and hauled him back over the barrier, where they sank to the pavement, arms around each other, both sobbing and trembling…. Joe just kept whispering in his ear, “I love you, bro.” …

After he’d been treated for the acute phase of his crisis, Aron [the young man] reached out to Joe, who’d given his number to a first responder to give to him. Joe was anxious to help him, but an online search for long-term suicide prevention resources tailored to men didn’t yield much.

So Joe created a support group just for Aron. He contacted a few men he knew, like a buddy from his fantasy football league, and cobbled together a group of six or seven guys willing to show up for a struggling stranger.

Nothing fancy. Not mental health per se. Just guys willing to share their own stories and listen to his. They all found it therapeutic.

The next time they met, a few of the guys had told other guys, so the group was a little larger. And so it went, week after week, until soon it was an actual thing that clearly begged to be formalized. So Joe, with no mental health training, but a big heart and a lot of love for people in crisis, launched the I Love You Bro project. It’s been growing ever since, with now 14 different weekly meetings from Logan to Spanish Fork. By now, more than 3,000 men have participated. Sometimes a handful of guys show up. Sometimes a couple dozen. There’s no formal program, no therapy, just a safe place to talk about what’s been bottled up inside….

Dr. Eric Monson of Huntsman Mental Health Institute says men are less likely than women to recognize their mental health challenges. And much more reluctant to talk about them. Depression can show up as irritability or feeling on edge. Men sometimes dive into work harder or they don’t feel well. They may use drugs or alcohol to numb their feelings. Monson said recklessness and temper flares are among men’s externalizing behaviors, and those can create legal problems.

My point for choosing Joe as my VIP for this week is to show that just average people – an average Joe – can do something to help another person.  In Joe’s case, the group he spear-headed after helping Aron has helped more than 3,000 other men. We never know what we can accomplish until we try.

For more of the article, follow this link. 

Should Supreme Court Decide in Favor of Americans or Illegal Aliens?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns birthright citizenship, a topic that is much in the news. Everyone has their own opinion about how the matter should be resolved. Joseph E. Schmitz has his opinion on the topic and shared his thoughts in an article titled “The Case for Resolving Birthright Citizenship in Trump’s Favor” and published at The Daily Signal. Schmitz was the inspector general of the Department of Defense from April 2002 to September 2005 and was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. 

Schmitz recognized that President Donald Trump promised repeatedly while campaigning that he would “end birthright citizenship” and then acted on his promise by issuing his executive order on January 20, 2025. That same executive order was argued in the Supreme Court on April 1, 2026, and Trump attended the court session in person, making history as the first sitting president by doing so. Schmitz then offered his opinion of what the Supreme Court should do.

For reasons explained below, the court should sustain Trump’s executive order because the people elected Trump, and any ambiguities in the 14^th Amendment should be construed in favor of the people – which is different than construing the amendment in favor of Trump. [This would put America and Americans first – not illegal aliens.]

The purpose of Trump’s executive order is clearly stated: “The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift. The Fourteenth Amendment states: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’ shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race.”

Trump’s executive order also acknowledged that, “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

On April 1, the lawyer representing the American Civil Liberties Union in its challenge to Trump’s executive order relied primarily on the 1898 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark for her arguments in favor of birthright citizenship for the children of parents not in the U.S. legally. She suggested that this “landmark decision” established that children born on U.S. social are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.

As the parents of the child at issue in Wong Kim Ark were in the U.S. legally, to suggest that this “landmark decision” established birthright citizenship for the children of parents not legally allowed to reside in the United States defies logic.

The issue argued in the Supreme Court on April 1 centered around ambiguities in the phrase in the 14^th Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Even though the final Section of the 14^th Amendment, Section 5, grants Congress “the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the 14^th Amendment, Congress has never enacted legislation clarifying the ambiguities in the phrase, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

When dealing with ambiguities in the 14^th Amendment, unless or until Congress exercises its powers under Section 5 of the 14^th Amendment to clarify ambiguities by legislative enforcement, the Supreme Court should construe the ambiguities in favor of the people, who reelected Trump….

Trump repeatedly promised to “end birthright citizenship” for children born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents, and then did just that on the first day of his second term. Now, the Supreme Court should resolve ambiguities in the 14^th Amendment using contra preferentem and thereby avoid frustrating the will of the people.

It’s our government after all.

What Is the Purpose of the Sacrament?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to Exodus 7-13 and a lesson titled “Remember this Day, in Which Ye Came Out from Egypt.” The lesson was introduced by the following information. 

Plague after plague afflicted Egypt, but Pharaoh still refused to release the Israelites. And yet God continued to demonstrate His power and give Pharaoh opportunities to accept “that I am the Lord” and “there is none like me in all the earth” (Exodus 7:5; 9:14).

Meanwhile, Moses and the Israelites must have watched with awe at these manifestations of God’s power on their behalf. Surely these continued signs confirmed their faith in God and strengthened their willingness to follow God’s prophet. Then, after nine terrible plagues had failed to free the Israelites, it was the tenth plague – the death of the firstborn, including Pharaoh’s firstborn – that finally ended the captivity. This seems fitting because in every case of spiritual captivity, there truly is only one way to escape. It is only the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Firstborn – the blood of the Lamb without blemish – that will save us.

The principles taught in this scriptures block include (1) I can choose to soften my heart (Exodus 7-11); (2) Jesus Christ can save me because of His Atonement (Exodus 12:1-42); (3) The sacrament helps me remember my deliverance through Jesus Christ (Exodus 12:14-17, 24-27; 13:1-16).

This essay will discuss principle #3 about the sacrament. This is obviously the Easter lesson, which is scheduled a week late due to General Conference being held on Easter Sunday. However, it is a good lesson for us to remember all year long.

Jehovah commanded the Israelites to observe the Passover each year to help them remember He had delivered them, even after their captivity became a distant memory. He wanted them to teach their children and children’s children about the Passover to remember “throughout your generations” (see Exodus 12:14, 26-27).

After His Resurrection, Jesus Christ instituted the sacrament as a reminder of His atoning sacrifice. The sacrament is an ordinance in which Church members partake of bread and water in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Through this ordinance, Church members renew the covenants they made with God when they were baptized. Here is a video titled “Always Remember Him” that teaches the importance of the sacrament. 

Each Sunday when we partake of the bread and water, we should do so in remembrance of the Savior’s Atonement – His time in the Garden of Gethsemane, His trials, His Crucifixion, and His Resurrection.

As you participate in the sacramental services tomorrow, think of the things that you do to “always remember” Jesus Christ (Moroni 4:3; 5:2). Think of ways that you can preserve that remembrance “throughout your generations” (see Exodus 12:14, 26-27).

How Does a Higher Fertility Rate Strengthen a Nation?

States and nations benefit from a high fertility rate and strong families. Therefore, states and nations are weakened by low fertility rates, but they are strengthened by strong families. The United States and nations around the globe are experiencing a two-decades decline in fertility rates. In her article published at The Daily Signal, Mariam Sunny reported on the fertility rate. 

The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low last year, extending a nearly two-decade decline, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Thursday.

The decline also reflects global trends, as fewer women choose to have children against a changing social backdrop. In the U.S., the general fertility rate has fallen nearly 23% since 2007, according to the agency’s data.

Shifting priorities among younger women, including “greater and more demanding job market opportunities, expanded leisure options, increased intensity of parenting … make the option to have children less desirable,” said Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College.

The number of babies born in the U.S. in 2025 declined 1% from a year earlier to roughly 3.6 million, while the general fertility rate – the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 – also slipped 1% to 53.1, the data showed.

While fertility rates among women in their 30s and 40s have increased over the past decade, those gains have remained too modest to offset sustained declines among women under 30. Last year, the fertility rate among women aged 25 to 29 fell about 4.4%, while the rate for women aged 30 to 34 rose about 2.7% from 2024, the data showed.

Fertility rates among teenagers also declined sharply, with the rate for those aged 18 to 19 falling 7% and the rate for younger teens aged 15 5o 17 dropping 11%, both reaching record lows.

The provisional data is based on 99.95% of all birth records received and processed last year by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC, as of Feb. 3, 2026.

 

  

Why Is Democracy Necessary?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns democracy and its ability to preserve freedom. The president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Dallin H. Oaks has long discussed importance of democracy, and he chose to focus on the same message in his first address as president of the Church of Jesus Christ. His message on Easter Sunday is that “peace and democratic freedoms, especially in times of conflict, require believers to extend Christ’s love to their opponents, even across vast differences in values and beliefs.”

Mariya Manzhos reported on President Oaks’ message in her article at the Deseret News. 

President Oaks also continued the theme of his predecessor, President Russell M. Nelson, calling believers to be peacemakers – those who “seek to reduce human suffering” and those who “work to promote understanding among different peoples.”

President Oaks described the current climate as “toxic” and “a time of contempt or hostility toward adversaries.” This kind of “hostility,” he said, is spreading across society, and involves “many whose Christian beliefs should orient them otherwise.”

Christ’s teaching, which the church’s leader described as “revolutionary,” is to extend love not only to the neighbors, but also to the enemies, whom President Oaks identified as “military foes” and those in direct conflict with one another. “Today we might say that we are commanded to love our adversaries,” he said.

The church’s leader has himself demonstrated a way of finding common ground in Utah politics. He played a key role in shaping the Utah Compromise in 2015, helping broker an agreement between religious groups and LGBTQ advocates, and supported a framework that paired protections for same-sex couples in housing and employment with safeguards for religious liberty – an agreement that became a national model for balancing competing rights.

In his Sunday address, he said: “As followers of Christ, we should seek to live peaceably and lovingly with other children of God who do not share our values and do not have the covenant obligations we have assumed. In a democratic government we should seek ‘fairness for all.’ In countless circumstances, strangers’ suspicion or even hostility gradually give way to friendship when personal contacts produce mutual respect.” …

In a new leadership position, Oaks is showing that there is no distinction between being Christ-like in personal life and being Christ-like in civic life, Rauch said.

President Oaks acknowledged just how hard reconciling the requirements of the church and civic life can be. “We balance our various responsibilities, this balancing is not easy,” Oaks said….

In President Oaks’ view, by contrast, the Constitution guarantees a shared civic space.