By John & Nisha Whitehead “Love your enemies.” —Jesus Christ “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” —President Donald Trump This country was built on the radical idea that government exists to serve the people—not to control them, monitor them, manage them, or rule over
By John & Nisha Whitehead In 2021, amid a global pandemic, warnings that the federal government might repurpose warehouses into detention facilities on American soil were dismissed as speculative, alarmist, even conspiratorial. Five years later, what was speculation is a blueprint for locking up whomever the government chooses to target.
By John & Nisha Whitehead What does it say about a political movement that demands absolute reverence for life in the womb yet shrugs when the government kills, cages, or brutalizes the living? What does it say about a government—and a political movement—that claims to value the unborn, but once
By John & Nisha Whitehead We are living through a period of open lawlessness at the highest levels of government. Executive orders are issued to sidestep Congress. Federal law enforcement is deployed as a tool of retaliation. Protest is criminalized. Surveillance expands. Due process becomes optional. Courts are packed, ignored,
By John & Nisha Whitehead In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that gave voice to the discontent of a nation struggling to free itself from a tyrannical ruler who believed power flowed from his own will rather than the consent of the governed. Paine’s warning was
By John & Nisha Whitehead Donald Trump, aptly dubbed a “master of projection,” could teach a master class in accusing others of wrongdoing of which he is guilty. Trump has repeatedly framed himself as a victim of corruption while weaponizing the machinery of government for personal, political, and financial gain.
By John & Nisha Whitehead Some years chip away at freedom. Others tear the mask off. In the year 2025 the government stopped pretending it was constrained by the Constitution—when executive power expanded openly and unapologetically, surveillance became ambient, dissent became dangerous, and the machinery of militarized government embedded itself
By John & Nisha Whitehead As familiar as the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger might be, it is also a cautionary tale for our age. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant
By John & Nisha Whitehead The Surveillance State is making a naughty list, and we’re all on it. Unlike Santa’s naughty list, however, the consequences of landing on the government’s “naughty list” are far more severe than a stocking full of coal. They can include heightened surveillance, loss of privacy,
By John & Nisha Whitehead We now live in a Nation where constitutional rights exist in theory, not in practice. Yet what good are rights on paper when every branch of government is allowed to ignore, circumvent, chip away at or hollow them out in practice? Two-hundred and thirty-four years
By John & Nisha Whitehead Every military servicemember’s oath is a pledge to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is not an oath to a politician. It is not an oath to a party. And it is not an oath to the police state. Yet what
By John & Nisha Whitehead “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands…for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”—Daniel Webster We find ourselves approaching that time of year when, as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed,
By John & Nisha Whitehead “The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything…. It’s called the American Dream, ‘cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
By John & Nisha Whitehead America has been backsliding into kleptocratic territory for years now, but this may finally be it. A kleptocracy is literally “rule by thieves.” It is a form of government in which a network of ruling elites “steal public funds for their own private gain using
By John & Nisha Whitehead Monsters don’t always come wrapped in the trappings of horror or myth. Most often, monsters in the real world look like ordinary people. They walk among us. They smile for the cameras. They promise protection and prosperity even as they feed on fear and obedience.
By John & Nisha Whitehead For a man supposedly intent on winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump spends an extraordinary amount of time waging war, threatening to wage war, and fantasizing about waging war. Notwithstanding his dubious claims about having ended “seven un-endable wars,” Trump has continued to squander
By John & Nisha Whitehead “Brother, I am American. You are twisting my arm.”— Man shouts “I am American” while ICE agents detain him Masked gunmen. Tasers. Tear gas. Pepper spray. Unmarked vehicles. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Racial profiling. Children traumatized. Families terrorized. Journalists targeted. Citizens detained. Disabled individuals, minors, the
By John & Nisha Whitehead When the government can label anyone or anything an enemy in order to wage war, we are all in danger. That danger is no longer theoretical. In the same breath that the administration touts lethal military strikes against Venezuelan boats in Caribbean waters, federal agents
By John & Nisha Whitehead “The era of the Department of Defense is over… From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting.” — Pete Hegseth “America is under invasion from within… That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within… We
By John & Nisha Whitehead The Donald Trump administration is taking its war on free speech into the realm of thought crimes. This is more than politics. In declaring “Antifa”—a loose ideology based on opposition to fascism—as a domestic terrorist organization, the government has given itself a green light to
