The Perimeter: How to Stay Informed Without Getting Flooded

BEDROCK–Wednesday. The standalone cornerstone. Free for everyone –read it, use it, and pass it to someone who’s drowning in it.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter, Bedrock Series #05: Wednesday, 29th, 2026

On Monday I showed you where the machine gets in: your attention…delivered through the device in your pocket…engineered to keep you agitated so you keep scrolling.

Today I hand you the fix.

And…let me kill the wrong answer first…because you’re expecting it: this is not “delete your apps and go off the grid.” Going blind isn’t strength; it’s just numbness with better PR…and it’s exactly what they’d love you to do. A disengaged citizen is a defeated one.

No. What you need isn’t a wall. It’s a Perimeter…a controlled border where the news gets in on your terms…not the machine’s. You stay informed. You just stop letting the firehose run 24 hours a day straight into your chest.

Three parts. Build all three.

One: set the windows–when it gets in

Right now, the news reaches you constantly…the second you wake…the last thing before sleep…every idle moment in between. That’s the machine’s schedule. We’re replacing it with yours.

Pick your windows. Maybe once around midday…once in the early evening. Twenty minutes each. That’s when you catch up…deliberately…on purpose…sitting down like an adult choosing to be informed.

Outside those windows? The gate is closed.

And here’s the single most important rule in this whole piece…the one that changes everything if you do nothing else:

Protect the first thirty minutes and the last thirty minutes of your day.

No feed first thing. No feed last thing. Do not let the machine be the first voice in your head before you’ve had one thought of your own…and do not let it be the last thing your mind chews on as you try to sleep.

Those two windows set the tone for your entire day and the quality of your entire night. Guard them like they’re sacred. Because they are.

Two: choose your sources–where it comes from

Left to its own devices…the algorithm feeds you whatever spikes your pulse…rage-bait…doom…the most inflammatory version of everything…regardless of whether it’s true or whether it matters.

So take that decision away from it.

Choose…on purpose…in advance…a small handful of sources you actually trust. A few solid outlets. A few writers who inform you instead of just inflaming you. Go to them…directly…during your windows. Let them be your news…instead of whatever the outrage machine shoves in front of you next.

A few trusted sources…chosen by you…beat an infinite feed chosen by a machine that profits from your anxiety. Every time.

Three: the “and then what?” filter–how much you carry

This is where the Perimeter connects to what we built last week.

Remember the cut? Pile one…what you can actually touch today. Pile two…everything else…real but not yours to carry right now. The Perimeter is how you keep pile two from climbing back over the wall.

So before you let a story move in…and take up residence in your body…run it through one question:

“And then what?”

Is there something I will actually do with this? Someone to call…a dollar to give…a vote to plan…an action to take? Or…is it something I genuinely, truly need to know?

If yes…let it in. Act on it. That’s pile one. That’s fuel.

If it’s just one more thing to feel sick about…with nowhere for the feeling to go…that’s pile two. Note it. Let it pass. You are allowed to not absorb a catastrophe you can do nothing about at 9pm on a Tuesday.

Staying informed does not require you to personally marinate in every wound in the world. It requires you to know…what’s true…and act where you can. The filter is how you tell the difference.

Put it to work today

Three moves. That’s the Perimeter.

Windows: decide when the news gets in…and guard your first and last thirty minutes.

Sources: pick a few you trust…and go to them instead of the firehose.

Filter: “and then what?” …let in what you can act on, let the rest pass.

Set your windows today. Pick your sources tonight. Run the filter the very next time you feel that pull to scroll.

Do it for one week…and I promise you’ll notice two things: you’ll know more about what actually matters…and you’ll carry far less of what doesn’t.

That’s not disengagement. That’s a soldier…who stops standing in the open…and finally takes cover…so they can last long enough to actually fight.

I’ll see you Friday…and we’ll close the week strong.

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#HoldFast

-Jack
Jack Hopkins

Bedrock: what holds when everything shakes. If this helped, send it to someone who can’t put the phone down. That’s how we keep each other standing.

P.S. Bedrock runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday goes to everyone…all three days go to paid subscribers, along with every other paid article. Upgrade today and you won't miss any of it.

Somebody At The Pentagon Just Cooked The Books

The bodies didn’t disappear. The paperwork did.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #984: Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Forget politics.

Forget party.

Forget who you voted for.

I want to talk about something much simpler.

A ledger.

Because sometime last week…while American troops were still taking enemy fire.. somebody inside the Pentagon quietly rewrote one.

Not history.

Not strategy.

The casualty ledger.

And for several days...

Four dead Americans simply vanished.

The official government count dropped from eighteen killed to fourteen.

The wounded?

Four hundred eighty-two suddenly became four hundred twenty.

No announcement.

No explanation.

No press conference.

Just four dead Americans...deleted from what the Pentagon itself calls the official public record of the war.

Then came Saturday.

Remember that.

Nobody buries good news on a Saturday.

Suddenly...

The four dead were back.

So were another 140-plus wounded troops nobody had bothered to mention.

Today’s total?

Eighteen dead.

Six hundred twenty-four wounded.

Twenty-one weeks.

Those numbers never changed.

Only the paperwork did.

Every Crooked Bookkeeper Knows This Trick

They didn’t actually erase the war.

That would have been too obvious.

Instead...

They created a second ledger.

Until now…every casualty had been listed under one operation.

Operation Epic Fury.

One war.

One running total.

Simple.

Then...

A brand-new category magically appeared.

“Overseas Operations.”

Starting July 7.

Four deaths over here.

Fourteen deaths over there.

Two hundred seven wounded on one page.

Four hundred seventeen on another.

Nothing looks especially alarming...

...unless somebody actually adds the numbers together.

Military reporters say they’ve never seen a war split apart like this.

Of course they haven’t.

Because every accountant who’s ever cooked the books knows the first rule:

Never lie about the total.

Scatter it.

Hide it.

Rename it.

Break it into pieces.

Make the arithmetic…harder than the headlines.

Most people stop counting.

Mission accomplished.

July 7 Wasn’t Picked By A General

It was picked by a lawyer.

Because July 7 is the day the administration says Operation Epic Fury ended.

Convenient.

Except the missiles kept flying.

The drones kept flying.

The troops kept getting wounded.

Americans kept dying.

Looks like the same war.

Feels like the same war.

Families burying sons certainly think it’s the same war.

But on paper?

Suddenly...

It’s a brand-new conflict.

Which also happens to restart the War Powers clock.

Sixty fresh days.

No new congressional authorization.

No messy constitutional debate.

Just...

A new heading on a spreadsheet.

Imagine explaining that to the parents standing beside a flag-draped coffin.

“Sorry...your son technically died in the sequel.”

Then Came The Insult

When reporters noticed the casualty numbers didn’t match...

The Pentagon explained.

Sort of.

The spokesman noted that many of the wounded had already returned to duty.

Then he offered an example.

“Minor sprained ankles during training.”

Sprained ankles.

That’s the picture they chose.

Not missile fragments.

Not blast injuries.

Not burns.

Not concussions.

Not shattered bones.

Sprained ankles.

When your first instinct is to minimize wounded Americans…instead of honor them...

You’ve already told us everything we need to know.

The Only People Who Pay Full Price

Here’s the transaction nobody inside Washington ever has to make.

At sunrise...

A military carry team unloads another transfer case at Dover.

Another family waits.

Another mother.

Another father.

Another wife.

Another child.

Somebody else’s hometown.

Somebody else’s son.

On July 22...

First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan came home.

Not to applause.

Not to speeches.

To a flag.

While somewhere inside the Pentagon...

Someone was reorganizing spreadsheets.

The politicians issue statements.

The soldiers send remains. REMAINS.

The bureaucrats…edit databases.

Here’s The Part That Should Concern You

If the government becomes comfortable changing how it counts the dead...

What else becomes negotiable?

Wars don’t become less expensive because somebody creates another spreadsheet.

Families don’t grieve less because somebody changes a heading.

The Constitution doesn’t disappear because somebody restarts a clock.

But public attention?

That disappears very easily.

Confusion has always been one of government’s favorite hiding places.

Because…confused people…rarely demand answers.

Here’s What I’d Demand

One war.

One casualty ledger.

One public total.

Updated every week.

No second books.

No renamed categories.

No accounting tricks.

Because if the government asks Americans to bleed...

The very least it can do...

Is count them honestly.

Anything less isn’t bookkeeping.

It’s camouflage.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack Hopkins

Jack Hopkins

Sources

• Downward revision, then reversal; Parnell’s response to the New York Times reporting — UPI, July 27, 2026

• Saturday update: +140 wounded, four deaths restored, “Overseas Operations” category added; 18 dead / 624 wounded since Feb. 28 — CNN, July 26, 2026

• Splitting a single campaign into separate accounting periods is unprecedented; DCAS as the authoritative public record — ABC News

• The July 7 War Powers reset; 182 of 207 wounded are soldiers; fighting before and after largely similar — Task & Purpose

• Two separate pages, two start dates; GOP operative on midterm candidates distancing from the war — The New Republic, July 27, 2026

• Count tops 600; lawmakers and press push for transparency — The Hill

• Pentagon’s own explanation for the recategorization; at least 200 wounded in July — NPR, July 27, 2026

I want to tell you about a change…and I want to tell you the thinking behind it… because you’ve earned that from me.

Starting September 1st, 2026, new annual memberships to Jack Hopkins Now will move to $227 a year.

Here’s why.

Over these last stretches…through everything this country has thrown at us…I’ve come to understand something about what we’re building here. It isn’t a mailing list. It’s a tribe.

A rock-solid core of people I genuinely love working alongside…who show up… who think hard…who don’t look away.

And…as we grow, I want to keep it that way.

I want new members to be people who looked at this and said, “Yes. I’m in. I’m committed enough to help power this.”

That kind of intention is what keeps a community tight…instead of just big. And…I’d rather have that…always.

Now…the part that matters most for you.

If you’re already a paid subscriber…this change is not for you. Your rate stays exactly where it is.

You were here. You said yes when it counted…and I’m not about to ask the people who built this to pay more for it. That’s always been the deal…and it always will be. You keep your current price for as long as you stay with me. That’s not a promotion. That’s a thank-you.

And if you’ve been reading free…thinking about joining…this is your window.

Until September 1st, 2026, you can lock in the current $175 annual rate…and keep it for as long as you’re a member…even after the new price takes effect. Join now…and you’re grandfathered in, right alongside the core.

This also isn’t a change I’m making in a vacuum.

On Monday, July 20th, 2026, I started giving paid subscribers even more: Bedrock, three days a week, on staying strong and steady while the country shakes. Membership is growing…because what you get for it…is growing.

One thing I want to be clear about, because it matters to me: the money is not the measure.

Commitment is a spirit…not a price tag. The $227 is simply how the people who can… and who want to…choose to stand behind this. If that’s you…I’d be honored to have you.

We’re building something that lasts. Thank you for being why.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

-Jack
Jack Hopkins

P.S. If you’re already a member: do nothing. Your rate is safe…and it always will be. This is my way of making sure the people who were here first stay the best-treated people in the house. Your entry rate…is your forever rate. That’s how it has always been…and that’s how it will always be.

P.P.S. If you’ve been on the fence, this is the cheapest it will ever be to join. After September 1st, 2026, $175 is gone for good. Come lock it in, and come meet the tribe.

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They Live in Your Pocket

BEDROCK–Monday. We set the foundation for the week. Last week we named the weapon. This week, we find where it gets in.

The Jack Hopkins Now Bedrock Series #4: Monday, July 27th, 2026

Last week we established the hard truth: they’re trying to exhaust you. The flood isn’t chaos…it’s a strategy, built to wear you down until you go numb and quiet.

Good. You know the weapon now.

So this week…we ask the next question…the one that actually gives you power over it:

How does it reach you?

Because a weapon needs a way in. All that outrage, all that dread…all that engineered exhaustion…it doesn’t come at you through the air. It comes through one narrow channel.

Your attention.

And…it’s delivered by a single device that is…I’d bet…within arm’s reach of you right now.

The battlefield is six inches wide

Here’s what took me too long to see.

Read more

This Is the Creepiest Story You’ll Read All Week

Police were given a system capable of tracking nearly any driver. Some officers immediately began using it to stalk people they knew.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #982: Monday, July 27th, 2026

Let me tell you what happened in Milwaukee.

A police officer was given access to a powerful surveillance system called Flock.

The system didn’t listen to his phone calls.

It didn’t read his emails.

It did something much simpler.

It told him where people were going.

So the officer reportedly used it to search for the location of his romantic partner 124 times.

Then he searched for that partner’s former lover another 55 times.

Not because either person was suspected of committing a crime.

Not because a judge had signed a warrant.

Not because someone was missing, kidnapped, or in danger.

He was watching them.

And the machine…helped him do it.

The officer, Josue Ayala…eventually resigned from the Milwaukee Police Department …and pleaded guilty…to attempted misconduct in public office.

Then the story took an almost unbelievable turn.

One of the internal affairs detectives who investigated Ayala…was…himself…arrested and accused of misusing the same system.

The man assigned to investigate the abuse of the surveillance system…was then accused of abusing the surveillance system.

That is not irony.

That is a warning.

ORIENTATION

Flock Safety operates a vast network of automated license-plate readers.

These cameras sit on poles…at intersections…in parking lots…near businesses…and along roads you drive every day.

They photograph license plates and capture identifying details about passing vehicles. Those observations are placed into a searchable database…generally retained for 30 days.

An authorized user can enter a plate number and reconstruct where that vehicle has recently appeared.

Your office.

Your home.

Your doctor’s office.

Your church.

Your child’s school.

A political meeting.

A divorce attorney.

A domestic-violence shelter.

A hotel where you weren’t supposed to be.

One camera produces a photograph.

Thousands of connected cameras produce a pattern.

And a pattern can become a map of your life.

This was sold to communities as a way to find stolen cars…locate missing people…and catch dangerous suspects.

And…it can do those things.

That is precisely what makes the issue difficult.

The best surveillance systems are never sold by saying:

We would like to build a searchable record of where innocent Americans travel.

They are sold with the case no decent person wants to oppose.

The abducted child.

The stolen vehicle.

The armed fugitive.

The mass shooter.

Once the system is installed…however…it does not photograph only criminals.

It photographs everyone.

It records first…and asks questions later.

And in many jurisdictions…an officer does not need a warrant to search it.

DOCTRINE

Here is the rule we need to remember:

A surveillance system should be judged not only by what a good person can accomplish with it…but by what a bad, reckless, obsessed, politically motivated, or frightened person can do with it.

That is where the sales presentation ends…and reality begins.

The people selling these systems want the public to imagine the finest officer in the department using the technology to rescue a missing child.

Fine.

Now imagine the worst officer in the department.

The jealous one.

The angry one.

The abusive one.

The officer going through a divorce.

The officer with a grievance.

The officer who wants to know where his former girlfriend sleeps.

The officer who sees a political opponent’s car outside a meeting.

The officer who believes that curiosity is close enough to probable cause.

That officer receives access to the same machine.

And…this is not a hypothetical objection cooked up by civil libertarians.

In July, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrests of five former Albany police officers accused of accessing retained license-plate data for non-law-enforcement purposes.

Five officers.

One department.

One internal audit.

Three more officers in metro Atlanta were fired later that month following accusations that they had searched for people they knew.

And now ask yourself the uncomfortable question:

How many officers misused the system but were never caught?

How many searches appeared just plausible enough to pass?

How many departments aren’t conducting meaningful audits?

How many citizens will never know that someone with a badge typed in their license plate and quietly began reconstructing their movements?

We only know about the abuses somebody discovered.

SIGNAL

The problem is bigger than a handful of dishonest officers.

The real signal is the infrastructure itself.

Before systems like Flock, following someone required effort.

An officer had to leave the station.

Use a vehicle.

Spend time.

Risk being seen.

Possibly involve another officer.

Create records.

Explain the expense.

Physical surveillance created friction.

Friction is not always an inconvenience.

Sometimes…friction is a safeguard.

Flock removes much of it.

A search that once required personnel…time…gasoline…supervisory awareness…and physical exposure…can potentially be performed from behind a screen.

That changes the equation.

When surveillance becomes fast…cheap…quiet…and searchable…it will inevitably be used more often.

Not only against dangerous suspects.

Against ordinary people.

Against people who have never been accused of anything.

Against people who will never know they were searched.

In Ayala’s case, the stated justification for the searches was reportedly a single vague word:

“Investigation.”

Chapman allegedly used terms including “training” and “test.”

That was the gate.

That was the mighty wall…standing between private travel and personal surveillance.

A few words typed into a box.

Only after the abuse was uncovered…did Milwaukee require a case number and explanation and begin conducting monthly audits.

Read that again.

The safeguards came after the stalking.

This is how privacy is usually lost in America.

Not with a dramatic announcement.

Not with Congress formally declaring that citizens no longer possess the right to move around without being catalogued.

It happens…one camera…at a time.

One database at a time.

One “public-safety tool” at a time.

Each expansion sounds narrow.

Each individual record appears harmless.

Then…someone connects the records.

Suddenly, the government…or a private company working with the government…doesn’t have a picture of your car.

It has your routine.

CONTINUITY

Flock says it has introduced an audit-assistance tool designed to identify abnormal searches.

Good.

That is an admission that abnormal searches can happen…and that the previous guardrails were not enough.

But…internal auditing is not a substitute for law.

Company policy is not a warrant requirement.

A software alert is not independent judicial oversight.

And “most officers use it properly” is not an answer to the constitutional question.

Most government employees would probably use the contents of your home responsibly, too.

We still require a warrant before allowing them to search it.

Privacy rights do not exist because every official is corrupt.

They exist…because power must have limits…even when most officials are honorable.

Especially then.

Because once the machinery is built…it will not always remain in the hands of the people who promised to use it carefully.

Administrations change.

Police chiefs change.

Policies change.

Definitions of “suspicious” change.

The cameras remain.

The database remains.

The temptation remains.

And the next official to gain access…may have very different ideas about who deserves to be watched.

WHAT MUST HAPPEN

This technology should not operate on trust alone.

At a minimum, communities should require:

• A warrant for searches designed to reconstruct an identifiable person’s movements, except in clearly defined emergencies.

• A valid case number attached to every search.

• Specific written justification…not “investigation,” “training,” or “test.”

• Automatic alerts for repeated searches involving the same vehicle.

• Immediate supervisory review of unusual search patterns.

• Strict limits on how long data is retained.

• Public disclosure of which agencies can access locally collected data.

• Prohibitions against using the system to monitor political, religious, medical, journalistic, or constitutionally protected activity.

• Independent audits whose results are available to the public.

• Meaningful criminal penalties for deliberate misuse.

• A requirement that affected citizens be notified when their information was accessed illegally.

And there must be another rule:

No local police department should be able to quietly plug its cameras into a national surveillance network without the informed consent of the community paying for it.

This is not anti-police.

It is anti-unaccountable power.

A good officer…should not be expected to work inside a system…whose weak safeguards allow a reckless colleague to poison public trust.

And…the public…should not be forced to surrender privacy…merely because a useful investigative tool exists.

IDENTITY

You are not paranoid for caring about this.

You are paying attention.

There is a difference.

The people who build surveillance systems depend on the public evaluating each camera in isolation.

Just one pole.

Just one picture.

Just one license plate.

Just 30 days.

But privacy is rarely destroyed by one enormous intrusion.

It is destroyed…by assembling thousands of small intrusions into a system powerful enough…to know things no stranger should know.

Where you worship.

Who you visit.

Which doctor you see.

Which meetings you attend.

Where you spend the night.

That is not simply vehicle data.

That is your life…with a license plate attached.

The question is not whether Flock can help solve crimes.

It can.

The question is whether solving crimes requires constructing a system…capable of tracking the innocent without a warrant…and then trusting every person with access to behave.

Milwaukee has already given us the answer.

Albany has given us the answer.

The growing list of officers accused of turning a crime-fighting system into a personal stalking device…has given us the answer.

Build the power first and bolt on the safeguards later?

No.

We have seen that movie.

We know how it ends.

The cameras are already watching.

Now…it is our job…to watch the people behind them.

Don’t panic.

Pay attention.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S.

Here is the part that should stay with you.

Milwaukee did not catch Josue Ayala.

A victim did.

Not through an audit.

Not through a supervisor.

Not through a compliance alert.

The person being tracked went looking…on their own…and found their own license plate sitting in somebody else’s search history.

That is the actual accountability system in most of this country right now.

A private citizen…getting curious…about their own life.

So if you take one thing from this piece, let it be this:

Ask your city council how many Flock cameras your community pays for.

Ask what the retention period is.

Ask who else can search the data your tax dollars collect.

Ask when the last audit was performed…and who read it.

Ask what happens to an officer who searches a plate for personal reasons.

Then ask for the answer in writing.

You are not obligated to prove you have something to hide.

They are obligated to prove they can be trusted with the map.

-Jack

SOURCES

Milwaukee — Officer Josue Ayala

• CNN, “Inside the growing police use and misuse of Flock’s license-plate reader cameras” — https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/26/us/flock-cameras-surveillance-abuse

• Wisconsin Examiner, “Milwaukee officer accused of misusing Flock surveillance cameras” — https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2026/02/26/milwaukee-officer-accused-of-misusing-flock-surveillance-cameras/

• FOX6 Milwaukee, “Milwaukee police officer charged in Flock camera misuse case” — https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-police-officer-charged-flock-camera-misuse-case

• WTMJ, “Former Milwaukee police officer sentenced for misusing Flock camera system” — https://wtmj.com/news/2026/07/15/former-milwaukee-police-officer-sentenced-for-misusing-flock-camera-system/

• Spectrum News 1, “Former MPD officer who misused Flock cameras sentenced” — https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2026/07/15/former-mpd-officer-misuse-flock-cameras-sentencing

Milwaukee — Detective Tehrangi Chapman

• WPR, “Second member of the Milwaukee Police Department charged with misuse of license plate reader system” — https://www.wpr.org/news/member-milwaukee-police-department-misuse-of-license-plate-reader-system

• FOX6 Milwaukee, “Milwaukee police Flock misuse, detective accused of misconduct” — https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-police-officer-flock-misuse-chapman-charges

• FOX 11, “2nd Milwaukee officer charged with using Flock cameras for stalking” — https://fox11online.com/news/crime/tehrangi-chapman-milwaukee-police-department-detective-flock-cameras-license-plater-readers-stalking-misconduct-public-office-criminal-charge

• WFRV Green Bay, “Wisconsin police officer criminally charged after Flock camera and GPS tracker misuse” — https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-police-officer-criminally-charged-after-using-flock-cameras-to-obtain-location-information-of-citizens/

Albany, Georgia — five officers arrested

• Georgia Bureau of Investigation press release (primary source), July 6, 2026 — https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2026-07-06/gbi-arrests-five-former-albany-police-department-officers-misuse-license

• FOX 5 Atlanta — https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/5-albany-police-officers-arrested-misusing-license-plate-readers

• CBS Atlanta — https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/5-georgia-officers-fired-arrested-for-misusing-access-to-citys-flock-cameras-gbi-says/

• 13WMAZ — https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/crime/5-former-south-georgia-officers-arrested-in-connection-with-misusing-their-access-to-flock-cameras/93-b3075042-06c9-4901-ae60-e3814fbb4aa6

Metro Atlanta — three officers fired

• Atlanta News First, “3 Fayetteville police officers fired, accused of misusing Flock camera system” — https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/07/17/3-fayetteville-police-officers-fired-accused-misusing-flock-camera-system/

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/07/3-more-georgia-police-officers-fired-over-alleged-flock-camera-misuse/

• The Citizen (full department statement) — https://thecitizen.com/2026/07/18/3-fayetteville-police-officers-fired-for-misusing-the-flock-camera-system/

• CBS Atlanta, on the widening Georgia pattern — https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/another-georgia-officer-arrested-over-alleged-flock-camera-misuse-as-internal-audits-continue-uncovering-cases/

The constitutional fight

• Institute for Justice, Norfolk ALPR litigation — https://ij.org/press-release/as-abuses-mount-nationwide-federal-government-calls-on-court-to-reject-lawsuit-challenging-constitutionality-of-license-plate-readers/

• Institute for Justice, on Flock’s attempt to intervene — https://ij.org/press-release/federal-court-rejects-flock-safetys-late-bid-to-join-and-block-ijs-lawsuit-challenging-norfolks-mass-surveillance-cameras/

• Courthouse News Service, district court ruling for Norfolk — https://courthousenews.com/judge-holds-norfolks-license-plate-reader-use-constitutional/

• The Record, “Judge dismisses case alleging use of Flock cameras in Virginia city is unconstitutional” — https://therecord.media/judge-dismisses-flock-case

• NBC News, on the underlying complaint — https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-flock-cameras-track-driver-safety-lawsuit-surveil-rcna230399

Flock’s network, retention, and audit tools

• Flock Safety on 30-day default retention and deletion — https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-does-flock-handle-license-plate-data-deletion

• Flock Safety compliance and audit tools — https://www.flocksafety.com/trust/compliance-tools

• Eyes on Flock, independent aggregation of Flock transparency portals —

https://eyesonflock.com/

Thank you.

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He Bombed. And In Bombing, He Proved Their Whole Point.

Trump finally showed up to the Correspondents’ Dinner, delivered an hour of dead air, got mocked for it in real time –and accidentally ran the best First Amendment demonstration you’ll see all year.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #981: Saturday, July 25th, 2026

Let me tell you the one thing a salesman can never fake.

The room.

You can buy the lights. You can buy the ballroom…hell, this guy built the ballroom. You can hand-pick the crowd…stack the dais…promise everyone a night that’s “unifying yet vicious,” …which is a phrase somebody in that White House…actually approved and sent out in advance like it was some damn movie tagline.

What you cannot buy is the laugh.

The laugh is the one transaction where the customer decides…in real time…whether you delivered. And…on Friday night…in a room he owned…in front of a crowd that came knowing they might get shot at…because the last time they tried this…in April, a man with a shotgun ended the evening…Donald Trump stood up and did an hour.

And the room said no. Actually, it was more like “Hell no!”

The Sound of a Room Saying No

Here’s what nobody who hasn’t stood on a stage understands: silence has a texture.

There’s the warm silence of a room leaning in. And…there’s the other kind; the flat… dead…HVAC-hum silence…of two thousand people deciding, together…without a word…that they are not going to give you this.

He got the second kind.

He tried a bit about a senator who couldn’t climb the stairs and make love at the same time. It landed on the floor. So…he looked up and asked the room, out loud, “Does anybody get that one?”

Nobody did.

And…then…this is the part I want you to sit with, because it’s the whole ballgame… he turned on his own material. Live. In front of everyone. He called it, and I’m quoting the man himself, “this whole, frickin, stupid speech they wrote.”

When the pitch dies…the amateur blames the script. He blames his writers…blames the crowd…blames the lighting…blames anything with a pulse that isn’t him.

The pro eats it. Trump reached for the oldest…saddest tool in the failing-closer’s bag:

It wasn’t me, it was the words they gave me.

You are the president of the United States. You picked the writers. You approved the speech. You walked out there. There is no “they.” There was never a “they.” There’s just a man…and a microphone…and a room that has rendered its verdict…and the verdict was “No! Now get the hell off the stage.”

The Set List of a Man Out of New Material

Want to know how you can tell a headliner is done? He does his old stuff.

Friday’s set was a clip show. The weight jokes…a strange…insistent number of them… aimed at people’s bodies…some of it brushing right up against something uglier than a punchline.

The recycled nicknames…dusted off and rerun:

Newsom, Christie, Omar, the late-night guys. He took a swing at CBS by way of a joke about it being run now by…in his words…a “gay dictator”…a line that tells you exactly where the writing was operating that night.

Then the finale. The red hat. “Trump 2028.” The wink about a fourth term…a thing the 22nd Amendment says in plain English cannot happen…delivered like a scoop.

This is a man doing his greatest hits…at a state function…because he has no new album. And a greatest-hits show only works on a crowd…that already loves you. Play it for a room that’s just watching? You get Friday night.

He owned the building…and lost the room. There’s a whole political career in that one sentence… if anyone’s paying attention.

Now Here’s the Part That’s Actually Important

You could stop there and just enjoy it. A lot of people are.

But if that’s all you take…you missed the real story…and the real story is bigger than one bad night.

Think it through.

A sitting head of state stood up and stunk up the room. And then what happened? Reporters wrote it. Networks aired it. The internet spent the night doing what the internet does.

He was mocked…openly…by name…on live television…by the very press corps sitting ten feet from him…for being bad at his own party.

In a long and growing list of countries…that is not a Saturday-morning headline.

That is a crime.

In some places on this earth…a journalist who wrote “the leader bombed and everyone laughed” would be writing it from a cell…or wouldn’t be writing again at all.

Here, it’s just…Saturday. It’s so normal…we forget it’s extraordinary.

That’s the whole point of that stupid dinner. Not the tuxedos. Not the celebrity mentalist. Not the free-flowing open bar for people who’ve forgotten what the event is even for.

The point is the demonstration:

That in this country…you can stand in a room with the most powerful man alive…and tell him…to his face…that he wasn’t funny…and go home unharmed.

He walked in to prove he’d conquered that room. He walked out having proven the opposite, and something better than he intended:

That the room still can’t be conquered. Not by charm, because he didn’t have any that night. And…not by force…which, given who was promising a speech that was “vicious,” is the reassurance that actually matters.

The Bill

So here’s the tab, and I’ll keep it short because the man could learn something about brevity.

He wanted the room. He didn’t get the room. He wanted to look like the biggest guy at the party…and…instead…he looked like every aging closer who ever blamed the script; a man doing old bits to a cold house…checking the crowd’s face for a laugh that wasn’t coming…and reaching for the hat.

But the freedom to tell you all that? To watch it…describe it…mock it…and print it without a single person needing permission?

That was the one thing in the room worth more than the ballroom he built. And it’s the one thing he’ll never own.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Here's the tell that should stay with you. The White House promised a speech that was "unifying yet vicious," and the vicious part was supposed to be the flex.

But he was standing in the one room on earth…built to prove that viciousness from the top doesn't work here…that you can aim it at the press all night…and the press just prints what you said and goes home.

He brought a weapon to a place specifically designed to make that weapon useless. That's not strength. That's a man who still doesn't know what room he's in.

The Man Who Spent 20 Years Studying an Iran War Just Issued a Terrifying Warning

Robert Pape believes America has entered an escalation trap–and that the next move could be an attack designed to kill Americans in large numbers.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #980: Friday, July 24th, 2026

Let me tell you about a man you should probably listen to right now.

His name is Robert Pape.

He isn’t a television general trying to land a consulting contract.

He isn’t a politician looking for airtime.

And…he isn’t some anonymous social-media account…drawing red arrows across a map of Iran.

Pape is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago…the founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats…and the author of major works on AirPower…coercion and suicide terrorism.

He has spent decades studying what happens when powerful nations attempt to bomb weaker adversaries into submission.

Now he says the United States may be walking directly into the most dangerous stage of that war.

And his warning is brutally simple:

The next major Iranian response may not be another symbolic missile volley.

It may be an attack designed to kill a very large number of American troops…or American civilians…at once.

That does not mean Pape knows an attack is coming.

It does not mean he has seen classified intelligence.

It means…a man who has spent much of his career studying how wars escalate… believes the incentives are now pointing in that direction.

And when someone with that background…says the next step may be mass casualties, you do not panic.

But…you damn well pay attention.

ORIENTATION

The biggest mistake Americans can make right now is assuming the most visible part of the war is the most important part.

We see bomb damage.

We see satellite photographs.

We see destroyed buildings…dead commanders…and triumphant briefings.

Then…someone stands behind a podium…and tells us the enemy has been “degraded.”

That word should make you nervous.

Because degraded does not mean defeated.

It does not mean disarmed.

It does not mean the enemy has lost the ability to retaliate.

And…it sure as shit does not mean the enemy has accepted the political outcome Washington wants.

Pape’s central argument…is that America has entered what he calls an escalation trap.

The United States possesses overwhelming conventional firepower. It can destroy military installations…command centers…air-defense systems and infrastructure.

But if those attacks fail to produce surrender, regime collapse or a negotiated settlement, Washington faces an ugly choice:

Back down without achieving its stated objectives…

Or escalate again.

More bombing.

More targets.

More American personnel.

Perhaps eventually American ground forces.

This is the trap.

Every escalation is supposed to create the leverage needed to end the war.

But…damnit…every escalation also gives Iran a stronger incentive to impose costs large enough to force the United States to reconsider.

That is how governments find themselves fighting wars…they never intended to fight.

Not through one enormous decision.

Through a staircase of smaller decisions…each presented…as the only logical response to what happened before.

DOCTRINE

Pape has built much of his career around one uncomfortable observation:

Military destruction and political success are not the same thing.

You can destroy a target without destroying the enemy’s will.

You can kill commanders without eliminating the organization.

You can crater runways…collapse tunnels and hit production sites while leaving the enemy more determined than before.

Pape’s academic work has focused extensively on strategic airpower and the political logic of terrorism. His books include Bombing to Win, Dying to Win and Cutting the Fuse.

The lesson running through that work is not that military force never works.

It is that force works…only when it changes the enemy’s political calculation.

And that…is much harder than blowing up a building.

So it does not need to fight the war America prefers.

It can disperse weapons.

Move launchers.

Use proxies.

Target shipping.

Strike bases.

Sabotage infrastructure.

Exploit vulnerable supply chains.

Or…attempt something spectacular enough…to shock the American public and transform the political environment overnight.

This is the logic behind Pape’s warning.

Iran does not need to defeat the United States military.

It needs to convince Americans…that the price of continuing the war is higher than the value of whatever Washington is trying to achieve.

And mass casualties can change political calculations…faster than almost anything else.

SIGNAL

This is the part I want you to understand.

Pape is not necessarily describing an attack on a crowded shopping mall in Kansas City…or a train station in Chicago.

A mass-casualty attack could take many forms.

A strike on a concentrated group of American troops.

A successful attack on a major military installation.

A ship hit…while carrying hundreds or thousands of personnel.

A coordinated proxy operation.

An attack on energy or civilian infrastructure…that produces cascading deaths.

Or an operation against civilians intended to trigger fear…rage…and demands for retaliation.

In the interview, Pape argues that an attack producing substantial American casualties has become a likely next step in the conflict’s escalation…not because Iran can win a conventional war…but because it may need a dramatic act capable of changing America’s behavior.

That distinction matters.

The objective may not simply be revenge.

• The objective may be manipulation.

• Kill enough Americans.

• Create national trauma.

• Provoke an enormous response.

• Pull the United States deeper into the war.

• Radicalize more people.

• Expand the battlefield.

• Make withdrawal politically impossible.

That is not madness.

It is strategy.

A ruthless strategy.

A monstrous strategy.

But a strategy…nonetheless.

One of the most dangerous myths Americans carry into war…is the belief that our enemies want the same kind of victory we want.

They may not.

They may not need to capture territory.

They may not need to defeat our military.

They may not need to survive intact.

They may simply need to cause us to make decisions…that weaken us.

THE ATTACK AFTER THE ATTACK

Suppose Pape is right.

Suppose an attack kills dozens…hundreds…or even more Americans.

What happens next?

The television networks switch to continuous coverage.

Flags appear behind every anchor.

Politicians demand immediate retaliation.

Anyone calling for restraint is accused of weakness.

The White House promises that those responsible…will pay a price they cannot imagine.

Targets expand.

Troops move.

Congress falls in line.

The public…frightened and furious…accepts actions it would have rejected 24 hours earlier.

That is the attack after the attack.

The first attack kills people.

The second…attacks judgment.

It compresses time.

Narrows choices.

Punishes deliberation.

And…creates the psychological conditions under which leaders can take a limited conflict…and turn it into a generational catastrophe.

We have seen this pattern before.

The emotional demand to do something…becomes more powerful than the strategic requirement to do the right thing.

And once that happens…the enemy begins influencing American policy from the outside.

That is why preparation cannot begin after the explosion.

It must begin before it.

THE GROUND-WAR PROBLEM

Pape also warns about the possibility that the United States could eventually introduce ground forces if bombing fails to achieve Washington’s objectives.

That would fundamentally change the character of the conflict.

Air campaigns allow Americans to imagine war as something distant…technical…and controlled.

Ground forces remove that illusion.

Ground operations require supply lines.

Bases.

Convoys.

Personnel concentrations.

Local partners.

Occupation zones.

And…human beings standing on territory that armed groups consider their homeland.

His conclusions have been debated by other scholars…but…the basic danger is real:

Occupation gives adversaries more targets, more recruits and a clearer political narrative.

Once American troops enter Iran in significant numbers…the question may no longer be whether they can defeat Iranian formations in battle.

They almost certainly can.

The question becomes:

What political order follows?

Who governs?

Who secures the cities?

Who controls the roads?

Who prevents revenge killings?

Who protects nuclear material?

Who stops weapons from flowing to militias?

Who explains to the American public why troops are still dying three years later?

Wars are easy to sell when the map is clean and the arrows move in one direction.

Reality…is messier.

THE ENERGY WEAPON

Iran also possesses leverage far beyond the battlefield.

The Persian Gulf remains one of the most important energy corridors on Earth.

Iran does not necessarily need to seal the Strait of Hormuz permanently…to cause enormous damage.

It may only need to make passage dangerous…unpredictable…and expensive.

A damaged tanker.

A drone attack.

A mine.

A threatened shipping company.

An insurance market that suddenly decides the risk is too great.

Energy markets do not wait for complete closure.

They react to fear.

Prices rise.

Transportation costs increase.

Inflation returns.

Businesses pay more.

Families pay more.

Governments come under pressure.

Not by destroying its army.

By disrupting the system…its citizens depend upon.

WHAT PAPE MAY BE WRONG ABOUT

Responsible analysis requires something more than repeating the most frightening prediction.

Pape could be wrong.

Iran’s leadership may decide that a spectacular mass-casualty attack would guarantee overwhelming retaliation and threaten the regime’s survival.

Iranian capabilities may have been damaged more severely than outside observers understand.

American and allied intelligence may disrupt planned attacks.

Backchannel negotiations may produce an offramp.

Internal divisions may restrain Iranian decision-makers.

And…no individual expert…no matter how experienced…can predict the behavior of governments with certainty.

We should also be careful with headlines announcing that an attack is coming.

Pape is making a strategic forecast…not reporting an intercepted operational order.

That distinction is vital.

But dismissing the warning because it is not certain…would be just as irresponsible as treating it as prophecy.

Risk assessment is not fortune-telling.

It is the process…of recognizing what an adversary is capable of doing…what incentives it faces…and what indicators would tell us the danger is increasing.

THE INDICATORS I WOULD WATCH

Here is what matters now:

Changes in protection levels at American military installations.

Watch for unusual restrictions…dispersal of personnel…canceled leave…movement of defensive systems or public warnings to military families.

Evacuations from embassies and diplomatic facilities.

Governments sometimes reduce staff before acknowledging the full reason publicly.

Warnings involving shipping, aviation or energy infrastructure.

A sudden change in official guidance…may indicate intelligence about a specific threat stream.

Movement by Iranian proxy organizations.

Watch for coordinated rhetoric…mobilization or a shift from symbolic attacks…toward operations intended to produce large numbers of casualties.

Changes in the language coming from Tehran.

There is a difference between promising retaliation…and framing mass death as a necessary or legitimate response.

American preparations for ground operations.

Logistics reveal intent. Fuel…transport aircraft…medical capacity…engineering units and force protection often tell us more than speeches.

A narrowing of diplomatic options.

When governments stop talking about terms…and begin talking exclusively about victory…punishment and credibility…the room for error becomes dangerously small.

No single indicator proves that an attack is imminent.

But several…moving together…would constitute a signal.

Paper.

Personnel.

Operations.

That is when concern should rise sharply.

CONTINUITY

The American public has been trained to experience war as a series of isolated headlines.

A strike.

A retaliation.

A briefing.

A funeral.

A promise.

Then…the news cycle moves on.

But…the enemy does not experience these events separately.

Neither should we.

Every action changes the menu of possible reactions.

Every death creates pressure.

Every public commitment makes retreat more difficult.

Every escalation increases the political cost of restraint.

That is why continuity matters.

The question is not merely what happened today.

The question…is what today makes more likely tomorrow.

Pape’s warning should be understood in that context.

He is not saying Iran possesses magical powers.

He is saying the strategic incentives…created by this war…may now reward an attempt to produce American mass casualties.

And if that happens…our leaders will face…the most consequential decisions of the entire conflict…at precisely the moment when the country is least emotionally capable of making them carefully.

IDENTITY

This is where we decide what kind of citizens we intend to be.

Fearful citizens demand certainty where none exists.

Partisan citizens accept whatever their side tells them.

Passive citizens wait for the explosion…and then discover that every decision has already been made for them.

Oriented citizens do something different.

They study the warning.

They separate evidence…from speculation.

They watch the indicators.

They refuse to be manipulated by either complacency or panic.

And…when violence comes…they do not surrender their judgment to the loudest person in the room.

That is our responsibility now.

Not to predict the exact location of an attack.

Not to spread rumors.

Not to frighten our neighbors.

But…to understand the strategic environment…before events begin moving too quickly to understand.

Robert Pape may be wrong about what comes next.

I sincerely hope he is.

But..he has given us a warning…based on decades of studying the point where bombing campaigns…occupation…political coercion…and terrorism collide.

We would be fools to ignore it.

Don’t panic.

Pay attention.

And watch what moves next.

What I’m watching now

I will be closely tracking force-protection changes…embassy activity…proxy mobilization…threats to shipping…signs of American ground preparation…and…any movement toward…or away…from…a negotiated offramp.

Those indicators will tell us whether Pape’s warning is merely one possible scenario…

Or…the outline of what is already beginning.

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-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. If you take one thing from this, don't let it be fear. Fear is the resource an adversary is counting on harvesting. Let it be this instead: decide now…while you're calm…what you'll require of your leaders before you support the next escalation. Because you will not be able to think clearly about it afterward. Nobody can. That's the entire point of the attack after the attack.

Oh, and you can check out Pape’s Substack, here Robert Pape's Substack

SOURCES

Primary source — the interview

• Steven Bartlett, The Diary of a CEO, “Iran War Expert: A Mass Casualty Attack Is Coming!” featuring Robert Pape — YouTube | Apple Podcasts (released July 23, 2026)

• Full transcript of the episode — Singju Post (third-party transcript; useful for locating quotes, not an official record)

• Episode summary and chapter timeline — Phil’s Stock World

Who Robert Pape is

• Robert A. Pape — faculty page, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago

• The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) — the research center Pape founded in 2004 and directs

• CPOST overview, University of Chicago

The books referenced

• Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, 1996)

• Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005)

• Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It, with James K. Feldman (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

(Full publication list on his UChicago faculty page.)

The earlier interviews — how the forecast developed

Pape has been on this beat for months, and the through-line matters more than any single episode.

• “I Simulated The Iran War for 20 Years” — DOAC, March 12, 2026. Where the “escalation trap” framing was first laid out.

• “The Most Dangerous Stage Begins Now” — DOAC, April 13, 2026. On remaining off-ramps and the ground-war threshold.

Additional reporting and coverage

• “Pape on Iran: ‘We’re the Titanic About to Hit Iceberg’; Thousands of Casualties Possible” — Newsmax, July 16, 2026

• “Robert Pape to Newsmax: ‘No Doubt’ Trump ‘Underestimated Iran’” — Newsmax, July 19, 2026

• “U.S. Faces 70% Probability of Iran Ground War Within Weeks” — BigGo Finance, July 2026

A note on sourcing: Pape is making a strategic forecast based on modeling and decades of research, not reporting classified intelligence or an intercepted operational order. Everything above is publicly available…and I’d encourage you to watch the full interview and not just my summary of it. Where I’ve characterized his argument…the transcript is linked so you can check me.

You’re Still Here. Do You Understand What That Means?

BEDROCK–Friday. We close the week strong. Because what you did this week was harder than you’re giving yourself credit for.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter, Bedrock series #03: Friday, July 24th, 2026.

It’s Friday. You made it.

I want you to stop for a second–actually stop–and take that in…because you’re going to rush right past it if I let you.

You made it through another week.

Another week of the flood. Another week of the gut-punches…the outrage…the exhaustion machine running full blast…aimed straight at you. Another week they bet would be the one that finally wore you down to nothing.

And…here you are. Still standing. Still reading. Still in it.

You think that’s ordinary. It isn’t. Let me tell you what it actually is.

Endurance doesn’t look like anything

Here’s the cruel trick of this kind of fight: winning it doesn’t look like winning.

There’s no finish line you cross with your arms up. No crowd. No moment…where a bell rings…and someone declares you made it. Endurance is invisible. It looks like a tired person…doing the ordinary things…one more day.

So…you don’t feel like you’re winning. You feel like you’re just barely hanging on.

But…go back and remember what we established on Monday: they are trying to exhaust you. Your quitting…is the entire objective. It’s the whole game.

Which means…every ordinary day you refuse to quit…is a day they lose.

You didn’t feel heroic this week. You felt tired. But…you got up. You carried what was yours and…if you took Wednesday to heart…you started setting down what wasn’t. You hit your floor even on the days it was all you could do.

That’s not “barely hanging on.” That’s winning the exact war being waged against you…one unglamorous day at a time.

Read more

Hunter Biden: The Man Who Ran Out of F*cks

Hunter Biden spent five years as the GOP’s favorite piñata. Now he’s swinging back, and nobody in Washington has figured out how to make him stop.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #979: Thursday, July 23rd, 2026

Let me tell you what leverage is.

Leverage…is what you have over a man who still wants something. A confirmation. A committee seat. A book deal. A dinner invitation from people who matter. Take away the wanting and you take away the grip…and what’s left standing in front of you is a guy with a microphone…and a very long memory.

That’s the situation the Republican Party is currently failing to understand.

For half a decade…Hunter Biden was the single most useful prop in American politics. Not a person…a prop.

A laptop with a last name attached. He got hauled through depositions…threaded into impeachment theater…waved around at press conferences by men who couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup.

The entire apparatus was built on one assumption:

That shame was load-bearing. That he’d stay quiet…because quiet was the price of eventually being left alone.

They were wrong about the price. They were wrong about the man. And…now…the bill is coming due…in the only currency that actually circulates in 2026: podcast clips.

The Business Model Has Changed

Here’s what nobody in the consultant class wants to say out loud:

The old media gatekeeping was a protection racket…and it protected them, not you.

The way it used to work…a guy like Hunter Biden gets exactly one shot at rehabilitation. A sit-down with a serious anchor. Contrite posture…careful phrasing… lawyer in the wings…everything sanded down to nothing by the time it airs.

In exchange, the network gets a ratings night…and the political establishment gets its story:

Fallen son, humbled…moving on.

He isn’t doing that anymore. He’s going on shows nobody in a Georgetown living room has heard of…and saying whatever the hell he wants for two hours at a stretch.

Last July it was Andrew Callaghan and a monologue about George Clooney that I’d characterize as “spirited.”

Last week it was I’ve Had It with Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan. Wednesday it was Don Lemon…where he said of Jake Tapper…a man he’s known twenty-five years…a man who put his father’s decline between hard covers…that he’s “a really poor journalist” and…on the subject of the book…that Tapper is “full of fcking sht.”

That is not a gaffe. Nobody says that by accident. That’s a man who has calculated exactly what the downside is…and concluded that there isn’t one.

The whole machine ran on his shame. He stopped paying, and the machine has no other revenue stream.

The Closetocracy

The line that actually detonated came on the Welch and Sullivan show on July 18, and it’s worth being precise about what he said, because precision is where this story lives.

He said the biggest problem in Washington isn’t the oligarchy. It’s what he called the “closetocracy” …his claim that there’s a closeted…largely Republican network in D.C….that everyone already knows who’s in it…and that the private contortion of it curdles into public cruelty.

His argument, roughly:

A man at war with himself will find someone else to take it out on, and has.

Then he named nobody.

Read that again, because it’s the whole play. He didn’t out a soul. He put a shape on the table and let every reader fill it in…which means every single person who spent the last five years insisting his private life was a matter of national concern…now gets to sit with the general principle for a while.

I want to be careful here, and so should you:

“Everybody knows” is not evidence…it’s a vibe…and vibes have ruined more people than they’ve ever exposed. But…you can decline to endorse the accusation and still recognize the maneuver for what it is. He held up the mirror. He didn’t have to throw anything.

I loved it so much, I literally felt like I was vibrating inside after I watched the video clip. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen and heard for a while.

Why This Actually Works

Three reasons, and they’re structural, not personal.

One: the pardon closed the file.

Whatever you think of it…and plenty of Democrats hated it…a December 2024 pardon is a door that locks behind you. Prosecution was the lever. The lever’s gone.

Two: he has no constituency to protect.

He isn’t running for anything. He doesn’t need a donor to like him…a swing voter to tolerate him…or a network to book him again. He is the rarest creature in American public life: a famous person with no ask.

Three: the attack surface is already fully mapped.

Every humiliating thing about Hunter Biden was published years ago…by people who wanted it to destroy him. What exactly is the follow-up threat? There’s nothing left in the file.

The oppo research budget line for this guy…should be zero…because everything they’d dig up…is already in a congressional exhibit…with a page number.

You cannot leverage a man who has been fully disclosed. The disclosure was supposed to be the punishment. It turned out to be the release.

BONUS: The Part That Should Actually Worry Them

The clips aren’t the threat. The format is.

Understand the difference, because the people paid to understand it…clearly don’t.

A hostile interview is a contained event. Twelve minutes. A hard out. An anchor who has to get to weather. A control room that can cut a feed. Whatever damage happens, happens inside a box that somebody else built…and boxes can be managed.

That’s what five years of communications strategy was designed to handle.

A two-hour podcast is not a box. It’s a room with no clock…no producer in anybody’s ear…no next booking to protect…and a host whose entire business model…rewards the guest saying the thing.

The only editorial constraint left in that room is a lawyer…and he’s already told you exactly where that line sits…he’ll characterize…he’ll gesture…he’ll describe a shape. He won’t name it.

So the ceiling on this isn’t set by what he’s said so far. It’s set by whatever he decides to say on some ordinary Tuesday…to someone with forty thousand subscribers…about something nobody has thought to ask him in half a decade.

Now think about what that does to the other side of the table.

You cannot opposition-research a man who’s already been fully disclosed. You cannot primary a man who isn’t running.

You cannot sue him into silence…without a discovery process…that runs directly through the exact subject matter you’d least like discovered…and everyone involved knows it…which is why the lawsuits everybody keeps threatening…keep not materializing.

You cannot even ignore him…because ignoring him is a decision made by editors…and editors no longer control the distribution.

There is no rapid-response playbook for this. There’s no war room function. Every tool in the kit assumes the target wants something, and he doesn’t.

The three questions nobody has good answers to

1. Who talks him down?

There’s no campaign to protect…no party discipline that reaches him…no institutional relationship left to leverage. His father is out of office. Historically…the family fixer was the family…and the family’s remaining political interests are, at this point, mostly retrospective.

2. What’s the second escalation?

He’s already gone after a marquee network anchor by name…and described a network of people by category. The next rung up the ladder is specificity…and specificity is the one thing his lawyer is visibly holding him back from. That’s a lot of tension in a rope that nobody – and I mean NOBODY–on the other side controls.

3. Who’s next to figure this out?

Because that’s the real story here, and it has nothing to do with Hunter Biden. He’s the proof of concept. Every disgraced…pardoned…primaried-out…indicted-and-acquitted figure in American politics…is currently watching a man discover that total public humiliation…once complete…converts into total freedom.

The supply of people with nothing left to lose is not small…and it is sure as hell not shrinking.

The shame economy required everyone to keep paying into it. One person stopped…publicly…and it turned out the whole damn thing was voluntary.

That’s the part worth sitting with. Not what he said about anybody. What it demonstrated about the price of saying it.

Which is…as far as anyone can tell…nothing.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. One more thing, and then I'll leave it alone. Every single person now complaining that Hunter Biden won't shut up spent five years demanding he be made to talk. They got exactly what they asked for. Read the fine print next time.

P.S.S. I absolutely love Hunter Biden…and what he’s doing. I hope he continues escalating and bringing even more fire and venom.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Certify Now Wants to Run the Certification

Andy Biggs just won Arizona. The election is in November–but 2028 is what’s actually on the table.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #978: Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026

Let’s orient ourselves.

This is not simply a story about who may become Arizona’s next governor. No, no, no.

It is a story…about who could be positioned inside the machinery of the 2028 presidential election…and what happens if the people operating that machinery…refuse to accept the voters’ decision.

To understand the threat…we need to go back to December 2022.

Cochise County, Arizona.

Two Republican county supervisors refused to certify the election results. The votes had been counted. There was no evidence that the tally was wrong.

They simply folded their arms and said no.

A judge had to order them to perform their legal duty.

Think about what that means.

In the United States, in the twenty-first century…it required a court order to make elected officials sign a document confirming what voters had already decided.

Hold that image in your mind.

Because Arizona Republicans have now nominated for governor…a man who participated in the federal version of that same refusal.

ORIENTATION: What Just Happened

Andy Biggs won the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona.

It wasn’t close.

He took more than 70 percent of the vote…crushing Congressman David Schweikert and riding Donald Trump’s endorsement and Turning Point USA’s political machinery through the primary.

The political press will cover it as a conventional governor’s race:

Taxes.
The border.
Schools.
Housing.
The cost of living.

Those issues matter.

But…they are not the entire election. Oh, hell no.

The question most voters must be taught to ask is this:

What authority will Arizona’s next governor possess during the 2028 presidential election?

That is where the real stakes begin.

DOCTRINE: Never Evaluate an Election Only by the Office Being Filled

Here is the doctrine:

When an election denier seeks an office…involved in administering…certifying…or validating elections…evaluate the candidacy by the power of the office…not merely by the title on the ballot.

Arizona is not just another state in presidential politics.

It was the tip of the spear in 2020. A very ugly tip.

Arizona was where fake electors assembled. It was where “Kraken” litigation …attempted to invalidate lawful votes. It became one of the principal testing grounds…for turning a candidate’s defeat at the ballot box…into victory on paper.

The governor is woven into the process through which Arizona’s presidential results become official:

The canvass…certifications…and documents…transforming millions of individual votes into electoral votes.

So…whom did Arizona Republicans nominate to occupy that office?

Read that again carefully:

The certification of the 2020 election is precisely what Biggs attempted to obstruct. Now he wants an office positioned inside the certification process in 2028.

That does not automatically prove what Biggs would do four years from now.

But…it establishes the risk beyond any reasonable doubt.

Past conduct is an indicator.

Power is an opportunity.

When the same person…acquires both…attention is mandatory.

SIGNAL: He Isn’t Running Alone

This is the part of the story that changes its meaning.

On the same night…Arizona Republicans nominated Biggs for governor…they nominated Alexander Kolodin for secretary of state.

That office is not adjacent to election administration.

It is the center of it.

Arizona’s secretary of state is the state’s chief election officer…with responsibilities involving voting systems…statewide election results and certification.

Kolodin is an attorney who led lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 and 2022 election results. Judges and the Arizona State Bar rebuked his conduct. He participated in the “Kraken” litigation…represented fake electors and pursued efforts to disqualify mail-in ballots.

The State Bar of Arizona sanctioned him in 2023.

Now…he wants to become Arizona’s chief election officer…during the approach to the 2028 presidential election.

Put the two races beside each other:

• The man who opposed certification wants the governor’s office.

• The man who litigated against election results and represented fake electors wants the secretary of state’s office.

• Both offices will be positioned inside Arizona’s 2028 election machinery.

• The prize is one of America’s most contested collections of electoral votes.

These are not two unrelated candidacies.

They are two access points to the same system.

That is the signal.

SIGNAL: Biggs Has Become Quieter

Biggs spent years casting doubt on the 2020 election.

Now, facing a competitive statewide election…he has stepped away from that subject.

Some will interpret the silence as moderation.

I don’t.

Political candidates understand sequencing. They know which messages excite primary voters…and which frighten independents. They know when to display their most extreme commitments…and when to put them back in the drawer.

The question is not whether Biggs talks about overturning elections every day.

The question is whether he has ever repudiated what he did.

Has he acknowledged that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election?

Has he admitted that his vote against certification was wrong?

Has he promised unequivocally to certify Arizona’s results in 2028 regardless of which candidate wins?

Until those answers are clear…silence is not reassurance.

Silence is an indicator.

CONTINUITY: Cochise County Was a Rehearsal

This is why I began with Cochise County.

The refusal there did not ultimately succeed. A court intervened. The supervisors were ordered to certify…and the lawful result survived.

That can create a dangerous sense of comfort.

The system worked.

Yes…but only because someone attempted to break it…someone else challenged them… and a functioning court…still possessed enough authority to force compliance.

Continuity means carrying the lesson forward.

What happens when election denial is no longer confined to two county supervisors?

What happens when it reaches the governor’s office?

What happens when it reaches the secretary of state’s office?

What happens when multiple officials act together…each using a different portion of the process to delay…cloud…contest or obstruct the final result?

And…what happens if the courts themselves…are less willing…or less able…to stop them?

Cochise County was not proof that the danger was imaginary.

It was proof that refusal is possible.

It demonstrated how little is required to create a certification crisis: not fraudulent ballots…compromised machines or foreign interference.

Just officials holding the pens who decide not to sign.

IDENTITY: What People Who Understand the Stakes Do Now

I am not writing this to make you angry for the afternoon.

Anger is cheap. It burns hot…produces a few posts and disappears by dinner.

Orientation must lead to action.

Right now…this is still a campaign.

It is persuadable.

It is winnable.

Katie Hobbs has already demonstrated that a Democrat can win statewide in Arizona…by holding the Democratic coalition…winning independents…and attracting Republicans who understand…that loyalty to the Constitution must come before loyalty to Donald Trump.

But voters cannot act on stakes they do not recognize.

Most Arizonans will be told that they are voting on taxes…schools…immigration and prices. They may never be told that they are also choosing who will occupy crucial positions when Arizona determines the winner of the 2028 presidential election.

Our responsibility is to make those stakes visible before people vote…not after the certification crisis begins.

People who protect democracy do not wait until the alarm is screaming.

They recognize the signal while it is still quiet.

ACTION DESK: Before You Close This

Do three things.

First:

Send this to three people who live in Arizona…or who love someone who does.

Not thirty strangers.

Three actual people you can contact again.

Second:

Track both races.

The press will concentrate on the governor’s contest because it sits at the top of the ballot. Do not lose sight of the secretary of state’s race one line below it.

The greatest leverage may be located there.

Third:

Remember Cochise County.

Remember that officials refused to certify a lawful election.

Remember that a judge had to force them to sign.

Then…ask what could happen in 2028…if the governor and secretary of state are both men whose records demonstrate hostility toward election results they dislike.

The votes will be counted by ordinary Americans performing difficult…repetitive…and mostly invisible work.

The decisive question may be whether the officials above them accept what those votes say.

Arizona Republicans have nominated two men…whose histories give voters profound reason to doubt that they will.

November is not merely about who governs Arizona for the next four years.

It is about who may be holding the pens…when America chooses its next president.

Don’t panic. Pay attention.

Then make certain Arizona…understands what is actually on the ballot.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Here's the thing I couldn't shake while writing this. In 2022, the system held by an inch. A judge stepped in. Officials who tried to refuse were forced to comply. The guardrail worked…barely.

But…guardrails aren't laws of physics. They're just people…in offices…willing to say no to their own side.

Now…the same movement that ran into those guardrails last time…is running to fill the offices where the guardrails live. You don't do that by accident.

You do that…because last time…the pen wasn't in your hand…and you've decided that next time…it will be. November is when you decide whether that plan works. Not 2028. November.

By 2028…it's already too late to matter.

Sources

• Trump-backed Rep. Andy Biggs wins GOP primary for Arizona governor — Fox News

• Andy Biggs wins GOP nomination to challenge Katie Hobbs — Associated Press via ABC News

• Arizona primary takeaways: Republicans back Trump’s picks — CNN

• Alexander Kolodin, who tried to overturn Arizona election results, wins GOP nod for secretary of state — NBC News

• What to watch in Arizona: the 2028 chief election officer at stake — NBC News Politics Desk

• Arizona Republicans pick nominees for governor and other top offices — PBS NewsHour

• Arizona certifies 2022 results after Cochise County certification standoff — Fox News

• Freedom Caucus member Kolodin, sanctioned over 2020 lawsuits, runs for secretary of state — Arizona Mirror

The Daily Floor: The One Practice That Keeps You Standing

BEDROCK–Wednesday. The standalone cornerstone. Free for everyone–read it, use it, and send it to someone who needs it.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter, Bedrock series #02: Wenesday, July 22nd, 2026

On Monday…I told you the hard truth: the exhaustion is the strategy. They’re not trying to beat you. They’re trying to wear you down until you go quiet.

Today…I’m giving you the fix. The actual…concrete practice…that I use to stay standing when the flood comes.

No slogans. No “just think positive” …I’d never insult you with that. A tool. Something you can put to work before you finish your coffee.

It comes in two parts. Together…they’ve kept me on my feet through stretches I wasn’t sure I’d get through. Let me hand them to you.

Part one: the cut

Here’s what’s drowning you. It isn’t the news. It’s that you’re carrying all of it…and almost none of it is actually yours to carry.

So…every morning…before the phone…before the feed…you make one cut. You take everything sitting on your chest…and you sort it into two piles.

Pile one: what I can actually touch today.

Pile two: everything else.

That’s it. That’s the cut.

The vote you’ll cast. The call you’ll make to a representative. The neighbor you’ll check on. The dollars you’ll give. The words you’ll write. The kid you’ll raise to be decent. Those go in pile one. Those are yours. They’re real. Your hands can reach them.

The court ruling three states away. What some senator said on television. The latest thing designed to make your stomach drop. The outcome of an election eight months out. Real? Yes. Heavy? God, yes.

Yours to carry today? No.

And…here’s the move that changes your life: you are allowed to set pile two down.

Not forever. Not with your head in the sand. You’ll pick the relevant parts back up when there’s actually something to do with them. But…you do not have to carry the entire weight of a nation’s crisis…in your body, at 6 a.m….when there is not one single thing you can do about most of it before lunch.

You were never meant to hold it all. No one can. That crushing, all-of-it weight you’ve been dragging around? It was never yours. Put it down.

Carry what’s yours. Set down the rest. Every single morning.

Part two: the floor

Now the second part…and this is the one that saves you on the worst days.

You need a Daily Floor. A non-negotiable minimum you protect no matter what, especially when everything’s on fire.

Here’s the thinking. On good days…you do a lot. Great. But…resilience isn’t built on good days. It’s built on what you refuse to let collapse on the bad ones…the days you’re flattened, hopeless, sure it’s all pointless.

On those days…you don’t need to be a hero. You just need to not hit zero.

So you decide…right now…while you’re calm…the handful of things that keep you a functioning human.

Mine are simple. Four things:

• Sleep I actually protect, because everything…my judgment, my mood, my hope… is downstream of it. I get 7 hours a night…no matter what. It’s THE priority.

• One thing for my body. A walk. Thirty pushups. A stretch. Not necessarily a workout. A rep. Proof I’m still in here.

• One real human connection. A text that isn’t about the news. A call. A face. Not the feed…a person.

• One thing that’s mine. Music…a page of a book…ten minutes outside. One small thing the chaos doesn’t get to touch.

That’s my floor. Four things. On my best day…I sail past it. On my worst day…the day I can’t do anything…I do those four, and only those four…and I call it a win. Because it is.

Your floor will look different. Build your own. Keep it small; small enough that you can hit it on the day you feel like you can’t get off the couch. If it’s too ambitious…it’s not a floor. A floor is the thing you never fall below.

Miss everything else. Let the ambitious to-do list burn. But…you hit your floor.

Because a person who never hits zero…never has to climb all the way back up from nothing. And that…not heroics…not adrenaline…is how you’re still standing a year from now when the sprinters have all dropped.

Put it to work today

Two moves. That’s the whole practice.

The cut: carry what’s yours today…set down the rest.

The floor: protect your non-negotiable minimum…no matter what.

Do the cut this morning. Build your floor tonight…write the list down…actually write it…four or five things…small enough to survive your darkest day.

That’s it. That’s the cornerstone. It’s not fancy. The things that hold under real weight rarely are…that’s the whole idea behind the name Bedrock.

They’re betting you’ll carry everything until you collapse.

So…carry what’s yours. Set down the rest. And never…ever hit zero.

I’ll see you Friday…and we’ll close the week strong.

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-Jack

Jack Hopkins

Bedrock: what holds when everything shakes. If this helped you, send it to someone who’s tired. That’s how we keep each other standing.

The FBI Director Just Booked a Flight to Moscow –and the KGB’s Grandchildren Are Picking Him Up at the Airport

Read this slowly. Then ask yourself one question: who does the FBI actually work for?

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #977: Tuesday, July 21st, 2026

Let me tell you something that should stop you cold.

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation…the top cop in the United States of America, the man with the keys to every counterintelligence file the Republic owns …is reportedly getting on a plane.

Destination? Moscow. Then St. Petersburg.

His host? Russia’s FSB…the direct institutional successor to the KGB.

Read that again. The secret police. The same outfit, new letterhead.

According to Politico, the trip is penciled in for October 14 and 15. And here’s the part that should make the hair on your neck stand up:

That’s a matter of weeks before the American midterm elections.

Now. I want you to notice something…the polished news anchors won’t say out loud.

Nobody will tell you what he’s doing there.

Even Politico’s own sources…people paid to be diplomatic…called it what it is: “an unusual and sensitive trip for an FBI chief to one of America’s top adversaries.”

Unusual and sensitive. That’s Washington-speak for “we can’t believe he’s actually doing this.”

Here’s Why This Isn’t Normal–And Don’t Let Anyone Tell You It Is

Let me give you the context they’re hoping you skip past.

The last sitting FBI director to set foot in Russia was Robert Mueller. In 2013. Thirteen years ago. And Mueller…remember him?…was later named special counsel to investigate Russia’s interference in American elections.

Think about the symmetry for a second. The man who investigated the Kremlin was the last director to go. The next one to go is a man who spent years insisting the whole investigation was a fraud.

Because that’s who Kash Patel is.

He rose to power as a House Intelligence Committee staffer…made his name attacking the Russia probe…branded the whole affair the “Russiagate hoax,” and even wrote a trilogy of children’s books mocking it. Children’s books. About the Russia investigation.

And now…the man who built his career telling you Russia was never a threat...

...is flying to Russia…to be chaperoned by Russia’s spy service…weeks before your election…with no agenda anyone will name.

“But Trump’s People Go to Russia All The Time”

Sure. Let’s talk about that…because it’s the defense you’ll hear.

Trump’s negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have made repeated trips to Moscow. Trump himself met Putin in Alaska. Fine. Those are diplomats and envoys. Cutting deals is arguably their job.

But…here’s the distinction that matters…and I need you to hold onto it:

The FBI is not a diplomatic agency.

The FBI is the tip of the spear in America’s counterintelligence war…the agency whose entire reason for existing…includes catching Russian spies.

When the head of that agency flies to Moscow…to be hosted by the FSB…the very service he’s supposed to be defending you against…that isn’t diplomacy.

That’s the guard…walking into the vault…and shaking hands with the burglar.

The Part That Should Concern Every Human Being on Earth

Now widen the lens, because this is bigger than one American election.

The whole world runs on a simple, fragile assumption:

That America’s law-enforcement and intelligence institutions are independent. That they answer to the law…not to a strongman…ours or anyone else’s.

The moment that assumption cracks…the moment the FBI Director looks like he’s taking meetings with the FSB weeks before an election…agenda hidden…every dissident…every journalist…every ally who ever trusted American institutions to hold the line has to wonder:

Is anyone still guarding the henhouse? Or has the fox been handed a key and a warm welcome?

He’s not just doing this in the dark. He’s already drawing fire from across the spectrum…even from his own side. MAGA figure Laura Loomer publicly slammed the trip; a former Democratic strategist openly asked what “legitimate reason” there could possibly be.

When your critics and your allies are both saying “wait, what?” …that’s not partisan noise. That’s a warning siren.

What You Should Do With This

I’m not going to tell you what to conclude. I’m going to tell you what to refuse to do: refuse to look away.

Ask the question out loud. Ask your representatives. Ask why the head of the FBI needs an FSB welcome party three weeks before Americans vote. Ask what’s on the agenda that’s too sensitive to write down.

Demand the itinerary. Demand the transcript. Demand daylight.

Because in a free country…the man who guards the secrets…doesn’t get to fly to Moscow and keep his own trip a secret.

Stay awake.

BONUS INVESTIGATION: Follow the Money to Moscow

Before Kash Patel Booked a Flight to Russia, a Kremlin-Linked Filmmaker Wrote Him a Check

What the financial disclosures actually say…and the questions nobody in his office wants to answer.

Look. Anybody can take a strange trip. People make mistakes. But investigators don’t chase headlines…they chase paper. And when you pull Kash Patel’s own paper…a pattern shows up that is a lot harder to wave away than a single plane ticket.

So let’s do what real reporters do.

Let’s follow the money.

The Check

Here’s the fact, straight from the record; not rumor…not a hit piece…but Patel’s own financial disclosure submitted during his confirmation.

In 2024, before he ran the FBI…Kash Patel was paid $25,000 by a film company owned by a Russian national with U.S. citizenship; a company that has produced programming pushing “deep state” conspiracy theories and anti-Western narratives of the kind the Kremlin relentlessly promotes.

The company: Global Tree Pictures. The man who runs it: Igor Lopatonok.

And Lopatonok is not some random producer. His previous projects include a pro-Russian influence campaign that received money from a fund created by Vladimir Putin himself.

Read that twice. A fund. Created by Putin.

Who Is Igor Lopatonok?

This is where the “coincidence” defense starts to crack.

His productions include Ukraine on Fire…which featured Oliver Stone interviewing Putin and pushed the narrative that Ukraine’s 2013 Maidan Revolution was a U.S.-orchestrated coup. He also directed Maidan Massacre…a film that denies pro-Russian forces were behind the killing of activists in Kyiv.

And…according to investigative reporting…Lopatonok has planned films celebrating authoritarian strongmen like Belarus’s Lukashenko and Azerbaijan’s Aliyev.

This is the man whose company…cut Kash Patel a check.

What Did the $25,000 Buy?

Patel’s appearance in a six-part series. And the title alone tells you the genre.

And…Patel wasn’t the only one paid. Bankruptcy filings show the same company…paid Giuliani Communications $100,000 for participation.

Here’s the connective tissue that should stop you:

The series was directed by Sean Stone…who had hosted a show on the Russian state network RT America until it shut down in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.

So line it up. A filmmaker funded by a Putin fund. A director who worked for Russian state TV. A production financed and distributed through pro-Kremlin channels. And in the middle of it…cashing a check…the man who now runs American counterintelligence.

And Now He’s Flying to Moscow

That’s the part that turns a footnote into a story.

It’s one thing for a private citizen to take questionable money for a documentary. It happens.

But…that same man is now the sitting Director of the FBI…and he’s reportedly headed to Russia in October to be hosted by the FSB…agenda undisclosed… weeks before an American election.

The $25,000 was 2024. The Moscow trip is 2026. Same man. Same orbit. Now with a security clearance and the keys to the building.

You don’t need a G’damn conspiracy theory. You just need to be able to count.

In Fairness–Here’s His Side

Because an investigation that ignores the defense isn’t an investigation, it’s a sermon. So here it is, straight:

Patel disclosed this payment himself. It was in the official paperwork. It wasn’t hidden…it was reported, which is exactly how it became public.

His spokesperson said Patel went “above and beyond” the process…countless meetings…hundreds of pages of documents…six hours of testimony…and that the Senate evaluated all potential conflicts.

And…that’s a fair point. Taking money to appear in a film is not a crime. Connections are not proof of coordination. The Senate confirmed him knowing all of this.

But…here’s the thing about disclosure:

It answers what. It doesn’t answer why.

Why did a Putin-adjacent film company want Kash Patel’s face in their product? Why $25,000? And why…of all the people in the U.S. government…is this man…with this history…now the one boarding a plane to be welcomed by Russia’s spy service three weeks before you vote?

Disclosure got us the check.

We’re still waiting on the answer.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Remember the timeline, because the timeline is the whole story.

The check cleared in 2024. The confirmation came in 2025. The Moscow flight is booked for October 2026…a matter of weeks before you walk into a voting booth.

Same man. Same orbit. Only now he’s got a badge, a clearance, and the keys to America’s counterintelligence files. If that sequence doesn’t bother you…ask yourself what would. Then forward this to three people who still think it’s nothing.

Sources

On the reported Moscow trip (Politico, July 2026):

• The Moscow Times — Patel Plans Trip to Russia in October

• The Independent (via Yahoo) — Hosted by the KGB’s successors

• Washington Examiner — Trip details unknown

• Raw Story — “Unusual and sensitive” trip draws scrutiny

• Kyiv Independent — Patel expected to visit Russia

• Meduza — Patel plans to visit Russia in October

On the $25,000 payment (disclosed via Patel’s confirmation filings, Feb. 2025):

• The Washington Post — Patel paid by Russian filmmaker tied to Kremlin

• Newsweek — Scrutiny over payment from Russian-owned film company

• The Daily Beast — Patel pocketed $25K from filmmaker with Kremlin ties

• Kyiv Independent — Trump’s FBI pick took money from Russian propagandist

He Swore He’d Lower Your Prices. Today He Taxed Canada 50%.

Trump just slapped a 50% tariff on Canadian wine, cheese, milk, cement–and, I promise I’m not making this up, hockey sticks. To do it, he reached back to a law from 1930. You know the one. It helped cause the Great Depression.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #976: Monday, July 20th, 2026.

Let me say the quiet part out loud, because nobody in a red hat wants to hear it.

A tariff is a tax. On you.

Not on Canada. Not on some faceless foreign villain. On the American…who buys the thing. When Trump puts a 50% tariff on a bottle of Canadian wine…Ottawa doesn’t cut a check to Washington.

The importer pays it…the store pays it…and then you pay it at the register.

That’s not my opinion. That’s how tariffs work…and nearly every economist alive will tell you the same thing. The foreign country doesn’t eat the cost. You do.

So…today…the man who won an election…swearing up and down he’d bring prices DOWN….signed three proclamations to drive a whole category of prices UP. On purpose. With a pen and a smile.

Let’s walk through the stupidity…because there’s a lot of it…and it deserves the full tour.

What he actually did

On Monday, Trump signed three proclamations imposing an additional 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods.

The White House says it’s punishment for Canada “discriminating” against American cars, booze, and dairy. The covered list runs…in the administration’s own words…from “wine to hockey sticks to cement.” Milk. Cream. Hockey equipment. Building materials.

The tariffs kick in 30 days from now. And…here’s a detail that matters: they hit Canadian goods that were supposed to be protected under USMCA…the free-trade deal Trump himself signed in his first term and called one of the best in history. More on that in a minute…because it’s a beauty.

Now, the tour.

Stupid #1: He’s taxing Americans and calling it toughness

Say you own a bar in Detroit. Or a construction firm in Buffalo. Or you just like a Canadian beer and a wheel of good cheese.

Congratulations…you just got a 50% price hike…and the guy who did it is on TV telling you he did it FOR you.

This is the shell game at the center of the whole tariff religion. They dress up a consumer tax…as a punch in Canada’s nose. But the fist…lands on your wallet. Every “tough on trade” headline is really a “your groceries cost more now” headline wearing a costume.

And remember the pitch. Prices down. Day one. He said it a hundred times. This is the opposite of that. This is prices up…by design, signed into being while he tells you it’s a win.

Stupid #2: He dusted off the law that made the Depression worse

Here’s the part that should make your jaw hit the floor.

The authority he used is Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. And the Tariff Act of 1930 has another…more famous name: Smoot-Hawley.

Yes…that Smoot-Hawley. The tariff law that economists have spent nearly a century blaming for choking off global trade…and deepening the Great Depression. The one they teach as a cautionary tale. The one…that triggered a wave of foreign retaliation …and helped turn a bad downturn…into a catastrophe.

Of all the dusty tools in the drawer…he reached for the one with “worsened the Great Depression” stamped on the handle.

It’s like treating a headache by reaching for the bottle marked POISON…because you liked the shape of it. If you set out to design a policy that broadcasts “I have learned nothing from history,” you could not do better than this.

Stupid #3: He’s torching his own trade deal

Follow the timeline, because it’s a masterpiece of self-sabotage.

First term: Trump rips up NAFTA, negotiates USMCA…and spikes the football. Greatest deal ever, he says. Signs it. Takes the credit.

Now: he lets that same deal lapse without renewal…blows a hole in what’s left of it… and slaps 50% tariffs on goods the deal was supposed to shield. The negotiations he’s kicked off could drag on for a decade. So the “best trade deal in history”…his words…his signature…is now roadkill under his own tires.

You cannot simultaneously claim you’re the greatest dealmaker who ever lived…and keep detonating your own deals. Pick one. The evidence has picked for him.

Stupid #4: Canada hits back, and both sides bleed

Trade wars have a rhythm, and it’s always the same:

You hit, they hit back…everyone loses…nobody wins…and the bill lands on ordinary people in both countries.

Canada already retaliated against his earlier rounds…pulling American liquor off store shelves across most of the country…putting duties on U.S. vehicles.

Now…Ontario’s premier is calling for Canada to answer this one “tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.”

That’s not a bluff. Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the U.S….and is deeply woven into our auto and metals supply chains. When you yank on a thread that tangled…you don’t hurt one sweater. You unravel both.

And here’s the kicker on the target: Canada is our friend. Our ally. The quiet…polite neighbor who’s stood next to us in every foreign fight that mattered. Trump keeps swinging at the one country least likely to deserve it…while calling them the 51st state…like it’s a joke everyone’s in on. They are not laughing.

Stupid #5: He wants to tariff the weather

I saved this one because you’ll think I’ve lost it.

According to the reporting, Trump also asked his aides to look into slapping additional tariffs on Canada because Canadian wildfire smoke has been drifting south and hurting U.S. air quality.

Tariffs. On smoke.

Let that sit. You cannot tax a weather pattern into submission. Wildfires do not read proclamations. Smoke does not clear customs. This is a man…so in love with the tariff hammer that he’s now eyeing the sky…wondering…if he can bill the clouds. It would be hilarious if he didn’t have the pen to actually try it.

Stupid #6: Hockey sticks, cement, and the worst possible timing

Step back and look at the target list one more time.

Hockey sticks. In a fight with Canada. It’s almost performance art. If a sitcom writer pitched “the president launches a trade war and the first casualty is hockey equipment,” the room would say it’s too on-the-nose.

Cement, milk, wine…these aren’t luxuries for the rich. They’re the stuff of building… eating…living. You’re taxing the middle of the economy and the middle of the country.

And the timing. This lands months before the November midterms. Self-inflicted inflation…right when voters are deciding whether the people in charge have any idea what they’re doing. He’s handing his opponents the receipt and asking them to mail it to every kitchen table in America.

Don’t let them call it strength

Here’s what I want you to hold onto.

They will package this as backbone. As fighting for the American worker. As finally getting tough. And…it is none of those things.

That’s not strength. That’s a man swinging a hammer at his own house…and charging you for the broken windows.

He told you he’d bring prices down. Watch what he does instead. Write it down. And when someone insists this is genius…this is leadership…this is the art of the deal…

Don’t give in.

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#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

They’re Not Trying to Beat You. They’re Trying to Exhaust You.

BEDROCK–Monday. We set the foundation for the week. And it starts with understanding the actual weapon being used against you.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter, Bedrock Series #1: Monday, July 20th, 2026

Let me tell you something it took me far too long to understand.

The people tearing at this country are not trying to win an argument with you.

They’re not trying to change your mind. They’re not trying to persuade you. Most days…they’re not even really trying to beat you.

They’re trying to wear you out.

Sit with that…because it changes everything about how you fight back.

The flood is the strategy

You’ve felt it. The firehose. One outrage…on top of another on top of another…so fast you can’t finish being angry about the first…before the second lands.

You think that’s chaos. It isn’t.

It’s design.

When everything is an emergency…nothing can hold your attention long enough to become action.

When every single day brings a new gut-punch…your nervous system stops being able to tell the difference between a papercut…and a heart attack. You go numb. You have to. It’s the only way to survive the noise.

And numb…is exactly where they want you.

A numb citizen doesn’t march. A numb citizen doesn’t call. A numb citizen doesn’t give money…doesn’t organize…doesn’t vote…doesn’t even argue at Thanksgiving.

A numb citizen scrolls…sighs…and mutters “what’s the point” …and then goes quiet.

That quiet? That’s the win they’re going for. Not your agreement. Your silence. Your exhaustion. Your slow…tired drift toward the couch.

They don’t need you to agree with them. They just need you to be too tired…to get up.

Read more

John Fetterman Ran as a Democrat. He’s Governed as a Houseguest.

The "red line" this week wasn't courage. It was the loudest tell yet from a man who took the seat that saved our majority–and spent every day since sneering at the people who handed it to him.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #975: Sunday, July 19th, 2026

Let me tell you what set me off this week.

John Fetterman…Democratic senator from Pennsylvania…the seat we fought for…the seat that held the majority…went on television and announced his “red line.” If the party ever officially turns on Israel…that’s when he walks.

A threat. From a sitting Democrat. Aimed at his own party. Delivered, naturally…with a camera rolling.

And the pundits called it principle. Bravery. A man of conviction.

Spare me.

So…let’s stop pretending this week was a surprise. Let’s walk through the act. And when we’re done…I think you’ll be less shocked than annoyed; annoyed that we ever handed this man the keys.

We built the myth. He cashed it.

Remember how they sold him to us.

Six-foot-eight, hoodie, tattoos, the mayor who rolled into gutted Braddock…and won by a single vote. The authentic Rust Belt guy…who…could win back working people …without apologizing for a progressive platform…weed…unions…LGBT rights…the works. GQ called him a “taste god.” The left called him the future.

We poured money into him. We knocked doors. We forgave the rough edges…because he was ours…and because in 2022 that seat was everything.

And the moment he had it? He started spending it against us.

Understand the trade we made. Fetterman’s win didn’t just send a guy to Washington. It held the Senate. It was the difference. Democrats gave that man everything…the machine…the money…the majority-making seat.

He has been charging us interest ever since.

The performance

Here’s the part that actually earns the irritation. Not one heterodox vote. Not honest disagreement. The pattern.

He didn’t just break with the party on immigration…he took a hardline enforcement posture…that would’ve gotten any other Democrat torched, and he did it loudly…on the friendliest possible platforms.

He broke ranks on shutdown strategy when the caucus needed a wall. He cast a deciding vote to advance one of Trump’s Cabinet nominees…handing the other side a win his own colleagues were fighting.

His fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Congressman Brendan Boyle…finally said out loud what a lot of people were thinking: he needs to go. Boyle called him “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” That’s not an insult from the right. That’s a Democrat…from his own state…done pretending.

And…how does Fetterman spend the rest of his time? Trashing the home team. He went after Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan and Maine. He called one of them…on the record…a “piece of shit.” He took a swing at Bernie Sanders. He seems to turn up on Fox News…more reliably than he turns up to vote.

About those votes:

Since late 2024…he’s racked up dozens of missed floor votes…among the most of any senator. He reportedly pulled himself out of the Democratic caucus group chat. He apparently couldn’t be bothered with the meetings…the briefings…the memos…the actual job…but he always found time for a camera and a grievance.

That’s not an independent voice. That’s a guy who wants the title without the work and the paycheck without the loyalty.

The part I’ll say straight

Now, I’m going to be fair…because unlike some I don’t need to be cruel to make a point.

Fetterman went through hell. In 2022 he had a stroke that nearly killed him…his heart stopped…he got a pacemaker and a defibrillator…and he was left with a real auditory processing disorder.

Months into the job…he checked himself into Walter Reed for clinical depression, and he was honest about it in a way that genuinely helped people. One in three stroke patients ends up depressed. Millions of Americans fight it. None of that is a punchline, and you won’t get one from me.

So…let’s be clear about what I’m irritated at and what I’m not.

I’m not irritated that he got sick. I’m irritated at what he did once he was back on his feet.

Because a lot of people survive something like that…and come out humbled. Grateful. Softer toward the people who carried them.

Fetterman came back…and did the opposite; came back certain…combative…and contemptuous of the very party that stood by him while he recovered…and never once used his health against him.

His own chief of staff saw it. In 2024, Adam Jentleson…a serious Capitol Hill veteran…was worried enough to put it in writing to Fetterman’s own doctor. The subject line was “concerns.”

When it went public in New York Magazine…Fetterman didn’t reckon with a word of it. He called it a “hit piece.” A “one-source story.” Disgruntled staffers with a “bizarre grudge.” Everybody takes a beating sometimes, he shrugged…quoting Goodfellas. I’m in good health. Case closed.

Maybe he’s right that he’s recovered. Fine. But…notice the move…it’s the same move he makes with everything now. Anyone who challenges him is a hater…a grudge…a hit job. No reflection. No accountability. Just the certainty…and the camera.

That’s not a health story. That’s a character story. And it’s the character…that’s been governing Pennsylvania.

The one loyalty he has left

Everything about this man has drifted…except one thing. Israel.

On that, he is immovable…absolute…and happy to blow up his own party over it.

So this week it finally cracked. More than a hundred House Democrats…nearly half the caucus, Nancy Pelosi included…voted to cut aid to Israel. Two years ago that number was 37. The party is moving.

And Fetterman…who bends on everything else…decided this was the hill to threaten a walkout on…not the immigration votes he cast against us…not the nominee he waved through…not any of the ground he’s already surrendered.

The one time he plants a flag…it’s to warn his own side.

Here’s what gets me. It’s always framed as his red line, his clarity, his principle. Never a word about the people who elected him…the majority his seat was supposed to protect…the voters in Pennsylvania who thought they were sending a Democrat.

That’s the whole act in one gesture. It was never about us. It was always about him.

Good. Go.

So let me drop the suspense.

If John Fetterman wants to leave, he should leave.

A senator who’d sooner caucus with the people dismantling this country…than let his own party evolve…was never worth the seat.

If he’d rather do his job from a Fox News green room than a committee hearing…if the memos are beneath him…and the briefings are optional…and everyone who disagrees is a grudge…then Pennsylvania deserves someone who actually wants to be a Democrat.

And nobody gets to act surprised.

Not after the immigration votes. Not after the confirmation. Not after the “piece of shit,” the shot at Bernie…the missed votes…the endless Fox hits…the contempt for anyone in his own party who dared to worry out loud.

The exit sign’s been lit over his head the whole time. This week…he finally pointed at it…and asked us to be impressed.

I’m not impressed. I’m just ready for him to use the door. Get the hell out…leave.

And…the real question…the one the party had better ask before 2028…is how many more are standing in line behind him.

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#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. John, if you’re reading this from a Fox green room between hits: the door doesn’t lock behind you. Nobody’s going to chase you down the hall begging you to stay. Walk whenever you’re ready. We’ll help you pack.

P.P.S. Speaking of things built to last: Bedrock launches tomorrow. Three days a week–Monday, Wednesday, Friday–on staying strong…steady…and unbreakable while the country shakes. Wednesday’s free for everyone; paid subscribers get the full weekly arc. Because…unlike a certain senator…some foundations don’t crack under pressure. See you Monday.

Subscribe now

Sources

This week’s “red line” and the Israel vote

• Fetterman lays out ‘red line’ over leaving Democratic Party: Israel — CNN

• Fetterman threatens to leave Democrats over Israel — Axios

• Fetterman Threatens to Leave Democratic Party Over Israel: ‘That’s My Red Line’ — Mediaite

• John Fetterman warns Democratic Party to stay loyal to Israel, or he’ll leave — The Hill

• John Fetterman is threatening to leave the Democratic Party. I say good riddance. — MS NOW (opinion)

His record and break with the party

• Fetterman cites anti-Israel sentiment as reason to potentially leave — Washington Times

• What to know about John Fetterman and his rightward shift — WHYY

• John Fetterman — Britannica (biography)

The stroke and the depression

• Sen. John Fetterman on depression, recovery, and “making up any lost time” — CBS News

• Fetterman opens up about seeking treatment for depression: “I knew I needed help” — CBS News Philadelphia

• John Fetterman timeline (Walter Reed, February–March 2023) — Ballotpedia

• Fetterman memoir details mental health battle, Senate rise — Spotlight PA

The Jentleson memo, the New York Magazine report, and Fetterman’s response

• ‘Unfit for Office’? Fetterman’s Fitness Questioned Amid Reports of Erratic Behavior — Common Dreams

• Staffers allege a regression in Fetterman’s recovery in NYMag report — Philadelphia Inquirer

• Fetterman dismisses former staffer’s claims he’s on a ‘bad trajectory’ — NBC News

• Fetterman doubts explode into Capitol Hill firestorm — Axios

• ‘I’m in good health’: Questions surround Fetterman’s fitness for office — Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pelosi

• Nancy Pelosi announces she will not seek reelection to Congress — CNN

• Nancy Pelosi to retire from Congress after this term — CBS News

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter Announcement: Sunday, July 19th, 2026

Bedrock: What Holds When Everything Shakes

A new resilience series, starting Monday, July 20th–Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Introducing Bedrock

We are living through something hard. The attacks on our democracy are relentless, and they’re designed to be…to exhaust us…to wear us down…to make us feel small and powerless and alone. I’ve watched it take a toll on all of us. I’ve felt it myself.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: the pressure isn’t going away, so we have to get stronger. Not louder. Not angrier. Stronger. Steadier. More resilient in body and mind…so we can stay in this fight for the long haul without breaking.

So I’m building something for us.

Bedrock is a new series about exactly that…resilience, handling stress, staying mentally and physically strong under pressure…and coping with the anguish of this moment without letting it hollow us out. It’s the ground that holds…when everything above it shakes.

Starting Monday, July 20th, 2026, Bedrock runs three times a week:

• Monday: We set the foundation for the week.

• Wednesday: The standalone cornerstone. Free for everyone.

• Friday: We close the week strong.

This series will run at least through November 4th, 2026…and will quite possibly continue well beyond that.

Free subscribers get every Wednesday edition, a complete…standalone piece…yours to keep.

I’m asking those of you who can to become paid subscribers of The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter…not because the Wednesday piece isn’t enough…but because the full week is where the real work happens, and lets me keep showing up, week after week, for all of us.

Subscribe now

We don’t get through this by pretending it isn’t hard. We get through it…by building something underneath us that doesn’t move.

That’s Bedrock. Let’s build it together.

Bedrock: what holds when everything shakes.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. They want us exhausted and alone. Bedrock is how we refuse. See you Monday.

P.P.S. If you want Bedrock to thrive…the most concrete way to help is to become a paid subscriber. For $175 a year, you keep all three Bedrock editions coming…part of my 5–7 articles each week…for you, and for those who can't chip in. I don't take that lightly.

Subscribe now

*My youngest daughter and I doing a little fishing a few years ago. (I just felt like posting;)

You've Survived Everything. Why Won't You Believe It?

The record is perfect. You've just been reading it wrong.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter Paid Subscriber Edition: Friday, July 17th, 2026

Read more

Four Months to the Midterms, and the Paper Is Still on the Table

The 2020 order to seize voting machines was drafted, reviewed, and never signed. The president now calls that a mistake–and has just emptied the agency that certifies the machines.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #974: Friday, July 17th, 2026

Let me tell you about a piece of paper.

It was written in December of 2020. It is a few pages long. It is written in the flat, bloodless language that government lawyers use when they want something monstrous to sound like paperwork.

And…it would have sent soldiers to seize America’s voting machines.

Now before you roll your eyes and click away…before you file this under “guy on the internet is excited again”…I want you to understand something.

I am not speculating.

That document is not a rumor. It is not a leak from a guy who knows a guy. Politico obtained it in January of 2022 and published a picture of the whole thing. You can look at it. Government lawyers wrote it. It sat one signature away from being real.

It was never signed.

And this past January, the man it was written for was asked about it by a reporter from The New York Times.

Here is what he said.

“Well, I should have.”

Read it again.

Now here’s the part that should stop you cold

The reporter pressed him. Was the military actually a viable option for grabbing those machines?

And the President of the United States hesitated.

But listen very carefully to WHAT he hesitated about.

He did not say it would have been illegal.

He did not say it would have been wrong.

He did not say the Constitution forbids it, or that the courts would have stopped him, or that soldiers don’t belong anywhere near a ballot in a free country.

Good warriors, he allowed. But maybe not clever enough to catch Democrats cheating.

Do you see it?

Do you SEE what just happened in that sentence?

The question is no longer whether.

The question is how well.

What that piece of paper actually did

I want to walk you through this document, because the details matter and almost nobody has read them.

The order would have handed the Secretary of Defense the authority to send National Guard troops out to take custody of voting machines. Not just machines…equipment. Stored data. The very records federal law requires be preserved after an election.

Then it appointed a special counsel to start filing criminal charges based on whatever they dug up.

And then…this is the part I need you to hold onto…it gave the Defense Secretary sixty days to file an assessment of what they found.

Sixty days.

From late December 2020.

Go get a calendar. Count it out. That report comes due long after January 20th, when Trump was scheduled to walk out of the White House.

That was never a deadline for finding evidence.

That was a deadline for not finishing.

So why didn’t it happen?

Here’s where everybody gets the story wrong. And I mean everybody.

People think the system stopped it. The courts. The Constitution. Some brave institution with marble columns.

Wrong.

Bernie Kerik…the lead investigator on Trump’s own legal team…told the January 6 committee where the idea came from. A former Army colonel named Phil Waldron. The team carried it to Ken Cuccinelli over at Homeland Security. Then they carried it to Trump himself.

Both men said no.

And in Kerik’s words, it “died on the vine.”

That’s it. That’s the whole story of how America dodged it.

No judge. No statute. No general. No safeguard. No system.

Now ask yourself the only question that matters:

Who’s in the room now?

Thursday night, July 16th, 2026, 9 PM, the East Room

He walked out flanked by his security chiefs. FBI Director Kash Patel. Acting intelligence director Bill Pulte. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

He told the country that without honest elections…there’s nothing left. “No trust, no greatness.”

He announced he was declassifying intelligence…RIGHT NOW, TONIGHT… revealing shocking vulnerabilities in American voting.

CNN’s reporters actually read the documents.

You want to know what’s in them?

He said the release wasn’t meant to shake anybody’s confidence in our elections.

It shook confidence in our elections.

Then he started giving orders. Homeland Security: go tell the states to purge their voter rolls. FBI, CIA, Justice Department: investigate the intelligence officials who say there’s no evidence. Fire them. Maybe charge them.

And the men standing behind him?

They stood there.

Now you’re going to tell me I’m being hysterical

Good. You should. I’d think less of you if you didn’t.

So let me hand you the ammunition myself. Every reason this can’t happen. And I’m going to give you the strong versions, not the weak ones:

“Elections are run by states and counties.” Correct. There is no federal machine to seize. Not one.

“Even the Insurrection Act wouldn’t cover it.” Also correct…that’s the Brennan Center’s read, and they’re the ones who actually know. The broadest domestic power a president has…still would not authorize troops to break the laws protecting election records.

“The courts have already reined him in.” True. They’ve curtailed his Guard deployments significantly.

“It’s self-defeating anyway.” Right again. Chain of custody. The second a soldier touches that machine…its evidentiary value is dead. They’d be destroying the thing they came for.

“The EAC firings actually make it harder.” And here’s the one nobody wants to admit …with no quorum…that commission can’t approve anything. Can’t change the voter form. Can’t touch voting-system standards. The paralysis cuts both ways.

There. Five real objections, honestly stated.

Now…let me tell you why I’m still writing this.

Because you’re arguing against the wrong scenario

You’re picturing tanks. Every county. Blackhawks over the high school gym.

Forget it. It’s never going to look like that…and as long as that’s what you’re watching for…you will not see the real thing coming.

Here’s what it actually looks like.

One county. ONE. Somewhere contested…somewhere close…somewhere the margin is thin enough to matter.

It happens in a night. It gets litigated for eight months. And…it cannot be undone.

Votebeat…sober, careful, no-drama Votebeat…says grabbing even a handful of machines could throw the whole thing into chaos. They also say any attempt would be a “five-alarm fire.”

And notice: it doesn’t have to change a result.

It only has to make the result arguable.

That’s the whole play. That’s all it costs.

Meanwhile…Steve Bannon is out there in public…not whispering, PUBLICLY… telling Trump to “call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne” for 2026 and blanket the polls.

The lawyers at Lawfare have spent this entire year writing that this collides with a century of precedent and still can’t be waved off as talk.

Here’s where we are

The Election Assistance Commission…the four-member bipartisan body that certifies this nation’s voting machines…has zero members. Not a skeleton crew. Zero. Trump emailed Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland their terminations on the night of July 9th. Christy McCormick was asked to resign…and did.

Replacements need Senate confirmation. Hovland’s took about nine months.

Chuck Schumer called it a “brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast.”

The midterms are four months away.

That agency is not coming back before November.

Read that again. It will not be back before the election.

So let me leave you with this

In December of 2020, this country was protected by exactly one thing.

Not the Constitution. Not the courts. Not the system.

Men in a room who said no.

Since then, every single move has been about emptying rooms. The EAC…emptied. The Supreme Court…the power to empty more…granted. The FBI and CIA…handed the job of investigating the officials who keep saying the evidence isn’t there.

The paper still exists. The man it was written for says he regrets not signing it. His only complaint was that he wasn’t sure the soldiers were smart enough.

So…go find out who’s sitting in those chairs today.

Then go back and watch Thursday night…one more time. Watch the men standing behind him while he told the country its elections were rigged.

Watch what they did.

They stood there. They stood there.

BONUS: They Didn’t Wait Twelve Hours

I was going to end this letter where I ended it….with “They stood there.”

Then…today happened.

Less than a day after the speech

Trump finished talking Thursday night around nine.

By Friday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was standing in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building putting all fifty states and the District of Columbia on notice.

Here’s what he said…and I want you to read it slowly…because a cabinet secretary said this out loud…on camera…about the people who run your elections:

They will be held accountable. And the penalties…up to five years in prison…up to $250,000 in fines…would be extended to them.

To the election officials.

Not to fraudsters. To the county clerks and secretaries of state who don’t do what DHS tells them to do.

“We will find you, and we will charge you.”

What he’s actually demanding

Strip away the noise and it’s simple.

Mullin wants every state to run its voter rolls through a federal database that DHS controls.

Don’t want to? Fine.

Then you don’t get federal election money. He was explicit…you want the grant…you want reimbursement for running federal elections…you implement what DHS says. Machines secured to their satisfaction. Registration lists…in his word…scrubbed.

DHS has pulled this lever before. It has previously threatened to hold back FEMA counterterrorism grants over election security mandates.

And…here’s a detail worth sitting with: reporters at the press conference couldn’t establish which grants were actually at risk.

Think about that. The threat is real. The specifics are TBD.

That’s not sloppiness. That’s leverage. A threat you can’t measure…is a threat you can’t litigate.

The number

DHS says it has preliminarily identified more than 250,000 potential non-citizens on the rolls in four states.

California: 190,832. New Jersey: 35,152. Nevada: 15,903. Pennsylvania: 14,576.

Mullin sent letters to all four secretaries of state…Shirley Weber, Dale Caldwell, Francisco Aguilar, Al Schmidt. “Election security is national security”, he said.

Now…let me show you how to read a number like that.

Every word in DHS’s own release is a door left open. Preliminary reviews. Potential non-citizens. There may be as many as.

Those aren’t findings. Those are database hits.

Anyone who has ever run a name-matching query against a federal file knows what comes back: juniors matched to seniors…naturalized citizens whose records never got updated…common surnames colliding by the thousand.

That’s why the press release says “may be” and the press conference says 250,000.

But here’s the thing that should end the conversation.

Look at who got the Pennsylvania letter.

Al Schmidt is Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State.

He is a Republican. He is the official who uncovered one of the largest instances of noncitizen voting in recent years…an actual case…with actual numbers…that he found and disclosed himself.

He found hundreds.

DHS just informed him there are 14,576.

The man who went looking harder than anyone…and had every political reason to find a big number found hundreds. A preliminary federal database scan found fifty times more. One of those two things involved checking.

And Schmidt…who did the checking…has said publicly that fears of widespread fraud are overblown.

Now here’s why this belongs in this letter

Go back to the top. Go back to that piece of paper.

Everybody remembers the Pentagon draft. The one Politico published. National Guard…seize the machines…Defense Secretary.

Almost nobody remembers there was a second one.

CBS News obtained it. Dated December 17, 2020…one day after the Pentagon version. Same purpose. Different agency.

It empowered the Department of Homeland Security.

And…in December 2020…Rudy Giuliani got Ken Cuccinelli on the phone…Cuccinelli was DHS’s number two…and asked whether Homeland Security had the authority to seize voting machines.

Cuccinelli said no. DHS did NOThave the power.

That’s the answer that killed it.

Nobody had to seize a machine.

Nobody had to call up the 82nd Airborne.

They just found the agency that says yes.

The objection, because you’ve earned it

You’ll notice what Mullin did not do.

He didn’t send troops. He didn’t seize equipment. He didn’t touch a ballot. He asked states to check their rolls against a database…which…stated that flatly…is a thing DHS has some colorable argument for wanting.

States can refuse. Several will. This is going to court…fast…and the constitutional ground is not friendly to him: states run elections, Congress regulates them, and the president does neither.

The funding threat may be mostly bluff. Nobody could even name the grants.

All true. Take it seriously.

And…then ask yourself the only question that’s ever mattered in this story:

Who said no?

In 2020…it was Barr. Rosen. Cuccinelli. Cipollone. Four men…one after another… telling a president he couldn’t do the thing he wanted to do.

Today it’s Mullin…at a podium, promising to prosecute the people who say no.

He’s not the obstacle anymore.

He’s the instrument.

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Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. I want to be honest with you about the weakest thing in this letter…because if I don’t say it…somebody else will. Standing silently behind a president at a speech proves almost nothing. It isn’t evidence. A director doesn’t heckle. Private objections leave no fingerprints. I know.

But…that’s the point. Silence is cheap…and it tells you nothing…which is exactly why you have to stop watching the podium and start watching the paperwork. Do those FBI investigations actually open? Does the DHS purge order hit a courtroom…and does it survive? Who commands the Guard in the states where it’ll be close…and does anybody try to federalize it?

In 2020, the thing that saved us was somebody’s conscience.

Hope is not a plan. Never was.

P.P.S. Twelve hours. That’s the entire gap between “here are some shocking vulnerabilities” and “run your rolls through my database or go to prison.” If you were wondering whether Thursday’s speech was about intelligence, Friday answered it.

Watch the four states. California, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania. Watch which ones comply…which ones sue…and how fast a judge gets to it.

And watch Al Schmidt. A Republican secretary of state…who already went looking for noncitizen voters…found them…reported them honestly…and said the panic was overblown…has just been handed a number fifty times his own and told to act on it.

What he does next tells you more than anything said from a podium this week.

Sources

The January admission

• “Well, I should have” — Roll Call, Jan. 27, 2026 — Nathan L. Gonzales, “5 concerning things Trump has said about the 2026 elections.” Contains the quote and the Guard remark.

• Democracy Docket, Jan. 12, 2026 — “Trump: ‘I should have’ seized ballots in 2020 election.” Notes Trump addressed feasibility rather than legality. Also has his answer on accepting midterm results.

• Yahoo/Daily Beast aggregation, Jan. 12, 2026 — Reports the Times interview was conducted Jan. 7 and written up Sunday, Jan. 11, by Alan Feuer and Ashley Ahn. Contains the full sophistication quote.

The draft order(s)

• Politico — the full text — “Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines.” Dated Dec. 16, 2020; published by Politico for the first time in Jan. 2022. Notes the Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Emily Newman, and Patrick Byrne.

• NBC News, Jan. 2022 — Best summary of what the order did: National Guard seizure, special counsel to bring proceedings, 60-day assessment landing after Jan. 20, 2021.

• CNN, Jan. 21, 2022 — Confirms the draft empowered the defense secretary to federalize Guard units.

• Forbes, Jan. 21, 2022 — Three pages; the 60-day deadline fell weeks after Trump’s term ended.

• Newsweek, Jan. 21, 2022 — The order’s own asserted basis for seizure.

• CBS News — the second draft order — A Dec. 17, 2020 version empowering DHS instead of DoD.

• NPR, Jan. 23, 2022 — Bennie Thompson confirms the Jan. 6 committee investigated it; quotes the order’s operative language.

• The Guardian, Feb. 2022 — Trump personally reviewed a Powell draft on Dec. 18 and verbally agreed to appoint her special counsel. Read this one before you file.

Who said no

• CBS News — Kerik testimony — Idea originated with Phil Waldron; “died on the vine” after Cuccinelli and Trump dismissed it. Also the “preserve evidence” framing.

• Jan. 6 hearing — Rosen testimony — Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen testifies Trump pressed DOJ to seize machines; Rosen said no factual basis and no legal authority. Trump then called Cuccinelli from the room.

• Barr testimony — Barr refused for lack of probable cause. Cipollone “vehemently opposed” the Powell special-counsel order.

• Cipollone, Jan. 6 committee interview — Called federal seizure of election machines a terrible idea for the country.

• NYT via AOL, Feb. 2022 — Trump personally asked Giuliani to call DHS; asked Barr directly. Cuccinelli said he lacked the authority.

Thursday night, July 16, 2026

• CNN live coverage — Full attendee list: Mullin, McMahon, Loeffler, Rollins, Patel, Pulte, Navarro, Miller, Cheung, Leavitt, Harp. Coons reaction.

• CNN — 5 takeaways — Frames the speech as a preview of how Trump might undermine 2026.

• NPR, July 16, 2026 — 25 minutes, many baseless claims. Critically: quotes the declassified March 2021 IC report finding no indications any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 vote.

• ABC News — Trump ordered DOJ to prosecute; the speech’s actual ask was passage of the SAVE America Act.

• Fox News live blog — “No trust, no greatness” in context.

• OAN — Friendly coverage; useful for the administration’s own framing.

• Epoch Times — takeaways — Documents span Jan. 2020–June 2026.

• Factually — fact check — No new independently verifiable evidence of flipped votes or altered outcomes.

The Election Assistance Commission

• Votebeat, July 9, 2026 — The firings; what freezes without a quorum; White House justification citing Slaughter.

• Votebeat, July 13, 2026 — Hovland interview. Fired by two-sentence email while stranded at an airport.

• Roll Call, July 10, 2026

• NPR, July 9, 2026

• NBC News, July 9, 2026

• MS NOW, July 9, 2026 — Schumer and Warner reactions.

• Democracy Docket — The counterargument. Most of the EAC’s 2026 work is already done; the executive director may retain authority to act even without a quorum.

The legal wall

• Lawfare — “The Military and Elections, Part I: The Legal Wall” — Orpett, Roberts, Voss. Source for the Bannon quote. Also: Hegseth declined to say whether he’d refuse an order to deploy troops to polling places, and falsely claimed Biden did it in 15 states.

• Votebeat, Jan. 20, 2026 — “Five-alarm fire.” Chain-of-custody problem.

• Bucks County Beacon (Votebeat syndication) — Quotes the actual statute: federal law bars troops at any place where an election is held absent armed enemies of the United States, and bars military interference with election officers.

• Votebeat — 37 election experts surveyed, April 17, 2026 — The most important link on this page. Over three-quarters said it was likely Trump would ask for post-election seizure of equipment; a slight majority said likely during. Experts said post-election is likelier because results are known. Also contains the rebuttal: officials and courts would stop it.

He Said The Emmys Were Rigged, Too.

Fourteen years. Every election. Including the ones he won. Tonight, it had the FBI Director sitting in the front row.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #973: Thursday, July 16th, 2026 11:50 PM CST

I want to tell you about an awards show.

Years ago, before any of this…a reality television program called The Apprentice kept not winning Emmys. Year after year. And the man who hosted it had an explanation ready…every time.

The Emmys were rigged.

All politics. Fixed. Not on the level.

Now…hold that in your head. A gold statue. A category nobody outside Los Angeles thinks about. No ballots. No voters. No count. Nothing to steal.

Rigged.

Because tonight…that same man stood in the East Room of the White House…in front of the Vice President of the United States…the Director of the FBI…the Secretary of State…the Acting Attorney General…and the Secretary of Homeland Security…

…and told you your elections are rigged, too.

The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud

Here’s what every talking head on your television got wrong tonight.

They’re all arguing about whether he’s right.

Wrong argument. Wrong century. Let me show you the actual pattern…and I want you to count with me.

2012.

Barack Obama gets reelected. Trump calls it a total sham. Says the machines wiped ballots for Mitt Romney. Says dead people voted.

2016.

Iowa. He loses the caucus to Ted Cruz by three points. His response: Cruz didn’t win it, he stole it. Demands the results be nullified or the whole thing run again.

Cruz’s answer that week is still the best sentence anybody has ever aimed at this man: it isn’t stealing when the voters vote against you.

2016.

Colorado. Loses. Rigged.

2016.

August, Columbus, Ohio. Three months before a single ballot is cast…he tells a rally the election is going to be rigged. People will walk in and vote ten times.

2016.

October. The election is absolutely being rigged.

2016.

November. He wins.

And claims millions of people voted illegally.

Read that again.

He won… and the election was still rigged.

2020.

August. Before voting starts: the only way we lose is if it’s rigged.

2020.

Election night. A fraud on the American public. Frankly, we did win this election. Stop the counting.

2020.

After. Dozens of lawsuits. Thrown out for no evidence…no standing…some by judges he appointed. Republican-run audits in Arizona and Georgia confirm the count. His own Department of Homeland Security calls it the most secure election in American history. His own Attorney General says there was no fraud on any scale that would have changed it.

2026.

He says California rigged the Los Angeles mayor’s race against Spencer Pratt.

Spencer Pratt.

So Now Do The Math

He said it when he lost.

He said it when he won.

He said it before people voted.

He said it about an awards show.

Fourteen years. Every possible configuration of outcome. Same conclusion…every single time.

Friend, that is not a finding. That’s a reflex.

You cannot falsify it. There is no election result that would cause this man to say “the system worked.” A loss is fraud. A win is fraud with an asterisk. A statuette going to somebody else is fraud.

Which brings us to the only question that actually matters tonight, and I promise you nobody on cable news is going to ask it:

What happens when a fourteen-year reflex gets handed the Justice Department?

What Actually Happened Tonight

Now pay attention, because the media is about to get this wrong in the other direction.

He did not say China changed votes. Fox News itself reported that. He was more careful than that. Much more careful.

Here’s what he actually did…and it’s clever as hell:

He declassified a pile of intelligence assessments…and posted them on whitehouse.gov. And one of them says America’s adversaries “have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.”

Capability.

Not did. Could.

That’s a threat assessment. That’s a fire marshal…saying a building could burn. Every security agency on earth writes documents like that…it’s literally their job.

He read it to you…as if it were a police report.

And…then…having never once claimed a vote was changed…he closed with this: “we can never watch a stolen election again.”

You see it? He gets the verdict…without ever having to prove the crime. He hands you a maybe…and lets you walk out with a did.

That is not the work of confused men and women. That is craftsmanship.

But Here’s The Part That Should Straighten Your Spine

For fourteen years, all of this was talk. Tweets. Rally lines. Lawsuits that lost, and lost, and lost.

Tonight it had machinery.

Tonight…he ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence…the Justice Department…the FBI…and the CIA to investigate the officials who said 2020 was secure. To fire them. And to file criminal charges.

The FBI Director was in the room. The Acting Attorney General was in the room…a man whose own confirmation hearing was happening this week.

He ordered Homeland Security to tell every state to “remove all ineligible voters” from the rolls. Immediately.

The DHS Secretary briefs the country tomorrow morning.

He demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act…photo ID…proof of citizenship… and no mail ballots…except for illness…disability…military service…or travel.

And…when he noticed that NBC and ABC hadn’t carried his speech…he said their licenses should be revoked.

The reflex is fourteen years old. The state power behind it is nine hours old.

And Now The Thing I’ve Been Trying To Tell You Since July 2nd

Two weeks ago I asked you to remember one date. Some of you wrote back. Some of you probably forgot.

Remember it now.

September 30, 2026.

Thirty-four days before you vote.

Tonight…the President of the United States stood in the East Room for an hour…and told you our election infrastructure is a five-alarm national emergency. Voter files stolen. Machines exposed. Foreign governments circling.

He promised to work with states to patch the holes before the midterms.

The law that makes that work legally possible expires on September 30. His party runs Congress.

He never mentioned it. Not once. Not one syllable.

He spent an hour screaming that the house is on fire.

And he never told you he’s letting the fire department’s charter run out on September 30th.

Now…maybe that’s an oversight. Maybe it’s the most convenient oversight in the history of the American republic. I don’t know, and neither does anybody else…and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

But I know this:

If the machinery that lets somebody independently verify a claim of foreign interference is switched off five weeks before an election…

…then in November…the only voice left telling you what happened will be his.

No trust…no greatness. That’s what he said tonight.

He’s half right. Without trust…you don’t have a country.

The question is…who benefits when it’s gone.

The Good News. Because There Is Some.

Before you crawl under your desk, let me tell you what the doom-scrollers won’t:

2024 held.

Cyber probes. Hoax bomb threats. Full-blown foreign influence operations. Not one changed an outcome.

The courts are working.

Dozens of 2020 suits died on the evidence…many in front of judges he picked himself. A federal judge just blocked Texas’s new map. The mail-in voting order is being litigated right now by lawyers who know what they’re doing.

And the people who run your elections

…in red counties and blue counties, in Missouri and Michigan and Maine…are the most stress-tested public servants alive. They ran an election through a pandemic. They ran one through 2020. They did not blink.

The system is not fragile.

But…it is not self-maintaining, either. It holds…because thousands of ordinary people do unglamorous work on time.

The date I just gave you is that work…with a countdown stamped on it.

So Here’s What I Want You To Do

Three things. Ten minutes. Costs you nothing.

One.

Go read the documents yourself. whitehouse.gov. Right now.

And…when you read them, look for one word: “capability.” Every time an assessment says an adversary could do something, ask yourself why a President described it as something they did. You don’t need a security clearance for that. You need a dictionary.

Two.

Bookmark your state and county election office. Tonight. Not in October. The official ones.

And burn this into your skull: election night will not settle it. The Supreme Court has upheld counting ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day. When the count runs long…and it will…that is not fraud. That is the law…working exactly as written by the Court he helped build.

The people who need you frightened are counting on you forgetting that.

Three.

September 30. CISA 2015. Pick up your phone.

He told you tonight to call your representatives about the SAVE Act. Fine. Do that too, if you want…it’s your phone.

But…while you’ve got them, ask the question nobody in that East Room asked:

“If our elections are so vulnerable…why is your Congress letting the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act die on September 30th?”

That is not a red question. It is not a blue question. Security professionals want that law renewed. Business groups want it. Election vendors across the spectrum want it.

It’s a keep the neighborhood watch running question.

And…I would very much like to know why the man who spent an hour tonight telling you the barbarians are at the gate…

…forgot to mention he’s letting the gate rust off its hinges in seventy-six days.

That’s it. That’s the whole pitch.

No panic. No conspiracy theories. Just a calendar…a countdown…and a country that works best when its citizens actually know what time it is.

Subscribe now

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. In 2012 he said the machines were rigged. In 2016 he said Iowa was stolen. Then he won…and said millions voted illegally anyway.

In 2020 he said it before the voting started. Tonight…he said it with the Director of the FBI sitting six feet away and the Justice Department taking notes.

The story never changes. Only the size of the gun in the room.

Set a reminder for September 30.

Sources

Tonight’s address

• Full transcript — President Trump’s Primetime Address to the Nation, July 16, 2026

• The declassified documents — whitehouse.gov (posted during the speech; read them yourself)

• Fox News: Trump releases declassified election intelligence, says reveals “shocking vulnerabilities” — the East Room attendee list, and Fox’s own confirmation that he did not claim China altered vote totals

• Newsweek: Trump Gives Presidential Address Today: What He’s Said About Rigged Elections — Reuters and CBS reporting that the intelligence under review does not show China manipulated votes; earlier assessments found no interference with 2020 election infrastructure or vote counting

• CNBC: Trump is set to deliver an election-focused national address tonight

• Fox News: Trump keeps ‘really big’ address under wraps — July 16, 2026

• Fox News: Trump holds Washington hostage over SAVE Act as midterm clock ticks on GOP control

• Stocktonia: Trump can’t stop talking about election-rigging, the thing that trips him up most — the Los Angeles mayoral claim

The fourteen-year record

• ABC News: Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results — 2012, 2016 Iowa, 2016 general

• ABC News: A timeline of Donald Trump’s election denial claims — the Emmys, the 2012 “total sham,” Cruz’s response, election night 2020

• PolitiFact: Donald Trump’s baseless claims about ‘rigged’ elections — August 2016, the Columbus rally

• LegalClarity: Trump Rigged Election Claims: Lawsuits, Cases, and Facts — the “millions voted illegally” claim after winning in 2016; California’s count timeline

The September 30 problem

• Federal News Network: DHS officials warn about growing shutdown backlogs — CISA legally barred from election outreach during the shutdown, in their own words, at a Senate hearing

• Federal News Network: Trump signs bill funding DHS, ending record shutdown — the 76-day lapse

• Wikipedia: 2026 United States federal government shutdowns — dates and scope

• PBS NewsHour, July 15, 2026 — the Clayton confirmation hearing

• PBS NewsHour: White House says Trump was referring to SAVE Act when he advocated nationalizing elections