🇺🇸 Doomscroll News – The 4th Way: No to DNC/UBI, GOP omnibus bills, or Musk's BTC party. Yes to pro-America tariffs & building a self-reliant economy.

🇺🇸 Doomscroll News

The 4th Way: No to DNC/UBI, GOP omnibus bills, or Musk's BTC party. Yes to pro-America tariffs & building a self-reliant economy.

‪Can Electors Go Rogue? The “Faithless Elector”‬
An elector can vote against the popular vote of their state. This is known as being a “faithless elector.” Historically, however, this has been rare and has never changed the outcome of a presidential election.

Who are the electors? They are chosen by the political parties in each state. They are often party loyalists, chosen to recognize their service.

Are there rules against it? Yes, many states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate they are pledged to. The Supreme Court has upheld these laws, allowing states to penalize or replace faithless electors. As of 2024, 38 states and D.C. have such laws.

As of 2024, the following 12 states do not have any laws that bind electors to the popular vote winner or penalize them for being “faithless”:
- Arkansas
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Louisiana
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Dakota
- Rhode Island
- Texas
- West Virginia
How often does it happen? It’s very infrequent. Out of over 23,000 electoral votes cast in U.S. history, only a small number have been faithless. The most significant number of faithless electors in a single election was in 1872, when a candidate died after the election but before the electors met.

Of course. While faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a presidential election, there have been numerous instances of them throughout U.S. history.

Here is a list of every faithless elector vote for a presidential candidate, broken down by election year.

Instances of Faithless Electors by Election

2016: This election had the most faithless electors in modern history.

Pledged to Hillary Clinton (Democrats):

In Washington, three electors voted for Colin Powell and one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle.

In Hawaii, one elector voted for Bernie Sanders.

An elector in Maine attempted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but was forced to change his vote to Clinton.

Electors in Minnesota and Colorado also attempted to vote for other candidates but were replaced.

Pledged to Donald Trump (Republicans):

In Texas, two electors defected. One voted for John Kasich and the other for Ron Paul.

2004: One Democratic elector from Minnesota, pledged to John Kerry, voted for John Edwards (Kerry’s running mate) for both president and vice president.

2000: One Democratic elector from the District of Columbia, Barbara Lett-Simmons, abstained from voting for Al Gore as a protest for D.C.’s lack of congressional representation.

1988: One Democratic elector from West Virginia, Margarette Leach, voted for Lloyd Bentsen (the vice-presidential candidate) for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president.

1976: One Republican elector from Washington, Mike Padden, voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Gerald Ford.

1972: One Republican elector from Virginia, Roger L. MacBride, voted for the Libertarian ticket of John Hospers and Tonie Nathan.

1968: One Republican elector from North Carolina, Lloyd W. Bailey, voted for George Wallace of the American Independent Party instead of Richard Nixon.

1960: One Republican elector from Oklahoma, Henry D. Irwin, voted for Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd instead of Richard Nixon.

1956: One Democratic elector from Alabama, W. F. Turner, voted for a local judge, Walter B. Jones, instead of Adlai Stevenson.

1948: One Democratic elector from Tennessee, Preston Parks, voted for Strom Thurmond of the States’ Rights Democratic Party instead of Harry S. Truman.

1912: Eight Republican electors voted for Nicholas Murray Butler for vice president instead of James S. Sherman, who had died before the electoral vote. This was a case of a candidate’s death, not a political protest.

1896: Four People’s Party electors cast their vice-presidential votes for Thomas E. Watson instead of the Democratic nominee, Arthur Sewall.

1872: This is the most significant case in terms of numbers. Horace Greeley, the Democratic/Liberal Republican candidate, died after the general election but before the Electoral College voted. As a result, 63 of the 66 electors pledged to him cast their votes for other individuals.

1836: Twenty-three Democratic electors from Virginia refused to vote for Richard M. Johnson for vice president, who had been Martin Van Buren’s running mate.

1796: Samuel Miles, a Federalist elector from Pennsylvania, voted for Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson instead of the Federalist candidate, John Adams. This was the first instance of a faithless elector.

Sources:

fairvote.org,latimes.com,thegreenpapers.com,wikipedia.org

David Gross
Follow me at https://x.com/dgapps and https://davidgrossapps.com
July 8, 2025
Hey Rep. Issa, I’ll Take That Bet: Here Are the Democrats Who Will Support Law Enforcement.

Rep. Issa, regarding your “Over/Under on how many Democrats will support law enforcement,” I’ll happily take the over. You might be guessing not many, but I’m betting on a flicker of common sense from a handful who understand that “condemning violence against law enforcement” should be the easiest bipartisan win of the century.

My guesstimate? You’ll get about 10 Democrats to vote YES on your resolution.

Here’s the scouting report on the Democrats most likely to break ranks and join you, and why:

I've seen enough. Next week, I am introducing a Congressional resolution unconditionally condemning violent attacks against @ICEgov agents enforcing our laws against criminal illegals.

Over/Under on how many Democrats will support law enforcement? I'm guessing not many.
— Rep. Darrell Issa (@repdarrellissa) July 8, 2025

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July 8, 2025
The Phoenix Plan: A Blueprint for American Rebirth
Prioritize national strength, economic independence, and internal order.

Core Principles
- Competent Government: Before voting on any bill, members of Congress must have one week to read it and pass a test to prove they understand it.
- “Fortress America” Economy: The plan aims for a self-reliant economy. This includes:
  - Taxes: Making current individual tax rates permanent while eliminating special-interest loopholes, the Child Tax Credit, and complex corporate taxes.
  - Trade and Investment: Using tariffs to protect critical industries and offering residency to foreigners who make multi-million dollar investments in the U.S.
  - Ending Corporate Crime: Forcing companies to be specific about how they use investor money. Seized assets from convicted executives and banks will fund their own prosecution and imprisonment.
  - Nationalizing Crypto: Making all private cryptocurrency transactions illegal. The entire crypto system will be seized and reserved as a financial weapon for the military to use only during a declared war.
  - Honest Money: Transitioning away from the Federal Reserve to a system where the U.S. Treasury issues debt-free money directly.
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July 5, 2025
The Energy Doctrine: A Fantastical Strategy for Earth and Space

What follows is not a sober policy proposal. It is a thought experiment, a flight of fancy designed to shatter the narrow confines of the current energy debate. The public discourse pits solar against fossil fuels as if it were a schoolyard argument, while the real game of power operates on a level of complexity that is rarely, if ever, discussed. This article is a wild, speculative attempt to outline a more complete, if fantastical, doctrine for energy strategy across three domains: strategic deception, tactical resilience, and celestial dominance. None of this is to be taken too seriously.

The Terrestrial Battlefield: The Art of Strategic Deception

The first principle of this doctrine is that a nation’s true energy capacity should be its most closely guarded secret. The ancient military strategist Sun Tzu taught that all warfare is based on deception. Publicly available data on energy production is, in this light, a strategic blunder—it’s like handing your enemy the schematics to your fortress. A wiser, if more paranoid, approach would be to reveal only what a sophisticated AI predicts is the bare minimum necessary to project stability, while concealing the true depth of your power. The real strength lies in the undisclosed—the unexpected and the unseen.

The Deception Layer: Power Beneath the Surface

The ultimate expression of strategic energy deception lies in moving critical infrastructure where it cannot be seen or targeted: underground. To be truly secure, a nation must possess power generation that is impervious to satellite surveillance, drone attacks, and bunker-busting bombs. The most practical technologies for this are nuclear and geothermal. All forms of nuclear reactors, from today’s fission plants to tomorrow’s fusion concepts, can be housed in deep, hardened subterranean bunkers. Geothermal energy, which taps the planet’s own internal heat, is perhaps even more elegant. With a minimal surface footprint, these plants provide constant, 24/7 power, regardless of weather, time of day, or what’s happening on the surface. By creating a distributed network of hidden geothermal and nuclear sites, a nation could build an invisible power base, with energy transmitted via hardened, buried, or even laser-based systems to ensure a second-strike capability and industrial survival.

The Solar Paradox and Strategic Response

On the surface, solar infrastructure is a paradox. In a conflict, sprawling solar farms are a liability—fragile, indefensible, and far more costly to rebuild than the munitions needed to destroy them. If you were Ukraine, fields of glass panels would be an illogical investment. Furthermore, we must consider scenarios beyond conventional warfare. A massive earthquake, a super-volcano eruption like Yellowstone that blacks out the sky with ash, or a meteor strike would render solar power useless. There are even whispers of weather manipulation technologies that could blot out the sun over a target area—a potentially cheaper tactic than building a massive solar infrastructure in the first place.

This is where the strategic value of natural gas becomes clear. It’s not about powering a peaceful nation; it’s about tactical response in a crisis. The ability to quickly spin up natural gas turbines provides the immediate power needed to launch a counter-attack, power essential services after a natural disaster, or simply keep the lights on in a command bunker when the sun has disappeared.
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July 1, 2025
The Debt is a Cancer, Not a Curve to Be Flattened

The analogy comparing the national debt to the COVID-19 “flatten the curve” mantra is a profoundly misleading and dangerous simplification of the crisis we face. The comparison is particularly flawed when one recalls the data inconsistencies during the initial wave of COVID-19. In early 2020, many observers noted with suspicion that official data from sources like Johns Hopkins University showed a startlingly low number of recoveries in the United States. This data “weirdness,” born from the chaos of tracking a novel virus in real-time, highlights a key difference: the COVID-19 curve was a matter of incomplete, real-time data, while the national debt curve is a matter of precise, cumulative accounting.

The national debt isn’t a virus that will simply “burn out” or be defeated by a short-term, emergency response. It is a chronic, metastasizing cancer on the body politic, the result of decades of policy decisions. Proposals for a “debt ceiling app” or other simple fixes are shortsighted political theater. Congress has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to raise the debt ceiling, rendering it more of a talking point than a genuine constraint.

The real technological revolution that offers a path forward is not in financial gimmicks, but in artificial intelligence, LLMs, and robotics. Their promise is not magical “growth,” but something far more valuable: the ruthless elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse. The potential for automation to overhaul the medical and insurance industries—the true drivers of our debt—is immense. Imagine humanoid robots, like Tesla’s Optimus, providing comprehensive elder care. These machines could handle everything from showering a grandparent to monitoring their vitals, ending the soul-crushing and financially ruinous nursing home industry. This isn’t science fiction; it is a necessary step to slash the costs that are bankrupting our nation.
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July 1, 2025
Information Blockade: A Flawed System, Tainted Actors, and the COVID-19 Response
A defective system governing taxpayer-funded research, coupled with questionable corporate actors, hampered the nation’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. This information blockade had dire consequences, not only for public health but also for the very companies that were supposed to be at the forefront of innovation.

The problem stems from a long-standing policy that has prioritized corporate profits over public access to critical information. In 2013, the Obama administration’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), then led by Director John P. Holdren, issued a memorandum entitled “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.” This memo established a 12-month embargo period, allowing publishers to lock away taxpayer-funded research for a full year.This delay, a significant impediment in a rapidly evolving public health crisis, was a compromise to appease the highly profitable academic publishing industry.

This dysfunctional system created a breeding ground for opportunism and mismanagement.
- Delayed Access, Stalled Innovation: The 12-month embargo meant that crucial data on clinical trials, epidemiological models, and virology was often obsolete by the time it became freely available. This left not only the American public in the dark, but also the very companies developing diagnostic tools. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process, which should have provided a swift path to public data, was also rendered ineffective, with requests for vital information stalled for years, well beyond the supposed two-week turnaround for a clear and present danger.
- Corporate Casualties and Questionable Practices: The story of Lucira Health exemplifies the devastating consequences of this information bottleneck. The company, which developed a promising combined COVID-19 and flu test, was financed by Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Hercules Capital, securing a debt facility of up to $80 million. However, Lucira was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a slower-than-anticipated FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) process for its new test created a fatal cash crunch. Pfizer then acquired the company’s assets for a mere $36.4 million. The collapse of SVB, which held deposits for numerous Chinese companies, has also raised concerns. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen confirmed that uninsured depositors in SVB, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, would be made whole by the American banking system. This has led to questions about potential conflicts of interest, especially given the belief that the COVID-19 virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
- A System Admitting Failure: In a tacit admission of the system’s shortcomings, the White House OSTP issued a new memo in August 2022, mandating that all taxpayer-funded research be made freely and immediately available by the end of 2025, effectively ending the 12-month embargo. While a welcome change, this comes as cold comfort for the companies and the public who were failed by a system that prioritized profits and secrecy over transparency and innovation during a critical time of need.
David Gross
Follow me at https://x.com/dgapps and https://davidgrossapps.com
June 30, 2025
Mamdani’s 2018 Naturalization: Who Was Responsible? A FOIA Strategy to Expose the Decision
Zohran Mamdani’s naturalization in 2018 occurred during the Trump administration. The agency responsible for approving citizenship applications is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While the specific officer who stamped his approval is protected by privacy, the ultimate responsibility lies with the leadership in place at that time. A best estimate of the top officials most responsible would be:
1. Lee Francis Cissna: The Director of USCIS from October 2017 to June 2019. He was the head of the entire agency and directly responsible for its policies and adjudications during the period Mamdani was naturalized.
2. Kirstjen Nielsen: The Secretary of Homeland Security from December 2017 to April 2019. As the cabinet-level head of DHS, she had ultimate authority over USCIS.
3. Stephen Miller: As Senior Advisor to the President for Policy, Miller was the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. While he had no direct line authority over USCIS adjudications, he exerted immense influence on the agency’s policy direction and leadership.
4. The USCIS New York City Field Office Director (2018): This individual (whose name is not readily available in public searches) was in charge of the office that likely processed and adjudicated Mamdani’s application. They were responsible for the day-to-day operations and quality control of their officers.
5. USCIS Chief Counsel (2018): This legal office would have been responsible for interpreting complex legal questions, such as whether specific rhetoric or affiliations would make an applicant ineligible for citizenship.
A FOIA Strategy to Expose the Decision

A targeted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) strategy could uncover the political environment and policies that allowed Mamdani’s naturalization. Since requesting his personal A-File is not possible without his consent, the strategy should focus on the system itself:
- Request Target: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
- Request 1: Policy and Guidance Memos. Submit a request for “All policy memoranda, field guidance, training materials, and internal communications issued by the USCIS Director’s Office and the Office of Chief Counsel between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2018, pertaining to the adjudication of N-400 applications involving applicants with known or suspected affiliations with socialist, communist, or anti-Zionist organizations.”
- Request 2: The ‘Holy Land Five’ Connection. Submit a request for “Any and all internal communications, policy guidance, or legal opinions within USCIS from 2017-2019 that reference the ‘Holy Land Foundation’ or the ‘Holy Land Five’ in the context of determining good moral character for naturalization applicants.”
- Request 3: Communications with Political Leadership. Submit a request for “All non-personal email communications and meeting minutes between the USCIS Director’s Office and the office of the DHS Secretary and/or the White House Domestic Policy Council (specifically mentioning Stephen Miller) regarding naturalization adjudication priorities for fiscal year 2018.”
June 30, 2025