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Nick Paro and Shane Yirak open this episode with a thesis: every branch of the U.S. government is now running on a cronyism-and-nepotism revolving door, and the architecture is visible if you read the contracts. Nick reads the numbers into the record. Since Inauguration Day 2025, Palantir has been awarded over $1.3 billion in federal contracts spanning DOD, Homeland Security, Treasury, State, HHS, VA, Energy, Transportation, Justice, Agriculture, HUD, NASA, GSA, and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. In March 2026, the Army awarded Anduril Industries — backed by the Thiel Founders Fund and Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital — a $20 billion enterprise contract under a sole-source framework, consolidating more than 120 procurement actions into a single 10-year line that runs to March 12, 2036, covering its AI-enabled Lattice platform, hardware, and data infrastructure. Then the Trump-family ledger: Foundation Future Industries, where Eric Trump serves as chief strategy advisor, was awarded $24 million for “Phantom” humanoid military robots; Power Us, partly owned by Eric and Don Jr., is positioned for a $1.1 billion drone set-aside following the administration’s ban on Chinese-made drones; and Vulcan Elements, a 30-person startup in Don Jr.’s 1789 Capital portfolio, just pulled a $620 million Pentagon loan inside a $1.4 billion rare-earth-magnets deal. Nick’s framing: this is not a Venn diagram. It is one circle of four or five companies, all owned or funded by the same people.

Shane brings the structural read. Palantir is no longer a vendor to the United States government — it is a parasite embedded in every institution it touches, which means the DOD, DHS, and Social Security Administration cannot honestly be called public institutions anymore. He argues that depending on how deeply Palantir has integrated, some agencies may not be revivable and will need to be reconstituted: stripped down and rebuilt in a system that works. He also offers a counter-weight that the hosts come back to repeatedly: the contracts are mostly aspirational. With 45% U.S. naval surge capability (per Congressional testimony), both hospital ships in dry dock, depleted Tomahawk reserves, no domestic rare-earth supply chain, and the Pentagon mineral strategy compromised by the Iran blockade burning U.S. standing with Saudi Arabia, the material reality does not support what the contracts promise. Cronyism, Shane points out, is not about intelligent people making intelligent decisions — it’s the corporate assumption that supply chain is infinite and the only thing that matters is the top line. Meanwhile, Ukraine has weaponized that gap: its drone supply line is real, it can ship to the Gulf states within a week, and it’s signing mutual defense contracts and supply agreements while the U.S. tries to sell blueprints.

The episode is built around action, not just diagnosis. Nick lays out the playbook in three concentric rings. Locally: FOIA your city council and police department about Flock Safety cameras — Peter Thiel was an early investor and reportedly wants the company for the data-aggregation dashboard, which integrates into the Palantir stack. Electorally: it is primary season, and the Courage candidates network and Citizens’ Impeachment movement (citizensimpeachment.com, couragefordemocracy.com) is where progressive challengers are getting wired in. Nick is actively interviewing them — Brittany Jones for the Oregon governorship is on Wednesday with Rachel Marin asking constituent questions, Kira Havens drew a thousand-person live two weeks ago, and Walter Rhein and Will Fullwood are running the same playbook. The pitch is concrete: if non-voters turned out at even 20% above baseline, the MAGA voting bloc evaporates; at 50% it stops mattering what MAGA wants; at 90%, every sitting member of Congress who hasn’t pledged to do the right thing is gone. Hand-count the ballots. Internationally: U.S. citizens cannot purge Palantir from Palantir’s home country — its institutional capture is too deep — but other nations can, and Shane argues this is the leverage point. The UK is already reassessing its contracts after the Karp 22-point “Technological Republic” manifesto trended on Threads. Australia and the IAEA are next. Orbán just lost in Hungary despite controlling every lever of his government, because turnout was overwhelming enough that manipulation couldn’t close the gap. That is the model.

Shane closes with the line the episode keeps returning to: do not let the soldiers who died in Iran die for Trump. Let their deaths be the catalyst that puts people at the polls. Courage is action in spite of fear — not the absence of it. Nick wraps with the program note: more free subscribers to Banner and Backbone matter more than paid right now because the goal is reach; the Anti Fascist Book Club is back this Friday; and the new Powerful Voices candidate-interview series is the operational arm of all of the above.

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Palantalk Team

~ Nick Paro | Shane Yirak ~

Nick Paro sits down with Mary Noone — Indiana-based progressive strategist, Hoosier Victory Alliance co-founder, and former Lululemon/Ivivva leadership trainer — and the hour is essentially a clinic on why down-ballot Democratic campaigns keep losing winnable seats. Mary’s diagnosis is structural: candidates are recruited as policy experts but never trained as marketers, so they launch with a checklist of platform planks and no positioning. Her fix is a four-week candidate training built around community mapping (list 8–10 issues that matter locally, then the orgs and stakeholders already working them), social-media listening to surface the actual language voters use, and values-based messaging that lets candidates in neighboring districts talk about the same issue — data centers, redistricting, child care — in ways that resonate with their specific community without sounding scripted. She uses Zohran Mamdani’s NYC run as the canonical example: affordability was his frame, listening for months was his method, and rent control, child care, and grocery stores were the issues that hung off the frame.

The throughline beneath the marketing language is what Stephanie Wilson calls “better humaning” — the argument that durable political coalitions get built the way Lululemon built community before opening a brick-and-mortar: show up at the women’s hockey game, host a panel on data-center development, give without expectation, and trust that the metrics arrive three to four months later. Nick presses on the time crunch — midterms and 2028 are both bearing down — and Mary’s answer is twofold: lift up the “how-to” actionable creators (Run for Something, her own Hoosier Victory Alliance) above the news-explainer top layer, and educate the public that campaigns need accountants, graphic designers, and event planners more than they need another door-knocker. Her closing pitch is for candidates to start now if they’re thinking about 2028, and to get on the waiting list for the messaging-guide tool she and her partner Josh are automating so candidates without staff can still find their North Star.

Key Takeaways

• If you’re a working professional who wants to help — accountant, graphic designer, event planner, book-club organizer — Mary’s argument is that down-ballot campaigns will accept that help directly and don’t have the bandwidth to recruit you. Pick a local race, email the campaign manager with the specific skill you offer, and watch how fast the door opens.

• Track the Indiana redistricting fight as a case study in values-based pushback. Mary credits the win to (a) eight to ten weeks of sustained ecosystem messaging rather than a single rally, and (b) reframing redistricting as “DC deciding for Indiana” — a frame that landed because swatting incidents had already crossed the Hoosier value of not hurting each other’s families. Watch whether other gerrymandered states can replicate the frame.

Organizations and Terms

Organizations / Programs:

• Hoosier Victory Alliance — The progressive 501(c)(3) Mary co-founded with Stephanie Wilson to fill Indiana’s communications-hub gap.

• Indiana Women’s Action Movement — Where Mary previously chaired and surfaced the recruitment gap for women and women of color candidates.

• Run for Something — Amanda Litman’s national candidate-recruitment org; Mary positions her own work as complementary “how-to” infrastructure.

• Courage for Democracy — Network of progressive candidates who pledge on a shared set of articles and the citizens-impeachment movement.

• Indiana Rural Summit — Indiana-specific work Mary mentions on rural messaging consistency across neighboring districts.

• Veterans Fighting Fascism — Chris Goldsmith’s anti-fascist book club model that Nick’s Anti-Fascist Book Club is built on.

Terms / Concepts:

• Community mapping — Listing the 8–10 issues that matter in a community plus the orgs and stakeholders already working them; the prerequisite to messaging.

• Values-based messaging — Anchoring positioning to community-held values (family, independent decision-making, trust, fairness) rather than party labels or polling demographics.

• Better humaning — Stephanie Wilson’s frame for relationship-first political organizing where metrics lag months behind the work.

• Give without expectation — Lululemon-leadership ethos Mary imports into campaigns: build community presence without demanding immediate volunteer or vote conversion.

• Trifecta — Democratic control of the House, Senate, and presidency in 2020; cited as the unkept promise that drove Gen Z disengagement in 2024.

• MAHA — Make America Healthy Again; Mary cites Trump’s fruit-flavored-vapor executive order as a small-but-delivered campaign promise that explains MAHA loyalty.

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Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

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~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro sits down with Erik Terwey, the Courage for Democracy candidate challenging Republican Josh Brecheen in Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District, and Terwey spends the hour translating progressive economics into language that works in a 22,000-square-mile rural district. He grounds his candidacy in his own biography — raised in OK-02, Teach for America French teacher in Tulsa, OU master’s, student debt and a 30-year mortgage he is not sure he can pay off — and argues nobody is fighting hard enough for people like him. His top issue is affordability: ending data-center sweetheart deals he blames for a 30% local electricity spike (against an 11% national figure), raising rural wages, restoring an education system he calls the worst in America, and pulling back from what he names as the “illegal war in Iran” because of how fossil-fuel and fertilizer prices flow through to grocery bills. On Native sovereignty, Terwey commits to introducing a day-one bill to seat the Cherokee Nation’s House delegate guaranteed by the Treaty of New Echota — a seat the nation has chosen and never been allowed to fill — and frames it as enforcing a treaty the U.S. signed, not granting a favor. He lays out his coalitions: Take Back Congress (term limits, overturning Citizens United, ending the Congress-to-lobbyist pipeline, banning congressional stock trading, an enforceable Supreme Court code of ethics), Citizens Impeachment, Mission for America, Men for Choice, and Progressive Victory. He is openly gay but deliberately keeps that off the website, arguing OK-02 voters respond to “fair” rather than “equity” or “inclusion,” and that the language the party uses in New York or California loses elections in the Ozarks.

What makes the conversation worth listeners’ time is the discipline of Terwey’s frame. He refuses to launder progressive policy as anything other than what it is, but he insists on translating it into the dialect of his district — fairness, work, faith, neighbor — and he is honest about why. He has very deep problems with the Oklahoma state party, real problems with the national party, and says plainly that the Democrats have not written him a check or sent him a volunteer. Nick presses him on how he would actually represent constituents from DC, on how he handles a suppressed-turnout electorate, and on whether his coalition pitch is more than branding; Terwey’s answer is transparency turned into a practice — weekly live streams, three-and-a-half-hour calls with single voters, and town halls during recess instead of vacations. The Cherokee delegate thread is the most editorially distinctive moment of the episode: Terwey credits fellow Courage candidate Brittany Jones for putting treaty law on his radar, and that cross-pollination is itself a useful signal about whether the Courage for Democracy network is functioning as a coalition or just a logo. The episode is a test of whether a gay, Democratic, treaty-enforcement, anti-data-center candidate can run an explicitly progressive economic platform inside the fourth-most-conservative district in the country and survive long enough to be heard.

Key Takeaways

• Watch Terwey’s day-one Cherokee delegate bill — the Treaty of New Echota guarantees the Cherokee Nation a non-voting House seat with committee votes and bill-submission rights, the nation has selected a representative, and no Oklahoma member of Congress has moved to seat them; treat the bill’s introduction (or absence) as the fastest measurable test of whether Terwey actually governs the way he campaigns.

• Audit the data-center deal claim — Terwey blames Oklahoma’s 30% electricity-cost increase (against an 11% national figure) on tax-incentive packages handed to data-center operators who employ a handful of permanent workers; track the underlying utility-rate filings and the specific tax-abatement agreements before treating the 30% number as settled, because the policy ask (ending the sweetheart deals) only lands if the cost causation does.

People, Organizations, and Terms

People:

• Erik Terwey — Courage for Democracy Democratic candidate for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District; OU French-lit master’s, former Teach for America Union French teacher in Tulsa, openly gay; the guest. https://www.terweyforcongress.com

• Josh Brecheen — Incumbent OK-02 Republican congressman Terwey is challenging; cited for reading from cue cards at an August town hall and taking only a cursory question before leaving.

• Brittany Jones — Fellow Courage for Democracy candidate (running for Oregon governor) Terwey credits for surfacing tribal treaty law as a federal-policy lever.

Organizations / Programs:

• Courage for Democracy — The pro-democracy candidate coalition through which Terwey reached the show. https://www.couragefordemocracy.com

• Take Back Congress — 100+ candidate coalition committed to five day-one bills: term limits, overturning Citizens United, ending the Congress-to-lobbyist pipeline, banning congressional stock trading, and enforceable Supreme Court ethics.

• Citizens Impeachment — Accountability-focused candidate coalition Terwey says is ready to investigate constitutional-oath violations in any branch. https://www.citizensimpeachment.com

• Mission for America — Ten-year economic-transformation plan (newconsensus.org) Terwey has signed onto as a framework for clean, modern, broadly distributed prosperity.

• Men for Choice — Men’s coalition dedicated to restoring reproductive rights; does not endorse during primaries. https://men4choice.org

• Progressive Victory — Grassroots organization working to elect progressive candidates; Terwey is a member.

• Cherokee Nation — Sovereign nation whose Treaty of New Echota House-delegate seat Terwey commits to seating on day one.

Terms / Concepts:

• Treaty of New Echota — Pre-removal treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the United States that guarantees the nation a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House with committee votes, bill-submission rights, and full floor-speech rights — never seated.

• McGirt decision — The Supreme Court ruling Terwey cites as having reaffirmed tribal sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma; “settled law in my heart.”

• Fairness framing — Terwey’s deliberate substitution of “fair” for “equity,” “equality,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” when speaking to OK-02 voters; same policy, different dialect.

• Data-center sweetheart deals — Tax incentives Terwey blames for OK-02’s 30% electricity cost increase versus an 11% national average, with few permanent jobs in return.

• Day-one bills — Pre-written legislation Terwey and his coalition partners say they will file the day they are seated, as a contrast to “going there to learn how to govern.”

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

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The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

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~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro and Rachel Maron sit down with Brittany Jones, the Courage for Democracy candidate challenging Oregon Governor Tina Kotek in the Democratic primary, and Jones spends the hour translating progressive instinct into specific gubernatorial powers. She argues for a temporary state gas-tax suspension paired with a Secretary-of-State audit of ODOT, statewide expansion of CAHOOTS-style mental-health response, a housing-first approach she will fund from her own salary if the legislature refuses, and aggressive use of treaty law with Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes to block data-center expansion and Trump-administration logging approvals. She is explicit about confrontation with the federal government — referring ICE conduct to the Oregon DOJ, activating the state militia and National Guard to protect protesters, and coordinating with Washington and California to “fortify the West Coast” as a sanctuary for transgender, immigrant, and reproductive-care refugees.

What makes this interview worth listeners’ time is not the platform itself but Jones’s willingness to name the threat in plain language — fascism, white supremacy, government capture — and to accept the personal risk of doing so. She has raised under $2,000, lost her DoorDash vehicle, and tells her team to keep campaigning if she is arrested. The hosts press her on durability (income-tax flight, performance management, follow-through on past Oregon decriminalization) and on coalition-building with establishment Democrats; her answer is community-led oversight boards and constituent pressure rather than insider negotiation. The episode is a useful test case for whether a working-class, indigenous, grassroots-funded primary challenge can move the Democratic Party’s spine before the 2026 cycle.

Key Takeaways

• Track Oregon’s May ballot gas-tax measure and Jones’s proposed temporary suspension — her offset claim depends on an ODOT audit she has not yet seen the numbers on, so verify the audit’s existence and findings before treating the suspension as fully funded.

• Watch Jones’s use of treaty law as a template — if Oregon governors can credibly invoke the nine recognized tribes’ treaty rights to block data centers and federal logging approvals, that’s a tool other states could replicate, and the absence of its use today is itself evidence worth surfacing.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

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~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro opens this Powerful Voices interview by welcoming Joseph Perez-Caputo — law student, former actor, former gardener, Sicilian-Boricua, and the Courage Candidate running to unseat Representative Jim Himes in Connecticut’s 4th District. CT-04 runs from Bridgeport down to Greenwich, through Ridgefield and Redding and all the idyllic New England towns in between, and Joseph moved back in with his mother in Stamford at 33 years old to run for the seat. That detail is not incidental. It frames everything else in this conversation: the man did the math, decided the district needed this, and went.

Before a single policy question, the episode gives real time to the mechanics of getting onto the ballot in Connecticut — and the picture is ugly. The state runs closed primaries, which means you either win 15% of delegates from Democratic Town Committees (people picked by the party infrastructure you’re challenging) or you petition. Joseph is pursuing the petition route. No one in Connecticut history has successfully petitioned their way onto the congressional ballot since the country was founded. The numbers explain why: he needs 2% of registered voters who voted in the last election — which translates to roughly 4,500 signatures, all from registered Democrats, all collected in 42 days, all meeting archaic literacy-law standards requiring cursive, specific ink colors, and a form the state doesn’t even release until April 28th. Modern campaign wisdom says double it. One previous candidate got close, had the state delay releasing his forms by three days, and then watched the court rule against him when he argued the delay was unconstitutional. Joseph knows all of this and is running the petition route anyway — because, he says, the petition is about the voice of the people. The delegates route would require him to walk back into a district he left during the pandemic and ask party insiders to hand him support. He didn’t want to do it that way. You sense he wouldn’t have respected himself if he had.

The policy section of this episode is dense and genuinely interesting. Joseph’s first legislative priority is a tax abatement program for residential and commercial property taxes, structured around converting lawns into native cultivar havens or community vegetable gardens — routed through local CSAs, farmer’s markets, and food pantries to eliminate food deserts. He built this idea out as a gardener a decade ago and has been waiting for the right moment to run on it. The ecological case he makes is real: existing research suggests that if most American lawns were converted to native habitat, the cumulative effect would approximate a 22 million hectare national park. The economic case is equally direct — prop up the gardening trade as legitimate skilled work, bring fresh local produce into grocery supply chains, and give communities a new category of economic participation. From there, the episode covers affordable housing (the luxury-apartment gentrification wave gutting CT-04), the AI revolution’s impact on labor (tech layoffs, energy usage, water consumption), and a genuinely open conversation about universal basic income as a mechanism for letting people change careers without a three-month gap in healthcare. Joseph is not a fan of AI. He wants regulation on what data it can access, what it can be connected to, and what it can be used to generate — including explicit deepfakes made without consent. His critique of AI mirrors his critique of social media: we failed to learn the right lessons the first time, and the greatest repository of social behavior data in history (Meta) exists entirely for advertisers, not for public benefit.

The sharpest section of the episode is on FISA 702. Joseph’s incumbent, Representative Jim Himes, has been the public face of pushing clean reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s subsection 702 — the mechanism under which, through the data broker loophole, the government can purchase commercially available data on American citizens without a judicial warrant. Himes fought hard for clean reauthorization, got pushed back by constituent pressure, wrote a 14-page amendment Joseph describes as a press release, and still didn’t close the loophole. Joseph’s critique is not rhetorical. He’s in law school. He explains the difference between legal terms of art and plain meaning rules, walks through how the phrase “commercially available data” has been interpreted to mean everything, and makes the point plainly: someone could be watching this conversation right now through a phone camera, and it would be legal. The fix he wants is twofold — class action restitution rights for citizens whose data has been breached or sold, and actual defined terms in the statute so that “commercially available data” and “acted with a foreign national” have precise legal meanings instead of acting as open-ended surveillance licenses. When Nick asks whether this warrants a constitutional amendment to enshrine data sovereignty and human protection into the Bill of Rights, Joseph says categorically yes — and notes that 12 years ago he organized an international protest whose central demand was exactly that: a constitutional convention and a constitutional restatement of rights for the digital age. The punk rock dude who wants to build a machine he doesn’t want to rebel against is already thinking at that level.

The episode closes on impeachment, and here Joseph is explicit that he holds the more aggressive position within Courage for Democracy. Impeachment is the floor, not the ceiling. What he wants is to pursue treason charges — under RICO, against the full network of business, NGO, and political machine actors — after the impeachments. He cites On Treason by Carlton F.W. Larson as the legal framework, draws a line from the Confederacy to the current president, and names Pete Hegseth’s alleged orders for extrajudicial killings as falling under the same category of accountability that would send a soldier to Leavenworth. He wants a full DHS review. He wants the new Nuremberg — and he says the first one wasn’t intense enough because of Operation Paperclip. He’s aware that saying this on camera is not safe. He says it anyway. Nick’s response is worth noting: he’s been saying the same thing on his own platform for some time, and he’s glad a candidate is willing to speak it out loud, because public opinion has to exist before Congress will act. Citizens’ Impeachment has been building exactly that — and Joseph is one of roughly 130 Courage for Democracy candidates already operating as a collaborative, pre-formed legislative block across 38 states. They have a policy matrix on the Courage for Democracy website showing nearly 99% agreement across issues. They’re not waiting to get elected to start working together. They’re already working.

Key Takeaways

• Connecticut’s ballot access system is designed to fail challengers. No one has ever successfully petitioned onto a Connecticut congressional ballot. Joseph needs 4,500+ signatures from registered Democrats, collected in 42 days, on a form the state won’t release until April 28th, following 150-year-old literacy laws. If you’re in CT-04, find him at JPC4CT04 and help collect signatures.

• The gardening tax abatement program is ready to become a bill. Joseph’s proposal — abating property taxes in exchange for converting lawns to native cultivar havens or community gardens — has ecological benefits at national scale (22M hectare equivalent national park effect) and economic benefits at the local level. It’s also the kind of policy that crosses partisan lines: lower property taxes, local food access, and skilled trade creation are not ideologically divisive asks.

• FISA 702’s data broker loophole means everything is commercially available. Your IP address, your phone camera, your communications with anyone in another country — all of it potentially falls under the current legal framework. Joseph’s incumbent is fighting to keep reauthorization “clean.” Joseph’s campaign is now primarily focused on defeating that effort and defining terms that actually protect citizens. Citizens’ Impeachment is tracking this fight and acting on it.

• Impeachment is the floor, treason charges are the ceiling. Joseph is explicit that he holds the more aggressive position within the Courage Candidate network — RICO charges, full network accountability, a new Nuremberg that goes further than the last one. Public opinion needs to exist before Congress will act. Say it out loud. Keep saying it.

• The Courage Candidate network is already functioning as a pre-formed congressional block. 130 candidates across 38 states, with a policy matrix showing ~99% agreement. The candidates who didn’t make the primary ballot are staying committed locally and will be offered staff positions if their peers win. Find the candidate in your district at couragefordemocracy.com and make noise before the advertising money arrives.

• The House of Representatives is the only branch that can create law. Joseph’s answer to the Supreme Court running renegade is legislative: go into the old cases, read the dissents and the dicta, find the reasoning, and write the bill that undoes the bad decision. Executive orders are suggestions. The Court can strike down bad law but can’t create new law. A functioning legislative body can undo everything the Court has enabled — if it does its job. That’s the argument for why the candidates in this network matter.

Terms and Concepts

• Closed Primary (Connecticut) — A system in which only registered party members can vote in that party’s primary. In CT, getting on the primary ballot requires either 15% of Democratic Town Committee delegates or a successful petition drive — both designed to be difficult for challengers.

• Petition Route — The path Joseph is pursuing for ballot access. Requires ~4,500 signatures from registered Democrats, collected in 42 days from April 28th to June 8th. Has never been successfully completed in Connecticut history for a congressional race.

• Tax Abatement Program (Agrarian Integration) — Joseph’s signature legislative proposal. Property tax abatements for property owners who convert their land to native cultivar gardens or community food gardens. Designed to eliminate food deserts, create a new skilled trade economy, and produce national ecological benefit.

• FISA 702 / Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 — The surveillance law that allows intelligence agencies to collect communications involving non-U.S. persons abroad. The data broker loophole allows the government to purchase “commercially available data” without a judicial warrant, potentially capturing U.S. citizens’ data.

• Data Broker Loophole — The mechanism by which private companies sell personal data to each other, and then to the government, without triggering warrant requirements. Joseph’s incumbent argues this is not addressed in the statute. Joseph argues that’s precisely what makes it a loophole.

• Citizens’ Impeachment — Nonpartisan grassroots organization working to force Congress to act on impeachment and accountability. Connected to the Courage for Democracy candidate slate.

• Courage for Democracy — Non-partisan candidate slate of 130+ candidates across 38 states running for federal office. Policy matrix shows ~99% agreement across candidates. Operating as a pre-formed legislative collaborative.

• RICO — The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Joseph proposes applying it to the current administration’s conduct, treating the full network of actors as a coordinated criminal enterprise.

• Ranked Choice Voting (Joseph’s Federal Proposal) — A federal bill Joseph would pursue allowing each party to place two candidates on the general election ballot, with ranked-choice voting determining the winner. Designed to expand democratic choice while respecting state control over elections.

• Constitutional Amendment for Data Sovereignty — Joseph’s long-standing position: data protection, biometric sovereignty, and human rights protections should be enshrined in the Bill of Rights, not left to statutory interpretation.

Sources & References

• Joseph Perez-Caputo Campaign — creatingcommunityeverywhere-jpcforcongress.org

• Courage for Democracy

• Citizens’ Impeachment

• On Treason — Carlton F.W. Larson (2019)

• FISA Section 702 reauthorization — ongoing legislative fight, CT-04

• Connecticut closed primary and petition ballot access requirements

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

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You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

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Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro, Walter Rhein, and Will Fullwood open this Powerful Voices episode by welcoming Keira Havens — Air Force veteran, former scientist, co-founder of the Citizens Impeachment Coalition, and a driving force behind the Courage for Democracy candidate slate. The intro is warm and the military banter is real, but Keira gets down to business fast: she swore an oath to the Constitution, she’s taking it seriously, and she’s here because almost nobody in Congress is.

The backstory Keira lays out is both more organized and more infuriating than most people realize. In April 2025 — when polls were already showing 80-plus percent of Democrats, 40-50% of independents, and even 20% of Republicans wanting impeachment — the Citizens Impeachment Coalition launched with a single coordinated action: 600 people, one from every congressional district, sent an article of impeachment to Congress at the exact same moment. It worked. Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan’s 13th district incorporated their drafted article into a full impeachment resolution, filed it under Rule 9 (which forces a House floor vote within two legislative days), and brought it to a vote in under a month. Then Democratic leadership walked onto the floor and physically yelled at Thanedar until he pulled it. The first vote that did happen saw 79 members willing to take up the question of impeachment. By December, that number had jumped to 140. Only 47 Democrats followed leadership into the “present” column. The coalition reads this as a signal: leadership is isolated. The caucus is not with them. The movement needs to keep forcing votes until leadership can no longer pretend otherwise. Citizens Impeachment is still pushing for the next one.

The second pillar of this work is Courage for Democracy — the candidate replacement arm. If Congress won’t do its job, you replace the people in Congress. That logic produced a slate of 130-plus Courage Candidates across 38 states, running in 100-plus districts at the federal level, spanning both House and Senate races. Keira is clear on what “non-partisan” actually means in this context: it doesn’t mean bipartisan, it doesn’t mean splitting the difference, and it doesn’t mean she has any interest in what label a candidate puts on themselves. It means a shared standard — elected officials uphold the Constitution and are held to it equally — applied without exception and without carve-outs for team affiliation. The candidate interview playbook Walter and Courtney built (now live at broadbanner.com/candidate-interview-playbook) is part of this infrastructure: giving independent media creators the baseline they need to run a serious candidate interview and get something useful on the record.

The primary calendar is where this episode becomes immediately actionable. Primary season kicks off May 5th, with Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana all in the first wave. Louisiana’s Courage Candidate has already cleared her primary — her opponent dropped out, so she’s on the general election ballot. Georgia has Brianna Woodson and Case Norton, who Keira describes as showing up ready and willing to fight. California is a major target on June 6th, along with a batch of others. The math Keira lays out matters: a typical congressional primary turns out roughly 40,000 voters in a district where the general may pull 200,000. That compression means 100, 200, or 500 organized people can swing a primary. The movement doesn’t need to win the whole country at once. It needs to win primaries, one district at a time, with people who show up before the general and vote when it actually counts. Full candidate search by state and office is at couragefordemocracy.com.

Nick closes by pulling the two threads together on-screen — showing the BroadBanner resources page with Citizens Impeachment and Courage for Democracy links already live — and framing what the platform is for: getting serious candidates in front of audiences before the money decides the conversation. Keira’s assessment of what podcasters and independent media can actually provide is worth sitting with. It isn’t money, and it isn’t infrastructure. It’s taking candidates seriously, giving them a platform where they look credible, and asking them the question that the institutional media consistently refuses to ask: are you willing to fight? That question, Keira says, is the one that actually separates the candidates who matter from the ones who are just running for résumé reasons. All resources — Citizens Impeachment, Courage Candidates, the community calendar, and the candidate interview playbook — are consolidated at broadbanner.com/resources.

Key Takeaways

• Vote in the primary. Congressional primaries turn out roughly 40,000 people per district — roughly 5% of the total electorate. That compression means a few hundred organized voters can determine the outcome. Find your Courage Candidate at couragefordemocracy.com, learn when your primary is, and show up before the general.

• Track the impeachment vote count. The December House vote had 140 members willing to take up the question of impeachment. Only 47 Democrats voted with leadership against it. Watch whether the next vote moves that number above 150 — that is the threshold at which Democratic leadership can no longer hold the line. Citizens Impeachment tracks every vote and sends constituent action items directly.

• Ask every candidate if they’re willing to fight. Keira’s framework for evaluating candidates is simple: not how much money they’ve raised, not what party label they’re wearing, but whether they will actually use power when they have it. That’s the interview question that matters. If you’re hosting candidates on your platform, use the framework at broadbanner.com/candidate-interview-playbook.

• Primaries in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, West Virginia, and California start May 5th. The first wave of Courage Candidate primaries begins immediately. Louisiana’s candidate is already on the general election ballot. West Virginia’s Brit is running hard. California is the major June 6th target. Know who’s running in your district and make noise about it now, before the advertising money rolls in.

• Connect independent media to Courage Candidates. The most valuable thing podcasters and community platforms can do right now is give Courage Candidates a platform and treat them seriously. This doesn’t require money or infrastructure. It requires showing up, asking real questions, and getting candidates in front of new audiences. Reach out to Courage for Democracy to get connected with a candidate running in your district.

• The oath of office is non-negotiable. Keira’s framing is as simple as it is demanding: every member of Congress swore the same oath she swore in the Air Force — to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Courage for Democracy applies that standard uniformly, regardless of party, and will primary anyone who won’t keep it. That’s the entire theory of change.

Terms and Concepts

• Citizens Impeachment — Nonpartisan grassroots organization founded April 2025 with the goal of forcing Congress to act on impeachment. Strategy: coordinated constituent pressure, drafted articles of impeachment, Rule 9 filings. citizensimpeachment.com

• Courage for Democracy — The candidate slate arm of the citizens accountability movement. 130+ candidates in 38 states running for House and Senate seats. Non-partisan by design: applies a single constitutional standard to all candidates regardless of party. couragefordemocracy.com

• Courage Candidates — Individual candidates endorsed and supported by Courage for Democracy. Screened for willingness to uphold their oath of office and actually use power once elected.

• Rule 9 — A House procedural rule under which any member can raise a question of constitutional privilege at any time, forcing a floor vote within two legislative days. The mechanism the Citizens Impeachment Coalition used to get an impeachment vote to the floor in under a month.

• Non-partisan vs. Bipartisan — Keira’s explicit distinction: bipartisan means splitting the difference between parties; non-partisan means applying the same constitutional standard to everyone regardless of party. Courage for Democracy is the latter.

• Candidate Interview Playbook — A guide developed by Walter Rhein and volunteer Courtney for independent media creators who want to interview congressional candidates. Provides baseline discussion points and interview structure. broadbanner.com/candidate-interview-playbook

• Primary Math — A Courage for Democracy organizing framework: congressional primaries average ~40,000 voters per district vs. ~200,000 in the general. 100-500 organized voters can swing a primary. Primary voting has disproportionate impact and is where the movement’s electoral leverage is concentrated.

Sources & References

• Citizens Impeachment Coalition — citizensimpeachment.com

• Courage for Democracy — couragefordemocracy.com

• Banner and Backbone Community Resources — broadbanner.com/resources

• Congressional Candidate Interview Playbook — broadbanner.com/candidate-interview-playbook

• House impeachment vote tallies (first vote: 79 for; December vote: 140 for, 47 with leadership)

• April 2025 polling: 80%+ of Democrats, 40-50% of independents, 20% of Republicans supporting impeachment

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

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• deflock.me

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• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

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• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro and Shane Yirak open today’s episode with the clock running: the US-Iran ceasefire is set to expire in roughly 32 hours, and the negotiations in Islamabad are going nowhere. JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner are on the ground in Pakistan — none of them Senate-confirmed diplomats, none of them with constitutional authority to bind the United States to anything. Iran rejected the US negotiating framework before the ceasefire was even signed, and still the US accepted Iran’s terms. Shane reads that as a signal: something went badly wrong in the days before the ceasefire that forced the US into a weak position, and the two-week pause was about buying time for the second wave to arrive, not about making peace.

Shane tracks the force posture in detail. The USS Lincoln and USS Tripoli were the opening bluff — Iran called it, said they were ready, and they were. The USS George H.W. Bush and its carrier group are now the second wave, arriving into the ceasefire window alongside what Shane describes as the largest US naval armada assembled for this conflict: three carriers, assigned strike groups, two Marine Expeditionary Units, over a dozen destroyers, support ships, everything. The problem, Shane argues, is that this arrival coincides with a US military that is already degraded. Both hospital ships are in dry dock. Tomahawk reserves are critically low. The Pentagon is leaking precisely because people inside know the US is not ready for what comes next. Special operations forces sent deep into Iranian territory — in Shane’s reading, likely to seize enriched uranium — appear to have suffered serious losses, which is why the ceasefire happened at all. Losing that volume of special operators in enemy territory, he says, would be the single largest military defeat in modern US history.

Iran, meanwhile, is not standing still. Shane has been tracking a China-to-Iran resupply corridor running through Pakistan’s Belt and Road infrastructure, surging MANPADs and potentially larger air defense systems into Iran in advance of the ceasefire expiration. Pakistan’s current leader is an untouchable dictator with full unilateral authority, and the country has every incentive to hold leverage over India by controlling this corridor. The proof-of-concept for Chinese weapons tech is no longer theoretical — in the India-Pakistan conflict, Pakistani forces used Chinese air defense systems to shoot down Rafale fighters. The same category of systems is now flowing to Iran. Shane’s assessment: the Tripoli and Lincoln were the bluff; they failed. What comes next is the real war. And if the US expends its remaining military capacity here, Taiwan is next.

Nick pulls the thread back to the domestic economy. Gas is $4 a gallon in Arkansas and $6 in parts of the South. Federal minimum wage has not moved since Nick was a kid — still $7.25. The wage-to-gas-price ratio for workers in the South is worse than the same ratio in California at $6, because Southern wages are so compressed. There is no amount of Fox News spin that makes $4 gas feel like progress. The war is making the material conditions impossible to lie about, and that exposure is what the current political moment turns on. Nick also calls out Congress directly: Democrats need to file war powers resolutions and find Republican co-sponsors now, regardless of what AIPAC has bought. Ro Khanna should walk onto the House floor and read every name in the Congressional sexual assault defense fund — the slush fund of public money that members use to settle their own assault claims. If enough members resigned over credible assault allegations, quorum would break and snap elections would be required under the Constitution. Nick names names: Eric Swalwell, Tony Gonzalez, Ruben Gallego.

The episode opens with news Nick delivers before the main discussion: Evan Fields was fired from Lincoln Square the same day. Evan had published a detailed piece calling out major platform figures for holding zero paid subscriptions to smaller contributors — screenshotted, named, documented. He was fired by a board member who didn’t like the accountability. Nick invited Evan onto Banner and Backbone immediately as a public contributor. The Evan Fields story is not a sidebar to the episode’s larger argument — it is the same argument. Independent media consolidation, platform capture, and the economics of who gets to speak track directly alongside the question of who profits from the Iran war. Palantir gets richer. Halliburton looks like a footnote. BlackRock looks small. And the people doing the actual accountability journalism get fired for a hundred and fifty bucks a week.

Shane closes with the structural assessment: the ceasefire was not peace, it was a repositioning window. Both sides used it. The question now is who’s more ready. He does not believe the US is. The real war, when it comes, will produce the kind of mass casualty event that cannot be narratively managed — and the response from a fractured, nationalist-inflected US public will not look like the post-9/11 unification. It will look worse.

Key Takeaways

• Track the ceasefire expiration and who shoots first. The 32-hour window in this episode closes the ceasefire. Watch whether the US, Israel, or Iran initiates after expiration — and watch where. Shane identifies Lebanon/Hezbollah strikes and anti-ship ballistic missile salvos as the two most dangerous escalation pathways that Iran has not yet used at scale.

• Map the China-Pakistan-Iran resupply corridor. China is surging air defense systems — MANPADs and potentially larger — to Iran through Pakistan’s Belt and Road infrastructure. Verify this through cargo flight patterns, Belt and Road shipping data, and Pakistani arms transfer records. Pakistan’s use of Chinese systems to shoot down Rafale fighters in the India-Pakistan conflict is the proof of concept.

• Monitor US military readiness indicators. Both US hospital ships are in dry dock. Tomahawk reserves are critically depleted. The Navy is being decommissioned faster than it is being replaced. Verify through DoD budget documents, Navy decommissioning schedules, and Congressional testimony on munitions reserves.

• Demand war powers resolutions. Congress has sole constitutional authority to authorize armed conflict and appropriate war funding. Contact your representatives and demand a war powers resolution to limit presidential military authority in the Iran conflict. Find out whether your member has taken AIPAC money and whether they have drawn on the Congressional sexual assault defense fund.

• Follow Evan Fields. Evan was fired from Lincoln Square for publishing accountability journalism that documented major platform figures holding zero paid subscriptions to independent contributors. He is now a public contributor at Banner and Backbone. His work is a direct counter to the platform capture dynamic that suppresses independent voices. Subscribe and share.

• Connect the war-profit loop. Palantir, Anduril, and their investor class need this war to continue. That is not a conspiracy — it is their disclosed business model. A forever war in Iran is the profit event their valuations are built on. Track their DoD contracts, their lobbyist filings, and the policy positions of the people they fund.

Terms and Concepts

• The Blockade — The US seizure of Iranian oil tankers and closure of the Strait of Hormuz by US/Israeli forces; the proximate cause of this episode’s title and the central strategic escalation being analyzed.

• Second Wave — The USS George H.W. Bush carrier group and additional MEUs arriving in the conflict zone during the ceasefire window, completing the full assembled armada: three carriers, assigned strike groups, 12+ destroyers, support ships.

• MANPADs — Man-portable air defense systems; China is surging these to Iran through Pakistan’s Belt and Road corridor. Shoulder-mounted, proven capable of shooting down F-15Es and A-10 Warthogs. Iran has not yet deployed them at volume.

• Shahed drones — Iranian-produced loitering munitions; Iran has the capacity to launch 500 simultaneously and has not done so, indicating strategic restraint and conserved capability.

• Anti-ship ballistic missiles — Iranian weapons not yet used at scale in the conflict; a coordinated salvo against carrier groups represents the escalation Iran has held in reserve.

• Belt and Road Initiative — China’s infrastructure investment network; the corridor through Pakistan is being used to route air defense systems into Iran in advance of ceasefire expiration.

• Congressional Sexual Assault Defense Fund — A fund of public money used by members of Congress to settle sexual assault claims against themselves. Nick calls for public disclosure and forced resignation of all members who have drawn on it for credible assault claims.

• Abrahamic Fascism — Nick’s term for theocratic nationalism that weaponizes religious identity for state power — applied equally to Israeli ultra-Zionism and American Christian nationalism. He distinguishes this sharply from Judaism, Christianity, or Islam as practiced religions.

• Platform Capture — The process by which legacy media rebrands as independent media on platforms like Substack while continuing to suppress and underpay small contributors. The Lincoln Square/Evan Fields situation is the episode’s case study.

~ Nick Paro, Shane Yirak

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

• Broad Banner

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new Broad Banner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the Banner & Backbone team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback: Feedback Form

• Email us: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Palantalk Team

~ Nick Paro | Shane Yirak ~

Nick Paro and Shane Yirak argue that Peter Thiel has methodically purchased or gained control over vast swaths of American critical infrastructure—surveillance systems, AI companies, defense contractors, and health systems—leveraging his wealth to bypass constitutional limits on presidential eligibility by grooming JD Vance as a proxy. Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies, a CIA-backed surveillance and AI company with active contracts across military, intelligence, and health agencies, and co-founded Anduril Industries, which builds autonomous weapons systems. Nick walks through Thiel’s political spending ($20 million to Blake Masters in 2022, $15 million to JD Vance), his ownership of drone networks, and the downstream policy consequences—including a new AI fraud detection tool at the Veterans Administration that will screen out veterans from benefits. Shane emphasizes the “systemic rot” that warps the boundary between government and private power: Thiel is not building anything new, he is buying existing infrastructure and redirecting it toward privatized control. This episode cuts to the heart of why Palantalk exists—to track the individuals and systems that concentrate wealth and power at the expense of democratic accountability.

Key Takeaways

• Track Thiel’s infrastructure ownership. Palantir holds contracts with CIA, military, DHS, and HHS. Anduril builds autonomous weapons. Thiel owns major drone networks. Verify these contracts in public records and assess how privatization shifts accountability away from elected officials.

• Monitor the VA’s new AI fraud tool. The Veterans Administration rolled out an AI system meant to catch fraud in disability claims. It will also flag legitimate claims from veterans using third-party representation, screening them out as fraudulent and denying benefits. Document the rollout, the false positive rate, and the denied claims this generates.

• Examine the JD Vance grooming relationship. Vance received $15 million from Thiel in 2022 and has been mentored by him. Now Vice President, Vance can shape policy in areas where Thiel has financial interests. Compare Vance’s policy positions to Thiel’s business holdings and campaign donations.

• Watch for the Hungarian precedent. JD Vance went to Hungary and helped Orban lose the election, disrupting a decades-long conservative network project. This signals how far operatives will go to protect or reshape power structures. Track similar interventions elsewhere.

• Distinguish between innovation and privatization. Thiel does not invent—he buys. His model is to acquire government contracts and shift control to private hands while maintaining government funding. Look for other billionaires replicating this playbook in healthcare, energy, or transportation.

People and Terms

People:

• Peter Thiel — Co-founder of Palantir and Anduril, CIA-backed investor, JD Vance’s political patron; ineligible for US presidency because he is not a natural-born citizen but has installed Vance as proxy.

• JD Vance — Vice President, received $15 million in campaign support from Thiel in 2022, has worked under his tutelage; now positioned to advance Thiel’s policy interests.

• Blake Masters — Received $20 million from Thiel in 2022 for Arizona Senate campaign; reflects Thiel’s direct political spending model.

• Victor Orban — Hungarian Prime Minister whose network was disrupted when JD Vance intervened to help him lose re-election.

Terms / Concepts:

• Autonomous weapons — Military systems that auto-target and kill without human decision-making; Anduril builds these using Palantir AI.

• Systemic rot — The warping of the boundary between government and private money, where private individuals acquire control over public infrastructure while government continues to fund it.

• Infrastructure capture — The process of buying or obtaining control over critical systems (surveillance, defense, health) that governments depend on, shifting accountability from elected officials to private owners.

Sources & References

• Federal Election Commission (FEC) records for Thiel’s 2022 campaign donations

• SAM.gov and DoD contract databases for Palantir and Anduril contracts

• VA press releases and internal memos on the new fraud detection AI rollout

• CPAC and Hungarian political records for Orban network details

~ Nick Paro, Shane Yirak

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

• Broad Banner

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new Broad Banner network and affiliate calendar!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Reach out to the Banner & Backbone team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback: Feedback Form

• Email us: info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Palantalk Team

~ Nick Paro | Shane Yirak ~

The final episode of the Anti-Fascist Book Club’s discussion on “To Catch a Fascist” by zeroes in on the closing chapters, where Mathias traces how the right has systematized the branding of antifascism itself as a domestic terror threat. Part Three examines the mechanism: right-wing influencers led a well-funded, well-organized effort to make “antifa” legible as a terrorist organization, a campaign that has now moved beyond rhetoric into state apparatus. , , and wrestled with the book’s most urgent implications — that fascism thrives on isolation and identity capture, while authentic democracy depends on the opposite.

The discussion opens with a gut-punch story from the book: a young Patriot Front member who left the organization describes his terror at the loneliness that followed. His entire identity, his sense of belonging, his access to people who would house him and call him brother — all of it was tethered to the group. This becomes the connective tissue for the entire discussion. Tara seizes on it immediately: this is why separating people from MAGA, from white supremacist movements, is so brutally hard. It’s not just propaganda doing the work. It’s community. It’s identity. It’s the bonds that humans are wired to need. The group recognizes what the book makes clear: the antidote is building our own communities so compelling, so real, that they become the default rather than the exception.

Nick and Kristofer expand this into the context of American decline. Kristofer points to a structural catastrophe: the postwar suburbs destroyed what he calls “third places” — the bars, bowling alleys, pool halls where people of all types gathered without apology. American culture stopped engineering spaces for community, and extremist organizations filled the void. Young men in particular — isolated, searching for agency, lacking any forcing function that would connect them to others — are funneled into Patriot Front, Three Percenters, and the ecosystem around them. These organizations sell what the military sold Kristofer at eighteen: mission, purpose, community. The book documents this recruitment pipeline. The team makes clear that preventing it requires not de-radicalization programs but preventative community building. This is why the Anti-Fascist Book Club exists at all.

The panel also locates the book in a second, more immediate crisis: the state weaponization of the antifa label. Nick methodically walks through what Mathias documents. The Trump administration designated antifa as a domestic terror organization without legal authority — a move that “doesn’t actually mean anything” in law but everything in practice. Pam Bondi’s DOJ issued orders to prosecute it. More chillingly, the Trump administration pressured allied governments to officially designate domestic antifascist organizations overseas as international terrorist organizations, building a legal network that can be drawn back to Americans working in international spaces. For researchers, journalists, and transnational antifascists, this is a direct threat to civil liberties. The game is to create the apparatus — the international designations, the surveillance infrastructure — that can then be deployed domestically. The panel’s response is not panic but clarity: the actual threat comes from the right. Always has.

The third pillar of this episode is a withering critique of the left’s failure to match the right’s media strategy. Tara articulates what she’s been saying for years: the right won control of the national imagination by flooding every corner of culture — YouTube, podcasts, mainstream television — with their message. Small creators like Diamond and Silk got elevated to Fox News. The right understood that reaching people everywhere, all the time, was the strategy. The left does not do this. Progressives have the ideas, the facts, the moral clarity. But they do not have the funding, the organizational will, or the tribal loyalty to outreach at scale. This is not accident. It is choice. And that choice is killing democracy.

Nick brings the book back to the constitutional question at stake. He quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from “Letters from Birmingham Jail” — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — and uses it as the spine for a larger argument about national identity. Americans have allowed themselves to become fractured into state-based identities, a fragmentation the right exploits relentlessly. But King was arguing for something else: the interconnectedness of all communities, the notion that Americans are never “outside agitators” but always neighbors. The Anti-Fascist Book Club provides one model: forcing functions for people to gather, to build relationships, to remember that they are not alone. The book’s final message, which the panel inhabits fully, is that antifascism is not an intellectual exercise. It is the work of building community stronger than the fascists can.

What Comes Next

• Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen — Indiebound

Books Mentioned

• To Catch a Fascist by Christopher Mathias — Hachette Book Group

• Letters from Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — King Institute

Where to find resources

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

• Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• safedc.info

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin ~

If you want to contact her campaign for an interview, here’s the email: winning@gingerforuscongress.com

You can follow her here:

Ginger Murray

Find here:

Missives from a Middle-aged Man

Musings, Rants & Essays on... Whatever I feel like writing about.

By Frederic Poag

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I'd Rather Be Writing

My perspective is never given equal representation in the mainstream media. I believe character matters. I believe the experts. I believe in education. I believe women. Let me know if you have a story to tell. There's no AI content in my newsletter.

By Walter Rhein

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

Episode six of the Anti-Fascist Book Club’s reading of Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist centers on the chapter titled “The Fire Rises,” beginning around page 200, where Mathias traces the accelerationist movement’s path from internet subculture to political mainstream. Nick opens with the book’s account of how figures like Nick Fuentes — once fringe provocateurs whose rhetoric should have disqualified them from public discourse — were welcomed into Trump’s orbit during his first administration. The panel treats this not as history but as diagnosis, connecting Mathias‘ reporting directly to the week’s news: Pam Bondi’s firing as Attorney General, the Epstein Transparency Act violations, and the Supreme Court hearing a case against birthright citizenship.

What makes this episode sharp is the way Nick and Tara refuse to let the book’s analysis sit at arm’s length. Tara draws from Part Two of the book — the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the doxing campaigns that exposed rally attendees as Republican staffers and military members, and the pattern of those same individuals later being arrested for domestic violence and CSAM. She places these facts against Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” framing, and the contrast does the work Mathias intends: the far right’s sickness isn’t aberrant, it’s structural. Nick extends the argument by connecting the chapter’s cultural analysis to the accelerationist pipeline — how abandoning the cultural space allowed movements like Trad Wives, looks-maxing, and Soft Girl aesthetics to flourish, and how conservative parents who screamed about radicalization were blaming trans people when the actual threat was accelerationist capture of their children.

The episode’s most sustained argument is about gendered power within the fascist apparatus. Nick traces a pattern: every woman removed from Trump’s administration is replaced by a man — Kristi Noem by Markwayne Mullen, Pam Bondi by an as-yet-unnamed male successor. The replacements aren’t just shuffles; they’re escalations. Mullen is described as even more performative than Noem, trading on a false masculinity that American culture is conditioned to accept. Nick connects this to “The Fire Rises” by arguing that accelerationists prefer male figureheads who can perform authority without scrutiny — the “trust me, bro” of fascist governance. The panel insists that while Bondi bears full responsibility for her choices, the systemic patriarchy that positions women as disposable shields for male accelerationists is itself a feature of the movement Matthias documents.

The conversation also addresses the cultural pipeline from rhetoric to policy, tracing how the “they’re eating the dogs” trope — which became viral TikTok content and a meme song — provided the cultural impetus for the Supreme Court to hear a birthright citizenship case. Nick argues this is the accelerationist playbook in action: normalize dehumanizing language through entertainment, then use the normalized hostility as political cover for stripping constitutional rights. Tara reinforces this by noting the double standard in how law enforcement treats right-wing versus left-wing protests, from Charlottesville to Zuccotti Park to January 6th. The episode closes with a live exchange with chat commenters about free speech and hate speech — a microcosm of the very cultural battle the book describes.

This second-to-last episode on To Catch a Fascist arrives at what feels like the book’s operational thesis: awareness without accountability changes nothing. Nick’s call for Bondi’s prosecution under the Epstein Transparency Act, Tara’s insistence that consequences must extend beyond individual scapegoats, and the book club’s standing invitation to start local chapters all point in the same direction — that community-building is not a supplement to anti-fascist action, it is the action itself.

Where to find resources

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

• Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• safedc.info

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

Nick Paro and Shane Yirak open today’s Palantalk by framing the U.S. military campaign against Iran not as war in any conventional sense, but as an act of state terrorism executed without a coherent exit strategy — the direct result of a Pentagon gutted of its institutional brain trust and replaced with ideological loyalists. Shane presents a systematic accounting of the military leadership purge that began in February 2025, tracking the removal of at least 24 generals and admirals — including CENTCOM commander General Michael Carrilla, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General C.Q. Brown, and the head of U.S. Cyber Command — each fired for offering professional resistance or inconvenient intelligence. In their place, the administration installed loyalists aligned with Christian Nationalists and Dominionist ideology, substituting obedience for mission command and, as Shane flags, accelerating the integration of Palantir into Pentagon operations as an AI replacement for the human expertise that was purged.

Nick and Shane then analyze Iran’s documented military strategy: a disciplined tit-for-tat doctrine that has degraded 40% of the U.S. tanker fleet, destroyed at least one irreplaceable E-3 Sentinel AWACS pulled from Alaska, rendered 14 regional airbases uninhabitable, and — critically — held its entire inventory of anti-ship ballistic missiles in reserve, suggesting Iran is waiting for the highest-value moment to deploy them. The episode closes on the Kharg Island question: both hosts argue that a U.S. amphibious assault on Kharg would walk directly into a prepared Iranian kill box in the Strait of Hormuz, mining the strait behind the fleet and creating a mass-casualty cascade — exactly the scenario that a reactionary, plan-free Pentagon leadership would fall into.

Key Takeaways

• Track the Strait of Hormuz closely: Iran controls Hormuz and the Houthis control the Bab al-Mandeb, meaning both of the world’s critical oil shipping lanes are already in adversary hands. Any naval surge into the strait should be read as an escalation trigger, not a show of strength.

• Verify the military’s casualty and damage numbers against independent OSINT sources. Shane documents a consistent pattern of official minimization — “damaged” regularly means destroyed — and cross-referencing Chinese satellite imagery, the Wall Street Journal’s base reporting, and tools like IranWarLive.com gives a far more accurate operational picture.

• Understand what Palantir’s designation as an essential Pentagon contractor means for democratic oversight. Firing human experts who push back and replacing them with AI systems that comply is a structural shift in how military decisions are made and by whom they can be questioned.

• Watch the Kharg Island situation as a potential strategic trap. Shane’s analysis holds that Iran has war-gamed this scenario deliberately — they want the U.S. to attempt a seizure so they can mine the strait, strand a carrier group, and force a mass-casualty response that exhausts U.S. naval assets.

• Support the troops by opposing the war. Nick, as a disabled Army combat veteran, is direct: supporting service members means demanding they be brought home, not conflating troop welfare with political support for the operation by sending them into an unwinnable position.

OSINT Resources

• https://iranstrikemap.com/

• https://iranwarlive.com/

• https://i0.wp.com/www.directrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ME_conflict.png?resize=1280%2C720&ssl=1

Extras

• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Map_of_North_America_with_the_Western_Interior_Seaway_during_the_Campanian_%28Upper_Cretaceous%29.png

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

• : info@sickofthisshitpublications.com

• : firebrandproject@proton.me

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

This was such a great conversation. Despite all that’s happened, I’m always overwhelmed when I meet authentic people of integrity who are doing great work to protect our nation. is working to organize progressive candidates to flip seats and challenge ineffective representatives. Help me put them in touch with .

We win through the messaging. We must demand that our voices are heard. Keira Havens discussed a lot of great tactics like the importance of writing a letter to the editor of your local paper. Read about that here.

Friends, the forces of hate have the guns and the money but WE’VE GOT THE NUMBERS! We’re going to win this with peace, love, and reason. But you all need to break out your typewriters and start to make your voices heard!

Their web page is Courage for Democracy.

Also check out Citizens’ Impeachment. They have Monday morning actions that will inspire you to do more to save your country.

Citizens' Impeachment

Grassroots nonpartisan movement to impeach, convict, and remove Donald Trump and his administration for Tyranny and Treason. Join us: https://citizensimpeachment.com/sign-up-to-help-us-stop-trump/

, , , , , , , , this would be a great person to invite on for an interview!

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I'd Rather Be Writing

My perspective is never given equal representation in the mainstream media. I believe character matters. I believe the experts. I believe in education. I believe women. Let me know if you have a story to tell. There's no AI content in my newsletter.

By Walter Rhein

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

In the fifth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist, , , and open with a direct charge for the No Kings rally weekend: stop treating protest as the endpoint. Kristofer framed the Anti-Fascist Book Club as a “social lubricant that becomes social glue” — the goal isn’t just showing up, it’s using those spaces to connect with three people you don’t already know, make concrete plans to meet within a week, and hand them a printed copy of the Veterans Fighting Fascism AFBC leadership guide. The distinction matters: solidarity without community-building is just a feeling. Community-building at scale is democracy itself.

Nick anchored the book discussion in a passage from pages 116–117 on the alt-right’s deliberate targeting of neurodivergent and socially isolated young people. The book documents how the movement weaponized terms like “weaponized autism,” used Discord channels and gaming platforms to build pipelines, and deployed memes, cartoon characters, and pop culture parodies to recruit children in spaces that pro-democracy voices had largely abandoned. Kristofer added a specific mechanism: these communities use self-diagnosed neurodivergence as a rhetorical shield, framing racist behavior as a social processing disorder rather than a moral failure. Nick, speaking from his own experience with ADHD, pushed back directly — a diagnosis explains some things, but it doesn’t transfer your accountability to someone else. That distinction is one of the core tools parents, siblings, and trusted adults need to put in front of young men before the pipeline does.

The conversation moved through the mechanics of radicalization into the harder question Kris raised: what happens when the legal system fails to deliver consequences? He walked through the real cost of pursuing his own case against a neo-Nazi who hand-delivered a death threat to his mother’s home — 18 months, $40,000, and repeated continuances just to get one charge to stick. The process punished him as much as the perpetrator. He put it plainly: he had the man’s address within hours and could have handled it differently if he subscribed to militant antifascism. He’s not endorsing that path, but he’s asking the question honestly, especially as masked federal agents operate with documented impunity and the DOJ blocks FBI investigation into killings. Tara drew the parallel to Hans Litten, the German lawyer who took Nazi street violence to court in the early 1930s and ended up dying in a concentration camp after the regime took power. The lesson isn’t despair — it’s that legal accountability must be pursued aggressively and that the community around those efforts has to be larger than one person.

The episode closed on community as the structural counter to fascism. Tara cited research showing that strong, multiracial local networks are among the most effective documented defenses against authoritarian politics — connected people are harder to isolate and harder to scare. Nick extended that to the practical: take your MAGA-adjacent family members to a city they’ve never been to. Show them culture. Blow their minds in the best way. That work belongs to those of us with the social capital to do it safely — not to the trans people, LGBTQ+ community members, or marginalized groups who are already targeted. With the No Kings rallies the next day, the crew’s unified message was: go, but go with a plan, go to build something, and go to till the garden.

On Offense with Kris Goldsmith

Don’t Waste Your Time at “No Kings” Protests

Don’t waste your time with these “No Kings” protests…

Listen now

2 months ago · 137 likes · 30 comments · Kristofer Goldsmith and Valor Media Network

People, Orgs, and Terms Mentioned

People

• Kristofer Goldsmith — veteran, founder of Veterans Fighting Fascism and Task Force Butler, host of On Offense (Valor Media Network); infiltrated Patriot Front

• Christopher Mathias — author of To Catch a Fascist; HuffPost journalist; previously appeared on On Offense

• Nick Fuentes — named as an example of the alt-right pipeline operating in the open

• Hans Litten — German lawyer who cross-examined Hitler and prosecuted Nazi street violence in Weimar Germany; died in a concentration camp after the regime took power

• Dylann Roof — white supremacist mass murderer; referenced in context of the “Last Rhodesian” dog whistle and its use in extremist online spaces

• Paul Town — subject in the book; a case study in the targeted recruitment of neurodivergent people into white supremacist networks

• Renee Nicole Good — the first named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN

• Alex Pretti — the second named victim of masked ICE violence in Minneapolis, MN

Organizations / Programs

• Veterans Fighting Fascism (VFF) — ’s non-profit organization; hosts the AFBC reading list and leadership guide at veteransfightingfascism.org

• Task Force Butler — affiliated organization; resources and gear available at taskforcebutler.org

• Patriot Front — neo-Nazi organization Kristofer infiltrated; discussed throughout

• Anonymous Comrades Collective — anti-fascist research group cited in the book; documented the targeting of neurodivergent people

• Anne Frank Army — Midwest anti-fascist group quoted in the book on the tension between prison abolition and accountability for fascist violence

• No Kings Rally — nationwide protests scheduled for March 28, 2026; referenced throughout as the immediate action opportunity

• On Offense / Valor Media Network — Kristofer’s podcast and network

Terms / Concepts

• Militant antifascism — active, confrontational opposition to fascist organizing; Mathias subscribes to this in the book; the hosts engaged with it honestly without endorsing or dismissing it

• Prison abolition — the position that prisons should be eliminated; creates tension for anti-fascists who also want accountability for fascist violence; the book quotes Anne Frank Army on this directly

• Neurodivergence — umbrella term for cognitive differences including ADHD, autism spectrum, etc.; discussed in context of recruitment targeting and bad-faith weaponization by extremist communities

• Edgelording — transgressive humor used as a gateway to radicalization; described as an appeal to young men’s desire for autonomy and rebellion

• The Great Deplatforming — mass removal of alt-right figures from social platforms after January 6th; cited as a brief disruption largely reversed by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X

• “Last Rhodesian” — Dylann Roof’s online handle; a dog whistle referencing the white colonial government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); used to signal ideology in plain sight

Where to find resources

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

• Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• safedc.info

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

, , and opened with a sharp analysis of the SAVE Act's voter suppression mechanics, arguing that the law's passport-document requirements will disproportionately disenfranchise women — including Republican women whose access to identity documents has been systematically constrained. The conversation then shifted to its core subject: how independent media creators can build and deploy their own tech infrastructure to compete on the same information terrain as well-funded authoritarian actors. Nick live-demoed the Broad Banner Assistant, an open-source automation tool that pulls content from Google Drive, converts it to Markdown, and publishes it to GitHub Pages with minimal human input — positioning GitHub as both a content distribution channel and an AI training-data feed. Rachel introduced the concept of a sovereign tech stack using locally-run small language models, explained the Owl Problem as evidence that AI bias transmission is poorly understood even by developers, and detailed how she used AI-assisted OSINT aggregation to track troop movements before CENTCOM announced them. The episode closed with a geopolitical segment on Iran's strategic goal of decoupling the Trump regime from its Gulf financial backers, and a call for audiences to treat citizen journalism and AI-literacy as active civic responsibilities.

Come check out the new https://pages.broadbanner.com/

Key Takeaways

• Star your GitHub repositories and share GitHub Pages links — visibility metrics feed directly into the AI models that learn from public repositories, making audience engagement a form of counter-narrative training data.

• Add “and tell me why you think this is important to me” to the end of every AI prompt — it forces the model to surface its own bias toward your past usage patterns so you can interrogate it rather than absorb it.

• Research the SAVE Act’s documentary requirements and compare them against passport-ownership data by demographic — the numbers reveal who the law is actually designed to remove from the voter rolls.

• Look up Project Maven and read Palantir’s publicly available contract documentation — understanding how AI is integrated into military targeting decisions is prerequisite knowledge for any informed civic engagement with AI policy.

• Build or download a morality/ethics instruction set for any AI agent you operate — Rachel’s Epistemic War Report prompt is available under Creative Commons and is a usable starting point.

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

• : info@sickofthisshitpublications.com

• : firebrandproject@proton.me

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Banner & Backbone Team

~ | | | | | | | | ~

In the fourth session on Christopher Mathias’ To Catch a Fascist – Nick Paro, Tara Devlin, and Steven Acheson opened with a graphic and necessary reading from page 91 — the documented lynching of Mary Turner in 1918. Nick read the passage aloud with a content warning in place, and the crew used it as an anchor for the entire episode: the violence that built this country’s racial hierarchy was never fully confronted, and its consequences are still being vandalized out of public memory. Tara connected the dots between the removal of Turner’s memorial markers in 2020 and the broader erasure that the anti-DEI agenda now performs under a legal cover that feels more comfortable than a hood.

Steven brought the weight of a veteran’s perspective to the discussion of the KKK’s decline in membership. He pointed to the Rage Against the Machine lyric that crystallized the book’s argument for him — those who once burned crosses are now in the halls of power. Nick built on historian Linda Gordon’s argument from pages 98–99, reading directly from Mathias’s text: the Klan’s most durable victory was not rallies or robes but the Overton Window itself, shifting what passes for acceptable public discourse and encoding white nativist ideology into law. When the ideology is in the statute, the organization no longer needs the membership numbers.

The conversation moved from historical analysis to lived counter-organizing. Steven described blocking Westboro Baptist Church protesters outside a Madison Planned Parenthood by parking his truck on the median — not confrontation, but interference, wasting their time so they couldn’t do worse. Nick and Tara both named the visibility of everyday anti-fascists as a critical force: when your neighbors know who you are and they see that an anti-fascist looks like a normal person, you shift the social landscape. They drew a direct line between community presence, local food systems, CSA farming models, and the parallel infrastructure people need to reduce dependency on corporate supply chains that fascism is currently weaponizing.

The final stretch connected everything upstream. Tara named the Democracy Index downgrade of the U.S. press freedom score. Nick traced the attacks on Iran, fertilizer supply disruptions, and rollback of EV infrastructure as coordinated policy failures that disproportionately hammer the same rural farmers who voted for the administration executing them. The episode closed where it had to: the goal is not simply to stop one man or one party, but to destroy the conditions under which fascism can take root at all — so that the environment that produced a Trump or a Putin cannot re-emerge.

Where to find resources

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

• Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• safedc.info

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone now for only $5 a month or $50 annually!

Anti Fascist Book Club Team

~ Nick Paro | Kristofer Goldsmith | Stephanie Wilson | Tara Devlin | Steven Acheson ~

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

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Three weeks into the U.S. military campaign against Iran, and use open-source intelligence — flight tracking data, battlefield maps, casualty reports, and interceptor depletion modeling — to describe a conflict that is going far worse than the official briefings admit. Shane frames Iran's asymmetrical strategy clearly: don't fight the fist, go for the eyes — degrade logistics, bleed interceptors, activate proxies, and survive. Nick adds the domestic dimension: the war is also being used to construct the conditions for expanded surveillance, potential conscription, and public suppression at home. The action is clear — stop consuming propaganda, pressure congressional representatives, and support independent media doing the verification work that mainstream outlets won't.

Our Takeaways

• Verify troop movement through open sources. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has been redeployed from Okinawa toward the Middle East. The Army abruptly cancelled an 82nd Airborne Division headquarters training exercise — that doesn’t happen often. Cross-reference reports before sharing numbers — official figures have already diverged.

• Reframe the scope of the conflict. This is not a U.S./Israel-vs.-Iran operation. U.S. bases, airports, and energy infrastructure across Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are being struck simultaneously by Iran’s proxy network—with others, like the Houthis still waiting to enter the action. This is at minimum a regional axis war.

• Watch the Kurdish situation closely. Iran preemptively bombed Kurdish military sites to prevent them from joining the U.S. campaign. The Kurds have stepped back. Their safety is directly tied to whether or when the U.S. withdraws.

• Monitor selective service funding and draft precedents. The U.S. has historically overfunded selective service infrastructure before implementing broader drafts. That pattern is repeating.

• Contact your congressional representatives directly. The most available lever for all citizens right now is direct, primary pressure — force candidates to take positions on the war and its human cost.

• Use OSINT sources over mainstream briefings. Flight tracking data, battlefield maps, and cross-referenced casualty reports are publicly available and more accurate than official statements.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Disclaimer: We are in no way a danger to ourselves or others. We are in no way having any ideations of self harm or harming others. We are in no way promoting or suggesting any type of violent action towards these tech companies, the cities and law enforcement agencies that contract with them, or any agency of local, state, or federal law enforcement. We always insist our readers maintain a nonviolent position of resistance.

Actions You Can Take

Visit our new community network and affiliate calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

• : info@sickofthisshitpublications.com

• : firebrandproject@proton.me

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Banner & Backbone Team

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In today’s 3rd Anti Fascist Book Club discussion into To Catch a Fascist, we opened not in the book but in Minneapolis — where and had spent the previous week at the AbolishICE Live music event near the Alex Pretti memorial, organized in partnership with the Dropkick Murphys, local bands, , , and anchored by a brass ensemble called Brass Solidarity. What came through in that opening was about the direct lessons learned: Minneapolis is doing anti-fascism in real time, using mutual aid, community kitchens, rent funds, and sustained memorial culture to hold the line against an ICE occupation that has directly damaged the local economy. Kris framed it plainly — every American with the means to do so should plan a trip, support those businesses, and bring lessons home, because ICE is a fraction of its projected size and this is what expansion will look like everywhere.

When the group turned to the book itself, Kris grounded the conversation in the stakes of his own infiltration work. He explained that when he first entered Patriot Front, he assumed the word “Nazi” was being used loosely. It wasn’t — these were people debating national socialist philosophers, using words like “propaganda” and “self-radicalization” without irony, and pursuing genocide as an explicit goal, not an abstraction. Chapter seven’s thesis — that American white supremacy oscillates between masked periods and periods when masks aren’t needed — drove the episode’s central question: are we entering an era when ICE agents, like the Patriot Front members before them, feel socially and legally invulnerable enough to operate in the open? Kris argued that federal pardons cover federal law, which means state and local governments are the only remaining mechanism for accountability — and most of them are not stepping up — yet.

named the structural problem enabling all of this: the paradox of tolerance. A society that extends liberal protections to movements whose explicit goal is genocide isn’t being principled — it’s being cowardly. She connected the normalization of fascist aesthetics and rhetoric to the failure of corporate media to draw clear lines, while pointing out that trans people are now being targeted in precisely the sequence the early Nazi regime used: first strip legal identity, then restrict movement, then remove the ability to vote. The Kansas driver’s license law came up as a concrete, present-day example of that sequence in action. Tara and Kris both pressed that the debate should never have been about what Trump said after Charlottesville — it should have been about the country refusing to tolerate Nazis at all.

joined late in the discussion, bringing a rural Wisconsin ground-level view that sharpened the local organizing argument. An Army veteran, former organic farmer, and current local school board candidate, Steven talked about what it actually looks like to build community trust in a town of 800 where you weren’t born — coaching youth sports, being intentional about the language used with kids, finding common ground before introducing harder conversations. He pushed back on the idea that Wisconsin is a red state, describing it instead as a blue state gerrymandered into losing. His enthusiasm for gubernatorial candidate — the only explicit democratic socialist in the race — closed the episode on a concrete electoral note: education funding, fair maps, and candidates who know their communities from the inside are where the work connects local resistance to statewide change.

Where to find resources

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

How to Access the material

We encourage you to read along with us, with get a copy of your own — we recommend these resources:

• Go to your local library and checkout a copy, if available

• Bookstore.org

• ThriftBooks.com

Start & Support Your Own Book Club

• Veterans Fighting Fascism

• Task Force Butler

• Shop VFF for gear

Actions You Can Take

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Investigate Presidential Use of the Autopen for Pardons and Executive Actions

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States:

• safedc.info

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with , , , and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

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Banner & Backbone Team

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My reader got me in touch with for a quick chat. He was attending a regular Sunday demonstration and he took a bit of time out of his busy day to talk to us about the progressive promise. Note that Chris shows up at about the 32:25 minute mark.

It warms my heart to talk to candidates like this. He’s absolutely wonderful, authentic, compassionate, intelligent… I could go on and on. I’m sure he’ll win you over as well.

If you want to learn more about him or his campaign, you can find his web page here.

Please help me continue to shine a light on candidates like this. You can like, comment, share, and cross-post this interview. I’ve also been asking people to write up their reactions in articles and post those (and tag me). I’ll restack your words, learn from them, and together we’ll all rise.

Thanks for the support! We’re going to win this!

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I'd Rather Be Writing

My perspective is never given equal representation in the mainstream media. I believe character matters. I believe the experts. I believe in education. I believe women. Let me know if you have a story to tell. There's no AI content in my newsletter.

By Walter Rhein

Actions You Can Take

Check out our new shared community calendar:

• Broad Banner

Sign the Petitions:

• Demand Congress Subpoena Key Figures on the Epstein Case

• Mandate that ICE agents show their face and identification

Call your public servants on important issues:

• 5calls.org

Join the efforts to de-flock the States:

• deflock.me

Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders:

• Orders Project

• Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76

Banner & Backbone Authors’ Notes

Check out the new BroadBanner network and affiliate calendar!

Donate to Feeding America, today!

You being here shows that you have already begun the process of unfurling new Banners and forging new Backbones for a more progressive America. Please, take the time to become a paid, or free, subscriber to the Network — supporting us all and ensuring everyone in America can hear these messages.

The America we strive for — it is one where we willingly remember the teachings of our past, humbly learn from our failings, proudly celebrate our successes, and boldly lead the way into a future for all people.

Subscribe now

Reach out to the team if you are interested in volunteering time, supporting, and building these community driven platforms:

• Submit feedback directly: Feedback Form

• : info@bannerandbackbone.com

Support and subscribe to Banner & Backbone!

Banner & Backbone Team

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