‘You Have This Superpower”: Jury Nullification Becomes the Latest Attack on the Court System
Below is my column on campaigns on the left to enlist citizens in jury nullification. It is the latest assault on the integrity of our courts. Long supported by far-left law professors and pundits, it encourages potential jurors to disregard the evidence and the law in rendering a form of social justice.
Here is the column:
“You have this superpower.”
That statement from Qiana Johnson is part of reported training material for residents to engage in “jury nullification,” whereby jurors ignore the law and incriminating facts in a given case to nullify any prosecution.
Notably, Johnson is the newly elected clerk of Prince George’s County Circuit Court in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. She is part of a growing left-wing movement gaining traction with voters that calls for radical changes to the U.S. legal system.
The effort is to engineer “Twelve Angry Men” scenarios on real juries — but unlike in the movie, the jurors are actually being trained to ignore evidence and deliberations in favor of political outcomes.
In her election campaign for her current job, Johnson had to overcome questions about her own criminal record. But many voters are willing to give others a second chance when they show evidence of rehabilitation and contrition. The more immediate concern might be embracing a practice that is expressly barred by courts.
Johnson is part of a new investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into groups training citizens to engage in jury nullification — including Free DC and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, where Johnson was reportedly a board member.
One such document allegedly declares, “You have this superpower, and that superpower is you are able to nullify that goddamn jury.”
Far-left professors have long advocated that juries use jury nullification. Georgetown Law professor and MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler has long advocated that Black jurors engage in nullification in cases involving Black defendants. Butler wrote in the Washington Post in 2016: “Confronting the racial crisis in criminal justice, jury nullification gives jurors a special power to send the message that Black lives matter.”
The problem of biased jurors has long plagued the legal system. It can work both ways in ignoring the law to refuse or secure convictions. Past cases involving President Trump and other Republicans have raised bias concerns over the jury pool in cities such as Washington, D.C., and New York City.
But jury nullification is different; it is a direct assault on the very foundation of the American court system. The juror is the thumping heart of that system — a group of empowered citizens who swear to consider cases without prejudice or prejudgment.
It is not a crime to advocate jury nullification. Moreover, there are legitimate concerns raised by investigations into such groups. about chilling the rights of free speech and association. In my view, such advocacy is protected speech under the First Amendment.
But that is not always the case for lawyers, who can face professional consequences. Many courts bar lawyers from arguing for jury nullification. Calling for jury nullification can also present sanctionable conduct for lawyers in a given case.
Jury nullification is the source of much debate. Some maintain that it is an important safeguard of last resort against wrongful imprisonment and government tyranny.[17][18] Some view it as a violation of the right to a jury trial, which undermines the law;[18] whereas others, such as those members of Congress who voted to impeach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase for instructing a jury against nullification, view a jury as a body charged with judging both law and fact. Some view it as a violation of the oath sworn by jurors. In the United States, some view the requirement that jurors take an oath to be unlawful in itself, while still others view the oath's reference to "deliverance" to require nullification of unjust law: "will well and truly try and a true deliverance make between the United States and the defendant at the bar, and a true verdict render according to the evidence, so help [me] God". United States v. Green, 556 F.2d 71 (D.C. Cir. 1977).[19]
Personally I have always been in favor of it, as it provides juries with the ability to refuse to apply an unjust law or misapply a legitimate law.
[The American Mind] This is an edited version of a speech that was delivered at the 2026 National Conservatism Conference in Jerusalem on October 6, during the “Immigration and Cultural Replacement” panel.
Generals always fight the last war. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan made a similar point when he argued that we understand the effects of new technologies in terms of past ones. He called this rear-view mirror thinking. Right now, Western countries are suffering from a collective exercise in rear-view thinking about the effects of digital technology on mass migration. Rather than seeing the unique functions of digital technology, we have assumed it has the same homogenizing effects as prior information technologies. That exercise of rear-view thinking is accelerating cultural replacement.
Let’s take stock of where we are. Since the 2010s, it has become clear that we are living in the end of the end of history. Having studied the West for decades, China and Russia decided not to imitate it but to pursue their own civilizational paths. Islamic civilization had long been pursuing its own. As the geostrategic ambitions of those three civilizations became clear, the concept of "the West" gained fresh life.
The civilizational paradigm seemed perfectly poised to address these new clashes. You might call it Samuel Huntington’s posthumous revenge over Francis Fukuyama.
An absolutely delicious sentence.
Many liberals and conservatives embrace a quasi-Huntingtonian paradigm of a clash of civilizations, in which the liberal democratic West is ready to face off against its rivals. It’s enticing. But the weakness of this paradigm is that it conceals an increasingly incoherent concept of Western civilization.
Huntington’s best critic, the political scientist James Kurth, made this point. In his 1994 essay "The Real Clash," Kurth argued that Huntington played down the growing conflicts emerging within the West. Sometime late in the previous century, it repudiated the institutional arrangements of mid-20th-century liberal democracy and went in a new direction. Kurth argued that
the real clash of civilizations...is already underway within the West itself, particularly within its central power, the United States. This is a clash between Western civilization and a different grand alliance, one composed of the multicultural and the feminist movements. It is, in short, a clash between Western and post-Western civilizations.
Multiculturalism and feminism are more than a set of ideas—they are social technologies for administering society. Moreover, they claim the need to have absolute efficacy in every human activity. Anti-discrimination law cannot stop at the door of a privately funded school, business, or social club; it must pry its way in, enlisting state police power when necessary.
#1
As long as we are still enraptured by the late 20th-century confidence that any culture can integrate into the West, we will continue to be pulled in this post-Western direction.
Yes, they are uniquely different. They have absolutely no desire to visit to our village and we should have no desire to visit theirs.
#2
The American Century and it's high-watermark of material plenty, creature comfort, martial dominance, political freedom and scientific excellence seems to be over. Vestigial protection of Reagan's Shining City on a Hill" by a return to hemispheric focus, America First policies, strict protections of existing political, social and economic bedrock-institutions will stabilize the process of change, but the old World is lost already. Act knowingly to realign our national goals with these understandings in place, and the nation can remain optimistic about the future. Let the left return to power, and the dystopian balkanization of the United States will proceed!
“We are also starting to consult federal workers on how to do some blocking inside the govt agencies during emergency situations — but please do not put that on the form.” —Eric Manton, of the DRG
They put it on the form, though, cuz somebody screwed up. Oopsie.
...
Get this: the reason that a color revolution is underway at all in America is not really political anymore — if it ever even was. It’s because a whole lot of people have committed crimes against this country. And with each wave of attempted sedition, they have compounded their crimes with more seditious acts, arrant hoaxes, lawfare, election fraud, censorship, and wholesale looting of taxpayer dollars to keep themselves out of prison.
That’s what USAID was all about, and why it was taken down early in Trump 2.0. It was a nexus of racketeering and the home-base of the Deep State’s foot soldiers, bureaucrats who actually managed the money streams to NGOs that ran everything from election rigging operations to vast social services fraud in blue states, in concert with a Democratic Party that had nothing but rackets to keep it going.
That’s how the USAID’s defunct office of Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has morphed into the new Democracy Renewal Group (DRG). This new DRG operates under another project called Branch-4 — as in a fourth branch of government, the permanent bureaucracy — and Branch-4 operates under an NGO called the Action Center on Race and the Economy Institute (ACRE Institute), a 501(c)(3) public charity based in Chicago (EIN 82-1199695). Note, the ACRE Institute’s primary funders include the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. You see how byzantine this is, echoing exactly the hyper-complex administrative workings of government bureaucracy itself?
And so, that’s why, for instance, one Eric Manton, a former USAID employee now working with DRG said, “... we are also starting to consult federal workers on how to do some blocking inside the govt agencies during emergency situations.” Blocking? What they mean by that is federal employees lodged in the official agencies should “help run out the clock... develop selective hearing... forgetfulness... or blame your workload” for whatever it takes to block enforcement of any executive action proposed by the Trump administration.
Those tactics are explicitly proposed by another org, the Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy (FWAD formerly known as Federal Workers Against DOGE), which is affiliated with DRG primarily as a partner in the Renew American Democracy (RAD) strategy and through the broader Branch-4 ecosystem. Confused yet? You should be. The flak-storm of acronyms is beloved by Lefty-leftists for exactly that purpose.
And he’s off. Lots more at the link, including DataRepublican and the Soros Open Society Foundation.
#1
No, I'm not "asking." Please see attached grapic.
You might ask: why has the FBI not paid a visit to Beverley Schreiber to assess how she is organizing her members to “block” actions that the chief executive orders agencies to carry out? The Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy must have a membership list. If their mission is to block the work of their agencies, as explicitly directed by FWAD, shouldn’t they be fired from their jobs?
[Business Insider] I first fell in love with the idea of Europe when I was 14.
My mom and I went on a trip to Russia to visit relatives, and Moscow won me over with its grand boulevards and trendy cafés. We also stopped in London, where we explored the city's central neighborhoods and shopped in stores I'd only read about in fashion magazines back home.
I was amazed by everything. I was convinced Europe was better — more aesthetically pleasing, more interesting — than my hometown of Vancouver, and vowed to go back as often as I could. Canuck!
By my early 20s, I was traveling to Europe almost every summer. My sister had moved to France, so I had a great excuse to visit: I'd stay with her in Paris and later Toulouse, and I'd also check out other destinations like Spain and Italy when I could.
I became more enamored with the continent with each trip. Like so many North Americans, I considered it somewhat of a utopia where the overall lifestyle is healthier, the food is more delicious, and everything is more beautiful.
In 2018, at age 26, I met and fell in love with a Brit who was living in Vancouver. When his Canadian working-holiday visa expired, we started a long-distance relationship — and I applied for a British visa so we could be together.
After years of romanticizing the continent on vacations, my dream was finally coming true. I moved to Birmingham and got a UK-based job.
My first year there was great. I loved being surrounded by historic architecture, feeling comfortable dressing up in fancier clothes, and knowing that countries like Spain, Italy, and Greece were just a quick flight away.
But eventually, the novelty started wearing off. Things I initially found so charming became mundane after a few years. The old buildings blurred into the background of my daily commute, and I never quite adjusted to certain cultural differences, like the Brits' less direct communication style.
I also started to miss the things I took for granted back home, like easy access to the ocean and mountains. Back in Vancouver, I used to spend weekends at the beach or hiking, and though these activities were possible in the UK, they were more difficult from my inland location.
Plus, although some things were more affordable — like groceries — others, like transportation fees, weren't. I was also getting paid a lower salary for the same job I was doing back home.
[FOX] Miranda Devine examines the violent unrest in Europe and argues that it happens when mass immigration, radical political movements, and economic dissatisfaction converge. She warns that America faces similar vulnerabilities and argues that Trump’s administration must contend with these problems while avoiding the political traps his opponents may be setting.
[FOX] Europe is in the streets. From Paris to Brussels, Milan to Lisbon, hundreds of thousands of citizens are protesting rising living costs, stagnant wages, unaffordable housing and deteriorating public services. In France, demonstrations have descended into burning barricades, looted businesses, and attacks on public buildings. Elsewhere, students, workers and frustrated families are demanding that their governments deliver the prosperity and security they have long promised. Most protesters are peaceful, but the unrest reflects a growing anxiety that Europe’s economic and social model is no longer delivering.
The immediate grievances vary, but the underlying problem is more profound: too many European economies have become better at protecting yesterday’s arrangements than creating tomorrow’s opportunities. Excessive regulation, rigid labor structures, fragmented capital markets, and slow decision-making constrain the growth necessary to sustain Europe’s generous social promises. Europe has not run out of talent. It has made it unnecessarily difficult for talent to flourish.
Having served as the U.S. ambassador to the EU, I have heard this firsthand from executives running the American operations of major European companies, particularly in Silicon Valley. Their message is remarkably consistent: they simply cannot innovate in Europe the way they can in the United States. These are Europeans describing the limitations of their own economic environment. They come to America because our ecosystem allows them to move faster, attract capital, take risks, recruit talent, and turn promising ideas into commercially successful businesses.
Think about the implications. Europe has extraordinary universities, brilliant engineers, world-class scientists, and sophisticated corporations. Yet many of those same corporations look to America when they want to push the boundaries of innovation. The problem is not imagination. It is an economic and regulatory structure that too often suffocates imagination before it can become commercial reality.
There is another uncomfortable dimension to Europe’s predicament. For decades, the United States provided the military security umbrella under which European governments could devote comparatively modest resources to their own defense. While American taxpayers financed enormous military capabilities, many European countries concentrated more of their resources on generous pensions, health care, social benefits, and other domestic priorities.
Imagine if European governments had been required to spend 4% or 5% of GDP on defense throughout the past three decades. Would their social safety nets look anything like they do today? Perhaps Europeans would still have chosen extensive benefits, shorter workweeks and lengthy vacations. But those arrangements would have required far more difficult fiscal choices involving taxes, borrowing, spending and economic growth.
American military power did not create Europe’s welfare state, but it helped make that welfare state easier to afford.
The American security guarantee may also have distorted European perceptions of the threats themselves. When someone else bears much of the cost of protecting you, it becomes easier to discount the danger. Why acknowledge the full threat posed by Russia if doing so means telling voters they must sacrifice cherished benefits to purchase tanks, aircraft and missiles? Far easier for Europeans to conclude that Washington is exaggerating the danger, let America spend the money, and enjoy another three-hour lunch.
Poland and the Baltic states have generally viewed Russia differently. But across much of Western Europe, American protection made strategic complacency easier to sustain.
Now the defense bill is coming due. President Trump has pressed NATO allies to assume greater responsibility for their own security, and European governments have committed to substantially higher defense spending. Those commitments arrive just as their economies struggle to generate the growth necessary to finance them.
Europe needs an immediate regulatory reset, more integrated capital markets, flexible labor arrangements, faster permitting, affordable energy and an environment in which entrepreneurs can build global companies without crossing the Atlantic. Estonia’s digital government, Denmark’s labor flexibility, Ireland’s technology investment and Poland’s industrial development offer useful examples. What Europe lacks is not another commission or another report. It needs political leaders willing to confront the bureaucracies, vested interests and institutional inertia that prevent meaningful reform.
Which brings us to America.
We have our own protests, riots, economic inequalities, political dysfunction, and government bureaucracy. We are far from perfect, and we should never pretend otherwise. Millions of Americans struggle with housing costs, health care, education, and the fear that their children may not enjoy the opportunities they once expected. We have communities that feel abandoned, institutions that have lost public trust and political divisions that sometimes seem impossible to bridge.
But America’s greatest strength has never been perfection. It is our extraordinary capacity for reinvention.
Our system is built around the possibility of constant change. We experiment, fail, learn, improve and try again. Yesterday’s conventional wisdom becomes tomorrow’s obsolete business model. New companies challenge established giants. New technologies disrupt entire industries. Every generation has the opportunity to create something that did not exist before.
That process can be messy, disruptive, and sometimes deeply unfair. But it creates something indispensable to a successful society: the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and that individuals have the power to help make it so.
This is the essential difference between American economic dynamism and the more rigid structures that constrain much of Europe. Our system does not guarantee success. It preserves the possibility of extraordinary success, and it gives people repeated opportunities to pursue it.
Critics of American wealth inequality frequently point to our growing number of billionaires, and perhaps someday a trillionaire, as evidence of a system gone wrong. But the mere existence of extraordinary fortunes misses a fundamental point. The question is not simply how much wealth the richest American has accumulated. It is whether the next American, starting with little more than an idea, talent and determination, has a genuine opportunity to build something extraordinary.
I want to wake up every morning believing the sky is the limit. I want every American to have that same opportunity. Not a government-imposed ceiling on ambition, not a predetermined limit on success, and not a tax system designed to punish exceptional achievement simply because it is exceptional.
Why take the risk, invest the capital, work the extra hours or pursue the seemingly impossible if government has already decided how much success is enough?
None of this means ignoring inequality. An economy in which wealth and power become permanently concentrated, established businesses suppress competition and children born into poverty have little realistic prospect of advancement would betray the very principles that make American capitalism work. Government has an essential role in enforcing the rule of law, protecting competition, providing education, maintaining a functioning safety net and ensuring that opportunity is not reserved for those who already possess wealth or influence.
But there is an enormous difference between government creating the conditions for opportunity and government attempting to dictate economic outcomes.
America should respond to Europe’s difficulties with neither arrogance nor indifference. A prosperous, innovative and militarily capable Europe is essential to our own security and economic interests. We should encourage European reform, welcome European investment and insist that our allies assume a greater share of their defense responsibilities.
At home, however, we must be careful not to import the very economic rigidities Europe is struggling to escape. We should resist the temptation to address every imperfection with another layer of regulation, another barrier to investment or another policy that makes entrepreneurship less rewarding.
#2
The free lunch of NATO has ended and it's beautiful to see. They finally have to pay for themselves and it's all falling apart. Couldn't think of a more deserving band of jerks.
[BreezyScroll] Few foreign policy claims have had the staying power of the "planeloads of cash" narrative. The short answer: yes, money was delivered to Iran in 2016 during the presidency of Barack Obama. But the context is more complex than the slogan suggests.
The payment was part of a legal settlement tied to a decades-old dispute, not a standalone political giveaway. Still, the optics and timing, especially alongside the release of American detainees, turned it into one of the most contested foreign policy decisions of the decade.
What happened in 2016?
In January 2016, the Obama administration transferred $1.7 billion to Iran. The breakdown:
$400 million as the principal amount
$1.3 billion in accumulated interest
The funds were delivered in foreign currencies, including euros and Swiss francs, and physically flown into Iran.
Why was the money paid?
The payment resolved a long-running legal dispute stemming from the 1970s.
Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran had paid the United States for military equipment that was never delivered after diplomatic relations collapsed. The case went to arbitration at The Hague.
Why was the payment made in cash?
The delivery method became the most controversial part of the story.
Over a decade later the smell lingers.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
10/27/2026 09:07 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[103 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
The payment resolved a long-running legal dispute stemming from the 1970s.
[Gateway] Conservative historian and scholar Victor Davis Hanson appeared on the Ingraham Angle on Monday night and suggested that as the midterm races are tightening, Democrats look increasingly desperate.
Hanson pointed to the fact that o many Democrats are crying foul before election day ha even happened. He remind the audience that Democrats used to accuse people doing this of ’election denialism.’
Hanson also points out some of the crazy tactics Democrats are using in this election, like running a candidate in Alaska who has the same name as the Republican candidate.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[BreezyScroll] Few foreign policy claims have had the staying power of the "planeloads of cash" narrative. The short answer: yes, money was delivered to Iran in 2016 during the presidency of Barack Obama. But the context is more complex than the slogan suggests.
