Five Quick Things: Bye, Pam
We’re diving right in. I have a word limit on the 5QT this week. It’s self-imposed, because I am attempting to enforce discipline after continuous hazing by our readers over the “Quick” part of the 5QT.
Accordingly…
1. The Bondi Bounce
It’s being styled as a “move to the private sector,” and President Trump was effusive in his praise for Pam Bondi as his attorney general, but she’s nevertheless getting packed off. Todd Blanche, Bondi’s deputy AG, is taking over.
Per Bondi…
Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration.
Leading President Trump’s historic and highly successful efforts to make America safer and more secure has been the honor of a lifetime, and easily the most consequential first year of the Department of Justice in American history.
Since February 2025, we have secured the lowest murder rate in 125 years, secured first-ever terrorism convictions against members of Antifa, shattered domestic and transnational gangs across the country, taken custody of more than 90 key cartel figures, and won 24 favorable rulings at the Supreme Court.
I remain eternally grateful for the trust that President Trump placed in me to Make America Safe Again.
All of which is fine, and it certainly signals that the Justice Department was in better hands with Bondi than it was under the previous administration.
But Trump supporters fell out of love with Bondi pretty early for the lack of backlash against Democrat abuses. There haven’t been cases brought against people like Jake Sullivan and John Brennan over the Trump-Russia scam and other fairly egregious abuses of power and law, and the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files — something which is an intensely Democratic scandal, somehow allowed it to be weaponized against Trump. (RELATED: ‘Accountability’ for RussiaGate? Don’t Bet on It)
That’s a firing offense in its own right. But then, on Thursday, as the news of her ouster broke out, there was this…
NEW: Pam Bondi was fired, in part, because President Trump believed she had tipped off Eric Swalwell, according to the Daily Mail.
Trump reportedly believes Bondi had tipped off Swalwell about the FBI’s effort to share investigative documents about his relationship with an… pic.twitter.com/ULpH0Lm8Y6
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 2, 2026
Sure hope that isn’t true. If it is, there can be no surprise about Bondi’s ouster.
How on earth could anybody be friendly with Eric Swalwell?
2. Was It Act Blue?
I don’t think Bondi’s end has anything to do with the fact that nobody from Act Blue has been indicted for what’s clear and obvious — that the Democrats’ fundraising platform has been a means of laundering foreign money into American political campaigns. (RELATED: ActBlue Probes May Shut Down DNC Money Laundry)
But it remains a fact that we’ve not seen indictments, and it’s more and more obvious what’s been going on — though those of us observing this have been screaming about it for years.
Initially, what was obvious was that people who supposedly donated to Act Blue were not actually donating to Act Blue. James O’Keefe did a pretty thorough job of illuminating that a couple of years ago.
At my site, The Hayride, we did just a shallow dive into Act Blue donations from zip codes in Louisiana, where it would be implausible to see lots of money being spent on political campaigns, and we were pretty blown away by how brazen the fraud was. People donating amounts like $7.06 through ActBlue, for example, or somebody living in a row house in the slums making 100 donations totaling more than $18,000 in the space of a little more than a year?
Clearly, those were straw donors.
And those strange amounts? The likely explanation is that they represent the exchange value of foreign currencies.
This plot has thickened, thanks to the honest journalism of… the New York Times? What?
????Act Blue reportedly LIED to Congress about vetting foreign donations.
Per the New York Times:
Foreign donors “who paid through third-party apps like Apple Pay, PayPal or Venmo were not asked for passport information.”
As the NYT notes:
“Federal election law prohibits… pic.twitter.com/ScIK6cPf6H
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 2, 2026
When even the New York Times is reporting on this, we’re long overdue for criminal charges. Bondi’s DOJ should have moved faster.
3. Can We Talk About the Stupidity of Europe?
Per yesterday’s column and the clear indications that the Trump administration is going to dissolve — either de facto or de jure — our entanglement with NATO, the opinions are all over the place. Mostly centered around Trump and his behavior. (READ MORE: Trump Delivers Europe’s Much-Needed Wake-Up Call)
But what of the Europeans? They’re active players in this drama as well, you know. Should they not go in for an examination?
After all, regardless of your opinion of Trump, the fact remains that he’s the American president, and he’s been quite consistent in his opinion on NATO and its current value. It was clear to anyone with a functional tactical or strategic mind that keeping Trump happy in the alliance would require more than in the case of Joe Biden.
And if not, then the Munich Security Conference speeches by JD Vance last year and Marco Rubio this year were fairly unmistakable expressions of American concern. (RELATED: Munich and the Fate of the West)
And now we’re seeing U.S. forces being denied basing and flyover rights as part of an effort to subdue a country that has built missiles capable of hitting more or less every major city in Europe and has spent half a century promoting terrorism, with Europe as one of their main bloody playgrounds. (RELATED: What’s Wrong With Spain? It’s Pedro Sánchez.)
Let’s just say that the current class of European leaders is guilty of poor assumptions.
For example, it wasn’t a very good assumption that you could take millions of unassimilable Muslim migrants into your white Christian ethno-states, when your ancestors’ experience with Muslims was universally negative, and not have existential troubles as a result.
It also wasn’t a very good assumption that you could declare a virtue in denying yourself the production of domestic energy — coal, natural gas, and oil, which many or most of these countries would have access to if they allowed themselves to explore and produce it — and instead depend on windmills and solar panels. In Germany’s case, they’ve even denied themselves the use of nuclear power for zero discernible reason (panic following the Fukushima incident was the given justification, though there was no German nuclear plant in anything like the Fukushima threat scenario). (RELATED: Trump the Wolf Topples von der Leyen From Her Pony — Saint Paul Style)
Not only that, we can say it was a pretty poor assumption that dependence on Russian natural gas was a good plan while screeching about how evil Vladimir Putin is. Back in 2018, Trump told them they were making a mistake, and the Germans laughed at him.
They maybe shouldn’t have assumed Trump was an idiot when he’s been a lot more right than wrong on geopolitical issues — or, if you refuse to accept that, you at least have to concede Trump has been more correct than Messrs. Starmer, Sanchez, and Macron.
Assuming that the post-war trade protectionism, calcified within the EU bureaucratic state, that Europe has cloaked itself in, would never result in American reaction, probably was a mistake.
And so was the assumption that they could forever offload their national defense to the U.S. without someday being asked to pay the check.
And when the check did come, it turned out that it’s base use and flyover rights, and an invitation to participate in opening the Strait of Hormuz so that oil for Europe (some 6 percent of the Euros’ already-tight oil consumption comes through the Strait of Hormuz, compared to a negligible amount headed here) might flow out of the Persian Gulf. That’s fairly cheap, at the end of the day, particularly when it comes a full generation after the request for a few thousand troops to help in Iraq and Afghanistan. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Hormuz)
As yesterday’s column noted, the real truth behind Europe’s indignation at being asked by Trump to help reopen Hormuz is that the Euros aren’t capable of doing that. Our NATO allies are military invalids at this point — which Trump is exposing.
And yet the argument for keeping NATO is… nostalgia? I give you the fossilized John Kasich…
When this administration dismisses @NATO, it forgets what NATO has meant for America: collective security, shared values, and decades of peace. You don’t walk away because allies disagree. You strengthen it and preserve it. pic.twitter.com/LrIJipm9mA
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) April 1, 2026
When Spain builds submarines too heavy to surface, Spanish politicians had better curry much favor with American presidents, because Spain is a supplicant to America.
And they still are. They just aren’t very good at it. One might keep this in mind going forward.
4. We’ll Find Out If It’s Our Supreme Court, or China’s
The issue deserves a full column, several of which you can find elsewhere at The American Spectator, but one of the key questions Solicitor General John Sauer was asked by the Supreme Court during oral arguments on the birthright citizenship case heard at the Court on Wednesday was “What’s changed?”
PJ Media’s Tim O’Brien had a good post on that topic…
During the course of the Court’s questioning of Sauer, the exchange bounced around, focusing on things like what the Constitution’s framers intended on some issues, what the authors of the 14th Amendment were thinking in 1868, what lawmakers were thinking in 1940 and 1952, and what previous Supreme Court justices were thinking in earlier landmark cases.
Keep in mind, Sauer and the Trump administration had taken on the daunting task of trying to dramatically redefine the common interpretation of birthright citizenship as addressed in the 14th Amendment, in the Citizenship Clause. That clause says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
In other words, if you’re born on U.S. soil, by accident or intent (with very few exceptions), you are an American citizen.
Sauer’s case keyed in on what is meant by “the jurisdiction thereof.” As I followed the court’s questioning, I did notice a pattern that may determine the case’s outcome. Justice after justice seemed to want to know what has changed so much that it requires them to pretty much turn the country’s immigration law and policy on its head.
They seemed to be telling Sauer, “If I’m going to change the common interpretation of the Constitution, tell me what I need to tell everyone who is impacted by this. Why do this, and why now?”
Sauer raised the issue of Chinese birth tourism, which has now become a major, major thing — there are hundreds if not thousands of companies in China (and by “companies” in that country, we mean “fronts for the Chinese Communist Party”) which are facilitating travel by Chinese women to the United States for the purpose of giving birth here and thereby conferring American citizenship on their Chinese children.
You can let that one marinate in your head a while and imagine the parade of horribles this could engender.
Or you can just listen to Johnathan Turley, who was on Laura Ingraham talking about this Wednesday…
“Only a moronic nation would allow birth tourism to flourish.”@JonathanTurley: the policy is “perfectly insane” — and even liberal justices suddenly rediscovered “original intent” when it suits them.
This isn’t settled law. It’s a debate we’ve avoided for decades. pic.twitter.com/ZhbqSQD0q4
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 1, 2026
Chief Justice John Roberts acted unimpressed by Sauer’s presentation of the utter absurdity of the current stupid interpretation of the 14th Amendment — allowing rival/enemy nations to create U.S. citizenship rights for their people, and all of the privileges those entail. Roberts’s quote was “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”
Which is not encouraging.
John Roberts was happy to interpret the Obamacare individual mandate as a tax when it was specifically denied as a tax during the legislative debate, which is a pretty good indication he’s willing to be malleable in his constitutional interpretations in the right circumstances, and yet on this, he wants to play cigar-store Indian.
That said, if the Supreme Court comes back in June with a pro-China ruling on birthright citizenship, the GOP has an absolutely killer issue for the midterms. You simply pass — or pass it in the House and let the Democrats filibuster it in the Senate amid a huge hue and cry — a federal law which creates a statutory interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s jurisdiction clause in the way the drafters of the amendment did. Which is to say that citizenship is only conferred upon the children of legal immigrants who are actively trying to become Americans. Not diplomats, not tourists, and not illegal aliens.
Let Chuck Schumer filibuster that and then hang those Chinese birth tourists around his neck and that of every Democrat running for federal office this fall. It’ll be fun.
5. The Racist, Anti-Racist Angry Lesbian (or At Least Angry Lesbian-Adjacent) Fans of the National Women’s Soccer League (Who Turn Out Not To Be Very Good For Free Enterprise)
You likely haven’t heard this story. And it’s going to drive you up the wall. We’re ending this 5QT with a flourish.
A black Kansas City businessman has been forced to scrap his plans to open a new nightclub after a local football fan club comprised mainly of liberal white women complained that the name was “racist.”
Casio McCombs said this week he was “deeply disappointed” that his plans to open a club named Sundown HiFi were halted due to outcry from KC Blue Crew, a supporters club for women’s soccer team KC Current.
The “sundown” name was deemed by the group to be a reference to a “sundown town,” a 19th Century term for all-white communities that would practice racial segregation and terrorize any black people unfortunate enough to find themselves on its streets after dark.
The nightclub was set to be opened on a development site named Current Landing located next to the CPKC Stadium, leading the women’s group to issue a statement arguing the ‘sundown’ name would tarnish the sports area.
“In the year 2026, the history of America and its African American population is not unknown. The use of the name ‘Sundown’ for a dance club is not only racist, but incredibly insensitive to the history of the area in which this team resides,” the club said.
“Missouri has had a particularly violent history of sundown towns so it is especially disturbing for a team located in Missouri to choose to name a night club establishment for people to gather at on its grounds, after dark, Sundown Lounge.”
McCombs said the pressure from the group forced him to drop his plans to open the bar, saying his dream was “reduced, misinterpreted and ultimately stripped away — largely by voices outside of the community it was meant to represent.”
“What kind of creativity are we actually willing to support?” he questioned. “And who do we allow to shape it?”
So who are these do-gooder fascists? Well…
I don’t think I need to say more. (RELATED: Feminism, the Nose-Ring Theory, and Our Potential Extinction)
Have a great weekend. And prayers for the crew of Artemis II — may they succeed in their mission and come home without a scratch!
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
Trump Delivers Europe’s Much-Needed Wake-Up Call