Famed attorney Robert Barnes has one of the most interesting Twitter accounts for politics. It’s not just what he posts himself, which is often very informative. It’s also what he finds and retweets that grabs my attention.
He retweeted the thread below by Matt Beebe that delivers an analysis of the indictment of President Donald J. Trump. It offers insights into what powers the president possesses over classified documents that are relevant to what we’re seeing today…
Deep dive on the classified document fiasco: The entire classification scheme is a *control system* established by Executive Order and therefore applicable *only* to people below POTUS.
As CINC, Trump was entitled to do *anything* with classified material while President. Let that sink in.
Surely he would be subject to impeachment for any alleged misuse, but his authority is inherent in the Constitutional position, and there are no statutory restrictions that apply to him*.
*NOTE: The Atomic Energy Act, which established a separate classification & control scheme for certain US nuclear secrets, purports to also apply to POTUS. But this actually presents interesting separation of powers issues that aren’t so cut & dry. It’s not relevant here though.
The primary classification scheme promulgated by EO also prescribes a mechanism where classified material can be declassified.
Declassification doesn’t change the nature of the information, it changes the control system & procedures applicable to the information which are obligatory to non-POTUS actors. Again, this process is not binding on POTUS. Otherwise his power as CINC is dependent & conditional, not inherent.
Think about it — if he has the inherent power to do whatever he wants with it, does he need to follow a process (that he controls)? Does his compliance with every jot & tittle of a process (that he controls) impair his right to determine the disposition of that material? No. It cannot, or it’s not a power inherent to the Presidency.
Trump’s ham-handed explanation of this as “thinking it” declassified notwithstanding, and his inability to clearly articulate the finer points of the classification & control system and how it interacts with Article II powers doesn’t make it any less true.
This brings us to the Presidential Records Act (and subsequent case law), which clearly grants the President unilateral authority to determine what he keeps as a “personal record.”
Wait, this seems like a disaster waiting to happen — how can he be allowed to keep marital that might still be marked classified or a subsequent administration might decide to control differently? It’s quite a minefield with a bunch of inter-related gotchas.
And that’s the quandary that the PRA sought to avoid— by granting a former POTUS clarity and wide latitude surrounding his records.
To be sure, there are national security implications with a POTUS keeping material that remains sensitive or a subsequent administration might deem subject to different classification and control rules. This is why NARA has SCIFs, this is why Presidential Libraries have SCIFs, this is why a former President identifies “records custodians” (who receive continued security clearances), and this is why former Presidents are generally granted security clearances (Biden Administration refused to grant Trump a clearance by the way)
Bottom line: there is no legal basis for any of the mishandling/wrongful possession claims, and any bonafide national security concerns presented are able to be handled amicably through various procedures.
Which then beings us to the obstruction claims:
I’m somewhat disappointed in his apparent willingness to play games with NARA/DOJ (who were clearly out to get him, not to preserve Presidential Records).
My sense is that he really didn’t know what he still had, wanted to personally filter the material, and was ensured he could consider them all personal records, so he handled the initial NARA/DOJ requests unseriously. (Nobody steps on rakes better than Trump)
And I am troubled by his alleged comment to his lawyer which was essentially “Hillary had liars for lawyers and they made her problems go away, <wink-wink>” — which, by the way we only know about because of an unconstitutional piercing of the attorney-client privilege. (This should honestly concern more people than it does)
But you can’t “obstruct justice” unless there is an underlying crime. Which there isn’t here.
The entire case is built on a stack of lies and will eventually result in his complete and total exoneration.
But at what cost? It’s a dark, dark day in America.
Which then beings us to the obstruction claims:
I’m somewhat disappointed in his apparent willingness to play games with NARA/DOJ (who were clearly out to get him, not to preserve Presidential Records).
My sense is that he really didn’t know what he still had, wanted to…
— Matt Beebe (@TheMattBeebe) June 9, 2023
It is the darkest of days we’re facing, and it’s only going to get worse if this travesty is not resolved.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
