Introduction

During an August podcast, widely popular commentator Joe Rogan had some choice words to describe California Governor Gavin Newsom.

 

"Nobody believes in that guy. That guy’s a f---ing conman. Everything he did in California, from trying to mandate vaccines for kids, when it was totally unnecessary, to being caught out in public without a mask and lying about the fact that he was outdoors.  He's just a politician. Just a stone-cold narrative-driven politician." 

 

Wow!  What a smackdown – from a long-time fellow Democrat no less.  With an introduction like that one would have to reasonably assume that Gavin Newsom is up to no good.  Let’s find out.

 

2024

Next year Gavin Newsom will term out as governor.  As a career politician he needs to find his next meal ticket.  For the past few months Gavin Newsom has been campaigning for President Joe Biden.  Given the uncertainty of Biden’s mental and physical health, many view Newsom’s traipsing as a thinly veiled excuse to set up his own run for president.  Although Newsom has denied this.  But Newsom is a calculating political animal.  And with only 13 months until the presidential election the governor of California would not be campaigning for Biden – especially in red states - if he wasn’t angling in, trying to establish his own political credentials at the national level.  However, riding on Biden’s coattails isn’t going to deliver Newsom the attention he craves.  He needed something bigger and bolder.  Enter his 28th Amendment invention.

 

Gavin Newsom’s 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

On June 8th, Gavin Newsom announced:

 

I’m proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to … enshrine in the Constitution common sense gun safety…while leaving the 2nd Amendment unchanged ...”

 

Huh? Leave the 2nd Amendment unchanged yet enshrine into the United States Constitution open ended gun control language in direct defiance of the 2nd Amendment.

Click here to read the full article.
 

Candidate Analysis: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
By Matthew Hartwig

Although the U.S. 2024 presidential election is still more than a year out, 2023 has nonetheless seen its fair share of surprises and intrigue as campaigns gear up on both sides of the aisle, and everywhere in between. Perhaps no single figure has made as many waves as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, colloquially known as RFK Jr. The son of former senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of former president John F. Kennedy, RFK Jr. initially announced in April 2023 that he would be running in the Democratic primaries against current president Joe Biden. From the early days of his campaign, RFK Jr. caught interest from a wide portion of the political spectrum, including many libertarians. Of particular interest to libertarians have been his skepticism of U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as his criticism of government interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular his opposition to vaccine mandates. The latter is a subject Kennedy is well-known for, due to his advocacy for vaccine freedom in his position as chairman of Children’s Health Defense.

Further signs of an affinity for libertarians and others dissatisfied with the two-party system abounded. Notable amongst his fellow presidential candidates, Kennedy has made appearances on numerous independent media shows such as the Joe Rogan Experience, as well as explicitly libertarian shows such as Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem. In June he made an appearance at the PorcFest festival in New Hampshire, where he reportedly spoke with LNC chair Angela McArdle. Some speculated that Kennedy may have been attempting to put out feelers for a potential Libertarian Party presidential run. However, if Kennedy did indeed have such aspirations, they have almost certainly been crushed by a number of his recent statements and actions.

Following the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, Kennedy stated on X (formerly Twitter), that “we must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself—now,” a statement that drew ire from many libertarians opposing U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. Even more recently, he has announced his support for race-based reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, a position also opposed by many libertarians.

Kennedy’s recent libertarian-alienating statements came close in timing to his ending his Democratic primary campaign—only to announce he will be running as an independent candidate instead. While this run is likely to make the 2024 campaign more difficult for the Libertarian Party, as both Kennedy and the eventual LP candidate will be seeking to draw support from those disaffected with the political duopoly, one hopes that despite the recent disappointment many libertarians have felt towards him, Kennedy and the LP may be able to work together to challenge the status quo of American two-party politics and bring greater attention to independent and third-party candidates.

📅 Save the Date:

 

The LNC National 2024 Convention will be May 23-27, 2024, in Washington D.C.  In addition to voting in Officer Elections, you will be able to vote for the Libertarian Presidential Candidate for the 2024 Presidential Election in November 2024.