The following is my prepared public comment presented on House Bill 958, “Election Law Changes,” at the July 28 meeting of the North Carolina Senate Committee on Elections:

I am Andy Jackson with the John Locke Foundation.

I speak in favor of House Bill 958.

The bill provides numerous changes that will make our state elections better-run and more secure.

The addition of election performance audits, listed in the bill as “Post-Election Audits by State Auditor,” is especially welcome.

To be clear, performance audits are not about influencing election outcomes. As noted in the bill, performance audits are conducted after the certification of general elections, and “No findings in audits under this section shall be used as grounds to challenge the final result of an election.” These audits are designed to identify and correct systemic problems in how our elections are conducted. Three elements of the proposed audit help in that regard:

1. 1. 1. It covers the entire election system, from voter registration to post-election ballot security.
      2. It is conducted by an entity outside the state board of elections.
      3. It includes responses from officials in the election boards mentioned in the audit.

Working with election boards and the General Assembly, these audits will foster cycles of continuous improvement in our election system.

Thank you.

My comment was originally longer, but I cut some of it because parts of HB 958 were moved to House Bill 834, “Sportsman’s Voter Act,” and the time for public comments was reduced to 90 seconds to make sure everyone who signed up could speak.

Both bills were presented to the committee as proposed committee substitutes (PCS). A PCS is essentially a friendly wholesale amendment of a bill. The PCS for HB 958 was put on the committee’s webpage the evening before the meeting.

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Jim Hoft writes for the Gateway Pundit about the latest development in New Jersey’s election integrity scandal.

Approximately 75,000 noncitizens are summoned for jury duty in the Garden State every year, according to newly disclosed figures from the New Jersey judiciary.

The revelation comes as state officials are already scrambling to explain how thousands of self-identified noncitizens were improperly added to New Jersey’s voter rolls and how hundreds reportedly cast ballots.

You cannot make this up.

The New Jersey Globe reported that New Jersey processes more than one million jury summonses annually using records randomly selected from three state agencies: the Division of Elections, the Division of Taxation, and the Motor Vehicle Commission.

Pete McAleer, a spokesman for the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts, said roughly 20% of respondents report that they fail to meet at least one statutory eligibility requirement.

Approximately one-quarter of those disqualifications, an average of roughly 75,000 people annually over the past three years, were because the recipient was not a United States citizen.

Under New Jersey law, only American citizens are eligible to serve on juries.

The judiciary insists safeguards are in place to stop noncitizens from actually serving.

“Prospective jurors are asked about their citizenship and other qualifications when they complete the mandatory juror qualification questionnaire,” McAleer told the New Jersey Globe.

“Those who advance are reminded of the eligibility requirements during jury orientation and are directly questioned about their citizenship during jury selection by the judge and, as permitted, the attorneys,” he added.

Officials say there is no evidence that noncitizens have served on juries since the additional safeguards were implemented.

But that does not explain why approximately 75,000 noncitizens are being swept into the jury-summons process every year.

It also raises serious questions about the reliability of government databases used to administer elections and jury selection.

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Hans Mahncke writes for the Federalist about interesting new revelations involving the early days of the COVID scare.

The latest revelations from Sen. Rand Paul’s investigation into the origin of Covid expose what may be one of the most consequential scientific deceptions in history.

The 1,123 pages of private Slack messages exchanged among the authors of the highly influential “Proximal Origin” paper reveal that the scientists who publicly declared that a laboratory origin of Covid was not plausible privately held a very different view. They repeatedly acknowledged that a laboratory origin remained possible, discussed flaws in their own arguments, and struggled to defend the natural origin theory.

In the first batch of Slack messages between the authors, which was released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2023, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, the lead author of “Proximal Origin,” privately described the possibility of a laboratory origin as “friggin’ likely.” In another exchange, he wrote, “The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory,” and elsewhere another author acknowledged that Covid “easily could have” leaked from a laboratory. Yet only weeks later, on March 17, 2020, they published “Proximal Origin,” declaring that a laboratory-based scenario was not plausible.

When those earlier messages became public, Andersen offered a simple explanation. He argued that his initial doubts had been resolved before publication and that the messages merely reflected a normal scientific process of considering possibilities before reaching a conclusion.

The latest Slack disclosures completely destroy that claim.

The doubts did not disappear after publication. The newly released messages show the authors continuing to wrestle with evidence they found troubling. In one exchange from June 2020, Andersen wrote: “Gotta say — some smoking(ish) guns starting to appear that I’m not comfortable with.”

But rather than publicly admitting that their paper got it wrong, they instead discussed strategies for defending the natural-origin theory and finding arguments that could preserve it despite mounting problems.

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Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon reports on Kamala Harris’ exclusive new neighborhood on the California coast.

Kamala Harris’s new Malibu estate makes the former vice president the member of an exclusive seaside community, Point Dume, that’s long been accused of “hostility” to people of color. And as a high-profile homeowner, she’s also believed to have coveted access to a beach that’s supposed to be public, but whose overwhelmingly white gatekeepers controversially block access to the rest of the community.

The secluded beach, known as Little Dume, is one of the most beautiful on the California coast. While all California beaches are legally public below the high-tide line, it is almost impossible to reach Little Dume without the means—either with a key or with the consent of a homeowner with a key—to pass through one of three private gates, two of which reportedly use facial recognition technology to keep out the riffraff.

The beach is as “close to a private beach as you can find in California. Some folks even buy homes just to get the key, and leave the places empty,” Page Six Hollywood wrote last month.

Harris—who is half black and has spent her career fighting racial segregation and discrimination in housing—plonked down $8.15 million on a four-bedroom, six-bathroom, 4,000-square-foot Malibu estate in a sale that closed in December 2025, according to multiple media reports. She bought the house with her husband, corporate lawyer Doug Emhoff, who has adult children from a previous marriage. …

… In choosing Malibu, Harris has moved to a town packed with ultra-rich Democratic donors, many of whom are accused of restricting access to various Malibu beaches. Harris’s new digs is just a short ride from Malibu’s own “Billionaires Row”—where billionaire David Geffen’s palatial property sold in 2017 for $85 million.

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Editors at National Review Online examine Maine Democrats’ new candidate for US Senate.

A few weeks after the implosion of the Graham Platner campaign, Maine Democrats have selected another candidate to challenge Senator Susan Collins. To avoid the appearance of the party bosses’ imposing a new candidate on voters à la Kamala Harris, they created a makeshift process, which included a debate and a vote by delegates. The resulting convention, which took place on Saturday, kicked off with a land acknowledgment recognizing the Maliseet, Mi‘kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot tribal nations as the original stewards of the State of Maine. Then, delegates nominated Troy Jackson, a former state senate president and failed gubernatorial candidate.

In Jackson, Democrats decided on somebody who shares Platner’s left-wing politics but — they hope — comes with less baggage. When Jackson was running for governor earlier this year, he campaigned alongside Platner. He supports a government-run health care system to be branded as Medicare for All; he has called for abolishing ICE; he wants to establish a federal right to abortion; and he wants to cut off all U.S. support for Israel in the name of ending the supposed “genocide in Gaza.”

Jackson’s radical ideas will provide plenty of ammo to Collins, a Republican who has survived in a blue state for 30 years as a centrist. Take his support for Medicare for All. The Urban Institute, a liberal think tank, estimated the ten-year cost of a Medicare for All proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders would be close to $40 trillion. But that was back in 2018, for the years between 2022 and 2031. Given inflation in the intervening years, any fresh estimate would almost certainly be higher.

Regardless of what the updated numbers look like, the broad trade-offs remain the same. Financing such an expensive program would require significant tax increases on the middle class, something even Sanders has conceded.

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Jim Geraghty of National Review Online responds to a recent revelation about a major player in the COVID-19 shutdown regime.

Very few people seem to care much about the origin of the Covid pandemic anymore. But Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is an exception, and on Saturday, he dropped a bombshell.

According to Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.”

On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:

“It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market.” …

… Now, Fauci is not the be-all and end-all of science — despite his declaration, “I represent science.” But his public comments throughout 2020 emphasized the likelihood of a “natural origin” and rejected the notion that the virus could have leaked from a lab. While I can’t find an instance in which Fauci explicitly stated that SARS-CoV-2 came from a wet market, he certainly didn’t do anything to dispel that perception — at a time when he was doing many, many interviews and public appearances. …

… Now we know that from very early on, Fauci concluded that he and other public health officials knew — not believed, knew — that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was not the source of the virus. …

… For the entirety of 2020 and long after, the “it started in a wet market” view was the respectable one. Believing that somebody at the Wuhan Institute of Virology hadn’t been careful one day and had gotten accidentally infected with a virus that had gained a function or two during its time in the lab made you a crazy conspiracy theorist. In fact, the lab leak theory was evidence of your racism.

And now — in July 2026! — we learn that Fauci himself had dismissed the wet market as a potential source at the end of January 2020.

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So called “assault weapons,” i.e., Colt AR-15s and similar lightweight semi-automatic rifles, have long been the target of gun control legislation. As I have explained, the United States Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller should have put a stop to such laws:

And in a dissent, Justice Thomas said:

I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America. That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country.

Last month, Justice Kavanaugh’s prediction came true. On June 30, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a consolidation of two cases: Viramontes v. Cook County, which is on appeal from a 7th Circuit decision upholding Illinois’ assault weapons ban, and Grant v. Rovella, which is on appeal from a 2nd Circuit decision upholding Connecticut’s ban. It seems all but certain that the court will reverse those decisions next term and do so in a way that makes it clear that state laws banning AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles violate the Second Amendment.

In more good news, rather than wait for the Supreme Court to make that clarification, last week the 3rd Circuit struck down New Jersey’s assault weapons ban. Instead of flaunting the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedents as so many other circuits had done, the 3rd Circuit found that “the many millions of semi-automatic rifles in circulation for lawful purposes are plainly in common use,” and it held that “New Jersey’s complete prohibition on the possession of semi-automatic rifles runs afoul of the Second Amendment’s protections.”

For more information see:

Locke to Supreme Court: “Give the Fourth Circuit a Well-Deserved Bench Slap”

Fourth Circuit Continues to Defy Supreme Court over Maryland’s Assault Weapons Ban

Why won’t the Supreme Court enforce its Second Amendment precedents?

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Heather Conley writes in Foreign Affairs about the need to look north as America assesses security threats.

Six months ago, the United States provoked a transatlantic crisis over Greenland. The White House announced in early January that “acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States” and that the options U.S. President Donald Trump was considering in pursuit of this goal included “utilizing the U.S. military.” …

… A few days later, Trump withdrew his threat to take Greenland by force, defusing the immediate crisis. But the episode—together with Trump’s repeated talk of incorporating Canada as “the 51st state”—has spurred NATO allies in the Arctic region to step up their security activities. …

… U.S. Arctic policy is undergoing a seismic shift, too. Since the end of the Cold War, American defense planners have treated the Arctic as a low priority, and programs to build icebreakers, deep-water ports, satellites, drones, and military installations have been severely delayed. The problems these delays created were obvious. In 2015, the United States did not have ships that could track Chinese naval vessels in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, and had to rely on air surveillance instead. In 2024, U.S. forces struggled to quickly reach Alaska’s remote Shemya Island after 15 Russian warships fired missiles as part of a maritime exercise. But now, the region may finally be getting the funding and attention it deserves. The Trump administration’s strategy documents include proposals to integrate the Arctic into a hemisphere-wide homeland defense plan. Already, Congress has funded the construction of up to three heavy icebreakers and 11 medium icebreakers, and it is beginning to appropriate funds to improve military infrastructure along the Alaskan coast. …

… But fully securing the United States’ northern frontline will also require that Washington cooperate much more closely with its Arctic allies.

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Michael Rosen ponders the impact of the fight against new American data centers.

It’s no surprise that politicians and activists on the Left vigorously oppose data centers, the massive, low-slung buildings housing the advanced computer chips that are powering the artificial intelligence revolution. And it’s also not exactly shocking that China has sought to stir up local opposition to these hyperscale structures, given that Beijing and Washington are locked in a fierce and highly consequential race toward AI supremacy.

But what’s raised eyebrows this summer has been growing unease in red states and among some Republican politicians—most notably, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX)—as rural residents in particular have rebelled against the seeming imposition in their communities by giant technology companies of new infrastructure of gargantuan proportions.

Unfortunately, while at least some of the arguments mustered against data centers have merit, they largely neglect the significant benefits that they bestow even on local jurisdictions. Increased electricity generation, lower utility rates, higher employment, and accelerated growth all typically accompany data center construction, to say nothing of their critical importance in winning the AI competition. And while the tech titans must work hand in glove with local communities to introduce infrastructure in a careful, measured, and effective manner, we simply cannot cede the field to the People’s Republic of China. …

… Last month, we learned that China itself had sparked supposedly homegrown concerns with data centers. In a blistering report issued in June, entitled “PRC-linked influence operations are targeting AI debates in the US,” the tech pioneer OpenAI found that actors originating in China “used our models in support of apparent covert influence operations that promoted narratives in an attempt to manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and wider tech policies.” In particular, in clear violation of the terms and conditions of OpenAI’s platform, a cluster of Chinese users “generated social media comments and images claiming that data center buildouts for AI were increasing electricity prices for average families.”

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Yuval Levin places concerns about America’s future in perspective.

It is an honor to respond to Wilfred McClay’s profound reflection on the anniversary of our founding. Having done more than perhaps any living historian to contribute to the civic education of the rising generation of Americans, McClay is ideally positioned to help us learn about our past and reflect upon our future. His essay illuminates the challenges we face, and also helps us see why we should face them with confidence and hope.

But it does more than that, and maybe even more than McClay himself quite grants. His essay suggests that we should resist and reject narratives of American decline, not because we don’t face enormous problems, but because those problems are permanent and durable. We confront the same kinds of dangers prior generations of Americans have—which is both good news and bad.

“Because we Americans enjoyed a national beginning which we have come to regard as foundational, and not a mere temporal launching pad,” McClay writes, “we have the ability in times of trouble to think our way back to our origins, and take from them not only a well-deserved rebuke, but also a strong dose of inspiration and redirection.” This is surely true, but it is true not only because our foundations don’t change but also because our deepest challenges recur.

Americans in every prior generation have noted the ways in which our country has fallen short and put its future at risk, but have also ultimately risen to the demands of their time and preserved and renewed our society’s capacity for greatness. And in every generation, we have tended to understand these ways of falling short as modes of falling away from a prior peak, or a lost era of virtue. In almost every phase of our history, Americans have been impressed with their grandparents’ generation, derisive of their parents’ myopia, persuaded their own time is an age of unprecedented dissolution, and alarmed about their children’s prospects.

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