The Quiet Machinery of Control

A federal regulator has finished reviewing roughly 100,000 complaints and 50,000 bank records from America's nine largest banks. The question was simple: did any bank shut Americans out of financial services because of what they believed? According to the review, the answer is yes. JP Morgan Chase flagged words like "MAGA" and "America First." Other banks targeted Christian organizations, pro-life groups, and firearm businesses. The reason given, again and again, was "reputational risk."

Glenn Beck frames this as the realization of a mechanism he described in his 2020 book The Great Reset — banks and government working together to control citizens through financial exclusion rather than legal punishment. "Fascism doesn't come with tanks all the time," he says. "It comes with compliance departments."

The Spreadsheet as a Weapon

Senator Chuck Grassley has released documents showing that Jack Smith's team, while investigating Donald Trump, collected personal data on more than 639,000 Republican voters and donors. One spreadsheet was built around a single question: did you buy a red MAGA hat after the 2020 election? If you did, the federal government collected your name, home address, birth date, and in some cases your credit card information. Nearly 5,000 donor records were also gathered, including checks for $5.