Former Special Counsel Jack Smith faced a barrage of questions during his public testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, as lawmakers dissected his failed prosecutions of President Donald Trump. The hearing, held in the Rayburn House Office Building, pulled back the curtain on what many see as a blatant abuse of power aimed at derailing Trump’s political future. Smith defended his actions, claiming he had “no partisan loyalties” and that evidence showed Trump had willfully broken laws in connection with the 2020 election. Yet, the session quickly devolved into pointed accusations that his investigations were nothing more than political hit jobs.
Attorney Jesse Binnall, speaking on Newsmax’s “Newsline” shortly after the hearing, didn’t hold back in his analysis.
“The idea that Jack Smith respects the Constitution in any way other than the people who he supports politically is a joke. And the American people are in on the joke,” Binnall said.
He argued that Smith’s attempts to gag Trump and push untested legal theories amounted to an assault on the First Amendment, particularly in the context of political speech during an election. Binnall went further, labeling Smith’s actions “vile and disgusting” for trying to silence the nominee of a major party.
Rick Gates, joining Binnall in the discussion, referenced President Trump’s Truth Social post from earlier that day, where Trump called Smith “a deranged animal” and insisted that “a big price should be paid for them for what they have put our country through.”
Gates emphasized the need for fact-checking amid what he described as dangerous Democratic rhetoric tying Trump directly to the events of January 6. The hearing itself featured sharp exchanges, with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan confronting Smith over claims that the probes were always about politics, not justice.
Critics like Binnall pointed to a pattern of hypocrisy among Democrats, noting their own history of contesting elections and using alternate electors without facing similar scrutiny.
“No prosecutor in our history has attacked the First Amendment the way he did,” Binnall stated, highlighting how Smith’s novel theories sought to criminalize protected speech. This resonates with ongoing concerns that Smith’s office subpoenaed records from Trump allies, including members of Congress, in a bid to interfere in the electoral process.
The presence of January 6 Capitol police officers at the hearing added another layer of tension, with some viewing their attendance as a staged show of support for Smith’s narrative. On X, users captured raw moments, including confrontations in the hallways where independent reporters challenged figures like Michael Fanone, accusing him of perpetuating lies about the day. Such scenes underscore the deep divisions, with conservatives arguing that the entire January 6 probe was inflated to target Republicans while ignoring broader election irregularities.
Binnall proposed real accountability, asserting there’s “a very solid case against Jack Smith for at least a conspiracy against civil rights.” He accused Smith of acting as “an arm of the Democratic party” by going after congressional members and meddling in a presidential election. This conspiratorial thread suggests Smith’s efforts were part of a coordinated deep-state push to undermine Trump, wasting over $30 million in taxpayer funds in the process. Binnall called for Smith to “pay back the American people the $30 million that he effectively stole from them.”
Smith’s testimony included defenses of his decisions, such as seeking nondisclosure orders due to “grave concerns” about threats, and accusations that Trump and his allies exploited the Capitol riot to advance a criminal scheme. He maintained that fraud isn’t shielded by the First Amendment. But these claims rang hollow to many observers, especially given the ultimate failure of the cases, which crumbled under scrutiny and shifting political winds.
In the end, the hearing served as a stark reminder of how far some in government will go to cling to power. For those who value the Republic’s foundations, it’s a call to vigilance.
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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.