Donald Bryson

North Carolinian; CEO @JohnLockeNC/@CivitasActionNC; @FreeConTalk signer; #girldad; #STLCards/#Arsenal fan; Tweets are my own. I block anonymous trolls. #ncpol

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Mr. Speaker, if you want tariffs, pass a bill. Literally, that's your job.

[Speaker Mike Johnson @SpeakerJohnson]

No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements with countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades. Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

From @WSJFreeEx via @WSJOpinion: A century later, Louisiana is still paying the bill for Huey Long’s con. The rest of America will get suckered, too, if it listens to would-be kings who promise what they can’t deliver, writes @rightwave.
https://t.co/CLQvgNGAGk

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

@CeoNunneley So what do you think?

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Limited, conservative government means the state does not get a default map of lawful life. You can want stolen cars recovered and violent offenders caught without handing the administrative state a searchable diary of the citizenry. Those who cannot tell the difference are not being tough on crime. They are being illiberal.

[Michael Foster @realmfoster]

If you oppose Flock, you have the same crime policies as Bernie Sanders and George Soros btw.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

@CeoNunneley Interesting that you've not noted the need for any limits.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

A camera on the police-station parking lot is fine. That is the city watching its own lot, the way Walmart watches its lot.

The line is a government network that watches your whole life. Not one camera. A system spread across town that records where people go as they live—church, school, the doctor, home—and lets police look that life up later without a warrant.

Flock is that network. A parking-lot camera is not. More cameras do not automatically cross the line.

Connecting them into a full-life watch does.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

No. The complaint is not “police searched a video.”

It is government use of full-life surveillance: a system that records the public in advance and can reconstruct church, school, the doctor, and home without a warrant.

One clip is evidence. Flock is the diary. That is the line.

Are you suggesting there's no limiting factor?

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Tesla access to its own cars is not a conservatism question. It is a customer-privacy question.

This argument is about government getting a warrantless, searchable map of lawful life. A vendor seeing through its own product has not done that. Police running Flock have.

Different actor, different line. I’m not relitigating every camera on earth.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

The line is government possession of a warrantless, searchable map of lawful life.

Tesla Sentry on a parked car is a private anti-theft camera. A company licensing that file to a private buyer is a contract question. Police licensing millions of those feeds as a live street grid is the Ring hypo again. At that point the state has built the mosaic.

Flock already is that system.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Yes. If the city buys live access to every Ring, it has built a surveillance grid. The doorbell doesn’t wash it clean.

That still isn’t Flock. Porch video where someone installed a camera is not a national, warrantless log of every car from church to school to the doctor.

You’ve just described a smaller panopticon and asked me to bless the bigger one.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

No. Selling a clip from my own camera is not selling a log of someone’s life.

Police getting one video of a public street is not the same thing as a system that can reconstruct church, school, the doctor’s office, and home without a warrant.

One homeowner cashing a check for one lens is a neighbor. Flock is a searchable diary.

Don’t confuse the two.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

The line is not “a camera saw a public street.” The line is who holds a searchable history of everyone’s movements.

A Ring or dashcam is a private record of what passed one lens. Police do not get a national lookup of my life from it.

Flock is built to identify every plate, keep the log, and let agencies query the mosaic later - without a warrant and without my consent. That is not a doorbell.

That is Big Brother with better marketing.

[John Locke Foundation @JohnLockeNC]

Happy Birthday to our namesake, John Locke!

#ncga #ncpol

[Andrew Dunn @andrew_dunn]

I miss statesmanship

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

Why is NC popular? Start here:
1. Cost/quality of living
2. Weather/geography
3. Educated workforce & excellent universities
4. Low(ish) taxes & top-ranked biz climate
5. Finance, tech, pharma, ag, advanced mfg
5. College sports heaven
6. Proximity to DC/NYC/ATL/MIA
7. Best BBQ

[Vance Ginn @VanceGinn]

This actually proves the classical-liberal case.

The Founders recognized shared interests, but they did not treat the “common good” as a blank check for government. They built limited powers, federalism, property rights, religious liberty, and civil society precisely to stop politicians from imposing their own vision of the good.

National defense and courts are constitutional functions. That is very different from modern “common good” arguments for managing markets, families, speech, or private life.

The Founders’ lesson was simple: protect liberty and equal rights, then let families, churches, communities, and civil society within markets do the rest.

[John Locke Foundation @JohnLockeNC]

An August 13th @CarolinaJournal Poll offers a stark warning for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterm elections: NC voters overwhelmingly believe tariffs make the things they buy more expensive.
#ncga #ncpol
https://t.co/Wi46tMxGij

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Five years ago I argued that Congress should pass @RepThomasMassie's #PRIMEAct so ranchers could process livestock at local custom plants and sell the meat in-state without the USDA bottleneck designed for industrial packers.

Today President Trump is circling the same idea—authorizing documents so farmers and ranchers can “PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD” to break the Big Four monopoly—after his 90-day tariff-free import plan for lean beef trimmings detonated with cattlemen.

The diagnosis was never mysterious. Four companies dominate roughly 85% of U.S. beef processing. Small producers haul animals hundreds of miles. Custom plants are largely barred from commercial sales. Consumers pay more; ranchers get squeezed; the herd shrinks. COVID already showed how brittle that system is.

Dumping imported trimmings can shave a few cents off ground beef before an election. It does not rebuild processing capacity or give ranchers a path around the cartel. An executive order can chip at guidance. Changing the Federal Meat Inspection Act cannot. That takes a statute. Massie has introduced the PRIME Act for years. A limited pilot was even included in the House farm bill.

My argument still holds.
https://t.co/ZXKKsQ8m2d #Beef #FoodFreedom

[Axios @axios]

China is secretly fueling America's data center rage https://t.co/ajqbBpsA5w

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

@DrewDiMeglio That's fair. But it's pretty close.

[Donald Bryson @donaldbryson]

Same people last week: “A burrito shouldn’t cost $20, this affordability thing is real.”

Same people this week: “Heck yeah, Lake America. Take that, Canada.”

The Venn diagram is a circle.
#CommonGoodBurritos

[Erick Erickson @EWErickson]

The post-libs hate Reagan because the post-libs are pro-life socialists.