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President Joe Biden last December warned of a “winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated.” But new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlighted a trend that would suggest that the greater share of COVID-19 deaths this winter will be among the vaccinated and boosted.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit that focuses on health care issues affecting the nation, issued a report Wednesday analyzing recent CDC data — data that excludes the partially vaccinated. According to the KFF report, the “share of COVID-19 deaths among those who are vaccinated has risen.”
“In fall 2021, about 3 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted. But by January 2022, as we showed in an analysis posted on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, about 4 in 10 deaths were vaccinated or boosted. By April 2022, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that about 6 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted,” said the report.
This decrease in the share of deaths from the unvaccinated crowd and the increase in the share of deaths from the vaccinated continued into the summer. In August, the CDC found that the unvaccinated accounted for 42% of COVID-19 deaths. Alternatively, individuals who had received the primary series of vaccines accounted for 22% of deaths, and those who received the primary series plus one or more booster accounted for 36% of deaths. Taken together, the vaccinated and boosted represented a 58% share of COVID-19 virus deaths in August.
On Nov. 23, Cynthia Cox, vice president at the KFF, told the Washington Post that this trend has been driven in particular by three factors: high-risk individuals being more likely to have received the shots; vaccines losing their potency over time; and more Americans having received the vaccines.
The KFF reported that another factor at play is “changes in immunity among the unvaccinated.”
The U.K. Health Security Agency noted in a March vaccine surveillance report that “people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19” previously. “This gives them some natural immunity to the virus which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks.” In addition, the report also suggested that new variants coupled with a drop in masking might lead to more deaths among vaccinated people.
Notwithstanding the reasons behind the trend, Cox concluded, “We can no longer say this a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Fox News Digital underscored how outgoing White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other medical experts had previously admitted that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect “overly well” against infection. Fauci, who is vaccinated and boosted but nevertheless caught COVID-19, stated in July that vaccines “don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection” but “protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death.”
On Nov. 22, Fauci once again implored people in what might have been his last address from the White House podium to “get your updated COVID 19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community.”
About a year and a half ago, I noticed that my son — let’s call him Andy — was putting rainbow stickers on his phone. And a friend alerted me that Andy rebuked her daughter in a group chat for being “so cisgender.” I did some delicate digging, and it became clear: My child, then 13, was flirting with going “trans.”
He’s not alone. The number of transgender-identifying kids is up 20 to 40 times since a decade ago, to 1.5 percent of all teens. And the gender facilities that say they are the experts have been unmasked. Videos and statements have revealed that doctors in these so-called clinics are willing to give 15-year-old girls double mastectomies and call it treatment.
I wasn’t about to send my son off for experimental medical interventions that didn’t treat any underlying psychological issues. In this, I think I’m representative of the silent (and bullied) majority. Still, what could I do?
The first thing I had to do was to realize that the gender cult is powerful, and I can’t control the choices and feelings of my kid. I had to accept my limits, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. Parents are still the most important influence on their kids.
Finding a New School
I was lucky: My son was at a private school that did not push kids, behind their parents’ backs, into exploring alternate sexualities and getting “treated” by lifetime medicalization. If my son had been at a trans-affirming school — which means just about any public school — I would have been undermined at every turn.
At this school, however, he did have a cohort of “rebel” friends who all seemed to identify themselves as gender-questioning. And the school itself was not academically challenging enough for Andy. So I focused on academics, and we looked for a new school that would be a better fit on that score — and still supportive of my values. Finding one gave him a fresh start and a new peer group.
Building Real Identity
Next, I decided I would not provoke Andy by debating gender and trans issues. Maria Keffler in her book “Desist, Detrans, and Detox” reminds parents that transgenderism in adolescents is less about sex and more about identity, identity, and identity. A few decades ago, Andy probably would have worked through his teenage crises by going goth or arguing with me about religion. These days, becoming one of the letters in LGTB is the shortcut to being interesting, not “basic.”
Well, I didn’t want to make gender-bending the way he was going to differentiate himself from his parents. If he had been openly claiming a different so-called gender identity, maybe I would have been more confrontational about it. But since he was just flirting with being trans, not yet eloping, I decided not to make the topic of the sexes even more important than it already was. Instead, I focused on helping him build an identity in a healthy way.
I made it a priority to compliment him, every day, praising him for all the good things he is. Every time I “caught him” being funny, smart, helpful, generous, thoughtful, or kind, I noted it out loud. Every day, multiple times a day. I tried to help him see that these things are more important to his identity than some exotic “gender.” I also tried to help him feel more at home in his skin. He was given lessons in a sport he enjoys, so he could experience his body being strong and agile. Whatever reduced his alienation from his body, I encouraged.
Open-Ended Questioning
Next, I focused on building our relationship. I asked a lot of open-ended questions, and I made goofy jokes. We laughed a lot. I learned about him and signaled that I was interested in learning more. De-escalating tension and increasing the joy between us was key.
If Andy wanted to wear a vintage shirt that looked like it belonged on a French aristocrat from a few centuries ago, I just shrugged and let it pass. As long as what he chose was somewhere within the boundaries of socially acceptable male clothing, I didn’t make a fuss. After all, being a man (or a woman) is large enough to encompass differences in style, personality, and interest. It’s the trans movement that stereotypes the sexes, telling us that a sensitive, artistic boy must actually be a girl. Nonsense! My son could be a man and wear pastels.
When opportunities arose in everyday life, I pointed out the differences between men and women. In talking about school athletics, I would casually observe, “Oh, in high school, the athletic teams are divided by sex, because by puberty, boys develop more muscles and have more lung capacity than girls.” I never made these into arguments, just objective remarks.
In fact, we didn’t talk about so-called gender much, although I was prepared to. I coached myself on how to respond with neutrality and interest. I was determined only to ask questions. “I’m not clear how, if gender is socially constructed, that it is also an infallible identity deep inside the person?” “Help me understand. If gender is fluid and changeable, why should people get surgeries to alter their bodies permanently?” Books and essays pointing out transgenderism’s inconsistencies helped me clarify my thoughts. Still, I vowed I would only provide my own answers when Andy asked me a question — only, that is, when he was truly curious about my thinking.
I did take Andy to one talk on gender by a speaker who was calm and sympathetic but still supportive of my values. When he asked why he had to go, I simply said, “It’s an important topic, and this point of view is not well-represented in the culture.” Afterward, when I asked him what he thought, he said, “It was fine,” in a tone of voice that indicated the opposite. I dropped it; the talk still gave him a lot to chew on, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
Limiting Technology
One other piece was key: technology. Much trans proselytizing happens online, with anonymous adults love-bombing vulnerable kids. These adults sell the idea that acceptance can be found only in their new trans family and not in their real home. Some parents need to take drastic steps regarding their kids’ online presence. Fortunately, the screen problem was one I had been addressing for a long time, so I could be more moderate.
Andy did not have a smartphone, although even flip phones these days have internet browsers. I gave him a new phone designed for kids, one that had some carefully curated apps but no internet browser. For computer time, he was limited to an hour a day, and I trusted the internet filters I managed on his computer to keep him off the porn sites and the sexually explicit forums that cater to trans-questioning kids. All that limited (but didn’t eliminate) his exposure to pro-trans pressure. As a bonus, I got a much more cheerful kid at home who wasn’t always in front of a screen.
The point of all of this was threefold: to be the good guy, to distract him from all gender talk all the time, and to provide other identity options than the trans one.
Upping My Parenting
Lastly, I played the long game. Even when I didn’t believe it, I kept repeating to myself that the universe wouldn’t give me a kid that I couldn’t care for. That I had his best interests at heart — and online trans gurus didn’t — and I could wait this out with patience. I prioritized him when we had downtime in the evenings, not my phone. And I did the things I needed to, like sleeping enough and getting my own support system, so I could be available to him. Should I have been doing all of this all along as a parent? Well, of course, and in fact, it’s not like I had to do a total 180 when this emergency happened. Some of these things I was already doing, sort of. But I still needed to level up my parenting.
This summer, when he decorated a new phone, there were no rainbow stickers on it.
I wouldn’t say we are out of the woods, but he seems uninterested in the whole gender question. His wardrobe choices are less outrageous, and he’s not anxious, angry, and approval-seeking. Instead, he’s engaged and happy at school and at home, and he doesn’t need to be “different” according to the trans script. He’s happier being different just as himself. That makes me one happy parent.
This byline marks several different individuals, granted anonymity in cases where publishing an article on The Federalist would credibly threaten close personal relationships, their safety, or their jobs. We verify the identities of those who publish anonymously with The Federalist.
Then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., November 12, 2019. | SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
The United States Department of Health and Human Services has expressed support for using taxpayer funds to cover the cost of body mutilating “gender transition” surgeries for minors.
In written responses to Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said that the Biden administration supports using taxpayer dollars to cover the costs of elective body-deforming surgeries on youth, such as mastectomies and vaginoplasties. His responses were submitted Tuesday to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor Tuesday.
Becerra responded to a series of questions inquiring as to whether the administration believes “taxpayers should pay for chemical castration and sex-change operations” and if “doctors should be forced to perform sex change operations on minor children without their parents’ consent.” He responded, “The Department follows the law, and is working to ensure that all patients, everywhere can access care free from discrimination, stigma and barriers.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration supports the upcoming release of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8 and believes that all children and adults should be afforded life-saving, medically necessary care,” he continued. “Payers, both public and private, should cover treatments which medical experts have determined to be medically necessary.”
Miller reacted to Becerra’s responses to her questions, published by The Daily Caller Wednesday, in a statement Thursday: “Biden’s HHS secretary has now confirmed that the Biden administration is using taxpayer dollars to push young children to have sex change operations and take dangerous chemicals that do permanent damage to their bodies,” she said. “The Biden administration even supports allowing these procedures to occur without parental consent.”
“American taxpayers should never fund puberty blockers and sex change surgeries on minor children,” she added. As Miller alluded to, Becerra also suggested that doctors should have the ability to perform sex change surgeries on minors without their parents’ consent.
In response to a question about whether doctors should be able to perform gender transition surgeries on minors in the absence of parental consent and a separate question asking if performing such procedures on children as young as 12 years old constituted child abuse, Becerra quoted from an HHS fact sheet titled “Gender Affirming Care and Young People.” Becerra’s reply did not answer the questions directly, instead insisting that so-called “gender affirming care is a supportive form of healthcare.”
“It consists of an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people. Gender-affirming care is patient-centered and treats individuals holistically, aligning their outward, physical traits with their gender identity,” the fact sheet, as cited by Becerra, explained.
In his response to Miller’s inquiry about whether gender transition surgeries on minors amounted to child abuse, Becerra prefaced his direct quotation from the fact sheet by stressing that “Medical care is between a patient, their family and their health care provider.”
He added, “The department is focused on ensuring that care is not stigmatized or denied based on a youth’s gender identity as consistent with the law.”
Becerra reiterated that “care is between a patient, their family and their health care provider” as he addressed Miller’s question about whether doctors should be able to perform sex change operations on children without parents’ consent.
Most of Miller’s line of questioning stems from the Biden administration’s newly released guidance that Becerra cited in his responses, which she described as “shocking.”
The guidance, compiled by HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, touts “gender-affirming care” for trans-identified youth as “crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the healthcare system.” It maintains that “medical and psychosocial gender affirming healthcare practices have been demonstrated to yield lower rates of adverse mental health outcomes, build self-esteem, and improve overall quality of life for transgender and gender diverse youth.”
Examples of so-called affirming care identified in the fact sheet include “puberty blockers,” characterized as the “reversible” use of “certain types of hormones to pause pubertal development,” and “gender-affirming surgeries” consisting of the creation of “male-typical shape” or “enhanced breasts” and/or “surgery on genitals or reproductive organs.”
Miller condemned the “gender-affirming care” promoted by the HHS as “dangerous chemicals” and “sex-change operations that permanently end their ability to ever have children.”
The American College of Pediatricians has listed “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility” as possible side effects of puberty blockers. It has also warned that cross-sex hormones can cause “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.”
While the Biden administration declined to classify gender transition services for minors as a form of child abuse, the state of Texas has explicitly assigned that label to such procedures. Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jaime Masters published a letter last summer stating that “genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery is child abuse, subject to all rules and procedures pertaining to child abuse.”
The state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a formal opinion earlier this year coming to the same conclusion, namely that gender transition surgeries for minors “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of” Texas law. Three other states have banned puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and/or genital mutilating gender reassignment surgery for minors using the legislative process: Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas.
Most recently, the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to ban the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children and body-mutilating “sex-change” surgeries for youth. President Joe Biden condemned state efforts to ban children from obtaining sex change operations as “wrong” during a presidential forum hosted by NowThisNews earlier this year.
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On November 14, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched a federal investigation into an Atlanta elementary school following allegations made by a parent that the principal was segregating students into certain classrooms based on race, CNN reported. The Office for Civil Rights wrote in a letter obtained by the news outlet that it would investigate the accusations that Atlanta Public Schools subjected students “to different treatment based on race” and whether the district retaliated against the parent’s complaint. The investigation into the district was launched over a year after Kila Posey, a mother of two, filed a civil rights complaint against Mary Lin Elementary School.
Posey, a black woman, told CNN in a September 2021 interview that Principal Sharyn Briscoe, also a black woman, was segregating black children into certain classrooms. At the time, Posey explained that she discovered Briscoe had designated two of the six second-grade classes for black students when she requested that her daughter be moved to a particular teacher’s classroom.
In an interview with WSB-TV last year, Posey alleged that Briscoe responded by telling her that the class she wanted her daughter in was “not one of the black classes.” According to Posey, Briscoe said that her child would be isolated.
“First, it was just disbelief that I was having this conversation in 2020 with a person that looks just like me — a black woman,” Posey said. “It’s segregating classrooms. You cannot segregate classrooms. You can’t do it.”
According to the original complaint filed by Posey, the school’s assistant principal admitted in a recorded phone call that she was aware Briscoe had separated the students. In the recorded call, the assistant principal can be heard stating that “class lists are always tough” and that she wished more black children were attending the school.
Following the allegations, the head of the Atlanta Public Schools’ Office of Communications and Public Engagement, Ian Smith, told CNN that corrective measures were taken and that the matter was closed.
“Atlanta Public Schools does not condone the assigning of students to classrooms based on race,” said Smith.
Since then, Posey filed a second complaint against the district on August 29, 2022. Posey stated that she was fired from her position as an after-school care provider for the district. According to Posey, the termination was a “retaliation for raising the issue of segregation.”
Posey noted that she does not believe that the school has continued to separate students based on race.
“My understanding is that they had changed to some degree, but there were rooms that were not diverse,” she noted.
The district told CNN, “Atlanta Public Schools has received notice from OCR that a complaint was filed, and the district is following OCR’s process. Given that this matter is pending before a federal administrative agency for consideration, APS has no further comment.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
This video grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account of billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. Elon Musk changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit” and posted video of himself walking into the social network’s California headquarters carrying a sink, days before his contentious takeover of the company must be finalized. | Photo by Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP via Getty Images
Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk confirmed the suspicions of many conservative voices Wednesday after revealing that the social media platform “has interfered in elections.” Musk made the announcement in response to a Reuters report on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who said the company was “not safer” after the billionaire business magnate acquired the company last month.
In what was billed as his first interview since resigning in November, Roth warned that the company no longer had enough staff to adequately perform safety work. In response to one commenter who said Twitter “has lost users’ trust” and that previous “trust and safety” personnel were a “disgrace,” Musk agreed and pledged to make Twitter “more effective, transparent and even-handed.”
“The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections,” he wrote.
Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections. Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
Earlier this week, Musk signaled that he would follow through with his pledge to make Twitter more transparent by releasing what he dubbed the “Twitter Files on free speech suppression,” adding, “The public deserves to know what really happened…”
The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
Roth made the comments that ultimately spurred Musk’s response while speaking at a conference hosted by the Knight Foundation when he explained why he tendered his resignation after initially supporting, at least publicly, Musk’s reform efforts.
“One of my limits was if Twitter starts being ruled by dictatorial edict rather than by policy … there’s no longer a need for me in my role, doing what I do,” he was quoted as saying.
Roth also admitted that Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign because the company was unable to confirm its veracity, according to Reuters.
In an interview with journalist Kara Swisher, the former Twitter division lead was quoted as saying: “We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke — and ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”
When asked whether the move was ultimately a mistake, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.”
In October 2020, just days before voters were to head to the polls, Twitter blocked users’ ability to share links to the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s now-notorious laptop.
The New York Times confirmed the laptop’s existence in March of this year in a report on the ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax filings.
Twitter’s censorship of the Post’s story also included blocking anyone with a large Twitter following from sharing it, CP reported in October 2020. The platform went so far as locking the personal account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she shared the article. Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who shared the article were also blocked on the platform. In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who later confirmed the censorship and said it was “wrong” to block the story from being shared.
Since Musk’s takeover, a number of several high-profile accounts were reinstated by Twitter, including former President Donald Trump, The Babylon Bee, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Kathy Griffin and Project Veritas, among others.
CP, which had its account suspended in March after publishing a headline that described trans-identified Health and Human Services Secretary Rachel Levine as a man, has not yet been reinstated.
Inheritors of Walmart founder Sam Walton’s fortune have poured millions of dollars into LGBT activist organizations in Arkansas, helping to bankroll a number of propaganda events ranging from drag shows and story hours for kids to so-called “education” programs for sexually-confused youths.
In a recent report, Heritage Foundation research associate Gillian Richards scrutinized some of the causes that second- and third-generation beneficiaries of the Walmart patriarch’s wealth have patronized.
In June 2021, the Alice W. Walton Foundation and Olivia and Tom Walton, through the Walton Family Foundation, launched the Arkansas LGBTQ+ Advancement Fund.
Heather Larkin, president of the Arkansas Community Foundation, stated that this $1 million fund, which in turn confers grants of up to $150,000 to “LGBTQ-serving” nonprofits throughout the state, helps ensure that activist groups can “expand their impact on communities and help Arkansans pull together to build a more welcoming and supportive environment for us all.”
Richards noted that the Equality Crew is one beneficiary of the Waltons’ advancement fund.
This particular group established Arkansas’ confidential “Affirming Teacher and School Staff Database” ahead of the 2021-22 school year so that confused children could connect with teachers who would “affirm” their amorphous adolescent and teen sexual identities.
According to Richards, the Equality Crew hosted an event at the Walton Arts Center, which had a segment titled “Kids Zone,” featuring a “drag story time for younger children.” In another segment, titled “Teen Zone,” grade school students were treated to a “DJ, local band, and TWO drag shows.”
In another Equality Crew event that was set to take place at a public library, youth were invited to get “clothing from The Transition Closet” and to take part in a “teens-only dance party.”
The Transition Closet happens to be another Walton-funded nonprofit that provides “gender-affirming clothing and accessories for transgender and non-binary Arkansans.”
According to the organizers, the Equality Crew event was ultimately cancelled due to an “increasing number of violent and disruptive attacks on parents, children, and organizers seeking to serve members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Richards reported that the Walton Family Foundation and the Walmart Foundation are both also leading sponsors of Northwest Arkansas Equality, an activist nonprofit based in Fayetteville.
According to the group’s website, “Northwest Arkansas Equality’s mission is to provide programs, education, and advocacy to serve, connect, and empower the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community.“
The NAE puts on various drag events.
The NAE proudly claims to have targeted kids with a number of its events, including drag brunches and “children’s storytimes.” Some of the group’s events featured so-called celebrities like drag queens Brian Michael Firkus (“Trixie Mattel”), Darius Jeremy Pierce (“Shangela”), and Ryan Taylor (“Trinity Taylor”).
The Walmart Foundation has been giving the NAE money since at least 2007 and has been filling the group’s coffers with the help of the Waltons as recently as 2020.
In addition to bankrolling LGBT groups, the Waltons have involved themselves directly in political battles regarding the advancement of the transgender agenda in Arkansas.
In 2021, Alice Walton, Tom Walton, and the Walton Family Foundation fought Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act” and failed. The proposed legislation passed despite a veto from Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The act, now law, bans doctors from medically mutilating children and teens for the purposes of so-called “gender transition.”
The Capital Research Center, an American conservative nonprofit focused on charity and philanthropy, previously detailed Walmart’s long slide into woke philanthropy.
Sam Walton wrote “that Wal-Mart really is not, and should not be, in the charity business,” not the least because it would amount to the company being charitable with other people’s money, particularly “shareholders or our customers.”
Nevertheless, the Walmart Foundation, created by Walton in 1982, reportedly tripled its expenditures on philanthropic donations between 1999 and 2005.
While the foundation largely gave to right-leaning think tanks in the early 2000s, facing criticism over being too capitalistic, it ramped up its funding of progressive and liberal causes in the 2010s.
The CPC indicated that the foundation soon was giving millions to leftist and leftist-adjacent organizations such as the New Venture Fund, FSG Inc., the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Meridian Institute, and others.
Soon, it was funneling cash into open-borders organizations like the National Immigration Forum and leftist identity groups like the Institute for Latino Progress.
Advocate, a gay activist publication, reported in 2016 that “Walmart has made an imperfect but nonetheless remarkable turnaround on LGBT advocacy,” trending from 14 out of a possible 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s so-called Corporate Equality Index to 90.
Now, just six years later, Walmart sits at first place on the index with a 100 CEI score, ahead of Amazon, ExxonMobil, and Apple. In addition to donating to groups pushing open borders, amnesty for criminal noncitizens, bigger government, and drag shows for children, Walmart also jumped on the BLM bandwagon.
In June 2020, amidst the George Floyd riots, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced that the Walmart Foundation and Walmart were committing $100 million to create a new center on racial equity.
While financially backing and systematizing identity politics, Walmart also embraced critical race theory. City Journal reported in October 2021 that Walmart employees were told that the U.S. was a “white supremacy system.”
Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced Thursday that the state will begin pulling over $2 billion in assets from large investment manager BlackRock because of the firm’s environmentally and socially motivated investing standards.
Patronis said that BlackRock is choosing to use its money to pursue its ideology rather than secure profits for its clients, according to a press release. Florida’s State Treasury will begin to remove roughly $1.43 billion worth of long-term securities from BlackRock’s control as well as approximately $600 million worth of short-term investments managed by the firm. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: State Treasurer Who Took On BlackRock Plans Crackdown On Woke Investing As Congressman)
“Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for,” Patronis said, according to the press release. “It’s got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do.”
The asset manager aims to push the world towards producing “net zero” emissions by 2050 and sees climate change as a severe financial risk, according to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2022 letter to executives. In August, 19 Republican attorneys general accused BlackRock of violating its duty to make money for its clients by allegedly boycotting fossil fuel companies.
Patronis claimed that BlackRock, which manages $8 trillion in assets, has used environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing practices to decide which companies receive investment as well as influence societal outcomes in an “undemocratic” manner. The Florida CFO stated that he cannot trust BlackRock with the state’s money as he doubts the firm’s dedication to seeking a return on investment.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 30: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Larry Fink on stage at the 2022 New York Times DealBook on November 30, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The New York Times)
“We are surprised by the Florida CFO’s decision given the strong returns BlackRock has delivered to Florida taxpayers over the last five years,” BlackRock said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Neither the CFO nor his staff have raised any performance concerns.”
Florida will have divested all its assets from BlackRock by the beginning of 2023 and transfer those assets to other asset managers. Missouri Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick withdrew $500 million worth of pension funds from BlackRock’s management on Oct. 18, arguing that the firm uses its control of pension funds to push a “left-wing” agenda.
“We are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this that sacrifice access to high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida’s citizens,” BlackRock stated. “Fiduciaries should always value performance over politics.”
The Florida CFO’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Nov. 22 after it failed to complete a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into communication records regarding alleged online censorship during the 2020 presidential election.
The watchdog group was seeking communications between the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA), a DHS subdivision, and the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an “information exchange” between researchers, election officials and government agencies established in 2020 to identify and research online misinformation leading up to elections that flagged social media posts for platforms to address. Judicial Watch demanded that the Washington D.C. District Court order the DHS to acknowledge the Oct. 5 FOIA request and “produce… non-exempt records responsive to the requests,” according to the lawsuit.
“We’ve had these disclosures essentially over the last year that federal agencies, especially DHS, hav been working to censor Americans… either directly or indirectly,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Through the EIP, multiple groups, including CISA and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee and the NAACP, could file “tickets” reporting potential election misinformation, which EIP would then forward on to social media platforms after an investigation into the claims. The EIP released a 2021 report detailing its efforts to address misinformation in the 2020 election in which it acknowledged it had shared hundreds of posts with online platforms, with “35% of the URLs we shared with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube […] either labeled, removed, or soft blocked.”
“This lawsuit’s designed to get into that. There’s these federal frauds that colluded to come up with a system of censorship for social media, and it looks like this [Department of Homeland Security] agency participated in it and we want to figure out what was going on,” Fitton said.
BREAKING: Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the DHS for all records of comms between the CISA, a division of DHS, and the EIP, which was created to flag online election content for censorship and suppression (1/3). https://t.co/xlJLtr8llL
Judicial Watch also requested records between CISA and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and the Stanford Internet Observatory, both of which were part of the EIP. The request specifically asked for communication about the 2020 election and “online misinformation and disinformation.” However, DHS allegedly failed to adhere to the Nov. 3 FOIA deadline, according to the lawsuit.
“When an agency unlawfully refuses to comply with FOIA, we have the option of suing the federal court, which is what we did,” Fitton told the DCNF.
House Republicans also launched an investigation into Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook about their role in online censorship. Amazon, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft are also under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, The Washington Times reported.
Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina reportedly made a request for all communication between the Biden administration and social media corporations pertaining to “digital censorship.”
“This is a threat to the first Amendment like we’ve never seen in modern history,” Fitton said.
The White House, DHS, CISA, the EIP, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public and the Stanford Internet Observatory did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
No matter how you define “marriage,” there is zero respect for it in the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. You may believe it serves to federally codify the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision that rejected marriage as a male-female union. Maybe it would do so temporarily. But that’s not the endgame.
If you’re paying attention, you can see that the Senate’s recent 62-37 vote for cloture on HR 8404 puts us one step closer to abolishing state recognition of marriage entirely. That’s where this train is headed.
This will happen the same way such things always happen — through a demonization campaign that frames skeptics as bigots who are guilty of discrimination. That’s how you get Democrat-pliable Republicans such as Mitt Romney and craven Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy to sign on. That’s how you manufacture a public opinion cascade, warning average Americans that they’ll be pummeled with lawsuits and ostracism if they dare think out loud.
And that’s how Democrats in Congress are likely in the not-too-distant future — via HR 8404 — to make the case that marriage actually comes with privileges that discriminate against the unmarried. Disagree? You’re a bigot who deserves to be socially ostracized! Self-censorship in the face of such accusations will pave the way, as always.
Collectivists Hope to Destroy Private Life and Regulate Relationships
Once they’ve gotten to that point via HR 8404 and Republicans who supported the measure, congressional Democrats will doubtless push us to agree that marriage is a discriminatory institution. We’ll start seeing more anti-marriage initiatives supported by singles, millennials, Julias, and gen Z, all well-groomed for the moment by teacher’s unions, academia, and media.
They’ll fall for the pitch that we can all just write up domestic partnership contracts instead. “Marriage” would then become nothing but a legal relationship (a contract) between two (or more) people for any purpose at all. Bureaucrats would broker those contracts. This proposal is all mapped out in Sunstein and Thaler’s 2008 book “Nudge.” It’s also been promoted for decades by internationally acclaimed feminist legal scholar Martha Fineman who writes that a system of contracts replacing marriage will help the state “regulate all social interactions.”
Under a system that abolishes state recognition of marriage, the family could no longer exist autonomously or unmolested by the state. How could it if the state no longer recognizes marriage as the foundation of the family unit? The government would have no requirement to recognize religious rites of marriage as valid. Thus, it would meddle more deeply in religion and religious communities that recognize bonds of kinship through blood ties.
We Become Atomized Individuals in the State’s Eyes
The atomization resulting from this will have repercussions that go beyond the bill’s guarantee to treat any difference of opinion as a federal crime. If we continue on this path, the government will no longer have to recognize any biological relationships. It need not recognize any legal right you might have as the parent of your biological child. Why should it? It would have already abolished its recognition of the union that produced the child.
Some of this process has already been completed through gender-neutral language in documents like passports, birth certificates, or the rules of the 117th Congress that do not recognize the words “mother,” “father,” “son,” or “daughter.”
Much groundwork has also been laid by surrogacy and abortion laws that treat children as chattel to buy, sell, and dispose of at will. And why would the state have to recognize any other relationships resulting from marriage if it no longer recognizes marriage? It could ignore your blood relationships to brother, sister, aunt, uncle, or any familial bond. In this scenario, you’d likely need a license to raise your own child, an old communist goal that the so-called Respect for Marriage Act conjures up.
When all there is are bureaucratized domestic partnership arrangements, the government would no longer need to recognize spousal privilege and thereby could legally coerce spouses to testify against one another in court. It could also abolish the default path of survivorship through which your inheritance goes to your spouse or next of kin. Instead, the state would be free to redistribute your nest egg at will in its great bureaucratic wisdom.
Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that the Respect for Marriage Act serves as a midwife to the radical left’s long-held goal of abolishing state recognition of marriage. It will allow the government to regulate our relationships, rendering each of us naked before its power.
We are each being set up for a pre-arranged marriage with Big Government operating as our abusive spouse.
Such Atomization Is a Totalitarian Necessity
The path to human atomization is the natural arc of all totalitarian systems in the making. They must always first isolate people in order to control them through terror, as Hannah Arendt noted in her work “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Tyrants always mask their intentions by borrowing from tradition, using words like “respect for marriage,” “love,” or “equality” as they march us all into virtual solitary confinement.
There’s nothing new about this trajectory. It’s a long-standing vision of all totalitarian systems, which first came into the open with the Communist Manifesto’s proclamation, “Abolish the family!” Communists referred to traditional religion as “the opiate of the people” while setting up communism as a pseudo-religion that demanded unquestioning loyalty. The resulting dependency then truly becomes the fentanyl of the people.
Such deceptions are why Schumer and company talk about marriage as though the government has some sort of litmus test for “love.” But anyone with half a brain knows that love’s got nothing to do with a functioning state’s interest in marriage. Marriage is an institution that exists to allow for a structured society and for the protection of children.
Of course, we easily forget such facts while living in a nation that increasingly promotes infanticide, assisted suicide, recreational drug use, child pornography, and other ways to torture and kill our children. In fact, virtually all of their policy positions are tailor-made for family breakdown, community breakdown, and for hostility toward religious communities.
But maybe you like feeling lonely and alienated, like the idea of a childless and hopeless future, and are all for the state regulating your personal relationships and conversations. Well, then, you’ll like the “Respect” for Marriage Act.
But the destruction of bonds of affection and loyalty in the private spheres of life makes sense from the point of view of statists. Those loyalties get in the way of their ambitions for power and social engineering. They are invested in isolating us so that we become dependent upon them.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.
Scripture engaged Americans donated more than $100 billion to charity last year, giving more on average to churches and other charitable organizations than the other subgroups surveyed, according to a new report.
The American Bible Society released the eighth chapter of its annual “State of the Bible” report earlier this month, which focused on the charitable giving habits of Christians and the American people as a whole. The survey found that Scripture engaged Americans, those who score the highest on a scale measuring Scripture engagement based on responses to a series of questions examining the “frequency of Bible use and the impact and centrality of [its] message” on their lives, gave a total of $145 billion to charitable causes in 2021.
According to the report, compiled based on responses from 2,598 U.S. adults collected from Jan. 20-28, charitable giving among Scripture engaged Americans accounted for 44% of all donations given to charity last year. Additionally, Scripture engaged Americans gave an average of $2,941 to charity in 2021. Their counterparts in the “movable middle” and the Scripture disengaged, as determined by their scores on the Scripture engagement scale, gave an average of $649 and $924 to charity last year, respectively.
On average, a majority of the donations from Scripture engaged Americans went to their church, parish or temple. With Scripture engaged Americans’ average contributions to their place of worship measured at $2,124, other top recipients of charitable giving among this subgroup included national religious charities ($344), other religious organizations ($277) and local non-religious charities ($162).
Respondents in the “movable middle” gave an average of $335 to their place of worship, followed by $168 to other religious organizations, $85 to local non-religious charities and $43 to national religious charities. On the other hand, the Bible disengaged directed most of their charitable donations ($406) at religious organizations besides their place of worship, more than double the average amount given to places of worship ($163).
The Bible disengaged donated an average of $285 to local non-religious charities and an average of $28 to national religious charities.
Scripture engaged Americans also had the highest proportion of givers among the three categories of respondents as determined by their scores on the Scripture engagement scale. Eighty percent of Scripture engaged Americans gave to charity in 2021, compared to 68% of those in the “movable middle” and 53% of Scripture disengaged Americans.
Among Scripture engaged Americans, a majority (58%) donated at least $210 to charity while an additional 24% gave less than $210, and the remaining 18% did not give to charity. A plurality of those in the “movable middle” (37%) gave less than $210 to charity, followed by 36% who did not donate at all and 27% who contributed more than $210. An outright majority of the Scripture disengaged (52%) did not give to charity, while the remaining 48% consisted of an even split of those who gave less than $210 and those who donated more than $210.
Practicing Christians also donated money to charity at a higher rate than their non-practicing and non-Christian counterparts. Eighty-one percent of practicing Christians donated to charity in 2021, compared to 61% of non-practicing Christians and 52% of non-Christians.
The latest chapter of the State of the Bible report also illustrated a correlation between the amount of money an individual gave to charity and their score on the Human Flourishing Index, developed by Harvard University to measure a person’s “happiness and life satisfaction,” “mental and physical health,” “meaning and purpose,” “character and virtue,” “close social relationships” and “financial and material stability.” Those who gave more than $210 to charity last year had an average score of 7.6 on the Human Flourishing Index’s 10-point scale.
Individuals who gave less than $210 to charity achieved an average score of 6.9 on the Human Flourishing Index and those who gave nothing at all to charity had an average score of 6.7. On the 10-point scale specifically measuring an individual’s level of meaning and purpose, those who gave at least $210 to charity registered an average score of 7.7 in contrast to those who gave less than $210 (6.9) or those who did not donate to charity (6.7).
John Farquhar Plake, the director of ministry intelligence for the American Bible Society, reacted to the findings of the report in a statement. “Year after year our research shows there is a strong correlation between charitable giving and human flourishing, suggesting that people find a sense of meaning when they give to a cause they believe in,” he said. “Engaging with the Bible and actively living out our faith doesn’t simply mean reading the words in the pages of Scripture–rather, it is a transformation of the heart that inspires us to love and live well.”
The State of the Bible report also illustrated a noticeable gap in levels of charitable giving based on age. Eighty-four percent of the elderly gave to charity in 2021, along with 73% of baby boomers, 61% of those in Generation X, 53% of millennials and exactly one-half of the youngest group of American adults that comprise Generation Z.
The report concluded with a look at the role that Bible users, defined as those who interact with the Bible at least three to four times a year, believe that their use of the Bible plays in their amount of charitable giving. Fifty-five percent of Bible users who agreed that “as a result of using the Bible, I am more generous with my time, energy, or financial resources” gave at least $210 to charity, while 19% donated less than $210 and the remaining 26% did not give to charity.
A majority of those who agreed that “as a result of using the Bible, I show more loving behavior toward others” (54%) reported giving at least $210 to charity. An additional 26% who credited the Bible with making them more loving toward others did not give any money to charity while the remaining 20% donated less than $210.
Image created by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace introduced congressional staffers to at least 10 individuals who worked for Chinese intelligence front groups during a 2019 sponsored trip to China while current CIA Director William Burns was the nonprofit’s president, the Daily Caller News Foundation determined after reviewing author Alex Joske’s book, “Spies and Lies.”
Since at least the 1980s, Chinese spies have impersonated scholars aiming to influence U.S. nonprofits and policymakers, Joske found.
“A lot of the key scholars and other figures involved in U.S.-China relations on the Chinese side have these sorts of relationships,” Joske told the DCNF.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace introduced congressional staffers to at least 10 individuals who worked for Chinese intelligence front groups during a 2019 trip to China while current CIA Director William Burns served as the nonprofit’s president, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
During the week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to Beijing, a bipartisan group of congressional staffers from the offices of various representatives — including Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jim Himes and former North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows — met with Chinese government officials, journalists, academics and policy experts, according to the trip’s itinerary. Yet, at least 10 of the Chinese individuals worked for front groups controlled by Chinese spy agencies, such as the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the International Liaison Department (ILD) and the intel arm of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the DCNF determined.
The congressional staffers participated in a number of discussions with undisclosed Chinese intelligence front group members, such as a Nov. 6 “pre-dinner dialogue” concerning “Chinese perspectives on U.S.-China policy challenges,” which included Ding Yifan, a member of the MSS-controlled Institute of World Development Studies.
PLA’s Second Intelligence Department carries out military intelligence operations, while the ILD focuses on political intelligence and the MSS serves as China’s equivalent of the CIA, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The DCNF was able to identify some of the individuals who participated in Carnegie’s 2019 trip as being tied to Chinese intelligence agency front groups by cross-referencing the itinerary with the research of several prominent Chinese intelligence specialists, including former CIA analyst Peter Mattis and Alex Joske, a former analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Joske’s new book, “Spies and Lies,” details how, since the 1980s, Chinese intelligence operatives co-opted or established various nonprofits and impersonated scholars with the goal of luring prominent Western think tanks, such as Carnegie, into partnerships in order to influence U.S. government policies towards the communist nation.
Carnegie’s cooperation with Chinese intelligence front groups dates back to at least 2004, when, under the leadership of former think tank president Jessica Mathews, the nonprofit launched a joint program with the MSS-controlled China Reform Forum, according to Joske’s research. More than a decade later, Carnegie co-hosted the 2019 congressional staffer trip, which occurred while current CIA Director William Burns served as the think tank’s president.
The six day trip, which was co-hosted by Carnegie and the Aspen Institute, became a flashpoint during Burns’ 2021 confirmation hearings. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio pressed Burns about Carnegie’s ties to a Chinese government-backed group as well as the all-expenses-paid trip that brought 11 congressional staffers to Beijing in 2019.
Burns told Rubio the trip was meant “to provide congressional staff members with an opportunity to engage directly with Chinese counterparts and to express their concerns about Chinese actions and malign behavior quite directly.”
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace employed undisclosed members of the Chinese Communist Party and individuals with ties to the Chinese government when CIA Director William Burns served as the think tank’s president, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation determined. (Artwork: The Daily Caller)
Additionally, the DCNF has identified at least 10 individuals listed on the trip’s itinerary who worked for nonprofits controlled by Chinese intelligence agencies. At least three of these individuals were simultaneously working for Chinese intelligence front groups while employed by Carnegie, the DCNF found. Another two Carnegie policy experts who participated in the trip formerly worked for Chinese intelligence fronts.
During the trip, congressional staffers visited Carnegie’s center at Tsinghua University, where they encountered at least three experts who’d worked for intelligence front groups, the DCNF determined.
One of these experts who participated in the visit was Li Bin, a Carnegie nuclear policy fellow, who spoke to congressional staffers about North Korea’s “nuclear threat.” Li Bin is a member of the CCP and a PLA intelligence front group, the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies (CFISS), according to the group’s website.
A second individual, Cheng Xiaohe, who Carnegie employed as an international relations expert, had previously worked for the MSS front group, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), by Carnegie’s own admission.
The third individual, Yang Wenjing, worked as the chief of U.S. policy at CICIR. While Carnegie did not employ Yang Wejing, Carnegie had featured her as a speaker during events in 2017 and 2018 and continued to feature her at events afterwards.
Similarly, at another point during the trip, Carnegie introduced staffers to Carnegie-Tsinghua advisory council member, Wang Jisi, who is also a CCP member, for a “roundtable discussion.”
Wang has a “very close relationship with the Ministry of State Security,” Joske told the DCNF. Wang has since 2000 also served as director of the China Reform Forum, which Joske’s book identifies as an MSS-controlled front group.
Carnegie, Burns, Wang and the CIA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
With Republicans preparing to take control of the House, lawmakers are once again scrutinizing Burns’ time at Carnegie and the group’s deep and enduring relationships with Chinese academics, policy experts and government officials.
“The amount of CCP infiltration at Carnegie shows that Director Burns was aware and intentionally concealed it from the American people, or he was grossly incompetent,” Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden told the DCNF in September. “Anyone who enables our top adversary is not fit to lead a U.S. intelligence agency.”
Twelve Republicans disregarded their constituents’ wishes and aided Democrats in deriding the First Amendment rights of religious Americans by passing the deceptively-named Respect For Marriage Act without including any of their colleagues’ proposed protective amendments.
Of the 12 Republicanswho voted to advance the RFMA to a vote on the floor, three needed to change their minds before a final vote on the bill to keep the bill from passing. It is clear from the 61-36 vote on Tuesday night that Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana did not change their minds.
Instead of using amendments as prerequisites for their support, these Republicans opened the door for their congressional colleagues to reject three separate attempts to give the bill robust legal protections for religious Americans who believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
The RFMA as it stands doesn’t just repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between male and female, by codifying the Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. It goes further by enabling LGBT activists, who have already made a habit of exploiting the legal system to target religious Americans, and the politically motivated Department of Justice to bring civil action against anyone they say violates the terms of the legislation.
Under the guise of vague language, the RFMA could allow for the legal victimization of wedding vendors, adoption agencies, bakeries, and any other entities run by people of faith who refuse to offer services condoning same-sex marriage based on religious convictions.
Despite the RFMA’s problems, the 12 GOP senators echoed their support for the legislation by once again voting in favor of it.
For their willingness to cave to the Democrats’ agenda, those Republicans were thanked by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer from the Senate floor ahead of the vote.
“I also want to acknowledge my Republican colleagues who voted in favor of advancing this legislation. Because of our work together, the rights of tens of millions of Americans will be strengthened under federal law,” he said. “That’s an accomplishment we should all be proud of.”
Other Republican senators, however, understood the risks the RFMA poses to Americans and offered solutions in the form of amendments that sought to clarify the bill’s cushioned language.
Sen. Mike Lee put forth an amendment that explicitly stated that the federal government “shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction” that marriage is between one man and woman. The amendment would have also allowed anyone who is wrongfully targeted by the government over their beliefs about marriage to sue.
My amendment simply prohibits the Federal Government from retaliating against schools, businesses, and organizations because of their religious beliefs about same-sex marriage.
That amendment, which required 60 votes to be adopted, ultimately failed.
Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. James Lankford also introduced amendments designed to clarify language and ensure religious liberty protections for all Americans.
Lankford’s amendment guaranteed that the RFMA’s obscurity would not be wielded against organizations with traditional marriage beliefs. Rubio’s amendment eliminated the private right to sue from the RFMA.
All Americans should be honored and no one should be discriminated against—no one. The Respect for Marriage Act isn’t about equality or maintaining the status quo. It is about silencing and disadvantaging people that disagree. pic.twitter.com/xp4JbZczdm
Both amendments required a simple majority but failed.
Now that the RFMA has passed the Senate, the House is expected to vote on the updated bill as soon as this week.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who will likely assume the position of House speaker in January, told reporters early on Tuesday that he agrees with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) which says that the RFMA would “betray our country’s commitment to the fundamental right of religious liberty.”
“Catholic Bishops say religious protections in the Respect For Marriage Act are insufficient and far from comprehensive and treat religious liberty as a second-class right. As you know, that’s currently in the Senate. Do you agree with that assessment by the Catholic Bishops?” one reporter asked.
“I agree with them, yes,” McCarthy confirmed.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy says he agrees with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which says the Respect For Marriage Act would "betray our country’s commitment to the fundamental right of religious liberty.” pic.twitter.com/ZbJIOytynJ
McCarthy’s willingness to signal strong opposition to the bill, which garnered support from 47 House Republicans earlier this year, shows that he is listening to conservative voters who overwhelmingly reject this legislation.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The transgender movement has a science problem. Trans activists and their allies are trying to silence their critics by accusing them of “science denialism,” but they are inadvertently illustrating the anti-science nature of transgender dogmas. For example, a recent opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) — titled “Protecting Transgender Health and Challenging Science Denialism in Policy” actually demonstrates that rejecting transgender ideology is the best way to protect health and defend scientific integrity.
Of course, the authors, a couple of Yale professors plus a student, set out to prove the opposite. They open by asserting:
A virulent brand of science denialism is emerging in the U.S. legal system, as states enact bans on gender-affirming health care. Misused clinical research and disinformation have provided legal cover for bans on essential treatments for transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) people. Many of these bans restrict Medicaid reimbursement of gender-affirming care for people of all ages or prohibit gender-affirming care for minors. The recent end of federal protection for abortion and the lifting of Covid-19 protections such as mask mandates may signal an expansion of this dangerous force in health policy.
Yes, the complaints about the Dobbs decision and the ending of mask mandates are real and not a parody of upscale liberal white women. The rest is just loudly repeating transgender orthodoxies, with imprecations for doubters. And despite its apologists’ accusations of misused research and disinformation on the part of critics, transgenderism is indeed a dogmatic form of mysticism. Science has nothing to do with it.
Transgenderism denigrates the reality of bodily sex in order to exalt a non-corporeal sense of gender identity. It does not make a scientific claim, but a spiritual or metaphysical claim — that we have something like a gendered soul in a sexed body and that mismatches are possible and are best resolved by modifying the body into a facsimile of the other sex.
This extraordinary claim cannot be proven and must be taken on faith. Consequently, transgender advocates and allies, such as those writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, do not even attempt to provide a scientific explanation for transgenderism. Rather, because there is no physical need for medical transition, transgenderism has to be self-authenticating, proving itself by whatever mental health benefits can be attributed to it. This is why trans advocates are constantly (and falsely) telling parents that the alternative to transition is suicide — it’s the only argument they have; the only physical harm that can result from not transitioning is self-harm.
TRANSGENDERISM
As this demonstrates, so-called gender-affirming care is abnormal medicine. It hugely disrupts healthy bodily functions for dubious mental benefits. It is like using intense chemotherapy to treat anxiety. Thus, the case for transition, especially for children, needs to meet an extremely high standard of evidence.
Predictably, the authors of the NEJM article fail to do this. They argue that the case for transition is robust and accuse their opponents of disinformation and cherry-picking data but tracing their citations back through their own previouswork provides more assertion than evidence. The studies they cite cannot escape the usual weaknessesplaguing this area of study: poor response rates, bad sampling methods, small sample sizes, short time-frames, and a reliance on patient self-evaluation.
Even less convincing are their attempts to dismiss the side effects of medical transition, which undermine the claims of any benefits. For example, the NEJM writers suggest that the use of puberty blockers in cases of precocious puberty means they are also safe to use in transition — but the former use simply delays a natural, healthy puberty until the appropriate age, while the latter prevents it from ever happening. Even the New York Times has noticed that using puberty blockers for gender-confused children may have major downsides.
TRANSGNDERING ISSUES.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that studies on transition, and especially transitioning children, are overwhelmingly conducted by those whose careers depend upon proving the benefits of transition. The doctors who are chemically castrating teenage boys, or amputating the healthy breasts of adolescent girls, are all-in. To admit that these procedures are a mistake would be a confession of horrific, possibly even criminal, medical malpractice that would end their careers.
Likewise, many of the formerly respectable gatekeepers of medicine and scientific research have been deeply compromised by transgender ideology. From medical associations to hospitals, there is a multitude of people who are in too deep to admit error, even as transgender ideology collapses.
The fact-free nature of transgender ideology is apparent in the latest standards of care issued by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health), a pro-trans group that is treated as the leading authority on transgender medicine. The organization eliminated many of its recommended age restrictions for medical transition in order to protect from malpractice claims physicians who were transitioning children younger than the previous standards — after all, doctors can’t violate a standard of care that doesn’t exist. And bizarrely, WPATH declared “eunuch” to be a valid gender identity, a decision reached, in part, by relying on online forums filled with violent fantasies of child sexual abuse.
These cranks and creeps have captured the establishment, from medicine to academia to the Democratic Party. And they intend to use their power to intimidate and silence critics. They do not care that their attempts are dishonest and incoherent. For instance, the NEJM writers admit that the scientific “consensus is ever evolving,” yet they posit this as a reason to shut down debate and deregulate transitioning children.
They are not perturbed by the inconsistency, for they are engaged in the exercise of power, not reason. They do not care about winning the argument but about intimidating people into compliance. And so, they rely on credentialism and cries of “science denialism” and “misinformation” — following the same approach used to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lab-leak theory of Covid-19’s origins, and skepticism about extended school closures and masking toddlers — to protect their faith in gender identity and the pediatric transitions it demands.
But try though they might, they cannot alter biological reality. They may live by the lie of gender ideology, but they cannot make it true.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed a crisis of confidence in our so-called elites and technocrats, who are supposed to serve the public but instead appear to have been serving themselves. So, what do we do to restore sanity and medical freedom and make sure a public health disaster never happens again? Some suggest “amnesty” for those who went to extremes during the pandemic. Absolutely not. What we need is to recognize what contributed to the insane pandemic response and implement solutions to make sure nothing like it ever happens again.
Now that the GOP has a majority in the House and some members want to hold Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), and others accountable, here are 12 steps Congress can take to curb future pharma corruption and malfeasance.
None of these should be considered partisan since both parties should share the objective of avoiding another pandemic disaster. However, the pharmaceutical and health industry makes substantial contributions to elected officials on both sides of the aisle, with more than $361 million spent on lobbying in 2021 and an all-time high of $92 million in political contributions in 2020 (62 percent to Democrats and 38 percent to Republicans), so implementing reforms will be a challenge no matter who controls the House or the Senate.
Early in 2022, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., published a 12-point plan to rescue America. Curiously, not a single point of his plan addressed the pandemic even though it was the worst health catastrophe in a century that also triggered authoritarian medical mandates and censorship never before seen in this country.
What is the common denominator between the pharmaceutical companies, the public health bureaucracy, medical associations, the corporate media, and Big Tech companies when it comes to censorship and medical misinformation? Money, of course.
According to Statista, the pharmaceutical and medical industry spent $5.6 billion on U.S. television advertising in 2021, second only behind the life and entertainment industry at $10.1 billion. For reference, total U.S. TV ad spending is expected to exceed $68 billion in 2022. According to eMarketer, pharmaceutical and health care companies combined spent an estimated $9.5 billion on digital media in 2020, with 56 percent going toward search advertising, dominated by Google and Facebook, which have aggressively censored medical information that deviated from the official public health narrative. This accounted for about 7.1 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending.
The pharma industry pays, in the form of user fees, for 75 percent of the FDA’s drug review budget, according to Forbes, and 45 percent of its overall budget. One investigation showed that 40 of 107 physician advisers on the FDA committees examined “received more than $10,000 in post hoc earnings or research support from the makers of drugs that the panels voted to approve, or from competing firms.”
According to an analysis by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has numerous conflicts of interest, including openly accepting private gifts through the CDC Foundation, accepting supposedly “prohibited” donations, and “automatic” conflict of interest waivers for advisory committee members. In 2010, the CDC inspector general noted a “systemic lack of oversight” of its ethics program. The CDC uses taxpayer money to develop patents and then receives money from pharma companies in the form of licenses and royalties.
Individual public health officials and scientists, including Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins, receive royalties on patents used by the industry, teaching hospitals accept industry donations, and doctors accept “consulting fees,” and other travel and meals payments from pharma companies when they promote their products. Medical associations, such as the American Medical Association, accept pharma money while promoting drug-based medicine and discrediting alternative medicine and other competitors. Some professional societies that are involved with the development of clinical practice guidelines also have financial conflicts of interest.
Is it any wonder why the public health authorities, medical associations and hospitals, the news media, and Big Tech have attempted to censor any information that contradicted the pro-pharma narratives?
Congress could pass one comprehensive law to effectively undercut the corruption behind the censorious Big Tech companies, the corporate media, and the corrupt public health establishment. Such a law would consist of several simple common-sense reforms to combat financial incentives that promote corruption and tyrannical behavior.
Re-impose the ban on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on advertising, which has made both Big Tech and corporate media companies vulnerable to influence, leading to censorship and search engine result manipulation.
Prohibit pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the campaigns of any political candidate or any political action committee for a period of 25 years if they have been fined or agreed to settlements of more than $100 million for violations of the False Claims Act, Medicare fraud, kickbacks, failure to disclose safety data, making misleading statements about drug safety, poor manufacturing practices, or off-label promotion. Since most pharma companies have been fined from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, this would effectively prohibit them from making political contributions to suppress government oversight and regulation.
Prohibit state medical boards and associations that accept state or federal funds from accepting funds from pharmaceutical companies. Those donations are a corrupting influence on the entire medical establishment, which has backed medical discrimination and tyrannical mandates. Instead, allocate public funds, paid for by higher taxes on pharma products, to support reputable medical boards and professional associations and enforce strict conflict-of-interest policies.
Prohibit medical journals that accept state or federal funds from accepting funds from pharmaceutical companies. Such funding is a corrupting influence on the journals, some of which have censored truthful medical studies or published fraudulent studies designed to suppress alternative treatments or challenge pharmaceutical company safety and efficacy claims. Instead, allocate public funds, paid for by higher taxes on pharma products, to support reputable journals that publish federally funded medical research and enforce strict conflict of interest policies.
Revoke laws granting pharmaceutical companies’ immunity from liability for vaccines or other products that cause death or harm. Pharmaceutical companies will no longer have an incentive to offer products that are improperly tested or do not meet reasonable safety standards and will need to pay more attention to safety. People who are harmed will be able to file lawsuits for financial restitution and bring public attention to the harm that is being done. Also prohibit the government National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program from requiring victims to agree to a non-disclosure (gag) agreement when they settle an injury claim, thus providing public transparency to vaccine injuries.
Require pharmaceutical companies that supply products to deal with a declared public health emergency, or produce products developed with federal research and development funding, to sell at a limited profit margin of, for instance, 5 percent. Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to use public funds in a public health emergency to make billions of dollars in profits. This should mitigate any incentive to exaggerate the threat of future pandemics, engage in unsafe gain-of-function research, or push for medical mandates to force the use of pharmaceutical products.
Pass a medical professional bill of rights that prohibits discrimination against medical professionals who do not agree with public health authorities on treatments. This includes threats of firing or decertification and attempts by public officials and medical associations to prevent doctors from lawfully treating patients using off-label medications or questioning the safety, efficacy, and need for pharmaceutical products. Impose civil or criminal penalties for public officials, private organizations, or medical professionals that engage in such discrimination.
Pass a medical consumer bill of rights that prohibits medical coercion and discrimination, including medical mandates that abrogate the doctor-patient relationship without consent or a complete disclosure of risks. Impose civil or criminal penalties for public officials, private organizations, or medical professionals that engage in such discrimination.
Limit corruption in the federal public health establishment by creating independent medical and scientific advisory commissions appointed by state legislatures that can override decisions made by the FDA, CDC, NIAID, and other federal public health bureaucracies. Doctors and scientists appointed to such commissions must be free of financial conflicts of interest with medical industries over which they provide oversight.
Create an independent, publicly funded drug safety monitoring organization that accepts no funding or royalties from pharmaceutical companies and has no role in the promotion or approval of pharmaceutical products. Oversight of this organization will also be provided by scientific advisory commissions appointed by state legislatures, whose members must be free of financial conflicts of interest with the medical industries over which they provide oversight.
Prohibit public health officials from holding investments in medical companies and receiving income from patents related to work conducted while in government service.
Limit terms of office for senior officials in public health to four years and impose a lifetime ban on employment by or representation of a medical company that they previously regulated.
These comprehensive reforms would help to remove corrupting financial incentives and decentralize federal public health oversight. The current environment rewards corruption and tyrannical behavior, which must be fought by eliminating bad incentives and replacing them with higher standards of personal integrity and transparency. There should be no amnesty for bad decisions that resulted in violations of human rights — only accountability and solutions designed to prevent them from ever being made again. As we have long been told, “those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
David Thalheimer is a graduate of George Washington University, Harvard University, the Air War College, and the National Intelligence University. He retired from the U.S. Air Force as a colonel and now works as an engineer in the field of cybersecurity.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Evangelist Franklin Graham is warning Christians that the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which is set to be voted on by the Senate Monday, is a deceptive smoke-screen that would change the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman while not protecting those who hold a traditional view of marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act “could impact you, your family, your church, and our nation,” Graham wrote on Facebook during the weekend. “The name is a smoke-screen. Very deceptive.”
He compared it to the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act that “did nothing but increase inflation and further hurt our economy.”
“The current version of the Respect for Marriage Act being pushed by Senator Chuck Schumer is designed to provide strong protections for same-sex marriage — but it fails to protect those of us who believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” explained Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse.
“It is dangerous legislation that would be used against individuals, churches and organizations who honor traditional marriage.”
The bill to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage into federal law cleared a major procedural hurdle in the Senate earlier this month, with critics saying that a religious freedom amendment added to the legislation doesn’t adequately protect those with deeply held beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman. Graham said Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s proposed amendment “can improve” the legislation and “bring critically-needed protection for religious liberty and rights of conscience.”
He continued, “Many say this is a long shot, but we desperately need senators to demand the Lee Amendment be added to the current version of the Respect for Marriage Act before it is finalized.”
The measure would codify the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to same-sex marriage, into federal law and formally repeal the unenforced Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman at the federal level.
Graham urged Christians to call their senators “as soon as possible and ask them to vote YES for the Lee Amendment — or to vote NO to the Respect for Marriage Act if it doesn’t have this amendment.”
He warned, “Time is short — freedom-loving people have to take action before it’s too late.”
The Respect for Marriage Act previously passed the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in July with the support of all Democrats and 47 House Republicans.
The legislation would require all states to give “full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between 2 individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.”
Passage of the bill has become a top priority for congressional Democrats following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, determining that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t contain a right to abortion. In a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas described the substantive due process as “legal fiction,” suggesting that the justices should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including Obergefell.
In a recent op-ed for The Christian Post, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, also warned that the bill “opens the door to American persecution.”
“As the mainstream culture moves further and further away from a Christian worldview, I’ve witnessed the hostility to moral truth creep closer to our shores,” he wrote. “The West, once the safe haven of free speech and religion, is turning cold to the foundations that made our countries thrive.”
He cited an FRC report released in July, which tracked 99 incidents of government attacks on religious freedom against Christians or Christian institutions across 14 Western countries in the last two years alone.
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A Texas teacher and two aides have been arrested for allegedly abusing a 5-year-old special needs boy in 2021.
Three instructors employed at the Liberty Independent School District (ISD) were taken into custody in mid-November for alleged crimes committed during an alleged shocking incident on April 15, 2021. Teacher Melody Michel LaPointe, 47, and teaching assistants Tarah Michelle Tinney, 33, and Augusta Danielle Costlow, 27, were charged with four counts each of abandoning or endangering a child in imminent danger of bodily injury, a second-degree felony.
All three women were booked into the Liberty County Jail, and their bond was set at $60,000 each. All three are reportedly out on bond.
The teacher and instructional assistants are accused of isolating a special needs student in a room at a Liberty Independent School District facility. The 5-year-old boy was deprived of food and began eating his own feces and drinking his own urine, according to court documents.
The three instructors were reportedly responsible for the care of the young victim.
The indictment identified the victim as “R.W.,” and stated the instructors “intentionally abandoned [R.W.] in a place under circumstances that exposed [R.W.] to an unreasonable risk of harm, and under circumstances that a reasonable person would believe would place the child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment.”
Law & Crime reported, “The document explains that the alleged conduct involved confining R.W. ‘to an isolation room where he fell causing bodily injury’ and then failing to ‘voluntarily deliver the child to a designated emergency infant care provider’ as required by law.”
A spokesperson for Liberty ISD issued a statement on the disturbing accusations.
We immediately reported the matter to law enforcement and CPS, removed the educators who continued to work for us from the classroom, and conducted a comprehensive investigation. Based upon our investigation, we reported the educators to the State Board for Educator Certification and shared our results with law enforcement officials.
KTRK-TV reported, “According to a spokesperson for Liberty ISD, the two assistants were put on administrative leave during the investigation last year and then resigned once the investigation was completed. LaPointe, the main teacher in the classroom, was able to find work at another school district. She was recently working as a teacher for Bonnie P. Hopper Primary School in Goose Creek CISD.”
On Nov. 17, officials at the Hopper Primary School informed parents of the teacher’s arrest.
“In an effort of full transparency, we want to inform our families of an incident that occurred yesterday during dismissal. A teacher at Bonnie P. Hopper Primary School was arrested yesterday by Liberty County constables. The cause for arrest occurred in Liberty County and is not affiliated with Goose Creek CISD in any way. The teacher is currently placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of an investigation, after which the District will take appropriate disciplinary action. As this is a pending legal matter, Goose Creek CISD will allow the legal process to proceed and refrain from further comment. We want to ensure our families that the safety and security of your children is our #1 concern. We thank you for your continuous support of our campus and our district.
Children’s Wisconsin’s recent chaplain hires are full-fledged left-wing activists who twist religion to advance their preferred social Marxist policies.
Wisconsin’s premier children’s hospital has had its fair share of scandal, particularly with regard to religious liberty and leadership, but the bar just keeps getting lower: Children’s Wisconsin is now hiring trans activists as chaplains and “spiritual care interns.”
Children’s staff members were first notified of such new hires when fliers were posted around the inpatient units advertising, “Meet Your New Chaplain: Kate Newendorp.” The first tip-off to Newendorp’s beliefs about the sexes was featured prominently on the posters, with a proclamation of her pronouns as “she/her/hers” and those of her fiance, a female who goes by “they/he.”
“Working in a pediatric hospital is a dream come true!!” Newendorp is quoted on the flier. “I am so excited to be working alongside everyone and am pumped to be part of the team. Think of me as your friendly next-door neighbor!”
The poster is just your garden-variety job announcement, but a deeper dive shows that Newendorp’s social Marxist views aren’t confined to a push for preferred pronouns. The new chaplain is all-in for transgender surgeries, abortion, and a rejection of religious teaching when it cuts against her personal comfort.
Despite biblical Christian doctrine affirming the sanctity and humanity of life in the womb, the existence of only two distinct sexes, and the immorality of same-sex relations in both the Old and New Testaments, the new “chaplain” proudly rejects all of this.
“Love Jesus. Be gay. Get ordained,” she wrote on Facebook in June, with pictures of herself in rainbow garb. “What better way to celebrate Pride than being ordained?! Many thanks to my church and classis for being willing to stand for queer folks being included in ministry and for allowing me to follow God’s call.”
Several months later, on Oct. 17, 2022, after announcing her engagement to her female fiance who identifies as transgender, the Children’s Wisconsin “chaplain” spouted off about her church online. “Also, your casual reminder that my validity as an ordained minister is currently under review by my denomination because of the love I feel for my fiancé. Do better Church, because I’m not going anywhere. I was called,” she wrote.
Newendorp doesn’t just reject biblical relationships in her own life; she’s a full-fledged left-wing activist who twists religion to advance her preferred leftist policies. Her Twitter bio announces that she’s a “Chaplain desiring to shake things up” and says she’s “Daydreaming about … a time where God isn’t referred to with male pronouns.” On Facebook, she shared a blasphemous poem called “Jesus at the Gay Bar”:
But she’s also used her religion card to proclaim that loving your neighbor looks like “getting vaccinated and masking up” and voting for Democrats, and that “Abortion is a religious freedom.”
“People of all genders and sexualities have and need abortions. Abortion is healthcare,” Newendorp wrote with misinformation about maternal deaths. “I am an ordained minister who supports a person’s right to choose what is right for their life and their body. I am pastor [sic] who is pro-choice.”
In January, Newendorp started a GoFundMe “on behalf of Jennifer London” to help her fiance “Jensen” undergo a double mastectomy, known in the transgender-activist world by the euphemism “top surgery.”
Since moving to Wisconsin for her role at the children’s hospital, Newendorp appears to have become friendly with the other chaplains, posting pictures of herself going wedding dress shopping with fellow Children’s chaplain Ian Butts. This indicates Newendorp is not the only anti-Christian person installed in a religious role at the hospital to help families deal with life-and-death medical situations.
If Butts’ name sounds familiar, that’s because he was the chaplain who interrogated Children’s staff members who submitted religious exemption requests over the disastrous Covid shot mandate that left many hospitals dangerously understaffed. As part of the invasive vetting process, Butts grilled employees about their religious beliefs to determine whether their theology met his standards for being allowed their First Amendment rights and freedom to make their own medical decisions.
As I reported in these pages at the time, “The questions included the specifics of the employees’ personal religious convictions and their vaccination record, with Butts pressing on what he considered to be contradictions. Two particularly leading questions regarded the specifics of how the employees would keep their patients safe without being vaccinated, implying a moral implication of refusing a vaccine, as well as how they could square working for a hospital that mandated something so contrary to their personal convictions as a condition of employment.”
“We have already seen that Children’s holds little value for respecting deeply held religious beliefs, given their recent COVID Religious Waiver Committee. But this feels like a step too far. This feels like they have actively recruited activists into this field to further their progressive agenda,” one former Children’s Wisconsin employee told The Federalist of the trans activist chaplains. “I think this situation really calls into question who do we want guiding the spiritual development of our children — especially children who are stuck in a hospital, isolated, sometimes alone, and extremely vulnerable and easily impressionable.”
Children’s also recently posted a flier for a “Spiritual Care Intern” named Meg Trimm, who demanded to be referred to by the third-person plural pronouns “They” and “Them.” This chaplain intern was “an LGBTQ+ community educator and LGBTQ+ teen safe space facilitator” who believes “a professional chaplain’s job is not to convert anyone or preach religion, but to empower each person to find and use the hope and resilience systems they already have.”
Like Newendorp, Trimm rejects biblical teaching such as the concurrent depravity and creation in God’s image of people of all skin colors to instead espouse the most radical of left-wing political and theological views. Trimm has shared numerous TikToks of herself “deconstructing my white supremacy,” explaining that “gender is infinite,” proclaiming, “God is TRANSGENDER!!!” and saying, “God has a purpose for your life, and it might be fricken queer!”
“I am deeply concerned with this new infiltration of trans activists into our chaplain and faith-based services,” the former Children’s employee told The Federalist. “We have already witnessed the erosion and lost of public trust in fields of psychology, psychiatry, social work and general mental health counselors due to the rise of activists in these areas. Now parents have to worry about this as well?”
TRANSFORMING
Like other pediatric hospitals that have recently come under fire for mutilative transgender interventions, the “Gender Health Clinic” at Children’s Wisconsin advertises medical interventions and surgeries for children up to age 16, with no specified age the hospital deems too young. It advertises that its services include “top surgery” (meaning a mastectomy that mutilates a child’s healthy and developing breasts), wrong-sex hormones, and allegedly “reversible” puberty-blocking hormones, although that isn’t what the experts and “science” say.
While the National Health Service used to claim such gender-bending interventions were “reversible,” it has since backpedaled, admitting:
Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. … It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations. … [Gender-affirming] hormones cause some irreversible changes, such as: breast development (caused by taking oestrogen), breaking or deepening of the voice (caused by taking testosterone). Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment may cause temporary or even permanent infertility.
If health-care workers in the “Gender Health Clinic” at Children’s Wisconsin decide it’s “appropriate,” they prescribe puberty blockers to children at their first visit, even if they’ve never been evaluated by a mental health professional. And while the hospital says it doesn’t pump kids full of wrong-sex hormones on the first visit, it “can work to quickly start hormones at a follow-up clinic visit, usually within a few weeks.”
Furthermore, the pediatric hospital states on its “gender health history” form: “We offer gender-affirming Spiritual Support to all our patients.” Andy Brodzeller, an external communication director for Children’s, failed to explain what “gender affirming Spiritual Support” means despite being asked repeatedly.
“Our chaplains are trained to support and engage families of various faith and personal backgrounds in a health care setting,” Brodzeller said in response to a Federalist inquiry. “They only interact with patients if specifically requested by a family. Families are also always free to seek the services of their own personal faith leader. Regarding your question about parental involvement related to care for gender diverse kids, parents and guardians are essential to all care decisions. Clear, informed consent of all parents/guardians is required before proceeding with all treatments.”
But with trans activist “chaplains” like Newendorp and Trimm stacking the pediatric hospital’s spiritual support bench, and a promise from Children’s to “offer gender-affirming Spiritual Support to all our patients” (emphasis mine), people in the Children’s community are rightly concerned.
“We have many parents and families at Children’s who are deeply religious and hold traditional Judeo-Christian values. Will these new chaplains be able to serve the need of these families objectively?” the former Children’s employee added. “How will they properly support a grieving parent who is dealing with a child’s traumatic injury? How will they properly counsel a child who may be alone in the hospital due to a single parent working to make ends meet and maintain insurance?”
How indeed.
Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a top gun-control advocate, dismissed on Sunday the possibility that lawmakers will pass new gun-control legislation before Republicans take control of the House in January.
After two mass shootings last week, President Joe Biden demanded that Congress pass “stricter gun control” laws before the new Congress convenes in January.
“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers,” Biden said on Friday.
He also confirmed that he is “going to try to get rid of assault weapons” during the lame-duck session in Congress.
“I’m glad that President Biden is going to be pushing us to take a vote on an assault weapons ban. The House has already passed it. It’s sitting in front of the Senate,” Murphy began.
“Does it have 60 votes in the Senate right now? Probably not,” he explained.
“But let’s see if we can try to get that number as close to 60 as possible,” the senator continued. “If we don’t have the votes, then we will talk to [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and maybe come back next year with maybe an additional senator and see if we can do better.“
Murphy also suggested the federal government should punish so-called “Second Amendment sanctuary” localities.
“They have decided that they are going to essentially refuse to implement laws that are on the books. That is a growing problem in this country,” Murphy claimed. “And I think we’re gonna have to have a conversation about that in the United States Senate. Do we want to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws?“
Second Amendment sanctuary states and cities, however, generally have not vowed to outright ignore laws.
Rather, they have simply passed resolutions vowing to protect the Second Amendment and not enforce controversial gun control measures whose constitutionality, and thus legality, is disputed. Indeed, promising to enforce Second Amendment rights is enforcing the law.
"They've decided they're going to essentially refuse to implement laws that are on the books. That is a growing problem in this country." – Sen. Murphy says Congress needs to consider not funding law enforcement in counties that don't enforce federal gun laws. @CNNSotu#CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/HZ5WEURSND
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The way you can tell the media is going to move on from the shooting at a Chesapeake, Virginia, Walmart that claimed the lives of six people is that there’s absolutely no handle for them.
Race? Not a factor — accused shooter Andre Bing, who later killed himself, was black. The gun? Not an AR-15 or an associated long rifle — the handgun he used was legally purchased. His victims weren’t chosen for any other reason than that they were his coworkers at the store.
And there are four words you definitely won’t hear them talk about from the alleged shooter’s suicide note: “led by the Satan.”
The note, which Chesapeake police say they found on the phone of the 31-year-old Bing, was released in a series of tweets on Friday.
In the rambling screed, Bing said he was offended because his coworkers compared him to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
“I would never have killed anyone that entered my home,” he said, calling his fellow employees “idiots with low intelligence” who tormented him with what he described as “evil twisted grins.”
“Sorry God I’ve failed you, this was not your fault but my own,” he wrote. “I failed to listen to the groans of the holy spirit which made me a poor representation of You.”
“My only wish would have been to start over from scratch and that my parents would have paid closer attention to my social deficits,” he continued.
“Sorry everyone but I did not plan this, I promise things just fell in place like I was led by the Satan.”
As the investigation has progressed, detectives conducted a forensic analysis of the suspect's phone, which was located at the scene. This note was located in the device. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/uCAvAZgYWP
So, guess how many times Satan was mentioned in CNN’s write-up of the suicide note? Zero.
Instead, we got this: “The note — found on his phone — talks about God, the holy spirit, and how the author felt his ‘associates’ were mocking him.”
Nowhere in the article is it mentioned how he was addressing God or talking about the Holy Spirit. One is left with the distinct impression he was inspired by God, not by the embodiment of sin and evil.
By ignoring Satan, the media ignores the fact very real spiritual evil exists. “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” 1 John 5:19 reads. Even a CNN reporter can look at the outlet’s own homepage and realize how true the last part of that equation is.
Focusing on that, however, would lead too many readers to ruminate on the state of our fallen world and to blame individuals — not guns, politicians or religion — for the shooting.
With the shooting at a Colorado Springs, Colorado, gay nightclub, those scapegoats were too easy. It was the fault of religion. Of Tucker Carlson and Lauren Boebert. Of the so-called “assault weapon.”
This time, four disgusting words spell out what motivated this and so many other mass murderers: “led by the Satan.”
Expect the media to do everything to avoid talking about the inconvenient fact that good and evil are real, objective things. They’re going to avoid it because they want to exist in a godless bubble where good and evil are determined by manmade standards.
Tragically, shootings like the one in Chesapeake show exactly what happens when those concepts are left to human arbiters.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The suspect in last weekend’s Colorado Springs mass shooting at a gay nightclub isn’t exactly the right-wing Christian boogeyman legacy media immediately painted him as. According to The New York Times on Tuesday, 22-year-old Anderson Aldrich claims to be “non-binary” and wants other people to refer to him with the plural pronouns “they” and “them.”
“The lawyers refer to their client as Mx. Anderson Aldrich,” reported the paper’s Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs.
Aldrich has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury related to the shooting that left five people dead and at least another 25 injured on Saturday night.
Despite few details about the suspect emerging immediately after the shooting, left-wing talking heads placed blame on conservative media in a knee-jerk fashion. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, whose Monday night monologue included a condemnation of political violence paired with a reminder of the dangers surrounding transgender medical interventions for minors, became a primary target — despite the fact that these interventions have been shown to raise suicide risks, contrary to the left’s constant fearmongering.
According to a recent groundbreaking study from the Heritage Foundation, “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.”
“There is no scientific justification for sexually mutilating kids,” Carlson said. “Is pointing that out an attack on gay people? Of course it is not an attack on gay people. It has nothing to do with gay people.”
“Violence and cruelty should always horrify us every single time,” Carlson added, provoking critics to call him a hypocrite because, according to the left, opposition to mutilative surgeries and sterilizing drugs for minors is somehow violent.
“‘Hateful’: Critics Rip Tucker Carlson’s Response to LGBTQ Nightclub Shooting,” blared a headline in HuffPost amplified by Yahoo News. The article ran down a list of media personalities active on Twitter, from Media Matters for America to liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, who admonished Carlson despite the prime-time host admitting the many unknowns and his commentary later being vindicated.
“So, the most obvious question is why did Anderson Aldrich shoot 30 people?” Carlson asked on air. “The truth is we don’t know.”
The leftist pundits on MSNBC, however, seemed to have an answer without actually knowing any of the facts. On Tuesday, NBC’s Twitter hall monitor Ben Collins, on the verge of tears, called on reporters to “have a come-to-Jesus moment” and confront the supposedly violent rhetoric from conservative outlets.
“Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people?” Collins asked after he highlighted a series of headlines that warned of right-wing violence targeting transgender-identified people.
“I’m more afraid of the dead people,” Collins finished. “I don’t want to wake up on a Sunday and see all of these headlines come to fruition.”
"I think we have to have a come-to-Jesus moment here as reporters—Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people?"
Now would be a good time for Collins and the rest of the left-wing media establishment to have an actual “come to Jesus moment” over their hysterical coverage that immediately fomented outrage, fear, and division by blaming their political opponents. Now that we actually have a few facts, their narrative appears to be falling apart.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
Imagine the Environmental Protection Agency decides that, instead of setting air pollution standards, it will outsource oversight to an industry group called the “Emission Standards Coalition,” which, despite its innocuous name, is funded and staffed entirely by coal companies. Or, closer to home, imagine that city councilmembers in your quiet suburb decide that henceforth all speed limits will be set by the local auto racing club. We all would promptly object, haranguing the government for abdicating its most basic responsibility to citizens. “Foxes shouldn’t guard henhouses,” we’d say. Rules meant for public health and safety shouldn’t become tools to advance special interests and profit seekers. Lifting pollution and speed limits may benefit factory and Ferrari owners, but the public at large will have to cope with the resulting damage.
Farfetched as these examples might seem, something like this is happening in health care. Along the new frontier of “transgender health,” novel and even destructive “standards of care” are being set by ideologues and billionaire-backed foundations — all with the government’s blessing.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a proposed rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. Behind its 190-plus pages and innocent-sounding name (“Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities”) hides a radical agenda that would reshape the nation’s health care in alarming ways. HHS is proposing new national standards for what it calls “gender affirming care,” mandating that doctors provide these services and insurance plans cover them. What is “gender affirming care” exactly? HHS never really says. Its proposed rule neither defines the term nor identifies objective standards — such as age limits — that might apply. Instead, HHS incorporates guidance from medical societies and a group calling itself the “World Professional Association for Transgender Health,” or WPATH.
WPATH is not a government agency. It is a trans-activist group. Its president is Dr. Marci Bowers, a man identifying as a woman and self-described “pioneer in the field of Gender Affirmation Surgery” with her own transgender reality show, “Sex Change Hospital.” WPATH’s staff appears to be largely borrowed from Veritas, a for-profit company that does marketing and public relations for medical societies. WPATH’s funders include the Arcus Foundation (“one of the largest LGBT funders in the world”), the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations, and the Tawani Foundation, headed by transgender billionaire Jennifer Pritzker.
‘Standards’ Reflect Radical Backers
In 2018, the Tawani Foundation gave WPATH $200,000 to develop its so-called “Standards of Care,” a gift that earned Pritzker the WPATH “Philanthropy Award.” And Pritzker is heavily invested in trans causes. While the foundation has been funneling money to groups like WPATH and the National Center for Transgender Equality, its for-profit arm, Tawani Enterprises, is making financial bets on medical devices, implants, and surgical cutting tools. With the transgender surgery market expected to grow by billions of dollars over the next decade, one careful observer notes that “it is hard to avoid the impression of complementarity” here.
No surprise, then, that the WPATH standards that HHS hopes to enshrine into law reflect the radical views of its backers. On the list of WPATH “treatments” are mutilating surgeries (mastectomies, vaginectomies, penectomies), “chest binding,” “genital tucking,” “aesthetic procedures” like “body contouring” and “voice surgery,” and puberty-blocking drugs for children. There’s no minimum age requirement for these procedures. WPATH even calls for “psychotherapy” for prepubescent “gender diverse children” to “explore their gender,” with parents involved “as necessary” and excluded if their involvement is “contra-indicated.” WPATH says it’s “committed to advocacy” for “social and political climates that ensure social tolerance, equality, and the full rights of citizenship.”
This isn’t medicine. It is the destruction of healthy bodies, the indoctrination of children, and the dissolution of parental rights. It is radical sexual ideology under the guise of science.
Rest of the World Backs Away
Even to call WPATH’s guidance “standards of care” is misleading. As the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine explains, a true standard of care “is a treatment approach that all reasonable providers would use in a particular clinical situation,” but no such consensus exists for so-called “gender affirming care,” especially for kids. And the mounting damage this form of “care” is doing to both kids and adults is well-documented. It’s why countries around the world are backing away from it, even as HHS bureaucrats are strangely doubling down.
WPATH published its latest guidance in its “partner” journal, the recently renamed “International Journal of Transgender Health.” Among its authors is Susie Green, who heads the United Kingdom-based group Mermaids focused on “gender-diverse kids.” Green is not a medical professional. She spent several years as an IT consultant before famously helping her 16-year-old son undergo transgender surgery in Thailand. Another contributor to the WPATH guidance is Laura A. Jacobs, a self-described genderqueer “activist” and “heretic” whose “psychotherapy specialties” include “LGBTQIA+” adolescents, “BDSM,” “kink,” and “sexwork.”
It isn’t shocking that a bunch of well-funded activists could come together, give their glossy PDFs a veneer of academic credibility, and market their views as a new sexual orthodoxy. What is shocking is that they’ve managed to capture the federal bureaucracy. For HHS to uncritically platform WPATH, mandating shoddy science and destructive medicine as law, is an alarming development that deserves greater scrutiny.
Ultimately, this is a lawless effort. HHS has no power to override the states and the medical profession by imposing “standards of care” for the entire country. Nor can HHS force these standards on health care professionals in violation of their ethical and religious convictions. And purporting to delegate these tasks to billionaire-backed ideologues with no democratic accountability is worse yet. Just as racing enthusiasts don’t set speed limits and coal companies don’t set pollution rules, transgender activists shouldn’t be setting national medical standards.
Douglas G. Wilson Jr. is the chief executive officer of the Catholic Benefits Association and founding board member of the Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
As reported earlier – Pennsylvania election observers filed a complaint against the Delaware County Board of Elections after county officials took a detour on election night with the county’s ballots and v-drives into a closed building for six hours. Poll watchers were prevented from entering the building at the time.
The county also deleted 194 voter registrations that were deleted after election day whose ballots were counted.
Here are several allegations that were filed in a complaint last week in Delaware County.
Delco Election Concerns Aired In 9-Hour Hearing Before Judge Dozor — Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge Barry Dozor presided over a remarkable nine-hour hearing, yesterday, Nov. 20, concerning the request by Leah Hoopes, Gregory Stenstrom and Nicole Missino that certification of the Pennsylvania county’s certification of votes from the Nov. 8 election be postponed until Nov. 28 so a hearing could be held at which evidence could be presented regarding election irregularities.
Well, the hearing was basically held but limited to specific allegations made in the plaintiffs filing, namely that 2,778 records of requests for mail-in ballots were deleted by the county; at least 194 voter registration records of individuals who voted were deleted; a partisan third-party was allowed to control and tabulate mail-in ballots; and the chain of custody was adulterated by detouring the election-night journey of the county’s physical ballots and v-drives for six hours into a closed building, where poll watchers were prohibited from entering, before continuing the delivery to the centralized counting center at the Wharf Building in Chester.
These claims were generally, and reasonably, explained by the County during the course of the day but other troubling points were brought up.
Judge Dozor, who deserves great praise, is expected to rule today.
Mrs. Hoopes and Stenstrom were certified poll watchers while Mrs. Missino was the Republican candidate for the 165th District in the State House. They represented themselves. Attorneys are notably reluctant to take vote fraud cases in Delco for fear of repercussions. Deborah Silver, a previous attorney for Mrs. Hoopes and Stenstrom, faced an attempt to disbar her which reportedly cost her $20,000 to beat.
The plaintiffs lack of experience led them to make mistakes. They were unable to call expert witnesses including data expert Robert Martini, who was unable to present a report which we are including at the end of this article. Martini, as a fact witness, testified, however, that the machine tape in the 1st Precinct of Marple’s 7th Ward was missing a hashcode.
This is a legitimate concern. If it happened there it likely happened elsewhere and reveals a security issue.
Mrs. Missino was unable to get into the record the voters who told her that their votes were never tallied.
Joan Weber, an entrepreneur who had been director of finance for Conde Nast, was unable to testify regarding the strange shrinkage in the tally for mail-in ballot requests she recorded from the state’s OpenDataPa website.
Julie Yu, whose report of election day ballots being taken unexpectedly from the Springfield Library dropbox to the county-owned “Flagship Building” at 2 W Baltimore Pike, in Media, might have made the most significant claim. The ballots had been expected to go to the counting center at the Wharf in Chester. The change caused suspicion regarding the the chain of custody.
James Allen, the county director of election operations, testified the change was due to Act 88 that was passed by the state legislature in July.
To get funding provided by the act, the county had to agree to, among other things, that it post on its publicly accessible Internet website an unofficial number of absentee ballots and mail-in ballots received for the election by 12:01 a.m.
This required election night procedures for the collection of dropbox ballots to be changed for logistical reasons, Allen said.
In previous elections — and in the weeks before election night — dropbox ballots were and are collected by county employees using vans and taken directly to the counting center. The new constraints led to the election night dropboxes being collected by two-person teams using private cars, with at least one member of the team being a county employee, according to Allen. Rather than being taken directly to Chester these ballots were first gathered at the Flagship Building.
Mrs. Hoopes, in her cross-examination, got Allen to admit that the change was never made public and that the county guidelines actually called for the ballots to go to Rose Tree Park on election night.
Things like this are what causes suspicions to arise.
Laureen Hagan, chief clerk of the Bureau of Elections, testified that the county never deletes requests for mail-in ballots. It remained unanswered as to why 2,778 such requests appear to have been deleted.
Stenstrom testified that he saw a cart of between 20,000 and 30,000 pre-canvassed ballots without pedigree at the Wharf on Election Night and that at 8:05 p.m., about 25,000 votes almost immediately appeared with lopsided margin for Democrats.
The logic and accuracy testing for the scanning machines was a big issue throughout the day with attorneys Nick Centrella, representing the Election Board, and William Martin, representing the County, desperately trying to keep it out.
Mrs. Hoopes got it on record that Delco was not following state protocols in its testing. She also got it on record that the county followed directives from their information technology guy rather than what was prescribed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Gavin Lawn, an observer at the counting center, testified he was inspired to become involved after receiving 13 mail-in ballots at his home in 2020. He said during his scheduled shift on Nov. 9, the door to the counting room was locked despite their being people inside.
Stenstrom said that he’d like the Judge to let him compare the ballot images from the scanner with the Department of State database to ease any concerns about the election being rigged. He said this could be done quickly and easily using off-the-shelf software without affecting the integrity of the machine.
There is no reason not to let citizens be allowed this access.
County solicitor Martin implied the plaintiffs and their supporters were merely sore losers motivated entirely by a dislike for mail-in ballots rather than legitimate concerns about the election.
About 40 people packed Courtroom 7 with another reported 80 in an overflow courtroom. About 20 stayed the whole nine hours.
Again kudos to Judge Dozor for the effort to address concerns.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
The 12 Republicans who voted to advance the bill last week are gaslighting the American public about its real purpose.
It’s not hard to game out what happens if the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act passes, codifying Obergefell and enshrining gay marriage in federal law. Everyone, including the dozen Republican senators who voted to advance the legislation last week, knows exactly what will happen. It’s not some big mystery.
What will happen is this: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who dares maintain that marriage is a lifelong conjugal union between one man and one woman — the definition of marriage for thousands of years until the U.S. Supreme Court descended from Mount Sinai with Obergefell v. Hodges inscribed on stone tablets — will be branded a bigot and driven from the public square and marketplace.
Anyone who owns a small business related to the wedding industry — photographers, bakers, website designers, venue owners, caterers, florists — will be sued into oblivion if they refuse services to same-sex couples. Religious colleges and universities will lose their tax-exempt status. Religious institutions of every kind, if they hold to their teachings and traditions about marriage, will face an onslaught from the Department of Justice and the federal bureaucracy.
To paraphrase George Orwell’s famous line, if you want a picture of the future under the Respect for Marriage Act, imagine a boot stamping on Jack Phillips’ face — forever.
The untrammeled exercise of power and the vigorous crushing of dissent is the entire purpose of the proposed law. There can be no other possible justification for it. Michael New, an assistant professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, recently told The Daily Signal that Catholic colleges and universities in particular might face ruinous lawsuits and loss of federal funding if the bill is signed into law.
“Suppose a Catholic college refused to allow a same-sex married couple to live in college owned graduate student housing for families, they might be subject to all kinds of litigation,” he said. “Such a college might lose its nonprofit status. Their students might lose eligibility for federal financial aid and their faculty might lose eligibility from research grants from government agencies.”
Well, yes. Of course all that would happen. Democrats and left-wing activists hear these kinds of concerns from people like New and think, “Good. Let them face ruinous litigation. Let them lose funding. Ghettoize them. Crush them. Grind their institutions into dust. They deserve it, the bigots.”
All the more appalling, then, that 12 Republican senators voted to advance the bill knowing full well what it will do. One wishes the explanation is just that these lawmakers are too stupid to understand what the purpose of the proposed law really is and what its effect will obviously be, but that’s wishful thinking. If they’re going to support this bill, though, do they have to pretend that we’re all too stupid to understand how it will work? Does Dan Sullivan, the second-worst U.S. senator from Alaska, who once supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the long-ago of 2014, really believe that the Respect for Marriage Act makes “important advances” in religious liberty? Does Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who 10 years ago as speaker of the statehouse supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in his state, really think the anemic amendments he and other GOP senators offered to the bill will “advance religious freedom” and “age well”?
All the Republicans who voted to advance the bill last week issued some version of the nonsense Sullivan and Tillis spouted. None of them believe a word of it. They just hope you buy it.
But you don’t have to. Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation helpfully walked through these specious claims one by one, explaining why they’re wrong. No, the bill won’t provide religious institutions with meaningful protections. Yes, the bill could certainly be used as a basis for the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax-exempt status to religious organizations that don’t toe the line on gay marriage. Yes, it could also be used to deny grants, licenses, or contracts. No, weak language about preserving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not enough to prevent harm to religious liberty. And so on.
The justification for the bill is just as outlandish and offensive as the argument that it presents no danger to religious Americans. In the wake of the Dobbs decision this summer, we were warned that some future Supreme Court opinion, following Justice Clarence Thomas’s logic, could overturn Obergefell and other substantive due process rulings such as Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state laws banning interracial marriage.
The purpose of this claim, in case it isn’t bone-crushingly obvious, is to lump opponents of gay marriage in with opponents of interracial marriage, to smear them as bigots who aren’t just on the wrong side of history, but who are about to be on the receiving end of a federal government empowered to go after them.
And if you think that can’t really be how proponents of the Respect for Marriage Act think about traditional-minded Americans, go ask Jack Phillips how he’s faring after winning his Supreme Court case in 2018.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Over a dozen Republican states are urging a judge to keep Title 42, a major Trump-era border policy, according to court documents filed Monday. Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming asked D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan if they could intervene in the case in which Title 42, which has been used to expel over one million migrants to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, was overturned, according to the request. Sullivan ruled on Nov. 15 that the Biden administration must end the policy in late December, giving them time to prepare for an expected influx of illegal migrants at the southern border. (RELATED: ‘Even Worse’: Illegal Migrants Will Flood The US Border When One Major Trump-Era Policy Ends)
When Title 42 ends, that influx will directly impact the Republican states, they argued.
“Because invalidation of the Title 42 Orders will directly harm the States, they now seek to intervene to offer a defense of the Title 42 policy so that its validity can be resolved on the merits, rather than through strategic surrender,” the Republican states wrote to Sullivan.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Republican states also argued against the Biden administration’s change of tune on the policy after it previously fought against their previous attempt to keep the police in place.
“The States have sovereign and quasi-sovereign interests in controlling their borders, limiting the persons present within those borders, excluding persons carrying communicable diseases, and the enforcement of immigration law,” the filing said.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.
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The Associated Press revised a story about the Hunter Biden scandal after constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley spotlighted the “whopper of a claim” within it.
On Saturday, the AP wrote about House Republicans and their plan to investigate President Joe Biden for potentially being involved in his son’s business dealings despite his denials. Buried deep within the story was a paragraph absolving the president of any wrongdoing. The AP reported:
Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and nothing the Republicans have put forth suggests otherwise. And there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president.
Turley quickly called out the “breathtaking but telling” claim.
“[T]he Bidens have succeeded in a Houdini-like trick in making this elephant of a scandal disappear from the public stage,” Turley wrote on his website. “They did so by enlisting the media in the illusion. However, this level of audience participation in the trick truly defies belief.”
He then detailed the circumstantial evidence that appears to contradict Biden’s claims about not being involved in Hunter’s business dealings, including voice messages, emails, and claims from Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden.
The AP later deleted its suggestion that Republicans have failed to produce evidence backing their suspicions.
“Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president,” the AP story now reads.
According to Turley, the edit — which the AP does not disclose in an editor’s note — “creates a new problem.”
“Rather than simply stating the fact, AP seems to struggle to shield the President. There is every indication that ‘the federal investigation involves the president.’ Not only is the President discussed in key emails under investigation, but the grand jury heard testimony that the ‘Big Guy’ is Joe Biden,” he explained, adding a link to this story.
The White House press corps exploded Tuesday after press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre berated the Daily Caller’s White House correspondent Diana Glebova.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was partaking in a press briefing when he went to step away from the podium. Glebova said she had asked several times what Fauci had done to investigate the origins of the virus, prompting Jean-Pierre to step back to the podium and snap at Glebova.
“Hold on one second, we have a process here. I’m not calling on people who yell. You’re being disrespectful to your colleagues and you’re being disrespectful to our guest. I will not call on you if you yell, and also you’re taking time off the clock,” she said.
The Grio reporter April Ryan also told her she was “being disrespectful.”
Glebova tried to respond but Jean-Pierre immediately silenced her, saying she would not get into a “back and forth with you.” Glebova then said to Jean-Pierre that she “calls on the same people all the time.” As Jean-Pierre then tried to step away, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson tried to defend Glebova, as did Simon Ateba from Africa News Today.
“She’s asking a good question, she’s asking a very good question,” Ateba said.
“You need to call on people across the room, she has a valid question, she’s asking about the origins of COVID,” Ateba said, prompting Jean-Pierre to head back to the podium and nastily say she heard the question but would not respond.
Daily Caller's @DianaGlebova tries to ask Dr. Fauci about what he did to investigate the origins of covid and Jean-Pierre shuts her down.
The Supreme Court has denied former President Donald Trump’s request to block the House Ways and Means Committee from reviewing his tax returns.
The committee has long been attempting to review six years of tax returns and files in connection with Trump and eight of his businesses. Trump had appealed to the Supreme Court to stop the committee from reviewing his tax returns, but the court turned down Trump’s request Tuesday.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court REJECTS Trump's bid to prevent the House Ways & Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns. No noted dissents.
The brief order may end years of litigation over the committee's efforts to review the tax records of Trump and his businesses. pic.twitter.com/raETmlco4T
On Oct. 27, a three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s request to block the tax returns, pushing him to file the emergency appeal in the Supreme Court, CNN reported. Trump asked the court Oct. 31 to temporarily block the committee from viewing his tax returns as the court considered his case, and Chief Justice John Roberts granted that request. (RELATED: Supreme Court Okays Masks On Planes During Public Health Emergencies)
The Tuesday court ruling also vacated Roberts’ order.
Trump’s Oct. 31 application claimed the committee’s tax return review request would, if allowed to stand, “undermine the separation of powers and render the office of the Presidency vulnerable to invasive information demands from political opponents in the legislative branch.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Even though the Arizona governor’s race has been called in favor of Katie Hobbs, Hobbs’ opponent Kari Lake has not conceded and vote counting and vote correcting are still happening. As has been reported (in mainly conservative media), many voters were turned away on Election Day because of broken printers or given provisional ballots that wouldn’t be counted. Furthermore, many ballots were not counted because of a non-matching signature or some mistake in filling out the ballot. This means voters are being contacted about their ballot being rejected and given a chance to correct or “cure” it. The window for doing this just ended on Nov. 17.
Considering how laughably convoluted this process is, along with its many vulnerabilities to fraud and error, it’s more than understandable to see why Lake, someone projected to win big and who faced a meek candidate who refused to debate her or even do much campaigning, refuses to give up. The glacially slow counting, the numerous malfunctioning printers and ballot machines, and the recent history of gross irregularities from the previous election all give ample reason for suspicion. There’s also the added wrinkle of Hobbs refusing to recuse herself from the role of supervising the election — somehow this didn’t constitute a conflict of interest.
And yet, for all this, the corporate media are blasting Lake for daring to challenge the election result, living up to her reputation as a dirty, rotten “election denier.” Here’s just a small sampling of headlines: “Election denier Kari Lake refuses to concede Arizona governor race she lost” in The Guardian, “Katie Hobbs elected Arizona’s 5th female governor, defeating election denier Kari Lake” in the Arizona Republic, “Kari Lake Is Denying Her Election Loss” in New York Magazine, and “Democrat Katie Hobbs defeats election denier Kari Lake for Arizona governor, AP projects” in Yahoo News.
As David Harsanyi has argued, this charge of election denier — that is, a person who questions and/or challenges elections — is a ridiculous criticism that stigmatizes perfectly rational behavior in a democracy. Furthermore, it’s a label that applies far more to Democrats despite being exclusively directed at Republicans. This insult (coupled with “the big lie”) became popular in 2020 after Donald Trump and many of his supporters claimed the presidential election was stolen.
It’s no secret that the left continues to call its opponents election deniers because it has been an effective tool to silence dissent. It casts people like Trump and Lake as unhinged losers who are ready to smash the whole system because they didn’t win. Thus, to give even the slightest credence to their objections is tantamount to undermining “Our Democracy.” And if anyone thinks that is an exaggeration, they should know that hundreds of Jan. 6 protesters have been thrown in prison and denied bail because they were “election deniers” who ostensibly posed a threat to the country.
However, the more successful it is to slander people as “election deniers,” the more destructive it becomes. First, it is an accusation that immediately groups the accused with every crackpot imaginable. Even though Lake has plenty of reasons to question her election, she is nonetheless associated with the QAnon Shaman and other disturbed crackpots who had their own theories about fraudulent elections and the deep state. This in turn pushes away her supporters and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously.
If the claim that an election is rigged is false, it should be easy enough for the left to simply prove it instead of delaying vote counting. But even if they can, the guilt-by-association still does more harm to conservatives who will start fighting one another instead of working together on getting accurate election results. This can be seen as Lake and her team toil away at curing votes and rooting out errors while her fellow Republicans have given up and have instead complained about candidate quality and messaging.
This attempt to move on not only demoralizes all efforts to challenge elections, but it also leads to faulty analysis. It’s completely useless to criticize the direction and composition of the GOP and its leadership when so many elections might very well be rigged. If Democratic candidates are stuffing ballot boxes and throwing out Republican ballots with impunity, it doesn’t matter who’s running for office, what they say, or even who’s voting. At the very minimum, Democrats’ relentless demands for mail-in ballots and remote voting, which are particularly susceptible to fraud, are a major threat to the integrity of our elections.
Second, and more importantly, the election denier accusation increasingly removes all recourse for justice. If an election is fraudulent, laws were broken, and large swaths of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised, there is nowhere they can turn because the well has been poisoned. As was shown in 2020, no judge, not even the U.S. Supreme Court, will dare hear the case and examine the evidence, and few conservative writers or pundits will bother talking about it. Rather, they will demand proof, knowing quite well that no amount of evidence will change their mind or any election outcome. Over time, it becomes an unprovable claim that guarantees political anathema to the conservative who makes it.
While Lake might not be able to overturn the result of her election, she should be commended for trying. Far from threatening the legitimacy of the election, she is breathing life into it, giving a voice to people who rightly want answers and accountability. Rather than being election deniers, they should be recognized as election defenders, putting their faith in the voters and the American political system.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
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Before the results are certified, the Arizona attorney general’s office wants answers about the bungled administration of the 2022 general election in Maricopa County. On Saturday, the AGO wrote to the Maricopa County attorney’s affice, raising problems voters faced in ballot tabulators and ballot-on-demand printers, along with potential election law violations.
In a Nov. 19 letter addressed to the Maricopa County attorney’s office, Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright noted that the AGO’s Election Integrity Unit has received “hundreds of complaints … pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County.”
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” wrote Wright.
On the basis of these complaints and the problematic administration of the election, Wright underscored how Arizonans “deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems” that occurred in Maricopa County on Election Day.
In addition to voters’ complaints, Wright indicated there was additional cause for concern, given that “statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of [Arizona election law].”
Having invoked Arizona Revised Statutes Section 16-1021, which allows the attorney general to “enforce the provisions of this title through civil and criminal actions” in any election for state office, the AGO demanded answers about:
Election Day ballot-on-demand printer configuration settings;
Election Day “check-out” procedures; and the
apparent contravention of statutory guidelines and failure to segregate, count, tabulate, tally, and transport ballots that voters were otherwise unable to have tabulated using on-site tabulators.
Wright requested that a response be given on or before Nov. 28.
BREAKING: The Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has officially demanded a response from Maricopa County "pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County." pic.twitter.com/PeYMK4F8Vq
\u201cBREAKING: The Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General\u2019s Office has officially demanded a response from Maricopa County “pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County.”\u201d
Wright stated that at least 60 voting locations had problems with their ballot-on-demand printers, “which appeared to have resulted in ballots that were unable to be read by on-site ballot tabulators.”
According to Votebeat Arizona, vote-counting machines had trouble tabulating ballots on Election Day “because the timing marks on the ballot — the black lines on the sides that tell the machine where the contests are located so the machine can tally the votes — were not printing correctly. As a result, the machines were rejecting the ballots.”
Nearly 27% of the voting centers (60 of the 223) were affected, generating longer wait times and confusion.
Nearly 17,000 Maricopa County voters (7% of all in-person voters) were reportedly “unable to watch machines tabulate their ballots on-site” because of printing malfunctions.
Sworn complaints submitted by election workers employed by Maricopa County indicated the printers had been tested on Nov. 7 “without any apparent problems,” Wright noted. Notwithstanding successful tests the night before, the printers started to malfunction within the first 30 minutes of voting on Election Day.
County Supervisor Chairman Bill Gates said at the time, “There is no question this is frustrating. … We don’t believe anyone has been disenfranchised.”
Gates claimed over the weekend that the printer problems did not disproportionately affect “Republican-leaning areas.”
We continue to answer your election-related questions this weekend. Here, Chairman @billgatesaz speaks about whether Election Day printer problems impacted certain areas more than others. pic.twitter.com/H8bRO682ER
\u201cWe continue to answer your election-related questions this weekend. Here, Chairman @billgatesaz speaks about whether Election Day printer problems impacted certain areas more than others.\u201d
The AGO’s election integrity unit expects a report detailing:
the voting centers that experienced these problems;
the specific problems at each location; any other printer issues that may have contributed to the problem;
a “comprehensive log of all changes to the [ballot-on-demand] printer configuration settings (to include the identity of individuals making changes)”;
the county’s standards for the printer configuration settings “as specified in internal technical specifications and/or manufacturer technical specifications”; and
other concerns.
Although the AGO made no claims of fraud or guilt regarding the printer errors, the questions asked appear open to the possibility of malfeasance and meddling.
Wright referenced sworn complaints received by the election integrity unit, which indicated that voters had trouble checking out of voting locations to cast their votes at functional centers.
“Not only have have poll workers reported that they were not trained and/or not provided with information on how to execute ‘check out’ procedures, but many voters have reported the second voting location required the voter to cast a provisional ballot as the [virtual pollbook] maintained the voter had cast a ballot in the original voting location,” Wright wrote in her letter.
This is troubling, suggested Wright, given “Arizona law specifically prohibits provisional ballots to be counted when a voter has signed multiple pollbooks.”
The AGO requested a report detailing whether poll workers were properly trained on how to “check out” voters so that they could “lawfully vote in another location” and all those voters who were provided a provisional ballot “due to having already signed an e-pollbook at another Election Day voting location.
Wright’s letter also presses the Maricopa County attorney’s office to report on the fate of ballots deposited at “Door 3.”
Since tabulators were malfunctioning at multiple locations, affected voters were told to deposit their ballots into a slot on a secure box at each location. According to Votebeat Arizona, the boxes were labeled with a “3” sticker, hence the name “Door 3.” From there, Wright suggested that “non-tabulated ballots were commingled with tabulated ballots at the voting location” prior to being taken to the central elections center. One sworn complaint suggested that thousands of non-tabulated ballots received at “Door 3” had been put in black duffle bags “intended to be used for tabulated ballots.”
Thomas Liddy, the civil division chief at the Maricopa County attorney’s office addressed in Wright’s letter, told Fox News Digital that he will convene with his clients “and begin the process of gathering the materials necessary to respond. As you are undoubtedly aware, Ms. Wright is still working on the AG’s Final Report of the 2020 election. I am looking forward to receiving that as well.”
After the AGO’s letter went out, Kari Lake told the Daily Mail that the “way they run elections in Maricopa County is worse than in banana republics around this world.”
The Associated Press called the race for Hobbs on Nov. 14. Lake trailed Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs by fewer than 18,000 votes and has yet to concede defeat.
“I’ll tell you what, I believe at the end of the day that this will be turned around, and I don’t know what the solution will be, but I still believe I will become governor, and we are going to restore honesty to our elections,” said Lake.
Image source: Polk County Sheriff’s Department, YouTube Video – Screenshot
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Over the weekend, deputies from the Polk County sheriff’s office disarmed an alleged firebomber in central Florida, leaving him with a wound he won’t soon forget. Responding to a 911 call on Nov. 20, the sheriff’s office dispatched deputies to a north Lakeland neighborhood to deal with a suspected arsonist who was throwing incendiary devices at a residence.
Sheriff Grady Judd indicated that 30-year-old Luke Neely, whom he characterized as a “bad man,” had been throwing “Molotov cocktails onto a roof and at a house,” with a mother, father, and their adult daughter still inside. Deputies arrived one minute and 18 seconds after receiving the call. According to the sheriff’s office, the first deputy on the scene witnessed the suspect throwing one of seven Molotov cocktails, two of which had exploded on the house. Other incendiary devices had reportedly caught fire in the yard.
When the deputy ordered the suspect to stop, Neely reportedly got into an older-model Chevrolet pickup truck and fled the scene. The deputy attempted to pull the suspect over, but failing that, continued to give chase south down U.S. 98. On account of the arson charges, the deputy determined that a precision immobilization technique (PIT maneuver) was warranted and made two attempts, the second of which broke his wrist.
Neely managed to continue fleeing westbound on I-4. West of the county line, in the Hillsborough County area, the truck, which had sustained significant damage from the PIT maneuver, began to slow down. The deputies seized upon this deceleration as an opportunity to bring the chase to an end. Sheriff’s deputies blocked and rammed the truck, causing a vehicle crash. The arson suspect did not, however, immediately surrender.
The Lakeland resident got out of the truck allegedly brandishing an “AR-style” rifle with a fully loaded .380 handgun on his hip and 57 rounds of ammunition to spare. According to Judd, Neely began to run toward a tyrannosaurus rex statue on the perimeter of the theme park Dinosaur World. Three deputies began shooting, firing a total of 10 shots. The suspect was struck twice in the right leg, once in the left leg, and once in the groin.
Judd said, “We’ve changed the looks of his groin forever, if you know what I mean.”
The wounds are reportedly non-life-threatening, though it is unclear whether the suspect’s ego will survive.
“We’re blessed that everything turned out the way that it did. It certainly could have been a lot worse,” said Judd.
The Polk County sheriff’s office noted in a statement that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the deputy-involved use of force because the incident occurred in Hillsborough County.
Neely’s alleged firebombing spree concerns more than the Polk and Hillsborough Counties. During his weekend press conference, Judd said that the suspect had “started early” the day of the incident, setting multiple fires in Ybor City and the Tampa area. After trying to fell a tree with flame, Neely allegedly tried to set fire to the rear of the Ritz Ybor, which had nearly 1,000 people inside at the time. Judd indicated that Neely successfully set the building’s air conditioning unit on fire.
The suspect allegedly went on to set additional fires, including a trash fire at Gaspar’s Grotto around 4 a.m., just hours before his run-in with Polk County deputies. One of the incidents can be seen in this video obtained by WFLA:
Alleged arsonist caught on surveillance video in Ybor youtu.be
Neely has been charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of arson, seven counts of firebombing, and one count of resisting arrest. Judd said that Neely will also face other charges, such as fleeing to elude.
Neely was previously arrested by the Polk County sheriff’s office in 2016 and charged with disorderly conduct, using a firearm while intoxicated, and resisting arrest. He was psychiatrically admitted under the Baker Act in 2020.
News Conference – Luke Neely (November 20, 2022) youtu.be
Sheriff Judd has earned a reputation for taking a no-nonsense approach to crime.
During an October appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Judd told Florida homeowners, “I would highly suggest that if a looter breaks into your home, comes into your home while you’re there to steal stuff that you take your gun and you shoot him. You shoot him so he looks like grated cheese.”
\u201cPolk County Sheriff:\n\n”I would highly suggest that if a looter breaks into your home … to steal stuff, that you take your gun and you shoot him \u2026 so that he looks like grated cheese.”\u201d
— The Post Millennial (@The Post Millennial) 1665170608
In June, Polk County deputies shot and killed an “active shooter” who had threatened to kill his wife and members of law enforcement. According to Judd, when 56-year-old Michael Loman came outside with a rifle to make good on his threat, “He chose for us to shoot him and we accommodated his request.”
Judd added, “We shot him a lot … and that was the end of the gunfight.”
In December 2021, Judd extolled the quick thinking and just action taken by a homeowner who shot a home invader. Judd said that the homeowner “had a gun, he knew how to use it, it was loaded, and he shot him a lot. He gave him an early Christmas present. Only Santa Claus gets to come in your house — and Santa Claus is invited.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
When Congress authorized $80 billion this year to beef up Internal Revenue Service enforcement and staffing, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.” A video quickly went viral racking up millions of views, purporting to show a bunch of clumsy bureaucrats receiving firearms training, prompting alarm that the IRS would be engaged in military-style raids of taxpayers. The GOP claims were widely attacked as exaggerations — since the video, though from the IRS, didn’t show official agent training — but the criticism has shed light on a growing trend: the rapid arming of the federal government.
A report issued last year by the watchdog group Open The Books, “The Militarization of The U.S. Executive Agencies,” found that more than 200,000 federal bureaucrats now have been granted the authority to carry guns and make arrests — more than the 186,000 Americans serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. “One hundred three executive agencies outside of the Department of Defense spent $2.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019 (inflation adjusted),” notes the report. “Nearly $1 billion ($944.9 million) was spent between fiscal years 2015 and 2019 alone.”
The watchdog reports that the Department of Health and Human Services has 1,300 guns including one shotgun, five submachine guns, and 189 automatic firearms. NASA has its own fully outfitted SWAT team, with all the attendant weaponry, including armored vehicles, submachine guns, and breeching shotguns. The Environmental Protection Agency has purchased drones, GPS trackers, radar equipment, and night vision goggles, and stockpiled firearms.
A 2018 Government Accountability Office report noted that the IRS had 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in inventory at the end of 2017 — before the enforcement funding boost this year. The IRS did not respond to requests for information, though the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division does put out an annual report detailing basic information such as how many warrants the agency is executing in a given year.
More than a hundred executive agencies have armed investigators, and apparently no independent authority is monitoring or tracking the use of force across the federal government. Agencies contacted by RealClearInvestigations from HHS to EPA declined to provide, or said they did not have, comprehensive statistics on how often their firearms are used, or details on how they conduct armed operations.
“I would be amazed if that data exists in any way,” said Trevor Burrus, a research fellow in constitutional and criminal law at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Over the years of working on this, it’s quite shocking how much they try to not have their stuff tracked on any level.”
All this weaponry raises questions about whether the 200,000 armed federal agents are getting adequate weapons and safety training. HHS did not respond to a request for comment on the $14 million in guns, ammunition, and military equipment it purchased between 2015 and 2019 or its new National Training Operations Center within the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Another government agency — Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers — also declined to speak with RCI for this article.
According to Burrus, recent history helps explain the militarization of the federal government. “This is 20 years of the war on terror, with the production of an excessive amount of access to weaponry,” he says.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 extended law enforcement authority to special agents of 24 Offices of Inspectors General in agencies throughout the government, with provisions to enable other OIGs to qualify for law enforcement authority. As a result, even obscure agencies such as the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board’s Office of Inspector General now have armed federal agents. This summer, before the expansion of the IRS was approved by Congress, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz singled out the RRB as an example of the excesses of an armed bureaucracy. He introduced a bill to stop federal agencies from stockpiling ammunition.
Federal agencies doing their own criminal investigations raises important constitutional and civil rights questions. Last year, the EPA raided a number of small auto shops across the country for allegedly selling equipment that helped car owners circumvent emissions regulations.
“It was 12 armed federal agents, and they had little EPA badges on and everything,” John Lund, the owner of Lund Racing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
While it’s hardly a new complaint that federal bureaucracies are overstepping their rulemaking authority, the idea that executive agencies are broadly empowered to effectively create their own laws and go out and enforce them with armed federal agents is another matter.
“So many of the regulations that can be enforced at the point of a gun have almost nothing to do with what people would normally call dangerous crime, that would be the kind of thing where you might want armed agents there,” said Burrus. “And especially coming from agencies such as the EPA and other agencies that are more quality-of-life agencies dealing with regulatory infractions, rather than involved in solving real crimes.”
One of the comforting fictions conservatives are increasingly tempted to tell themselves is that if they just move to a red state or county, the insanity of the woke left won’t affect them and their family. Ensconced in safely Republican communities, perhaps they’ll be free not just from disastrous Democrat policies but also from the pernicious sexual propaganda of the left. For conservatives with children, this is especially important.
But it’s a mirage. There is no American town or hamlet remote or red enough to prevent the infiltration of leftist ideology, which today often comes from institutions that in an earlier era would have been seen as the guardians of a decidedly Christian civic virtue. Not only are left-wing activists taking over these institutions, but they are also working to ban conservatives, and especially Christians, from the public square altogether.
There is nowhere today that conservatives can run and hide from the left. They can either surrender or stand and fight.
Consider what’s playing out in the small town of Taylor, Texas, population 16,807. Situated about 40 miles northeast of deep-blue Austin, it has long been precisely the sort of place conservative families might move to raise their children — a quiet and peaceful town full of churches in a deep-red part of the Lone Star State.
For decades, Taylor has staged a Christmas — not “holiday” — parade down Main Street. The Taylor Christmas Parade of Lights is a beloved tradition that for the past 10 years or so has been organized under the auspices of the Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance, or TAMA, a coalition of local churches.
Last year, as a result of an oversight in the application process, an LGBT advocacy group called Taylor Pride was included in the parade. The oversight in this case was that the old ladies who volunteer to organize the parade and process float applications had never heard of a group called Taylor Pride and didn’t realize what it was. (And no wonder, before the summer of 2021 the group had never staged a public event.)
By the time parade organizers found out, it was too late. Two men dressed in drag, one as a female Santa and the other scantily clad in glitter, were suggestively gyrating to dance music on the Taylor Pride float as it rolled down Main Street in the annual Christmas parade — as it happened, right in front of a float for Saint Mary’s Catholic School, which was full of children.
Parents and attendees were understandably outraged. Soon after the parade, TAMA decided that in the future, parade entries must be consistent with traditional biblical and family values, and made an announcement to that effect ahead of this year’s parade. The point, as TAMA’s statement made clear, was not to exclude any individuals or groups from attending or even participating in the parade, but to ensure the floats were family-friendly and not contrary to Christian teachings.
In response, the Taylor City Council announced it would stage a separate, city-sponsored parade, calling it the “Very Merry Holiday Parade and Celebration” — on the same night as the traditional TAMA parade, following immediately behind it on the same route, for the express purpose of giving Taylor Pride and other LGBT groups a parade of their own. As a recent post on the City of Taylor’s official Facebook page explained, the city is doing this because “we are committed to being inclusive and diverse in the City of Taylor.”
A spokesman for the city has since falsely characterized the situation to at least one local news outlet, saying TAMA had “made it clear that they did not want certain people to be a part of the parade,” and, “They were going to go in a little bit of a different direction … and make it a little bit more exclusive.”
This is exactly the opposite of what’s happened. The only thing that’s changed is that TAMA has realized that LGBT groups like Taylor Pride have targeted their town and attempted, with some success, to infiltrate and undermine their traditional civic celebrations of Christmas. So they decided to push back and insist on the survival of their traditions. Good for them.
The point here is that Taylor might as well be every conservative community in America. It’s located in Texas’s 31st Congressional District, one of two congressional districts in Texas that have never been represented by a Democrat. Voters there just reelected Republican Rep. John Carter for the 11th time. He ran unopposed. Taylor also sits in Williamson County, where nearly every elected office is held by a Republican.
Indeed, Taylor is the last place in the country where a family attending a Christmas parade organized by a coalition of local churches would expect to see two men in drag dancing inappropriately on a float rolling down Main Street. Yet like many such towns across the country, the city council and municipal staff are eager to prove just how enlightened and woke they are. Send in the drag queen holiday floats.
By now, Christians in Taylor must surely know that next year, there will be only one parade down Main Street in December — and it won’t be the Taylor Christmas Parade of Lights. Unless they vote the city council out of office and clean house in City Hall, traditions like the Christmas parade will soon be a thing of the past there, another lost battle in a never-ending war of attrition waged by the left. Same goes for the public library and the public schools. If conservatives don’t take them over, the left will.
It might just be one small town in Texas, but Taylor stands as a cautionary tale. It isn’t enough to move to a red state or a Republican district. You are going to have to fight the left, and win, or surrender to them. There is nowhere left to hide.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
In a statement on Nov. 17, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department indicated that 22-year-old Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez was charged with attempted murder on peace officers and that additional charges were pending.
CNN reported that while investigators have strong suspicions that the suspect meant to inflict harm on the recruits, they first need to shore up those suspicions with substantial evidence.
Since the department is usually required to present a case to the district attorney within 48 hours of a suspect’s arrest, they provisionally cut Gutierrez loose after his initial arrest. According to the Los Angeles Times, Gutierrez’s original arrest was deemed a detention.
LASD Deputy Deanna Mares told CNN: “It’s not like they arrested the wrong suspect. … They just want to make sure the investigation is going to be complete.”
Sgt. Gerardo Magos similarly suggested that there was ample evidence but that law enforcement just wanted “to make sure it’s properly presented.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva suggested that part of the reason investigators are taking more time is that they don’t trust the leftist district attorney to do his job.
The sheriff told NewsNation, “We operate under prosecutor George Gascón. We definitely have grave concerns about his ability to prosecute. We are actually going to provisionally release him (Gutierrez) until we can have the case ironclad, iron-proof, and submitted to the DA for filing consideration. Right now, we want to tie up all the loose ends on the case and then present it to the DA.”
Gutierrez allegedly drove 30 to 40 mph the wrong way up a street near the sheriff’s STARS Center Academy in Whittier, California, where 75 sheriff’s deputy recruits were jogging. The suspect is said to have mowed down 25 recruits, some of whom reportedly lost limbs.
Twenty of the victims are with the LASD; two are with the Glendale PD; two are with the Bell PD; and one is with the Pasadena PD.
The Independent reported that were it not for a light pole, even more people could have been injured.
Captain Pat MacDonald said, “Thank God for that light pole, because the vehicle ultimately hit it and stopped, as opposed to possibly hitting more recruits.”
Five recruits were left in critical condition. According to the Los Angeles Times, over a dozen others suffered “life-altering” injuries of varying severity.
Villanueva described the aftermath to NewsNation: “It was a bedlam, chaos, you know, there were bodies everywhere, bones sticking out and bleeding profusely. It was a pretty traumatic scene.”
“In fact, the paramedics that were there had never seen something of that scale. It was almost like an airplane accident, but everyone was alive, thankfully,” added Villanueva.
#Whittier Aftermath video of the 25 LA County Sheriff's recruits injured in Whittier crash yesterday.
The driver, 22-year-old Nicholas Joseph Gutierrez of Diamond Bar, was taken into custody near the scene of the crash. pic.twitter.com/cdobXHpjsU
As of Thursday night, seven recruits were reportedly still in the hospital, two of whom remained in critical condition.
The LASD noted that homicide investigators would present the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office on Friday for filing considerations.
Villanueva believes the vehicular attack to have been a “deliberate act.”
In one video of the incident caught on a nearby security camera, it appears as though the suspect oriented his vehicle toward the victims:
Surveillance video shows moment of horrific Whittier crash that injured 25 recruits youtu.be
The sheriff said on Wednesday that there were no skid marks at the scene, suggestive of a failure or a refusal to apply the brakes when driving toward the recruits. After allegedly mowing down the prospective deputies, Gutierrez allegedly remained in the Honda CR-V with his foot still on the accelerator.
A field sobriety test indicated that Gutierrez was not drunk on the morning of the brutal incident. The Los Angeles Times indicated that marijuana may have been recovered from the suspect’s vehicle.
Two dozen LA sheriff recruits injured after car plows into group youtu.be
Democratic candidate Adam Frisch conceded to Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado Friday after a razor-thin House race that saw Boebert leading with just a few hundred votes.
As of Friday, Boebert led Frisch by 551 votes, which is a margin of 0.17% of the total votes cast, with 99% of precincts reporting. Frisch, in a Zoom call, said that “The voters have spoken…The likelihood of this recount changing more than a handful of votes is very, very small.”
Two remaining counties in the District have about 200 outstanding ballots, Ben Stout, Boebert’s communications director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, who also confirmed that a recount is due to occur under state law. He noted that Boebert’s margin would still allow her to win, even if all ballots weren’t in her favor.
HAPPENING NOW: Adam Frisch concedes #CO03 race to Lauren Boebert. "The voters have spoken," Frisch says. "The likelihood of this recount changing more than a handful of votes is very, very small." #copoliticspic.twitter.com/OPUAr8mLMr
Boebert’s reelection campaign to a second House term had been unexpectedly competitive and illustrates a decline in support for her within the district, which has a Cook Partisan Voting Index score of R+7. In 2020, she defeated Rep. Scott Tipton in the district’s GOP primary by 9.2%, a major upset, which was the first time in 48 years an incumbent Colorado congressman had been defeated in a primary election.
Boebert was later elected by a 5.85% margin and joined the House Freedom Caucus upon election. She has been a strong ally of former President Donald Trump in the House, co-chairs the Second Amendment Caucus and has attracted attention for her Second Amendment advocacy, having first gained popularity after operating a restaurant, named “Shooter’s Grill,” where patrons were encouraged to carry firearms in public. (RELATED: Rep. Boebert Pushes To Ban Abortion Clinics On Federal Lands)
Additionally, Boebert faced controversy for interrupting President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in March 2022, shouting that “You put them in. Thirteen of them!” in relation to thirteen U.S. servicemembers killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the heckle occurring when Biden was discussing his son Beau’s death.
Frisch, an agricultural goods manufacturer, had made Boebert’s conduct as a Member a primary focus of the campaign, calling her “lying, self-serving, and morally compromised,” as well as claiming that she did not pay attention to local issues, and instead was obsessed with her popularity among conservatives nationally.
The race stood out in 2022’s midterm elections, where an incumbent and high-profile Republican representative was significantly challenged for their seat by a Democrat despite the GOP being forecast to win a majority. Though the Democrats flipped some House seats previously held by Republicans, their incumbents either lost primary challenges by Trump-backed candidates, such as Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler of Washington.
Wednesday was the deadline for voters in the district to resolve problems with mail-in ballots or their provisional ballot eligibility, as well as for precincts to receive overseas and military ballots, per NBC 9 News. County clerks must complete all counting by Friday, while the Secretary of State of Colorado must verify all results by Dec. 5 or order a recount. Under Colorado state elections law, a mandatory recount is conducted if the margin of victory is 0.5% or smaller.
Regardless of the race’s outcome, control of the House of Representatives in the next Congress has already been decided, with Republicans winning the required 218 seats for a majority.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
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Current Pennsylvania Attorney General and Democrat Governor-elect Josh Shapiro arrested a former political consultant on Wednesday for allegedly forging ballot signatures in the state’s 2019 Democratic primary races.
Rasheen Crews, a Democratic campaign consultant, was hired by multiple candidates to assist in gathering the required number of signatures for nomination petitions to run in the Democratic primary races in 2019. According to an investigation launched by the office of the attorney general in September 2019, Crews was charged with the “wide scale forgery of signatures” on his clients’ nomination petitions. The investigation involved several of Crews’ clients, including five candidates running for the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, three running for Philadelphia Municipal Court, and three running in both elections.
Crews allegedly enlisted individuals to assist in his petition work by having them write names and addresses and forge signatures on multiple petitions. He is then accused of having the petitions notarized and filed with the Pennsylvania Department of State.
\u201cBREAKING\n\nMy Office has arrested Rasheen Crews, a political consultant, on charges related to forging signatures on nomination petitions in municipal elections.\n\nAn important reminder that interfering with the integrity of our elections is a serious crime.\nhttps://t.co/ApxmufLWdk\u201d
“By soliciting and organizing the wide scale forgery of signatures, the defendant undermined the democratic process and Philadelphians’ right to a free and fair election,” Shapiro said. “My office is dedicated to upholding the integrity of the election process across the Commonwealth, to ensure everyone can participate in Pennsylvania’s future.“
The investigation discovered that more than 1,000 of the signatures were allegedly duplicates. The office of the attorney general found that many of the names and addresses were repeated on several petition pages, while other pages appeared to be photocopied. Additionally, some individuals listed claimed they never signed the petitions.
All of Crews’ clients denied knowledge of the forgery scheme. As a result of the petitions’ questionable authenticity, some candidates withdrew from the election.
Crews was charged with criminal solicitation to commit forgery and theft by failure to make required disposition. Senior Deputy Attorney General Thomas Ost-Prisco is prosecuting the case against Crews.
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Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed ,exchange FTX, revealed that the woke appearance that he and his company displayed was all a “dumb game.” In a new interview, Bankman-Fried confessed that the fake window dressing of altruism was mostly a front and that the performance was done “so everyone likes us.”
FTX CEO Bankman-Fried saw his company collapse on Election Day. The 30-year-old also saw his net worth of nearly $16 billion wiped out in days.
Until last week, FTX was the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange and was valued at $32 billion in February. However, the digital coin exchange filed for bankruptcy last Friday after a failed takeover by rival Binance. In addition, between $1 billion and $2 billion in customer funds reportedly vanished from the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
Investigations into FTX have been launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.
Bankman-Fried was a Democrat megadonor. He reportedly contributed more than $5 million to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential campaign. He was the second-biggest individual donor to Democrats in the 2021-2022 election cycle – donating $37 million. In May, Bankman-Fried said he planned to donate “north of $100 million” to Democrats in the 2024 presidential election, but pledged to have a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion in donations to Democrats if former President Donald Trump ran again.
SBF became the biggest donor to the Democratic Protect Our Future PAC that only launched in May. Gabe Bankman-Fried, SBF’s brother, who handles the billionaire’s political operations, declared that the PAC was formed to “stop the next pandemic.”
In February, the Bankman-Fried brothers gave a $5 million grant to ProPublica to financially “support investigations into ongoing questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, biosecurity and public health preparedness.”
Until this week, FTX was promoted on the World Economic Forum’s website.
In May, SBF was one of the featured speakers at World Economic Forum 2022 in Davos, Switzerland. Topics at the event included sustainability, diversity, equity, inclusion, cryptocurrency, and Web 3.0.
In September, Bankman-Fried was a featured speaker at the annual meeting for the Clinton Global Initiative. The event covered subjects such as vaccine development, the implications of climate change, and transforming philanthropy for “equity, justice, and impact.”
SBF is slated to be a featured speaker at a summit hosted by the New York Times on Nov. 30, along with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Tickets for the event cost $2,499.
Bankman-Fried, a self-proclaimed “effective altruist,” was hyped up by the media.
CNBC investment personality Jim Cramer championed SBF as “the JP Morgan of his generation.”
“Shark Tank” star investor Kevin O’Leary previously said of FTX, “If there’s ever a place I could be, that I’m not going to get in trouble, it’s gonna be at FTX.”
CNBC reporter Kate Rooney lauded Bankman-Fried as the “Michael Jordan of crypto.”
Bloomberg previously said of the FTX founder, “Sam Bankman-Fried drives a Corolla, sleeps on a beanbag, and has a Robin Hood-like philosophy.”
In a new interview, Bankman-Fried confessed that he used his virtuous stances as a front to win the game.
Vox reporter Kelsey Piper – who interviewed Bankman-Fried through direct messages on Twitter – said to the former FTX CEO, “You were really good at talking about ethics for someone who kind of saw it all as a game with winners and losers.”
SBF responded, “Ya, hehe. I had to be, it’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those who get f***ed by it. By this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths [sic] so everyone likes us.”
When asked if his “ethics stuff” was “mostly a front,” SBF replied, “Yeah. I mean that’s not all of it but it’s a lot.”
In the summer, SBF said that companies should not engage in unethical practices. However, when pressed by the Vox reporter, he admitted, “Man all the dumb s**t I said.”
Speaking about investors focusing on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), he declared, “ESG has been perverted beyond recognition.”
SBF exclaimed, “F*** regulators. They make everything worse. They don’t protect customers at all.”
Bankman-Fried said it was “never the intention” to squander away investors’ money, but “sometimes life creeps up on you.”
“I f**ed up big multiple times,” he added.
SBF said his biggest regret was FTX filing for bankruptcy. He believes that “everything would be 70% fixed right now” if he hadn’t declared bankruptcy. He calls the bankruptcy his “biggest single f***up.”
Bankman-Fried said if he could do it all over again, he would have “more careful accounting” and separated his hedge fund Alameda Research from FTX.
John Jay Ray III – a bankruptcy expert with more than 40 years of restructuring experience who liquidated Enron – was appointed the CEO of FTX.
In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Ray said, “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
“In the Bahamas, I understand that corporate funds of the FTX group were used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors,” Ray wrote in a 30-page document. “I understand that there does not appear to be documentation for certain of these transactions as loans, and that certain real estate was recorded in the personal name of these employees and advisors on the records of the Bahamas.”
Bankman-Fried is reportedly selling his Bahamian penthouse dubbed “the Orchid” in the exclusive private community of Albany, located in Nassau, for nearly $40 million.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
AP Photo/Tom E. Puskar
Trump’s been called a lot of things in recent years, but I’m going to call him something new.
First, a refresher. In 2015, the Republican Party was on life support, with a “Do Not Resuscitate” order pinned to its chest and a priest called to administer last rites. Voters kept telling the party they wanted less immigration, less tax-cutting and less warmongering, but the GOP kept giving us more immigration, more tax-cutting and more warmongering. (For a detailed account of this state of affairs, see my columns and books — they make great Christmas gifts — free shipping for Amazon Prime members!)
Only when all other treatments had failed did we turn to an ancient medical treatment: the leech.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Donald J. Trump. There was no greater leech in all the land!
No insult intended. Leeching is a time-honored medical tradition, dating back to the Stone Age, for every conceivable ailment — an overabundance of peccant humors, convulsions, flatulence, scarlet fever, pleurisy, inflamed eyes and diseases of the throat, to name a few. Even today, leeches are the best treatment, as I understand it, for certain anticoagulant purposes. But because they are worms and bloodsuckers, not all patients find the treatment especially tasteful.
Trump was our parasitic worm.
Though any doctor will tell you leeching rarely works, the next time you hear someone say we didn’t get anything from Trump, I respectfully suggest you reply: “I’ve got five words for you: Gorsuch. Kavanaugh. Coney F—ing Barrett.”
True, the only reason we got them is that neither Jared Kushner nor Kim Kardashian had any interest in the judiciary, so the Federalist Society picked Trump’s judges without interference. Albeit completely by accident, the leech still gave us a generation of solid Supreme Court justices. If that sounds like cold comfort, please recall that we just lost the Senate, and barely won the House by the skin of our teeth.
Moreover, without our leech, we would currently either be in Year Six of the Hillary administration, or Year Six of Jeb!’s presidency (who would have given us justices equal in stature to Harriet Miers and David Souter).
But you don’t leave the leech on the body forever. In leechery, once the parasite has served its purpose, it must be carefully removed and submerged in a solution of 70% alcohol to ensure that it is dead. (A common but incorrect method of performing the dismount is to set the leech on fire.)
Naturally, I am not suggesting we burn Trump or submerge him in a 70% alcohol solution.
If we’re coming up with a master list of possibilities after a few drinks, we might consider a traditional game of our dear Afghan allies, who play polo using a severed human head as the ball.
I submit it would be bad for the office for Trump’s head to be used in a polo match.
Another idea to come from our perpetual wars is to model the dismount on the de-Ba’athification after Saddam. This workable, but harsh, method would require sending troops to rout Trump from whatever underground bunker he’s hiding in.
I have to reject that, too, for reasons of dignity.
But the one method that I am absolutely, positively, 100% sure will not work is to attack Trump supporters as deplorable, white supremacist insurrectionists.
You will notice that this is the precise method settled on by Biden, the Democrats and the media, for utterly cynical reasons. At this stage, Trump is poisonous to the conservative agenda, so he and the media have exactly the same agenda: Promote Trump.
Liberals want Trump more than we ever did.
Leeching as a medical treatment is not based on the leech’s inherent nobility. Trump was a desperation move.
Our idea was that Trump, for narcissistic reasons, would occasionally do things that we wanted. That was more than we were getting from the Republican Party. I defy anyone to name any of the other 16 GOP presidential candidates who could have beaten Hillary.
We hadn’t planned to get to that point, but there’s no use arguing with the GPS. That’s where we were.
The people who gave Trump more primary votes than any Republican in history weren’t idiots, haters or racists. To the contrary, anyone who withstood the slings and arrows to make Trump president in 2016 is not deplorable, but honorable. Not duped, but clear-eyed. They didn’t screw up; they did the right thing.
It may take some of them a little longer to figure out that we’ve gotten everything out of the leech that we’re ever going to get. But they are good and decent people and will realize soon enough: It’s over. We got our parasitic worm, and it’s time to move on. Sometimes the worm turns; sometimes we turn on the worm.
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Legal Insurrection
Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama
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Legal Insurrection
Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama
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Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama
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Legal Insurrection
Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Legal Insurrection went live on October 12, 2008, originally at Google Blogger. We hit our one-millionth visit about 11.5 months later, our second million a few months after that, and since then readership and linkage from major websites have grown drama
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