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Archive for January, 2021

Facebook bans Christian prof. from platform for opposing Biden’s transgender military policy

The Instagram and Facebook logos are displayed at the 2018 CeBIT technology trade fair on June 12, 2018, in Hanover, Germany. | Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

A Christian university professor has been suspended from Facebook for voicing disagreement with President Joe Biden’s executive order allowing trans-identifying individuals to serve in the U.S. military.

Robert Gagnon, who teaches New Testament theology at Houston Baptist University and is a renowned scholar on the subject of sexuality, was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours on Tuesday after he posted a comment in defense of a friend who posted a satirical commentary about Biden’s executive order. Facebook suspended Gagnon’s account for what it deemed as “incitement” to violence.

In his post, Gagnon said the executive order will endanger women, and noted that those who promote transgenderism are allowing males to invade women’s athletics and shelters. He also likened transgender ideology to a “religious cult” and said it “is indeed a pseudo-science,” in that it forces people to reject basic biology. That Facebook suspended his friend for similar comments proves the cult-like dimension, he said.

Facebook subsequently sent Gagnon a notice, informing him that his words violated their “Community Standards on violence and incitement.”

“There was absolutely no incitement to violence on our part. We abhor violence done to any person,” Gagnon told PJ Media on Tuesday. “This is just a thinly veiled and pathetic excuse for censorship of any critical views toward trans-tyranny over our consciences, religion, and reason.”

“Only one point of view is being allowed,” he continued. “Trump was not the great danger to the Republic. Left-wing canceling is.”

After the day-long Facebook suspension was lifted, Gagnon posted on his page Thursday: “We are in the midst of rapidly accelerating public censorship of our views (with compelled speech) but we are not the victims. Neat trick.”

Gagnon’s friend, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, who was also banned from Facebook, had expressed her exasperation in a Facebook comment in which she pointed out that women who signed up to serve in the Armed Forces will now have to shower and bunk with males as a result of the executive order. Higgins referred to transgender advocacy as a “cult” whose goal is to spread “alchemical pseudo-science” globally “before the truth can pull up its pants” and continue to accuse Republicans as being “science-deniers.”

Higgins was banned from the social media platform for seven days and remains locked out of her account as of Thursday. The Christian Post reached out to Gagnon for additional comment on this article but did not receive a response by press time.

Conservative critics of Biden’s executive order have said that the change in policy imperils military readiness and that it’s tantamount to “social engineering.” Opposition to the order, however, spans the political spectrum.

In comments sent to CP earlier this week, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to ever be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being dismissed from service on the basis of sexuality, said she would “bet that no one thought to ask military women how they’d feel having an intact [male] in their barracks, showers, etc.”

“Military women already face difficulties when they serve — witness the recent spate of murders and the shocking statistics on rape in the military. Now, men have had the lack-witted brainlessness to add to the burden of military women. And wait until a female to trans wants to serve in the men’s barracks. What will the military do when such a woman is raped or assaulted — or killed?” she said.

Ben-Shalom, who describes herself as a “moderate independent” added that the move is a “slap in the face” to the military.

“This is pandering to a community that has many, many problems in terms of mental health and stability. This is pandering to Big Medicine, Big Pharma, and Big Money,” she said.

The Pentagon has said that approximately 9,000 service members identify as transgender, though independent estimates have put the number at around 16,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. Fewer than 1,000 have received a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

In 2016, the RAND Corporation published a study on Pentagon medical expenditures and found that the costs incurred by U.S. taxpayers to pay for trans-identifying service members’ medical costs fell somewhere between $2.4 million and $8.4 million each year.

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Horowitz: The Robinhood-GameStop scandal, lockdowns, and a two-tiered justice system

Reported by DANIEL HOROWITZ | January 29, 2021

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” ~James Madison, Federalist No. 62

If you are not a member of the ruling oligarchy, you can buy a stock only when it benefits the ruling oligarchy, but not when the oligarch shorted the stock and will lose money. In that case, you can only sell. They, the esteemed members of the system, on the other hand, can do what they want at any point to win the rigged game.

That was essentially the lesson the American people learned this week about our government-corporate manipulated economy when the oligarchs got together to block people from buying stocks like GameStop after the well-connected Wall Street hedge funds were slated to lose billions on their short-sale gamble. However, what happened this week was emblematic of a broader trend that has taken over our economy this past generation, but should have become patently obvious to the American people since the unconstitutional lockdowns began last March. The oligarchs in charge of our country have manipulated the entire economy in a way that arbitrarily weighs down individual risk-takers and business owners in order to benefit the ruling class, which includes large corporations like Walmart and Amazon.

In the ultimate unconstitutional market distortion, the government refashioned life itself with its draconian lockdowns in a way that forced entire chains of commerce only through narrow, well-connected giant companies while crushing small businesses. Just like the GameStop investors on Reddit who were shut down from making profit and could only take a loss in order to transfer wealth to the hedge funds, small businesses were shut down so that the consumer capital would flow to Zoom, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. Amazon’s stock price has nearly doubled since the lockdowns began last March.

The difference between who was shut down and who was given a waiver to open their business was so arbitrary in Pennsylvania that the auditor general wrote in a report, “The waiver process appeared to be a subjective process built on shifting sands of changing guidance, which led to significant confusion among business owners.” He observed, “Some owners of small businesses may not have had the knowledge to use the right ‘buzzwords’ in their justification for remaining open, or realized they could ask a legislator for help to navigate the process.”

It’s not only the fact that the government criminalized commerce through traditional means, forcing consumers into “high tech” commerce; it’s that they benefited from the trillions the Federal Reserve artificially injected into the economy. They had the economies of scale to borrow record amounts of cash at dirt-cheap interest rates.

So while small businesses owners are shedding tears and committing suicide at record rates, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are cashing out on the ultimate venture socialist scam of the government – in which politicians criminalize traditional commerce and property rights and then throw trillions of dollars of cheap money at the people who just benefited from the ultimate form of communism. Who made or lost money this past year, for the first time in history, had zero to do with smart investment, innovation, or even risk-taking, and everything to do with the luck of the government’s venture socialist draw.

Or perhaps it wasn’t luck at all. It was systemized and arranged based on who built up connections with the government over the years.

Unlike the left, which seeks to “rectify” this broken system it supported by throwing endless free money at people, we seek to reset the economy to what it’s supposed to be without any government intervention. That begins by ending all COVID restrictions and allowing all those businesses harmed by the illegal lockdowns to go five years without paying taxes or being subjected to costly regulations. It’s time to even the playing field that government distorted.

The way to end double standards is to return to constitutional governance, where there is a limit to what government can do to our lives. The wealthy masters of the universe can lobby all they want, but most subsidies, regulations, market distortions, and certainly restrictions are unconstitutional. Thus, if government can’t do it, the incestuous corruption of the oligarchy lobbying scam comes to an end. The only reason why government is able to rig society through reckless fiscal and monetary policy is because it has stepped outside the constitutional limits constraining the scope of its power.

Take stock for a moment of just a few of the appalling double standards we are witnessing in our economy, government, and society today:

The wall to protect Americans from illegal invaders is being dismantled, while a wall is being constructed between the politicians and the people around the Capitol complex.
Restaurants were shut down because of the COVID religion, but Walmart and Home Depot weren’t because they supposedly don’t spread virions.
Illegal aliens get court injunctions against deportations within hours of filing, even though they have no right to be here, while Americans have failed to secure an injunction against masking and lockdowns in nearly every state for 10 months.
Antifa and BLM have rioted nearly every day since last June, yet very few people have been prosecuted. But for one violent incident, the military is deployed even long after it was over, the entire intelligence and national security apparatus is being marshalled against Trump supporters, and the DOJ is now casting such a wide net in prosecutions that it is bordering on First Amendment violations.
BLM is such a religion that you can attend endless mass funerals for a career criminal like George Floyd, but not hold a 50-person funeral for your grandmother.
Hundreds of thousands of drug traffickers, gang members, and career violent criminals have been released from jail because they were considered “low-level,” while business owners are being threatened with jail time for exercising their property rights.
Millions of people who didn’t lose a penny during the lockdowns because of the nature of their jobs received thousands in “stimulus” checks, while small business owners often didn’t receive a penny, and worse, they were forced by a communist mandate not to evict derelict renters, but still had to pay property taxes.
The elites disregarded their own unconstitutional COVID restrictions, and then the minute Trump left office, they called for the reopening of schools and restaurants (albeit with the abuse of masks), using data that we were censored for posting online.
They bring in more refugees, foreign workers, and illegal aliens, while instituting curfews on Americans within the states. They place travel bans on American residents of other states while inviting illegal aliens to cross the border and use the very hospitals we are supposedly trying to protect with these restrictions.
The same courts that said states engaging in voter fraud and illegal election law changes mid-election were the business of the states blocked red states from requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

It all gets back to the fact that we are no longer a nation of laws with a fixed written law – whether it’s the Constitution or statutes – but a nation of men. The written law has been replaced with executive and judicial fiats that are based on the capricious whims of the corporate media that promotes corporate commerce and academia – all tied back to the politicians. They enrich themselves with pay-for-play schemes, but they also empower themselves by instituting these policies under the guise of helping “the little guy,” particular races or classes of people that are elevated by the culture at the expense of the whole of the people and the general common good, as required by the social compact.

In all these examples, it’s not that the ruling oligarchs inherently care more about black people, illegal aliens, foreign workers, the poor, or any other class about which it is easy to virtue-signal. It’s that they built a rigged system in which they are empowered by promoting or elevating the plight of those celebrated classes over the whole of the people. If they lost power by doing so – for example, if illegal aliens were conservative – we would see the opposite policies emanating from their citadels.

Article 7 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which was written by John Adams, states: “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”

What we witnessed this week in the stock market and what will only intensify in the coming weeks is the inevitable endgame of a system that arbitrarily picks winners and losers and uses the boot of government, culture, and economy to confront the “losers” with a checkmate, one-way street, and dead end at every turn. The losers will revolt. As it states in the next passage of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights: “Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it.”

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Ex-FBI Lawyer Receives Probation For Altering Email About Carter Page

Reported by CHUCK ROSS, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | January 29, 2021

U.S. Attorney John Durham (Youtube screen capture/Fox News)

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation on Friday for altering an email about former Trump aide Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA. District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered Clinesmith to receive 12 months of probation and perform 400 hours of community service, a sentence far more lenient than the three to six months in prison sought by John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut.

Clinesmith, who was an assistant general counsel in the FBI’s cyber law branch, pleaded guilty on Aug. 19, 2020 to altering a June 2017 email he received from a CIA employee regarding Page. The CIA employee wrote that Page had been “a source” for the spy agency through 2013. Clinesmith forwarded the email to FBI colleagues but altered the document to say that Page was “not a source.” (RELATED: Carter Page Wants A Say At Kevin Clinesmith’s Hearing)

Clinesmith helped the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, which investigated possible links between the Russian government and Trump campaign, draft applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants on Page. He later joined the special counsel’s team, but was removed after the Justice Department inspector general found that he sent text messages criticizing President Trump following the 2016 election.

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 02: Carter Page, former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, speaks to the media after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. The committee is conducting an investigation into Russia’s tampering in the 2016 election. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Boasberg said that Clinesmith’s actions “undermined the integrity of the FISA process,” but that he believed that Clinesmith was remorseful and did not alter the email to harm Page. Boasberg said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court’s “reputation has suffered from this incident.”

The IG blasted the FBI for providing misleading information to the FISA Court in order to obtain warrants on Page, a former Navy officer who joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. The Crossfire Hurricane team relied heavily on unverified and since-debunked allegations from Christopher Steele, a former British spy who investigated the Trump campaign on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. Prosecutors asserted that Clinesmith had not taken full responsibility for his actions. They noted that he has claimed that he believed the alteration to be accurate at the time.

Anthony Scarpelli, an assistant U.S. attorney, said during the hearing that Clinesmith’s lies about Carter Page were “more egregious” than those told by George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide who pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. Speaking at Clinesmith’s hearing, Page said that the “manufactured scandal and associated lies caused me to adopt the lifestyle of an international fugitive for years.”

“I often have felt as if I had been left with no life at all. Each member of my family was severely impacted.”

Page has sued the Justice Department, FBI, Clinesmith and other current and former FBI employees over the inaccurate FISA applications.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Quadruple Murderer Is NYT’s Profile in Courage

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jan 27, 2021 5:00 PM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Source: AP Photo/File

Having run out of international con women to promote or innocent biological weapons researchers to accuse, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is banging on about a spectacularly guilty quadruple murderer who — according to Kristof — “is very likely innocent.”

In this belief, he is opposed by more than a dozen courts, including the California Supreme Court, the infamous 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Joining Kristof’s crusade are Kim Kardashian and the usual pro-criminal misfits. (At least Ivanka is no longer making criminal justice decisions for the White House!)

On June 4, 1983, a Chino Hills, California, couple and two children were hacked to death by a perpetrator using a hatchet, an ice pick and a hunting knife. Doug and Peggy Ryen, both 41 years old, had been chopped, slashed and stabbed 37 and 33 times, respectively. Their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, had 46 wounds, and a visiting neighbor, 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, had 25. Some of the victim’s body parts had been fully amputated. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Josh, miraculously survived, despite a slit throat and hatchet blows to his head.

Christopher’s father discovered the nightmarish scene the next morning, when he came to pick up his son for church.

In 1985, a unanimous jury convicted Kevin Cooper, a violent rapist, career criminal and escaped mental patient, of the murders and sentenced him to death. His story illustrates why more prisoners on death row die of natural causes than execution.

One year before the Chino Hills slaughter, Cooper was released from a Pennsylvania prison, where he’d been serving time for a string of burglaries. In short order, Cooper violently kidnapped and raped an underage girl who’d interrupted him in the middle of yet another burglary, stabbing her in the eye with a screwdriver.

He was sent to a state psychiatric hospital, escaped and fled to Los Angeles, where he was soon convicted of two more burglaries and incarcerated in a men’s prison in Chino. Unaware of his criminal and psychiatric history, prison authorities mistakenly housed Cooper in a low-security wing. He escaped on June 2, 1983, and made his way to a furnished, unoccupied house just 50 yards from the Ryens’ home. There, he spent two days hiding out, watching the news about his escape, and calling friends, asking for money to get out of Chino.

On June 4, the night of the murders, Cooper fled to Mexico, checking into a hotel in Tijuana, about 130 miles south of Chino Hills, at 4:30 p.m. the next day. A few days after the murders, the Ryens’ stolen station wagon was found in a church parking lot in Long Beach, California. Cigarette butts in the car were identified as prison-issued Role-Rite tobacco and rolling papers, unique to the Chino prison. The butts also matched those found in Cooper’s hideaway house.

In Mexico, Cooper introduced himself to an American couple as “Angel Jackson,” and became a deckhand on their sailboat for a trip up the California coast. At a stop in Pelican Cove, near Santa Barbara, the three of them joined another couple for dinner on their sloop. Later that night, “Angel” returned to their hosts’ boat and raped the wife at knifepoint.

The rape victim and her husband called the police, and “Angel” was arrested. (He said the sex was consensual.) While at the sheriff’s office to give her statement, the wife noticed a “Wanted for Murder” poster with a picture of her rapist. “Angel Jackson” was identified as Kevin Cooper and sent back to San Bernardino to face charges for the Chino Hills massacre six weeks earlier.

Among the hundreds of pieces of evidence used to convict Cooper for the Ryen murders were:

— Shoe prints on a sheet in the Ryens’ master bedroom and on a spa cover outside the house. The prints, in Cooper’s shoe size, were made by a Pro-Ked Dude shoe — the shoes issued to Chino prison inmates and not available to the general public. They matched footprints in the unoccupied house where Cooper had been squatting for two days before the murders.

— A bloody hatchet found near the Ryens’ home that was identified by two of the absentee homeowners as having come from their house. The sheath to the hatchet was still in the bedroom where Cooper had slept for two nights.

— A drop of blood in the Ryens’ hallway that was consistent with Cooper’s rare blood type, establishing that the murderer was an African American.

— Luminol tests revealing a large quantity of blood in a shower where Cooper had been hiding.

Cooper’s groupies ignore all this evidence — and more! — and invent fanciful alternative theories of the crime. As always, they demand endless DNA testing.

Why not? DNA’s use for identification purposes wasn’t discovered until 1984. The first time DNA evidence was ever admitted in an American courtroom was in 1987. Consequently, if a single piece of evidence that was merely “consistent” with the defendant’s profile in the 1980s turns out not to match the defendant under more rigorous testing 40 years later, it’s a cheap Get Out of Jail Free card. And if the DNA matches? No harm, no foul.

So, in addition to nonstop frivolous appeals, Cooper’s advocates took up the cry for DNA testing, insisting that the DNA would prove him an innocent man, “framed” for murders he did not commit! Asked by CBS News if he would stop fighting and submit to his execution if the DNA was his, Cooper said, “That’s right. Because see, I say this with all the confidence in the world: I, Kevin Cooper, was never inside the home that I now know is the Ryen home.”

Guess whose DNA it was?

The California Department of Justice DNA Laboratory at Berkeley definitively established that Cooper’s DNA was in:

— a bloodstain inside the Ryen home;

— the cigarette butts found inside the Ryens’ stolen station wagon;

— a bloody T-shirt found near the Ryen home, which also contained Doug Ryen’s DNA.

And guess who hasn’t given up demanding more tests, more appeals and more investigations of their preposterous theories of the crime? Well, yes, obviously Kevin Cooper, the mass murderer himself, but also, Nick Kristof, the most easily fooled man in America.

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Today’s THREE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Front Guy

A.F. BRANCO | on January 28, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-front-guy/

Biden is nothing but a mouthpiece for the radical left. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in America anymore.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – What A Knockout

A.F. BRANCO | on January 28, 2021 at 5:26 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-what-a-knockout/

Biden’s executive order on transgender athletic rights threatens women’s athletics in general.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tools of the Trade

A.F. BRANCO | on January 29, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tools-of-the-trade/

Biden is Obama’s 3rd term implementing the same old radical failed policies.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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Found on My WeMe Account

Written

on January 27, 2021

Op-ed: HuffPost blaming Christian curriculum for Capitol riots is slanderous

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump protest outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators breached security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. | ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Recently the Huffington Post ran an article that was extremely hostile to Christian education here in the United States. The overall implication of the article was that the January 6 rioting at the Capitol building was directly tied to the government allowing and possibly funding conservative Christian education in the US. Specific curricula were cited and quoted (specifically, A-Beka, Bob Jones and Accelerated Christian Education) and blame was explicitly and carelessly lobbied at these schools and curriculum.

“Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.”^[1]

Such brash and unfair bias cannot go unanswered. The overwhelming majority of schools using these curricula are highly civic-minded American patriots. They love God and their country and deplore violence of any kind. Painting an entire demographic with a wide brush based on hear-say alone is slanderous. It is also disingenuous. The year 2020 was filled with leftist progressives rioting and looting all over the country in response to their own perceived inequities, yet none of that is alluded to in the Huffington Post article. If the author was seeking to be equitable, would she not have to acknowledge the possibility that government schools and their curriculum might bear some blame for those riots? Indeed the article concludes with just the opposite reaction.

The following statement from the article claims to have intellectual authority but is severely lacking in credulity.

“Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism.”^[2]

Exactly who are these scholars that the author is referring to? There are no footnotes or cited sources for this particular example, and of the three “scholars” quoted within this article, only one implies this thought process. Therefore, the reader’s only recourse is to give full trust to the statements of the author or practice intellectual independence and question the statements and opinions as presented. We choose the latter.

Linking terrorism to Christian education and its biblical worldview being communicated is grossly misleading. Consider Franklin Graham and the work of Samaritan’s Purse, which has helped countless suffering and needy people in the US and abroad. It is the same worldview that these schools and curricula seek to advance. American students using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum annually donate to the BLESS outreach, which sponsors literacy programs in third-world countries, giving thousands of children the opportunity for advancement through education. Consider a very large Florida Christian school that utilizes A Beka and Bob Jones curricula, and funnels all the profit from that school and a thrift shop to help to fund a completely free medical clinic, two homeless shelters, and a food pantry. These are only a few examples. Conservative Christians and their churches and schools are not promoting or involved in riotous activity, but rather in activities that fulfill the Greatest Commandment to love God and neighbor. Students are taught to be contributing members of society who work for the common good of the nation around them. This is an accurate representation of conservative Christian education in America.

A Clash of Worldviews

At its core this article is about a clash of worldviews. The author is a committed progressive and is defending her ideology. She feels that conservative Christian schools are seeking to undermine evolution and far-left progressive policies and therefore attempts to expose them as such. And this we have in common with her because Christians feel the same exact way. Why? Because it is true. This is the clash of worldviews that the apostle Paul so brilliantly contrasts in 1 Corinthians 2:14.

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Conservative Christians can and most certainly have gone through the curriculum of the government schools and point out all the issues that we have with the worldview being presented. Whether it be evolutionary history^[3], radical revisions of history (i.e., the 1619 Project), sex-education curriculum developed by Planned Parenthood, transgender and homosexual ideology, etc., etc., etc. But that would be a relatively futile tit-for-tat approach.

The most fundamental issue at stake is that progressives are now openly contending that one worldview is dangerous and are laying a foundation for the ostracization of the religious freedoms of anyone who disagrees.

Freedom of Speech First Requires Freedom of Thought

Those Christians that believe they have a responsibility to educate their child with a biblical worldview cannot consider public education a valid option. The courts have been clear over the years that there is no freedom of religion in a public school, nor is there freedom of speech for students or teachers regarding content that contradicts their sincerely held religious beliefs. Here are just some examples from the past 30 years.

1990 Webster v. New Lennox School District (7th Circuit Court of Appeals). School districts may prohibit a teacher from teaching creation science. It further states that this is not a violation of a teacher’s freedom of speech.
2000 – Minnesota State Court rules that there is no right for a teacher to present evidence both for and against the theory of evolution. This means that teachers are not allowed to question evolution in their own classroom.
2005 – US District Court refused to allow a school district to put disclaimer labels on textbooks regarding evolution being a “theory” and that other theories existed, including intelligent design and creation. It was appealed. The appeal resulted in the schools agreeing not to denigrate evolution either orally or in written form.
2005 – US Court ruled that schools could not maintain an Intelligent Design policy. Judge stated that Intelligent Design “is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community.”

It is of great concern that the Huffington Post (and they are not alone in this sentiment) considers the worldview of conservative Christians as dangerous and worthy of suppression. The tone of the article is clear that Christian education in the United States is a danger to our democracy. For example, a previous student of a Christian school was interviewed and the following summation was offered:

Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media.^[4]

One of the grossest misrepresentations is embodied in this quote:

“That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”^[5]

But isn’t the whole point of the article that the author takes issue with the way conservative Christian educators think? That their worldview is inferior and dangerous? Doesn’t she intimate that allowing this thinking to continue is dangerous to our society? It’s the same old progressive logical fallacy – tolerance is only extended to those that agree with them.

Perhaps the greatest danger to our first amendment right of free speech are the intellectual chains that are being forged around minds. If there is not freedom of thought then there cannot really be any freedom of speech. Consider these words from Richard Dawkins, arguably one of the secularist’s most staunch apologists:

“How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods? Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought out?” ^[6]

Do Christian parents still have freedom of thought and speech to impart those beliefs to their children? So long as America is a free nation they do, but it is quite clear that the secular, progressive worldview would like to eliminate those freedoms.

The Real Threat

Christian education is not a threat to the safety and well-being of our democracy nor is it a driver of terrorist threats. The real threat of Christian education is that it provides a viable alternative to the progressive worldview, and that terrifies the left. Their philosophies, which are built upon the sand of humanism, are so fragile that they cannot allow anyone to counter them.

So how should Christian education respond? In faith – that which overcomes the world. Hebrews 11 reminds us that we can obtain a good testimony in this world through faith. The examples presented in Scripture are the basis of our worldview and must set the example for our response. We continue in the course set before us, teaching what we know to be right. We continue to set the example that we believe in a Sovereign God to preserve our thoughts and belief, regardless of opposition. We continue to teach by example our love for fellow man, kindness for those around us, compassion for the hurting. We respond with the faith that brought us to this place, believing that God can do the work we cannot. We continue to believe that the Bible is not just a book, but the very Word of God. We can’t fight the powers of progressivism through words and legislation; they are not our weapons. We have the same power of prayer and faith that we started with. Opposition is not new. Christian education must stay faithful to the mission of communicating a Biblical worldview to the next generation. Because if the real threat to humanism is the Truth we believe in, it is all we have.

[1] Klein, R. (2021). These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian-textbooks-trump-capitol-riot_n_6000bce3c5b62c0057bb711f

[2] IBID

[3] See Evolution Exposed: Biology from Answers in Genesis: https://answersingenesis.org/store/product/evolution-exposed-biology/?sku=10-2-261&

[4] Klein, R. (2021)

[5] IBID

[6] Cited by Ken Ham and Greg Hall, Already Compromised, Master Books, June 2011; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusions (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006, 2008), p. 315

Dr. Adam Rondeau has served as a Christian educator and administrator as well as a pastor for over two decades. He is an author, adjunct professor of the Bible and currently serves as the director of ViewPoint Christian Academy in Southbridge, Massachusetts as well as the Assistant Administrative Director of Global Christian Educators Association. He holds three earned degrees in Christian Education, Theology and Leadership.

Emory Thompson is the Administrative Director of Global Christian Educators Association with experience working for a Christian curriculum company. A fourth-generation preacher, he has a heart for Christian Education and for the people of the world. He is senior pastor of Golden Mountain Ministries in Sparta, Tennessee.

Angel Parrish is a Christian educator, writer, and editor living in The Villages, Florida. She has written curriculum for several Christian and conservative education companies for 25 years. She is the Director of Educational Services for Global Christian Educators Association.

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Pennsylvania church gives away $13K in gift cards for store employees, customer bills

Members of Macedonia Church of Pittsburgh hand out gift cards to employees and help pay the bills of customers at a local Giant Eagle, Jan. 23, 2021. | DRE|media

A congregation in Pennsylvania recently gave out gift cards worth $50 each to all the employees of a local grocery store, while also helping to pay the bills of 200 customers. Macedonia Church of Pittsburgh, a predominantly African American congregation founded in 1903, held what it called a “grocery store takeover” on Saturday at a local Giant Eagle.

In addition to the $50 gift cards given to the Giant Eagle employees, the church also paid upwards of $50 of each grocery store bill for patrons of the store.

“We wanted to recognize these frontline workers and show them that we appreciate all they do in this season,” said the church in a statement posted to Facebook on Saturday.

“We’re able to be a blessing in our communities because of faithful givers like YOU! Thanks to all staff & volunteers as well as the management at Southside Giant Eagle for making this an excellent initiative.”

Pastor Brian James Edmonds, senior pastor of Macedonia Church, told The Christian Post that his congregation decided to do this event because “our world is hurting right now.”

“We are battling multiple pandemics, people are grieving lost loved ones, and frontline workers are putting their lives on the line. We thought this would be a powerful way to give people hope and demonstrate the love of Christ during uncertain times,” said Edmonds.

The total cost for the event was around $13,000, with Edmonds telling CP that it was “rooted in our understanding that the church should also tithe into the communities that it serves.”

“This is what it means to be a good neighbor. As a part of this particular outreach, we also gave $40,000 to local nonprofits who are doing transformative work,” he continued.

“For the past couple years, we have taken an entire weekend offering and devoted it to local nonprofits. We call it ‘Give100,’ since we are giving away 100% of what comes in.”

Ultimately, Edmonds told CP that he hoped the church taught people “that they are not alone, that they are appreciated, and that the love of God just might surprise you at the grocery store.”

“Our prayer is that someone’s faith is birthed, strengthened, or restored, as we are faithful to our calling to be the church,” he added.

As the United States continues to reel from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn, many churches are ramping up their charitable efforts to help the needy. Last year, One Church, a multisite congregation based in Ohio, held a fundraiser aimed at providing gift cards to every foster teenager in the state, or approximately 5,300 individuals.

One Church Lead Pastor Greg Ford told CP in an interview last month that the idea for the gift card charity drive stemmed from a meeting with Franklin County Children Services last year.

“They shared with us that typically during the holidays, many donors want to provide toys and gifts for little kids but the teens are usually left out since they’re typically not interested in toys at that stage,” Ford said.

“They said if we could provide gift cards for local fast food restaurants or retail stores, that gives the teens a sense of independence. When they’re out with their friends, they can have a meal and enjoy themselves.”

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Newly confirmed secretary of state vows to promote LGBT agenda

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is sworn in as the 71st U.S. Secretary of State by Acting Under Secretary of State for Management Carol Z. Perez at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 26, 2021. | U.S. State Department/Ron Przysucha

The newly confirmed U.S. secretary of state has vowed to support the LGBT agenda by flying pride flags at United States embassies and resurrecting the “special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons.”

Antony Blinken, who was confirmed 78-22 by the United States Senate Tuesday, shared his thoughts about LGBT issues during his Senate confirmation hearing last week, which took place before President Joe Biden took office. As he questioned Blinken, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “You and President-elect Biden have indicated that you’re going to support, appoint a new special envoy for human rights on LGBTI people, a position that I’ve been pushing to make permanent through the International Human Rights Defense Act.” As a presidential candidate, Biden vowed to make LGBT activism a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

“After four years of Trump administration efforts to specifically marginalize, minimize, do damage to the rights of the LGBTI people, I think it’s going to be vital to appoint a seasoned expert on this issues. Are you going to move forward towards a speedy appointment towards an LGBTI envoy and would you consider raising it to an ambassadorial level?” Markey asked.

Blinken answered in the affirmative: “This is a matter, I think, of some real urgency, we’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase. We’ve seen, I believe, the highest number of murders of transgender people, particularly women of color, that we’ve seen ever and so I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something the Department is going to take on and take on immediately.”

Markey also asked Blinken if he would “repudiate the findings of the report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights and reaffirm the United States’ acceptance and adherence to the human rights laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and whether he would “ensure that ambassadors are able to fly the pride … flag at our embassies around the world.”

“Yes to both,” Blinken replied.

The Commission on Unalienable Rights was created by the State Department under then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2019. In a press conference announcing the State Department Commission, the secretary of state argued that “international institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission.” According to Pompeo, “As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions about which rights are entitled to gain respect.”

Democrats and progressive advocacy groups quickly criticized the move to create the commission, warning that it constituted an attempt to remove LGBT rights and abortion from the consensus definition of human rights. During the Trump administration, the United States signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which declared that “there is no international right to abortion.”

During the Trump administration, U.S. embassies were told not to fly the pride flag, which consists of the rainbow colors and is designed to show support for LGBT rights. Then-Vice President Mike Pence defended the State Department’s declaration that “on the flagpole of our American embassies that one flag should fly and that’s the American flag,” saying “I support that.”

As Markey explained, the special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons was “left vacant in the Trump years.” The position was created during the latter part of the Obama administration. The first special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons was Randy Berry, who served in the position from 2015 to 2017 before former President Donald Trump appointed him to the position of United States Ambassador to Nepal.

While Markey contended that “the Trump administration rolled back much of the United States’ previous efforts to support and promote LGBTI rights around the world,” the previous administration pushed 69 countries to decriminalize homosexuality and same-sex relationships.

Blinken is the fourth member of Biden’s cabinet that has been confirmed by the Senate. The others are Director of Intelligence Avril Haines, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

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McConnell Votes In Favor Of Rand Paul’s Motion To Dismiss Trump’s Impeachment Trial, Five GOP Senators Opposed

Reported by HENRY RODGERS, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT | January 26, 2021

Photo by Samuel Corum: Getty Images 12121121111

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a majority of Republicans voted Tuesday in favor of Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s motion to dismiss the impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump. As senators prepared for the impeachment trial, Paul introduced a motion arguing that the trial is unconstitutional since Trump is now a private citizen and exempt from facing removal from office. However, five Republican senators and every Senate Democrat voted to table the motion, pushing Trump’s impeachment trial forward.

THESE FIVE GOP SENATORS VOTED TO TABLE THE MOTION:

Maine Sen. Collins
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) heads to the Senate floor before being called into session on January 26, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

“I think there will be enough support on it to show there’s no chance they can impeach the president,” Paul told reporters before the vote. “If 34 people support my resolution that this is an unconstitutional proceeding, it shows they don’t have the votes and we’re basically wasting our time.” (RELATED: Rand Paul Will Force Vote On The Constitutionality Of Trump’s Upcoming Senate Trial)

In order to convict Trump in the Senate, Democrats will need 17 Republican senators to side with every Democrat. (RELATED: Schumer Says Impeachment Trial Will Move Quickly, Won’t Need A Lot Of Witnesses)

Members were sworn in for trial on Tuesday. The arguments will start the week of Feb. 8, Schumer announced.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Out With the New

A.F. BRANCO | on January 27, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-out-with-the-new/

Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and ending the XL pipeline puts China 1st over America.

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Tulsi Gabbard labels Adam Schiff, John Brennan as ‘domestic enemies’ of the US

Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard issued a dire warning to the American people on Tuesday, expressing concern that “domestic enemies” of the United States, in the national security community and Big Tech industry, are plotting to create a “police state” in America.

Gabbard, who served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021, posted a video to social media in which she spoke out against efforts to expand the federal government’s national security powers after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. In the video, she called out former CIA Director John Brennan and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), two leading proponents of expanding national security powers, labeling them “domestic enemies” of the country.

“The mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country,” Gabbard said. “But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies — and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol.”

The video cuts to a clip from MSNBC of Brennan saying that members of the Biden administration “are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we see overseas.” Brennan was speaking of individuals and groups like those that formed the mob that laid siege to the Capitol.

The events of Jan. 6 have been compared in the media to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a comparison some have used to call for a “Domestic War on Terror,” demanding that the U.S. employ strategies here at home akin to those used against ISIS and al-Qaeda abroad. Rep. Schiff in 2019 introduced legislation that would create a federal domestic terrorism criminal statute. A similar bill sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would establish new offices in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI to investigate domestic terrorism in the U.S.

Civil liberties advocates like Gabbard have spoken out against a war on terror here at home. A group of progressive representatives, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), last week called on congressional leaders to reject efforts to pass Durbin’s Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act and oppose new legislation that would expand the national security state.

Gabbard is calling on President Joe Biden and the Congress to defend American civil liberties.

“President Biden, I call upon you & all of Congress from both parties to denounce efforts by Brennan & others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator & guaranteed in our Constitution. If you don’t stand up to them now, then our country will be in great peril,” she said.

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Even Groucho Marx Got It.

Written

on January 26, 2021

Parents too afraid to oppose critical race theory in schools, says activist

Critical race theory has infiltrated Christian private schools and parents aren’t speaking up because they’re afraid, said one education activist.

Elana Yaron Fishbein started an organization called “No Left Turn in Education” to help parents take the lead in the education of their children and to show people who oppose critical race theory that they have allies. Among its slogans is “education, not indoctrination.” In only a few months since its beginning in August 2020, her Facebook group grew dramatically. Today, her group has chapters in 18 states.

“Many parents say ‘how can you be against it (CRT)?’ until you open it and see what’s in it. It’s the exact opposite [of what it says,]” said Fishbein to The Christian Post.

Fishbein’s own courage in fighting critical race theory comes from her Jewish faith background, she said.

Originally from Israel, she noted, “It’s Jews, more than any other group in the history of the world, who have suffered from racism and the consequences of racism. Am I going to sit down and watch what they’re doing, turning this country into a racist country? Blaming all the whites for being racist and privileged? As an Israeli, I know if I don’t stand up and fight, we’ll be gone.”

She sounded the alarm that both public and private schools have begun teaching CRT as well as comprehensive sexual education, which instead of encouraging abstinence, focuses on normalizing sex outside of marriage and encourages confused kids to question whether they are male or female.

Critical race theory has varied definitions. Oxford Reference notes: “CRT regards the privileged position occupied by mostly White, middle-class academics as a major obstacle to a comprehensive exposure of the racism that is seen to permeate the law, its rules, concepts, and institutions.”

Conservative website Pulpit & Pen argues that CRT is dangerous in that it is “fundamentally opposed to the American Civil Rights Movement,” as it does not advocate for treating people equally but rather that “the law may actually need to [be] biased in favor of minority identity groups” to redistribute power. Race is the defining feature of human identity, Pulpit & Pen states, and every person is part of either an oppressor race that holds power, or an oppressed race that oppressors abuse.

Fishbein argued, “They attach to critical race theory a lot of beautiful names, but they mean the opposite. Of course, we are ‘anti-racist.’ Of course, we are ‘for diversity.’ But they mean the opposite.”

Churches and Christian schools are teaching children how to classify each other by race and see color instead of character, she said. It’s not only being taught in public schools but “it’s very, very pervasive in Catholic schools, Episcopalian schools, charter schools, we’re getting a lot of references from most private schools,” she maintained.

“The majority of private schools are in bed with all this too. It is very common even in religious schools and in a lot of churches. A lot of synagogues have gone totally woke.”

In Missouri, a student filed a lawsuit alleging that her Catholic school tried to force her to lie that she was racist. A Nevada charter school forced students to identify themselves as members of a race. A public school in California told children to rank themselves by “privilege” in the classroom. Some of the elements that defined privilege was whether someone was white and a Christian.

These incidents aren’t isolated. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy Director Lindsey Burke, many of America’s 14,000 public school boards are embracing CRT. One key driver of this educational change is The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which promotes the ideology.

“More than 4,500 classrooms around the country have begun to incorporate the 1619 Project curricular materials into their content,” she said.

Burke and her colleagues specifically asked school board members and families across the country about the 1619 Project and 50% of all parents and 70% of school board members said that they do not want schools to use the instructional materials rooted in the idea that slavery is the center of the national narrative. Likewise, 70% of parents and 74% of school board members believe that slavery is a tragedy that harmed the nation but freedom and prosperity represent who Americans are.

Their data showed that only 25% of parents and 17% of school board members believe that students should be taught that the founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written and that U.S. history must thus be reframed.

Fishbein believes that critical race theory often goes unopposed because its opponents feel too afraid to fight it. She often meets people who don’t tell even their close friends that they oppose the ideology.

One woman she met had a close friend who would host sleepovers with her children. For years, she felt too afraid to say she opposed CRT developments at the school their children attended. When she finally spoke up to her friend, her friend agreed with her and said that she also had felt too afraid to share her real beliefs.

When Fishbein first objected to CRT at her own school, parents weren’t willing to stand with her. Several people loudly condemned her, she said.

“The lynching was public, but the support was private,” she said. “I was really concerned about the people being afraid to talk. People say they are 100% with me and they agree, but they’re afraid to talk. It blew my mind. How in this country with First Amendment rights people are afraid to talk?”

Fishbein encouraged parents to run for school boards, form networks, and use resources on No Left Turn in Education’s website to fight back against the teaching of CRT.

“The school board dictates the curriculum,” she said. “Do you care about your kids, do you care about your family, do you care about your nation? You have to start getting involved.”

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Biggest churches push ‘superficial Christianity,’ ‘phonies’ now being exposed: John MacArthur

Pastor John MacArthur announced during the Shepherd’s Conference held earlier this month that next year’s conference will include a summit on biblical inerrancy. Photo taken March 7, 2014. | Grace Community Church

Some of America’s biggest churches support a culture of corrupt, “superficial Christianity” and made a lot of money doing it but the internet is now making it harder for “phonies” to survive, Pastor John MacArthur recently said. Speaking at the pulpit of Grace Community Church in California for the first time after a brief absence during which some speculated he may have been ill, MacArthur suggested that the pandemic combined with the technological shift in ministry has led to a “sifting and shifting.”

“We had for decades, people trying to create a cultural Christianity that would appeal to nonbelievers, that was accepting of immorality, accepting of homosexuality, accepting of racial hatred. There was a kind of superficial, shallow Christianity that watered down the Gospel, didn’t talk about sin, tried to have a positive message. And it was very successful. And I get it because I fought that battle well for almost all the time I’ve been here,” he told his congregants in a sermon just over a week ago.

He explained that one of the things he likes to do is to call the church to repentance but it was a tough call because “superficial Christianity made a lot of money” and “elevated a lot of charlatans.”

“It was successful. The biggest churches in America are part of it. It was very hard to call people to faithfulness when you could be so corrupt and so successful in Christian religion. That was the battle. Now I think there’s a sifting and a shifting,” he said before alluding to sex scandals surrounding prominent Christian figures like late apologist Ravi Zacharias and former Hillsong Church Pastor Carl Lentz without mentioning their names.

“First of all, phonies are going to have a hard time hiding with the internet. We’re seeing one after another after another. Dead ones and alive ones. This dead apologist had a deviant sex life. This cool dude rock and roll pastor was immoral with multiple women for years and years,” MacArthur said.

“I look at all that and my thoughts were I don’t think if it weren’t for Jesus Christ that I could sell anybody on Christianity. We preach Christ, right? And you’re attracted to Him, right? But if there are people out there looking at Christianity, it has to be uninviting, maybe even repulsive. Who are these people? Filthy rich, immoral, corrupt, narcissistic. If it weren’t for Jesus Christ, Christianity would have no appeal,” he said.

MacArthur also explained that despite efforts by government authorities to shutter his church during the pandemic, he has managed to defy every restriction and remain open regardless of fines and court actions against his church.

“They tried every way to close Grace Church. And I think it is true that there is no more scrutinized church in the United States of America than Grace Community Church,” he said, calling out major media organizations like ABC, CNN and the Los Angeles Times as well as “ungodly bloggers” who tried to discredit his church.

“I’m still here,” he said.

MacArthur said the decision to remain open in defiance of government restrictions has been a blessing to his church. He said even though the church had not collected an offering in the last 10 months, congregants “have given more in the last 10 months than any 10-month period in the history of this church.”

MacArthur fought for his church’s legal right to hold indoor worship services amid the pandemic and said even though his church has faced fines each Sunday for their defiance, the congregation has only continued to flourish.

“In the middle of the lawsuit, the Lord has grown our church. So this was a very small tiny local church until COVID. One thousand new members, baptisms,” he said, calling his new members “Grace refugees.”

“Did you hear the testimonies in baptism Sunday night? There’s a new evangelical term. I love it. It’s ‘Grace refugees,’” he said as his congregation laughed.

“It’s the people who had no other church to go to so they came here as church refugees,” he said to more cheers.

“And aren’t we happy about that? Aren’t we blessed? We’ll take you whoever you are even if you’re a Presbyterian refugee. People have flown in from all across America, driven in from all across the West every Sunday to be with us. Some of you only came here because it was the only church open and you found it wasn’t just a church that was open. It was a church that was presenting the Gospel and the Word of God,” he said.

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Biden Faces Backlash Across Country For Canceling Keystone XL Pipeline

Reported By Ryan Saavedra | Jan 25, 2021 | DailyWire.com

President Biden Signs Executive Order After Delivering Remarks On American Manufacturing

President Joe Biden is facing backlash across the country after he signed an Executive Order last week that canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that also drew criticism from Canada. The move by Biden comes after he signed Executive Orders on a wide range of issues last week during his first days in office, including orders on climate and energy matters.

Josh Senk, general manager of Michels Corporation, slammed Biden during a press conference in Wisconsin, saying, “The recent actions of President Joe Biden, the Executive Order halting the construction of the Keystone pipeline has effected Michels, thousands of union trade members across the country, and hundreds of guys that specifically work in Wisconsin.”

Senk later said that “hundreds of guys” have already been laid off.

The Associated Press noted that local leaders in New Mexico were worried about the impact that Biden’s decisions on placing a moratorium on drilling on public lands would have on their state and leaders in Utah have asked Biden to reconsider his decision.

“During his inauguration, President Biden spoke about bringing our nation together. Eliminating drilling on public lands will cost thousands of New Mexicans their jobs and destroy what’s left of our state’s economy,” Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway told the AP. “How does that bring us together? Environmental efforts should be fair and well-researched, not knee-jerk mandates that just hurt an already impoverished state.”

Native American tribes have also reportedly been angered by Biden’s decision to cancel the pipeline. In a letter to the Biden administration, Luke Duncan, the chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee, wrote:

The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation respectfully requests that you immediately amend Order No. 3395 to provide an exception for energy permits and approvals on Indian lands. The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members.

Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.

Order No. 3395 violates the United States treaty and trust responsibilities to the Ute Indian Tribe and violates important principles of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Your order was also issued in violation (of) our government-to-government relationship. Executive Order No. 13175 on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments, and Interior’s own Policy on Consultation with Tribal Governments.

The order must be withdrawn or amended to comply with Federal law and policies. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward from hearing from you.

Multiple unions that endorsed Biden during his presidential campaign — including the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) and the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters — have since slammed Biden for canceling the pipeline. LIUNA said that the decision would “kill thousands of good-paying UNION jobs!”

“In revoking this permit, the Biden Administration has chosen to listen to the voices of fringe activists instead of union members and the American consumer on Day 1,” Mark McManus, General President of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters. “Let me be very clear: When built with union labor by the men and women of the United Association, pipelines like Keystone XL remain the safest and most efficient modes of energy transportation in the world. Sadly, the Biden Administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”

Local media organizations across the country have also reported on the negative impacts that Biden’s executive orders on energy have had on their states.

This article has been revised for clarity and emphasis.

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Sen. Ted Cruz reintroduces constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress

Reported by BRECK DUMAS | Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was joined by a handful of GOP colleagues on Monday in reintroducing a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress. Cruz tweeted out the text of the resolution filed by himself along with Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Todd Young (Ind.), explaining that “the amendment would limit U.S. senators to two six-year terms and members of the U.S. House of Representatives to three two-year terms.”

Cruz’s office also provided background on the senator’s previous efforts to put term limits in place for federal lawmakers, noting that:

In 2016, Sen. Cruz and former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) published an op-ed in the Washington Post announcing their intention to introduce a term limits amendment.
In 2017, Sen. Cruz first introduced a constitutional amendment mandating term limits in the 115th Congress.
In 2019, Sen. Cruz led a hearing as chairman of the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on The Constitution, titled, ‘Keeping Congress Accountable: Term Limits in the United States.’ The hearing examined the use of term limits as an avenue to break the cycle of career politicians and encourage accountability in Congress.
In 2019, Sen. Cruz and former Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to impose term limits on members of Congress in the 116th Congress.

Also in 2019, the conservative Cruz even gave a nod to far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) when she called for making it illegal for members of Congress to become lobbyists after leaving office.

“Here’s something I don’t say often: on this point, I AGREE with @AOC,” Cruz wrote in reply to one of the congresswoman’s tweets. “Indeed, I have long called for a LIFETIME BAN on former Members of Congress becoming lobbyists. The Swamp would hate it, but perhaps a chance for some bipartisan cooperation?”

Esquire political editor Jack Holmes argued at the time:

If you impose term limits, particularly without a lobbying ban, you’re actually shifting the incentives for congress people in a bad way: since they’re only going to be around for a limited time, they’d better make career plans for afterwards. Like, say, securing a lobbying gig. That’s going to lead to poor performance while they’re in office, particularly for anyone living in their district who can’t afford a big-money campaign donation.

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Getting Caught Up with MORE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Sinking Fast

A.F. BRANCO | on January 26, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-sinking-fast/

As though businesses didn’t have enough to worry about Democrats push for a $15.00 minimum wage.

.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump

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33 missing children rescued in major human trafficking investigation in California

Reported By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor | Monday, January 25, 2021

During a human trafficking investigation in California, called “Operation Lost Angels,” the FBI recovered 33 missing children, eight of whom had been sexually exploited, the agency said.

For the operation, which began Jan. 11, the FBI worked with more than two dozen law enforcement and non-governmental partners “to identify, locate, and recover missing children, particularly those who have been or were suspected of being sexually exploited and/or trafficked.”

Of the underage victims recovered, eight were being sexually exploited at the time of recovery, the agency said in a statement, as part of Human Trafficking Awareness Month.

“Two were recovered multiple times during the operation while on the ‘track,’ a common term used to describe a known location for commercial sex trafficking. It is not uncommon for victims who are rescued to return to commercial sex trafficking either voluntarily or by force, fraud, or coercion,” it said.

“The FBI considers human trafficking modern day slavery and the minors engaged in commercial sex trafficking are considered victims,” said Assistant FBI Director Kristi K. Johnson.

In the 2020 Report on U.S. Government Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons, the State Department warned about “the increasing number of people vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers due to the instability, isolation, and lack of access to critical services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The effects of COVID-19, as with other catastrophic events, are disproportionately impacting communities suffering from systemic or generational inequality – the same communities traffickers often prey upon,” the report said.

The FBI also revealed that its caseload for trafficking-related crimes, for both sex and labor, had increased significantly in the past several years. Last year, the agency started 664 human trafficking investigations across the country, arresting 473 people. As of last November, there were more than 1,800 pending trafficking investigations, including those involving minors exploited through commercial sex trafficking, the FBI said.

The Tallahassee Police Department, Florida, announced last November that more than 170 people were charged as part of a two-year investigation uncovering a sex trafficking network in the state.

“Operation Stolen Innocence,” a secretive probe into the commercial trafficking of a teenaged girl, began in November 2018 when police investigators saw images of a child being posted on a website advertising sex for money.

Last October, the U.S. Marshals rescued 27 missing children in Virginia as part of nationwide operations to save exploited children. The Department of Justice announced at the time that the five-day law enforcement effort, called “Operation Find Our Children,” took place throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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Biden’s pause on oil cause for big concern in New Mexico

Reported By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN | January 22, 2021

FILE – In this April 24, 2015, file photo, pumpjacks work in a field near Lovington, N.M. Oil and gas development infused $2.8 billion into New Mexico coffers during the 2020 fiscal year and marked its second-highest total revenue ever reported despite a global price war and plummeting demand amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s 60-day moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits is prompting widespread concerns in New Mexico, where spending on education and other public programs hinges on the industry’s success.

Top Republicans in the state as well as local leaders in communities that border the Permian Basin — one of the most productive regions in the U.S. — say any moves to make permanent the suspension would be economically devastating for the state. Half of New Mexico’s production happens on federal land and amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties each year.

Congressional members from other western states also are raising concerns, saying the ripple effects of the moratorium will hurt small businesses already struggling because of the pandemic.

“During his inauguration, President Biden spoke about bringing our nation together. Eliminating drilling on public lands will cost thousands of New Mexicans their jobs and destroy what’s left of our state’s economy,” Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway told The Associated Press on Friday. “How does that bring us together? Environmental efforts should be fair and well-researched, not knee-jerk mandates that just hurt an already impoverished state.”

In Utah. the state’s delegation asked for Biden to reconsider what they called an arbitrary decision. While it’s common for an incoming administration to pause high-level agency decisions, they argued that such a widespread suspension of routine permitting decisions normally made in the field is unprecedented. Industry groups said the order effectively brings all regulatory activity to a halt, from routine requests that arise during the normal course of business to requests for rights of way for new pipelines designed to gather more natural gas as part of efforts to reduce venting and flaring — practices that Democrats have targeted in their fight against climate change.

“It really has the opposite intent,” said Robert McEntyre, spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. “It means some natural gas is not going to be captured, and that’s not what operators want to do. They want to capture it and send it to market.”

New Mexico’s sole Republican in Congress, freshman Rep. Yvette Herrell, was the only member of the state’s delegation to speak out publicly after Biden’s order was issued. She said she supports Republican-backed legislation to prevent the administration from imposing a moratorium on new drilling permits on federal lands. The issue has been a thorny one for Democrats in New Mexico, where the oil and gas industry has been vilified over pollution concerns despite its role as the state’s top economic driver. Aside from funneling revenues to the state’s coffers, the industry supports about 100,000 direct and related jobs.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office told the AP Friday that the administration is reviewing the federal action and the short- and long-term fiscal implications for the state.

“Certainly we all understand the critical importance of this industry to New Mexico’s bottom line and of the imperative to diversify our state economy and energy portfolio,” Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett said in an email.

Steve Pearce, chairman of the state Republican Party, said drilling was beginning to pick up in New Mexico’s share of the Permian Basin because of rising oil prices. But he said he’s concerned that activity could evaporate.

“I think we’re going to see companies choosing not to invest in New Mexico and take their jobs and drilling to Texas just 3 miles away,” Pearce said. “They can just scoot across the border where they don’t have federal lands.”

The executive order includes an exception giving some senior U.S. Interior Department officials authority to approve actions that otherwise would be suspended. But industry officials expect there to be a bottleneck given the amount of requests nationwide.

The order has drawn praise from environmentalists, who have been seeking to rein in development across the West.

“Any step toward fixing the broken federal oil and gas leasing program is a step in the right direction,” said Mark Allison, director of the group New Mexico Wild.

In New Mexico, activists have been pushing to stop drilling outside the boundaries of Chaco Culture National Historical Park, saying there are culturally significant areas that could be damaged by unchecked development. The fight has spanned both Democrat and Republican presidential administrations.

A coalition of groups on Thursday amended an ongoing lawsuit, seeking to overturn the sale of 42 leases that cover nearly 70 square miles (181 square kiometers) in the area. The groups argue that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management rushed public comment on the leases.

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Tucker Carlson reveals email sent to ICE officers after Biden’s deportation order: ‘Release them all, immediately’

Reported by CHRIS ENLOE | Monday, January 25, 2021

Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealed Friday that his team exclusively obtained an email showing how Immigration and Customs Enforcement was directed to carry out one of President Joe Biden’s executive orders on immigration. After entering office on Wednesday, Biden signed numerous executive orders, many of which reversed the policies of his predecessor, now-former President Donald Trump.

One of the executive orders enacted “a 100-day pause on deportations for some undocumented immigrants,” according to the Texas Tribune.

Bill Maher: Racism in America is not the huge problem that ‘radicals’ say it is. And Maher’s black guest agrees.

Reported by DAVE URBANSKI | Monday, January 25, 2021

Bill Maher, as he typically does, brought up a hot-button issue on his “Real Time” program Friday night by asking if racism in America is really the huge problem that “radicals” have been saying it is.

“So, am I wrong to not want to see race all the time? Because that’s how I was brought up,” Maher said. “Like, that’s what a good liberal does, is you don’t see race. And now they switched it all around, and I’m bad because I don’t see it all the time. And Is ubiquity even effective? To make people aware of this issue at every turn?”

With that, guest Kmele Foster — a popular podcaster who happens to be black — chimed in with his observation that left-wing endeavors such as “diversity and inclusion training” and “talking often about racism and discrimination” actually “can make people presume that it exists in places that it does not.”

Foster then noted “you have to acknowledge that racism is a subjective allegation, right? I can presume intent on your behalf, whether or not it is actually there, and that’s a major defect — and I don’t want to be the object of your special concern, Bill, or anyone else’s. I’m an individual, and that’s what’s important.”

Maher was moved by Foster’s words and said — as if he was speaking to left-wing racism salespeople — that “I’m so sympathetic to the cause, but don’t gaslight me, you know?”

He added that “this is what I hear privately from my black friends: ‘I don’t want to be the focal point. I just want to blend in. I want to have a beer like you. Don’t look at me like I have to, like, make a speech about it, or that you have to make a speech about it.'”

Maher also asked, “Is the picture of America that’s presented by the radicals, I would say — Black Lives Matter, some of them, the anti-racists — of America 2021? Is it an accurate picture? Because sometimes I’m like, ‘Are they talking about 2021?'”

Foster told Maher, “I don’t think so,” and added that there’s a “great deal of hyperbole” within the constant hollering “in the streets” among left-wing protesters “who, quite frankly, do not have a serious grounding in these issues … they’ve got the bullhorns in their hands, and they don’t know the numbers. I’m really surprised when I see, sort of, the outrage in Portland over these issues. When I actually go back and look at the number of police-involved shootings or deaths in custody, for example … the numbers simply do not bear out this genocide against black America. It’s not a thing.”

As you might expect, leftists didn’t agree with Foster or Maher and blasted both of them on social media:

“Bill Maher must want to retire, I’ve been watching #RealTimewithBillMaher for a long time. I can’t tolerate this bulls**t,” one Twitter user said. “Kmele Foster sounds like a house slave, and this show with him grinning as Bill Maher talks like he knows every black perspective. I’m f***ing disgusted.”
“I feel like #billmaher found @kmele in the ‘I hate being black’ room on clubhouse,” another commenter wrote. “I don’t know it for a fact, I just know it’s true.”
“This ugly episode of ‘Real Time’ would have been significantly better if Bill Maher had one of the leaders from the BLM movement on the show to dispute some of the Klan propaganda spread by this duplicitous version of Uncle Ruckus,” another user declared. “Engaging in white grievance isn’t a good look.”

Foster later ripped a story that appeared in the Daily Beast about his appearance on “Real Time,” calling it “bulls**t, opportunist, garbage.” He added that the story’s author Marlow Stern “isn’t a journalist. He’s a professional tattletale. And even at this bold endeavor — he fails, utterly. A cad. A charlatan. A man who wouldn’t dream of asking anyone for comment/context. My intent and meaning, they aren’t so hard to discern.”

You can view video of the “Real Time” discussion between Maher and Foster in the Daily Beast’s story.

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And There It Is: First Bill Introduced by Dems Would Codify Controversial 2020 Election Changes That Handed Them Victory

Reported By Elizabeth Stauffer | Published January 25, 2021

Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland has introduced the first bill of the 117th Congress, a bill that would profoundly transform the way America conducts its elections. H.R. 1 is a breathtaking power grab by the Democrats and threatens the very bedrock of our democratic republic by nearly guaranteeing one-party rule in Washington for years to come.

According to a statement on Sarbanes’ website, “the 2020 election underscored the need for comprehensive, structural democracy reform. Americans across the country were forced to overcome rampant voter suppression, gerrymandering and a torrent of special-interest dark money just to exercise their vote and their voice in our democracy.”

Sarbanes tells his constituents that “H. R. 1 is a transformational anti-corruption and clean elections reform package” intended to “clean up corruption in Washington, empower the American people and restore faith and integrity to our government.”

The stated purpose of H.R. 1, ironically called the “For the People Act,” is: “To expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.” The full text of H.R. 1 can be viewed here.

The real purpose of the bill is to make permanent many of the changes made to state voting systems and procedures ostensibly to facilitate voting in the age of COVID-19.

One of the most notable features of H.R. 1 is that it strips states of the right to set their own standards for how elections are to be conducted. Election laws will be determined at the federal level.

Under this bill, states would be required to promote the use of mail-in voting, to offer online applications for voter registration, and to provide automatic and even same-day voter registration.

H.R. 1 would all but eliminate voter ID laws. It would prohibit states from “requiring identification as a condition of obtaining a ballot.” However, the bill would allow a state to require “a signature of the individual or similar affirmation as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot.” After all, we must protect the integrity of our elections.

In Section 1005, the bill seeks to prohibit a state “from requiring applicants to provide more than last four digits of Social Security number.” Currently, in some states, if an individual without a driver’s license registers to vote, an applicant is required to supply the full Social Security number.

READ THE REST OF THIS IMPORTANT REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/first-bill-introduced-dems-codify-controversial-2020-election-changes-handed-victory/

Elizabeth Stauffer

Contributor, Commentary

Elizabeth is a contract writer at The Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many conservative websites including RedState, The Federalist, Bongino.com, HotAir, Instapundit, MSN and RealClearPolitics.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Apocalypse Now

A.F. BRANCO | on January 24, 2021 at 10:25 pm | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-apocalypse-now/

Some think America dodged a bullet when Biden beat Trump ignorant to the Socialist hell that awaits us.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – National Breakdown

A.F. BRANCO | on January 25, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-national-breakdown/

Biden is wasting no time dismantling Trump’s America 1st agenda by opening borders.

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Though largely ‘religiously unaffiliated,’ Gen Z craves spiritual mentoring: study

Reported By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter | Friday, January 22, 2021

Though the majority of Gen Z is not engaged in scriptural study and has a distrustful relationship with religious institutions, they are eager for trusted adults, including religious leaders, to invest in their lives.

“The State of Religion & Young People 2020,” a new study by the Springtide Research Institute, collected data from over 10,000 surveys and over 150 interviews with young people ages 13–25. It found that Gen Z is largely not engaged in scriptural study, with just 12% saying they’re attending gatherings for this purpose.

Additionally, nearly 40% describe themselves as religiously “unaffiliated,” whether agnostic, atheist, or nothing in particular. Interestingly, the study shows 60% of surveyed young people who are not involved with organized religion describe themselves as “spiritual,” and 19% indicate they attend religious gatherings at least once a month.

Today’s young people are also the “loneliest of any generation,” the study found, with 60% saying they feel “very isolated.” The study notes this phenomenon is likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced young people to socialize, learn, and engage with one another virtually.

“The inner and outer lives of Gen Z are complex, and the world they live in, it’s complicated. The way that young people form bonds, make meaning, and live out their values is constantly changing. This is without a doubt the most diverse generation that has ever existed,” Josh Packard, executive director of Springtide Research Institute, said.

Nearly 7 out of 10 (69%) young people who were surveyed said they have three or fewer meaningful interactions per day. About 4 in 10 say they have nobody to talk to and nobody who really knows them well, and two in 10 young people (21%) with no meaningful interactions per day said they never feel like their life has meaning.

However, the study found that a single meaningful interaction reduces the number to 4%, underscoring the importance of relationships. Sixty-nine percent of surveyed individuals who have one adult mentor reported that their life has meaning and purpose. A staggering 85% who have two to four adult mentors and 91% of those who have five or more adult mentors said their life has meaning and purpose.

Young people crave “relational authority,” the study found. Seventy-nine percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “I am more likely to listen to adults in my life if I know that they care about me,” and 87% of young people said they trust adults who take time to foster relationships.

The study also found that Gen Z is eager for more productive and empathetic conversations around politics, but feel dismissed by the adults in their lives.

“Our data show that … checking the boxes affiliated or unaffiliated on a survey doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story about young people’s religious identities,” Packard said. “It doesn’t tell us what we need to know about the things that young people long for and where they belong to. More important than checkboxes, behaviors. More revealing than affiliation, relationships.”

“The State of Religion & Young People 2020” corroborates earlier studies revealing the complicated way Gen Z approaches issues of religion and spirituality. A 2018 study from the Barna Group characterizes Gen Z as the “first truly ‘post Christian’ generation,” with only 4% adhering to a biblical worldview.

However, another report from the law firm Becket found that 74% of Gen Z respondents felt that faith was “at least somewhat important” during the pandemic, putting them above the 62% average of all generations.

Speaker and author Sadie Robertson Huff, 23, recently said her generation is craving mentors and discipleship. She advised her peers to “invite” older Christians to the table and listen to their wisdom.

“Sometimes, our generation is fearful to ask for a mentor or fearful to ask to be discipled, but we crave it,” she said. “And so if you are in the older generation, … if you came up to us and said, ‘Can I disciple you?’ I know my answer would be yes every time. And I know a whole lot of people who would agree with me who are my age.”

Huff also said she believes church leaders are asking “too little” of the younger generation and often make “excuses” for them.

“I’ve sat in a room with church leaders who I love and adore. … But there are times where I’ve even heard them say things like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do a conference at night because that is the night that college kids like to party.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s why we should do a conference that night because people are going to party if we expect too little,’” Huff said.

“Let them [decide] if they’re going to go with the world or if they’re going to go with God because you’ve got to make that decision,” she stressed.

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Lou Dobbs Warns GOP: “Those 74 Million Americans if They Continue to Be Insulted – Are Going to Say “To Hell With You!” And the Patriot Party Will Be Born (VIDEO)

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published January 21, 2021

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined Lou Dobbs on Thursday night to discuss the radical moves by Joe Biden and the persecution of the middle class.

During their discussion, Lou turned his focus to the leadership of the Republican Party. The popular pro-Trump host blasted the GOP leadership for spitting on the Trump voters who delivered a landslide 74 million votes to the Republican Party this year and saved the House and Senate races.

Lou Dobbs warned the Republican Party that they are about to lose their base!
He’s right!

Lou Dobbs: The fact of the matter is, working men and women and their families right now have no representation. This president has made clear who has his priority, his attention, his interest. President Trump, as you say, stood up for the working – men and women and their families. And, it’s stunning to me that the Republican party right now doesn’t understand the threat that he poses. Because, I think of those 74 million Americans, if they continue to be insulted by the leadership of both political parties they are going to say, “The hell with you.” And the Patriot Party will be born and it will be born with extraordinary strength and power.

Via Lou Dobbs Tonight:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jim Hoft

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.

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WHAT A COINCIDENCE: Washington, DC Mayor Lifts Indoor Dining Ban Two Days After Biden Inauguration

Reported By Mike LaChance | Published January 22, 2021

Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the ban on indoor dining for restaurants. Isn’t that great news? It’s probably just a coincidence that she is doing this two days after Joe Biden was sworn in as president. Democrats would never have shut down our economy for purely political reasons, right?

FOX Business reports:

DC Mayor Bowser confirms indoor bar and restaurant service to resume at 25% capacity starting Jan. 22

Washington, D.C., will roll back its COVID-19 restrictions on indoor dining beginning Friday, Jan. 22 at 5 a.m., allowing restaurants and bars to return to 25% capacity, or no more than 250 people.

Advertisement – story continues below

The move, first announced on Wednesday in a tweet by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio, aligns with the end of an “Inauguration Pause” on city’s Phase 2 reopening activities.

The “Inauguration Pause” was an extension of a Dec. 23 order implemented to flatten the curve amid a surge in coronavirus cases, which was set to expire on Jan. 15. Bowser cited ongoing “public health and safety” concerns as the reason for the extension, following a riot at the Capitol by pro-Trump protesters on Jan. 6 that left five people dead.

In addition to shutting down indoor dining, the order closed museums and the D.C. Circular Route along the National Mall. It also limited libraries to pick-up and drop-off services only for three weeks, ordered the Department of Parks and Recreation to offer reservations for individual swim and fitness room sessions only and required that all non-essential business employees telework, with the exception of in-person staff needed to support minimum operations.

Don’t question the timing of this at all.

It’s all just a coincidence. Carry on.

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UPDATE on the National Guard Troops In Washington

DeSantis Orders FL Troops In D.C. Back Home: ‘They’re Not Nancy Pelosi’s Servants’

“This is a half-cocked mission and they are not Nancy Pelosi’s servants.”

By Amanda Prestigiacomo | Jan 22, 2021 | DailyWire.com

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday morning announced that he has ordered back home Florida National Guard troops sent to Washington, D.C., to secure the inauguration of President Joe Biden, which took place on Wednesday. DeSantis called the “mission” in D.C. “half-cocked” and blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for treating troops like her “servants.”

“[Governor Ron DeSantis] says he ordered the National Guard to come home from the U.S. Capitol because ‘they’re not Nancy Pelosi’s servants’ and ‘this is a half-cocked mission at this point and I think the appropriate thing is to bring them home,’” reported Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas.

A stunning 25,000 troops from across the nation were ordered to D.C. to secure the inauguration of Biden. As noted by The Daily Wire, disturbing photographs circulated Thursday evening revealed our National Guard troops sleeping in cold parking garages.

“Thousands of National Guardsmen were forced to vacate congressional grounds on Thursday and have been photographed having to sleep in parking garages while temperatures in the nation’s capital were set to dip down to near-freezing temperatures,” The Daily Wire reported. “The photos of the living conditions that the National Guardsmen were forced to endure come after Democrats took complete control of the federal government this week following Joe Biden being sworn in as the nation’s 46th president.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (TX) reacted quickly to the report, too, ordering on Thursday night that members of the Texas National Guard return from D.C. back to Texas, The Daily Wire reported.

“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state,” Abbott said on Twitter.

Earlier in the week, the Abbott ripped into the so-called “loyalty” screening of the tens of thousands of National Guards troops sent to D.C. for the inauguration. Linking to a piece from The Washington Post concerning the excess screening of 25,000 National Guard troops, Abbott posted: “This is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard.”

Notably, service members are already screened for ties to extremism or other potential flags. Thus, the latest screenings seem to be excessive and perhaps linked to suspicion directed at supporters of President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot. The Associated Press in a Monday report on the screening, for example, named supporters of the president as potential threats to a Biden inauguration.

“No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard,” the governor said via Twitter on Monday. “I authorized more than 1,000 to go to DC. I’ll never do it again if they are disrespected like this.”

Texas Governor orders National Guard unit stationed in DC for Biden inauguration back home after troops forced to sleep in parking garages

Reported by Ari Hoffman, Seattle, WA | January 21, 2021 8:50 PM

Following the abhorrent treatment of National Guardsmen, who were forced to sleep in congressional parking garages in Washington DC after the inauguration of Joe Biden, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted that he had ordered Texas Guard members back home.

“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state.”

This follows bi-partisan outcry at pictures of Guardsmen sleeping on the concrete floors of the garages in freezing temperatures. A Guardsman told Politico “Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed.”

Guard units had been told to leave Capitol grounds facilities where they had been staying for the two weeks leading up to the inauguration. There was reportedly only one electrical outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 troops and no internet reception.

Over 25,000 Guardsmen from around the country were ordered to Washington DC following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol, in order to provide additional security for the inauguration. The guard has been on station for two weeks and were seen in pictures last week before the inauguration sleeping on the floors of the Capitol before cots were brought in.

Following public outcry and pushback from many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Guardsmen were welcomed back to the Capitol buildings on Thursday night.

President Trump Gives Permission for US Troops to Stay at Trump Hotel in Washington DC

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published January 22, 2021

As reported earlier by Cristina Laila – A military source in DC told TPUSA Chief Creative Officer Benny Johnson that for the last week his battalion had been sleeping on the floor in the Senate cafeteria in preparation for Biden’s sham inauguration. One day after Biden’s inauguration, 5,000 soldiers were moved to a cold parking garage. There is one power outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 soldiers.

More than 20,000 troops protected Joe Biden’s sham inauguration on Wednesday. Virtually no one showed up to see senile Joe slur his way through his swearing-in ceremony. The military felt completely abandoned by the DC elites.

This morning OANN reported that President Trump gave permission for the troops to stay at his lavish Trump Hotel in Washington DC. Trump loves the troops. It’s just too bad Democrats stole his military vote.

Via Jack Posobiec.

Jim Hoft

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: First Duty of the Press: Make It About Race

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jan 20, 2021

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

First Duty of the Press: Make It About Race

Source: AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Why can’t liberals ever just let Trump hang himself? Isn’t what he’s actually done bad enough? No, the media always have to punch up the story, layering lie upon lie, until normal people are forced to say, I don’t want to defend the guy, but that didn’t happen.

This was the whole point of my book “Resistance Is Futile,” written at the outset of the Trump administration:

“[M]y advice to the Resistance is: Get Trump on the worst thing he’s actually done, and stop running off with Wouldn’t it be great if he raped and murdered a nun? You’re right: If Trump had done that, he would be finished, done, put a fork in him. Unfortunately, he hasn’t committed that particular crime.”

Even after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the media felt the need to pile up the false accusations.

Their first order of business was to turn it into a story about race.

The Trump riot has as little to do with race as any story in 21st-century America. COVID, immigration, tax cuts, the stimulus — I could come up with a racial angle for any of those.

Your assignment: Make the siege at the Capitol a story primarily about race relations.

You, a normal person, one week later: I’m stumped.

But to our media, the main point to be made about the riot was: Can you imagine what would have happened if black people had done that?

An unarmed Trump supporter crawling through a window at the Capitol was shot dead. Please name the black protester killed by the police throughout 2020’s incessant BLM riots, lootings and arsons. He’d already be on a postage stamp.

During the 2015 BLM riots in Baltimore after a heroin dealer, Freddie Gray, died in the back of a police van, the mayor announced that she was giving “those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”

If you look at a mob storming the Capitol to protest Biden’s certification as president and immediately think, This is a story about black people!, you’ve got racism on the brain.

— Renee Zellweger Wins Oscar for Best Actress

Oh like she would have gotten if it she were black. I don’t think so!

— Nobel Prize for Physics Awarded to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for “Discovery of a Supermassive Compact Object at the Center Of Our Galaxy”

Does anyone seriously believe that the prize would have been awarded if the discovery had been made by Black Lives Matter?

— Denver beat the Knicks 114-89

Can you imagine Denver intentionally running up the score like that on a white team?

I’m beginning to suspect that conservatives are the only people who were genuinely appalled by Trump supporters storming the Capitol. The left’s consistent reaction has been: OK, what do we have to do to make it look bad?

It must be awkward to have to work up a high dudgeon about the Capitol protest after spending half of 2020 saying “mostly peaceful” protests were OK, even if beyond the “mostly” there was a lot of arson and looting.

SOLUTION: A riot is not bad unless it can be denounced as “racist.”

Liberals were indignant with Sen. Tom Cotton for saying Trump should send in troops to restore order during the George Floyd riots. His New York Times op-ed making this point was slapped with a disclaimer from the editors that’s nearly as long as the original column.

Today, there are more troops on patrol in D.C. than in actual war zones.

But, this time, instead of calling the militarization of our nation’s capital “fascist” — as the Times’ Michelle Goldberg dubbed Cotton’s proposal — the very presence of troops is cited as proof of how awful the Jan. 6 riot was.

Liberals have got to learn that their neuroses are not proof of their opponents’ perfidy. The hysterical deployment of more than 20,000 troops to Biden’s inauguration says something about them, not the rioters.

Similarly, cable news has been featuring Democrats giving long, emotional TV interviews describing their fears during the storming of the Capitol. I was afraid they’d kill us all! What if they’d started lynching senators? They could have taken hostages! I fully expected a mass shooting. I thought the building would collapse on top of us! What if they’d had a nuke?

Oh my gosh! What did they actually do?

They broke four windows, took selfies and threw papers on the ground.

How many people died?

Four — all Trump supporters.

The “Your Neurosis Proves My Malfeasance” argument is a specialty of the feminists. If I wasn’t sexually harassed, then please explain why I gained 30 pounds? You want proof that Trump is a monster? I can’t sleep at night! Do you want to see my psychiatrist’s bill?

No, no! We believe you! But it’s not evidence that anyone did something bad to you. Your mental anguish comes in during the penalty phase, not during the guilt-finding phase.

The winner of the “You want proof? My skin has broken out!” argument was this NBC headline last week: “Some Democrats in Congress are worried their colleagues might kill them.”

The raid was disgusting, appalling, sickening, but it’s not a license for concocting imaginary accusations. Trump is bad. The thugs who stormed the Capitol are bad. You don’t need to manufacture evidence against them, media.

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Just Found on mewe.com/i/jerrybroussard2

Written

on January 22, 2021

Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Torquemada

A.F. BRANCO | on January 21, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-torquemada/

Many Democrat officials are pushing for deprogramming Trump Supporters.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Unifier in Chief

A.F. BRANCO | on January 22, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-unifier-in-chief/

Biden preached unity and bringing the country together while slamming Trump supporters and promoting impeachment 2.0.

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Biden to sign 17 executive actions, orders to reverse Trump policies, restore Obama-era programs on first day

Reported by Brooke Singman | Fox News | January 20, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden will sign 17 executive actions and orders in the first hours of his presidency on Wednesday.

The moves are expected to restore a number of Obama-era policies and reverse some of what the Biden team calls “the gravest damages” of the Trump administration.

Biden is expected to sign the executive actions from the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon after the inauguration, which is set to lay out a “forward-looking” vision for his presidency.

“He wants to roll up his sleeves and get to work as quickly as possible,” incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, adding that some of that work will be to overturn the actions of his predecessor, President Trump, to fulfill Biden’s goals of “moving the country forward.”

In his first actions as president, Biden is set to roll back and reverse a number of Trump’s policies and directives.

End of the wall
Biden will declare an “immediate termination” of funding for the border wall construction — putting an end to a key Trump campaign and administration promise to “build a wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border. The move will direct an “immediate pause” in wall construction and will “determine the best way to redirect funds that were diverted by the prior administration to fund wall construction.”

Biden will also sign an executive order that revoking Trump’s previous order that directed aggressive immigration enforcement. The Biden team said that the move will allow for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to set “civil immigration enforcement policies that best protect the American people” and that are “in line with our values and priorities.”

“The Biden administration is going to have a very different approach to regional migration,” incoming White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, adding that there will be a “special emphasis” to address the “root causes of migration in the region.”

“The Biden administration is going to have a very different approach to regional migration.”

— Jake Sullivan, incoming White House national security adviser

Sullivan added that Biden was “committed to rebuilding the nation’s asylum system.”

Biden is also set to “preserve and fortify” the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows people who came to the United States as children to request deferred immigration enforcement and work authorization for a renewal period of two years. The Trump administration had sought to end the program since September 2017, mounting a number of federal legal battles.

Next, Biden is set to sign an executive order that will put an end to Trump’s “Muslim ban,” which Sullivan said was rooted in “religious animus and xenophobia.”

Trump, in 2017, signed an executive order suspending entry into the U.S. for individuals from mostly Muslim countries: Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iran. The travel ban was updated later that year to include North Korea and Venezuela. The Trump administration expanded the ban again in January 2020 to include an additional six countries.

The Biden administration’s reversal will repeal Trump’s order and instructs the State Department to restart visa processing for affected countries in an effort to “restore fairness and remedy the harms caused by the bans.”

Sullivan also said Biden’s action would strengthen screening and vetting for travelers by “enhancing information sharing” with foreign governments, while also directing a further review of other Trump administration “extreme vetting” practices.

As for the census, Biden will sign an executive order Wednesday to revoke the Trump administration’s plan to exclude non-citizens from the census and apportionment of congressional representatives. Biden’s move will also ensure the Census Bureau “has time” to complete “an accurate population count” for each state, which he will then present to Congress.

Biden also will take action Wednesday to re-engage with the World Health Organization, after Trump’s decision to withdraw in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden administration will “work with the WHO and our partners to strengthen and reform the organization, support the COVID-19 health and humanitarian response, and advance global health and security.”

The Biden team said Dr. Anthony Fauci would lead the Biden administration’s delegation at the WHO Executive Board meeting this week.

Biden is also expected to restore the White House’s National Security Council’s pandemic unit, which Trump disbanded early in his administration.

Back to Paris
Meanwhile, Biden will sign the instrument to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord — after the Trump administration officially left the agreement last year. The Paris Agreement was a global pact created during the Obama administration to combat climate change.

Biden’s national climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said the move will be an “important step for the U.S. to regain and strengthen its leadership opportunities,” and added that Biden has made it “abundantly clear” that climate change “poses an existential threat.”

Next, Biden is expected to sign an executive order that will roll back Trump’s environmental actions — including the revocation of Trump presidential proclamations and other actions signed that McCarthy claims “do not serve the U.S. national interest.”

The move will also revoke the presidential permit granted to the Keystone XL Pipeline — a “promise” made by Biden during the campaign, McCarthy said.

“He will sign a broad executive order that takes steps that are imperative to address our climate crisis and will create good union jobs and advance environmental justice,” McCarthy said, adding that Biden will also reverse “more than 100 of the previous administration’s harmful policies.”

With regard to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden, on Wednesday, will launch a “100-day masking challenge,” and sign an executive order requiring masks and physical distancing in all federal buildings, on all federal land and by federal employees and contractors.

Affordable housing
Biden will also extend the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums for those effected by the “unprecedented housing affordability crisis” brought on by the pandemic through March 31.

Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese said the emergency measures “are important,” but said they are “not a substitute,” and urged Congress to pass legislation.

“These measures are important, but they are not sufficient,” Deese said, while saying, however, that the steps “are immediately helpful and will help millions of families.”

Biden is also expected to ask the Department of Education to consider “immediately extending” the pause on interest and principal payments of federal student loans until Sept. 30.

Deese added that Biden “supports Congress acting immediately to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt per person.”

“These are emergency measures that will help make sure no American is put in the place to make the decision to pay their student loans or put food on the table,” Deese said, adding that this “will help to provide near-term relief.”

Meanwhile, White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice said Biden on Wednesday will put “racial justice and equity at the center of our agenda,” and will build a “whole of government approach to racial justice.”

Biden will sign an executive order to “define equity as the consistent and systemic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals” including those who “belong to underserved communities such as Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; LGBTQ+ persons; people with disabilities religious minorities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

Rice said Biden will direct federal agencies to review the state of equity within their agencies, work with the Office of Management and Budget to “equitably allocate federal resources to empower and invest in communities of color and other underserved communities;” improve the delivery of government benefits services to ensure families “can access opportunity,” and more.

Biden will also sign an executive order that prohibits against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will direct agencies to take all lawful steps to make sure that federal anti-discrimination statutes prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Other actions Biden will take Wednesday include signing a memo to extend the Deferred Enforced Departure designation for Liberians who have been in the U.S. for many years to June 30, 2022. The memo will also have Liberians work authorization extended, and will direct the secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that Citizen Immigration Services facilitates “ease of application and timely adjudication” for Liberians applying for residency.

‘Ethics pledge’
Biden will also sign an executive order to “restore and maintain public trust and government,” and will order every appointee in the executive branch to sign the “ethics pledge,” which will ensure that employees act in the interest of the American people and not for personal gain.

Biden will also issue a memo Wednesday withdrawing the Trump administration’s regulatory process in an effort to “remove those needless obstacles to regulating in the public’s interest.”

Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain will also issue a regulatory freeze memo on Wednesday that will pause any new regulations from moving forward and give the Biden Administration a change to review any regulations that the Trump administration tried to finalize in its last days.

Jen Psaki said that in the coming days and weeks, Biden will be “announcing additional executive actions that confront these challenges and deliver on the President-elect’s promises to the American people, including revoking the ban on military service by transgender Americans, and reversing the Mexico City policy.”

The Mexico City policy forbids the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions in foreign countries.

Read the full article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-to-sign-17-executive-actions-on-first-day-in-office-reversing-trump-policies-restoring-obama-programs

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Trump issues wave of pardons in final hours as president

Reported by W. James Antle III | Washington Examiner | January 20, 2021

President Trump issued 73 pardons and commuted the federal sentences of 70 other people in the final hours of his administration, headlined by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Trump also granted relief to rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, who were convicted on weapons charges, as well as to former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick, a Democrat, was convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering. He was serving a 28-year sentence. Trump through the White House press secretary cited Diamond and Silk and Pastor Paula White, strong supporters of his, as backers of commuting Kilpatrick’s sentence.

Elliott Broidy, the former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, received a full presidential pardon. He was convicted on one count of conspiracy to serve as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal. Trump invoked Rep. Devin Nunes of California and Ambassador Richard Grenell, among other friends of the White House, as supporters of the pardon.

The last-minute acts of clemency cap four years of controversial pardons of supporters and allies, including former 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Republican operative Roger Stone, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former Reps. Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, and Charles Kushner, father of the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.

Other recipients of Trump pardons who raised eyebrows included former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, four Iraq War veterans convicted in a Blackwater shooting, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, and Scooter Libby, who had served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Trump pardoned Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former border patrol agents whose cases had long been championed by immigration hawks.

Trump has also occasionally issued pardons to further the goals of criminal justice reform, such as when he granted clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender who spent 21 years in prison. “That means you can do whatever you want in life,” Trump told her in the Oval Office earlier this year. He had previously commuted her life sentence in 2018.

Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry O” Harris was granted early release from prison, where he had served three decades for attempted murder and cocaine trafficking. Rapper Snoop Dogg praised the move. These acts of clemency have generally received more positive reviews than Trump’s pardons of political supporters and personal associates, rekindling the former reality TV star’s once-chummy relationship with Hollywood.

Kim Kardashian West has visited the White House to advise Trump on less famous people who could benefit from pardons and commutations. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted Wednesday night that he was “more interested” in seeing Trump’s pardons than President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees.

A number low-level drug offenders were included in the current Trump list. Some supporters had hoped he would strike against the “deep state” by pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency while a federal contractor. They were not on the pardons list.

Trump has also used the pardon power to strike back at the investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, which the president has regularly described as the “Russia hoax.” This led to the pardons of Manafort, Stone, Papadopoulos, and, to a lesser extent, Flynn. Trump repeated the phrase “Russian collusion hoax” in announcing a full pardon for Paul Erickson. Mueller’s final report did not establish the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Bannon was charged with defrauding donors who hoped to help privately fund the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, a key Trump campaign promise. Bannon, a staunch proponent of the president’s populist and nationalist variant of conservatism both before and after serving in the White House, has denied the allegations. He had yet to stand trial.

In the days leading up to the final pardons, there was rampant speculation that Trump might pardon family members or even himself. Acts of clemency for Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, or Ivanka Trump, three of the president’s adult children, were thought to complicate any political future they or their spouses might be entertaining. The constitutionality of a presidential self-pardon has been debated by legal scholars.

Trump was reportedly warned by top aides not to pardon anyone involved in the “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by die-hard supporters of the president who were protesting the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. The House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the riot, and a Senate trial will follow after he leaves office, potentially paving the way for legislation to prevent him from running again in 2024. Five people died in the riots.

Trump has steadfastly maintained the election was stolen due to widespread voter fraud, though he has in recent days acknowledged “a new administration” will be taking power at the conclusion of his term. The slew of pardons beginning in December were also seen as a concession that his time in the White House was coming to a close.

Read the full article: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/politics/trump-issues-final-pardons

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BREAKING: President Trump Formally Declassifies Large Trove of Russiagate Documents Over Objections From FBI Director Wray

Reported By Cristina Laila | Published January 19, 2021

President Trump formally declassified a large trove of Russiagate documents Tuesday evening over objections from the FBI. The declassified documents are expected to be released by Wednesday.

President Trump said he received the materials in a binder on December 30 and decided to declassify and publicly release the documents.

“I determined that the materials in that binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible,” the president said.

According to investigative reporter John Solomon, the binder is about a foot tall. The FBI objected to a complete release of the documents and Trump agreed to light redactions.

“As part of the iterative process of the declassification review, under a cover letter dated January 17, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation noted its continuing objection to any further declassification of the materials in the binder and also, on the basis of a review that included Intelligence Community equities, identified the passages that it believed it was most crucial to keep from public disclosure. I have determined to accept the redactions proposed for continued classification by the FBI in that January 17 submission,” Trump said in a memo.

“I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy.”

John Solomon reported on Just The News that the documents will include an FBI memo outlining interviews agents did with dossier author Christopher Steele.

Just the News has already reported the materials include an FBI memo summarizing an interview agents did in fall 2017 with anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele, in which he acknowledged his motives for leaking the Russia collusion narrative during the 2016 U.S. election as well as tasking orders for another confidential human source to spy on the Trump campaign by posing as someone seeking a job.

Cristina Laila

Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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Mitch McConnell: Capitol Rioters Were ‘Fed Lies‘ and ‘Provoked by the President’ and Others

Reported by HANNAH BLEAU | 19 Jan 2021

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 19: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. Republicans spoke about their desire to work on their legislative agenda despite the impeachment hearings in the House. (Photo by Alex Edelman/Getty …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday spoke about the major breach that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, stating that the mob was “fed lies” and “provoked” by President Trump, as well as others.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, McConnell said that the “mob was fed lies” and “provoked by the president and other powerful people” — effectively echoing the claims made by his Democrat colleagues, who accuse Trump of inciting the chaos that descended upon the Capitol that day.

“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“But we pressed on. We stood together and said an angry mob would not get veto power over the rule of law in our nation,” he continued:

McConnell’s remarks echo the statements made by many of his Democrat colleagues, who contend that Trump incited the violence despite the fact that he, at no point during his “Save America” speech, urged supporters to engage in lawless and violent acts. As the chaos unfolded, Trump — who at the time had access to his personal Twitter account — repeatedly called for protesters to respect law enforcement and refrain from violence.

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” he wrote on Twitter shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Less than an hour later, the president wrote, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

However, one week later, the House impeached Trump for the second time, with the single article asserting that Trump incited members of the crowd.

“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government,” the article states.

“He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” it adds.

Ten House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting impeachment. While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) openly opposed impeachment, he too suggested that Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

“He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” he said on the House floor last week.

“These facts require immediate action of President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term,” he continued.

McCarthy told House Republicans earlier this month that Trump “told him he bears some of the responsibility for the Washington, DC, riots,” as Breitbart News detailed.

McConnell has not revealed if he would vote to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, stating that he intends to “listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.” He has reportedly told colleagues that their decision will be a “vote of conscience.”

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Nolte: Donald Trump Leaves Office with 51% Approval Rating

Reported by JOHN NOLTE | 19 Jan 2021

US President Donald Trump gestures during a Keep America Great Rally at Kellogg Arena December 18, 2019, in Battle Creek, Michigan. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

On his last full day in office, President Donald Trump enjoys a 51 percent approval rating, according to Rasmussen Reports, one of only about three polling firms that have a proven track record for legitimacy and accuracy. Most of the other polls are crap. Rigged. Fake. Not worthy of anyone’s time.

Trump’s disapproval rating sits at just 48 percent.

There are a lot of media polls that show Trump’s approval rating in the low forties, and even in the thirties. But, over the course of the last few election cycles, we have learned that these are almost all fake polls, rigged polls, polls that in no way reflect reality. And we know this because when the ultimate poll is taken on Election Day, the media polls are all wrong. The whole point of media polls is to mislead, demoralize, and deceive the American people into believing Trump is less popular than he really is.

Time and again, Rasmussen has proven to be reliable and accurate, which tells us the insanity of the Capitol Hill riot and the corporate media’s determination to blame the president for it — even though he expressly called on that crowd to be respectful and peaceful, even though he almost immediately called for the anarchy to stop once it began (which is more than any Democrat has ever done) — is not penetrating into the electorate at large.

People don’t trust the media and are not listening to the media, and why should they? The media have lied about everything for nearly a decade now.

So basically, all this unfounded left-wing hysteria is affecting absolutely nothing outside the corporate media bubble, even though the hysteria has gone so far that we now have to look at the kabuki theater of the military shutting down Washington, D.C., which includes fences covered in razor wire. This is all being done in an effort to fool people into believing Trump supporters are some sort of danger to His Fraudulency Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Oh, and did you know there is no evidence of any threats against His Fraudulency? That’s right, none.

What’s more, in this particular poll, Trump’s job approval rating has actually INCREASED since the Capitol Hill riot. What had been a 47 percent approval rating on January 7 is now a 51 percent approval rating, a bump of four points in approval.

Because Wednesday is Trump’s last full day in office, this will be Rasmussen’s final tracking of his daily approval numbers.

I do hope that those of you still naïve enough to be fooled by the fake news media pay attention to this poll. One trick the fake media are quite good at is delivering the impression they can still shape public opinion and move that needle. But what more proof do you need of how impotent the modern-day media are than this poll?

For two weeks the public have been gaslit by every corner of the dominant culture into believing Trump called for a riot and that Washington, D.C., is under imminent threat of attack by Trump supporters (when the truth is that there’s zero evidence of any kind of attack). To back up this nonsense, His Fraudulency and Capitol Hill Democrats have basically declared martial law around the White House, and what’s the result…

Trump’s approval rating has INCREASED and he leaves office with a perfectly respectable 51 percent.

Don’t let the media grifters and liars fool you. The only power they have left is to gin up violence in Democrat-run cities.

No one else is paying attention.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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Liberals lash out at Chuck Todd for calling on President-elect Biden to keep his campaign promise

Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | Wednesday, January 20, 2021

NBC political director and MSNBC host Chuck Todd was excoriated by many on the left on social media for asking if President-elect Joe Biden would be able to keep his promise on the coronavirus pandemic.

Todd made the comments Tuesday on “Meet the Press” after noting poll results that showed many Americans believed the country was divided and would remain so for many years.

“Let’s be realistic, Biden’s first and most crucial task is to vaccinate America, to fulfill that promise of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days,” Todd said.

“The ultimate success or failure of his presidency may hinge simply on that one promise that he made and it might be his only way to begin immediately cauterizing America’s social, economic, and political wounds,” he continued.

“Let’s put it this way, if Biden wants to succeed he has to fulfill that first vaccination promise,” he concluded. “If Biden doesn’t get it right, he will have failed on the job he was elected to do.”

Many on the left rushed to social media to register their fury against Todd and MSNBC for continuing to keep him employed.

“For years I’ve been on this platform telling you about the lack of professionalism and lack of journalistic ethics in @chucktodd’s daily broadcasts. A lot of you saw it today. But it’s been happening for years and it is past time for @MSNBC to do something about it,” said novelist Don Winslow.

“If you agree that Chuck Todd is already a failure before Joe Biden is sworn in, then raise your hand,” tweeted progressive activist Grant Stern.

“[C]huck todd, before biden is even sworn in… talking about his push for vaccines: ‘if biden doesn’t get it right, he will have failed in the job he was elected to do’ i repeat: biden is not even sworn in yet,” said liberal activist Oliver Willis.

“I’ve been trying to hold my tongue. But I’m done. F*** @chucktodd. That’s what I said. F***. #ChuckTodd. Once more for the kids in the back: #F***CHUCKTODD!!!!” tweeted liberal actor Matt Walton.

Todd faced similar rancor from many on the left in July when he merely pointed out that the president had “turned a corner” on whether masks should be worn to help stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the comments that enraged so many liberals:

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Donald Trump looking to form his own political party — the ‘Patriot Party’: Report

Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2021

Donald Trump has reportedly spoken to confidants and aides over the last several days about possibly forming his own political party, according to a Tuesday night report from the Wall Street Journal.

The outlet reports that the move comes on the heels of Trump feeling that Republicans abandoned him following the early January attack on the U.S. Capitol as well as the GOP members who voted in favor of a historic second impeachment.

The outlet, citing inside sources reportedly familiar with the matter, said that the president would like to call the party the “Patriot Party.”

“Trump discussed the matter with several aides and other people close to him last week,” the outlet reported. “The president said he would want to call the new party the ‘Patriot Party,’ the people said.”

The Daily Wire reported that “top pro-Trump Republicans” close to the administration said that it was a “bad idea” and would effectively split the Republican Party so that it would be nearly impossible for Republicans or otherwise to defeat the Democratic Party in elections.

In a Tuesday farewell video, Trump said that his movement is “only just beginning.”

“As I prepare to hand power over to a new administration at noon on Wednesday, I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning,” he said. “There’s never been anything like it. The belief that a nation must serve its citizens will not dwindle but instead only grow stronger by the day. As long as the American people hold in their hearts deep and devoted love of country, then there is nothing this nation cannot achieve.”

In his final speech as president, Trump at Joint Base Andrews said, “We will be back in some form.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – A Dark Winter

A.F. BRANCO | on January 20, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-a-dark-winter/

When Joe Biden takes the oath of office will his allegiance be with America or China?

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President Trump’s Farewell Message

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Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey on Fears of Insider Attack on Biden Inaugural: “I’d be Worried About Gun-Carrying Republican Congressmen Being Near the President”

Reported By Kristinn Taylor | Published January 18, 2021

Read ore at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/retired-gen-barry-mccaffrey-fears-insider-attack-biden-inaugural-worried-gun-carrying-republican-congressmen-near-president/

Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, a highly decorated war hero of the Vietnam and Gulf Wars who later served as drug czar in the Clinton administration, expressed concern Monday night that armed Republican members of Congress cannot be trusted around Joe Biden when he is sworn in on Wednesday. McCaffrey made the comment while discussing reports that 25,000 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. to protect the Biden inaugural are being vetted by the FBI out of fears of an insider attack on the inauguration.

McCaffrey’s comments came during an appearance on the Peacock news discussion show hosted by Zerlina Maxwell:

“If I was worried about anybody, I’d be worried about gun-carrying Republican congressmen being near the president. They better get them started going through the screening at the door and tell them it’s mandatory. I wouldn’t trust them within an inch of my life.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kristinn Taylor

Kristinn Taylor has contributed to The Gateway Pundit for over ten years. Mr. Taylor previously wrote for Breitbart, worked for Judicial Watch and was co-leader of the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com. Mr. Taylor studied journalism in high school, visited the Newseum and once met David Brinkley. Mr. Taylor is on Twitter

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Beautiful and Gracious Melania Trump Publishes Farewell Message After Her Four Years of Abuse as America’s Most Elegant First Lady

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published January 18, 2021

In her first public appearance with her husband after becoming First Lady Melania Trump kicked off the Melbourne, Florida rally in February 2017 by reciting the Lord’s prayer.
The crowd cheered wildly!

What a beautiful and gracious First Lady we had the past four years.

THE CROWD WENT WILD!

❤️ Melania Trump ❤️ prays The Our Father. She knows there are Evil Forces at work. God Bless them,God Bless America! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/btOmZPmDrt

— Rock (@rocksiphone) February 18, 2017

But not everyone appreciated the gesture. The demonic left was outraged at Melania’s prayer for the country.

Melania Trump is the most beautiful and stylish First Lady in American history. The liberal media hated her. They despised her beauty and class.

Like her husband, Melania Trump was under assault for four years by the demons on the left.

On Monday Melania Trump published a farewell message to America. In her message, Melania salutes law enforcement officers, addresses the hardships of those who have overcome opioid addiction, and also calls for nonviolence during these unprecedented times.

America was blessed to have Melania.

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On day one, Biden plans to reinstate rule allowing transgender students to use bathroom, locker room of choice AND Biden Names Dr. Rachel Levine Assistant Health Secretary — Would Be First Transgender Official Confirmed By Senate

Reported by PHIL SHIVER | Tuesday, January 19, 2021

On day one of his presidency, President-elect Joe Biden plans to reinstate Obama-era Title IX regulations ensuring that transgender students are allowed to use the bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender identity. The Trump administration revoked the guidance early during President Trump’s tenure, arguing that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, not gender identity, and that the Obama administration, by changing the rule, was attempting to rewrite the definition of “sex” in “sex-based discrimination.”

The Obama-era rule immediately became subject to legal challenges after being put in place in May 2016. Within months of implementation, approximately half of the states had sued the Obama administration over the new directive. Without federal guidance, policies with regard to transgender discrimination are left to the states. But now that Biden is poised to return to the White House, the guidance, issued when he was vice president, is set to be put back in place.

Dr. Rachel Levine (Biden-Harris transition team official portrait)

“On his first day in office, Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity,” a statement on the Biden campaign website says. “He will direct his Department of Education to vigorously enforce and investigate violations of transgender students’ civil rights.”

Under the guidance, all schools receiving federal funds are required to comply or risk having their funding withdrawn. The move will undoubtedly spark outcry among conservatives who do not wish to see the federal government overstepping its bounds and mandating compliance on a culturally divisive and sensitive issue. Similar legal challenges to those launched in 2016 will almost certainly follow as well.

The move should not come as a surprise, however. Biden has been telegraphing sweeping changes to LGBTQ policy for some time. On his campaign website, Biden listed a number of policy initiatives, including the enactment of the “Equality Act,” which will extend all protections found in existing federal civil rights laws to LGBTQ individuals.

The Democratic Party, which heralds itself as the party of science, has quickly moved left on the issue of transgenderism, denying the biological reality of the gender binary. While on the campaign trail late last year, Biden suggested that children as young as 8 years old should be able to legally change their gender.

Biden Names Dr. Rachel Levine Assistant Health Secretary — Would Be First Transgender Official Confirmed By Senate

Reported by CHRISTIAN DATOC, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT | January 19, 2021

Picture taken May 4, 2015. REUTERS/Daniel Shanken

President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Pennsylvania’s Dr. Rachel Levine will serve as the assistant Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, making her potentially the first transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate. Levine, who currently serves as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, will be the top deputy to HHS Secretary-designee Xavier Becerra of California. (RELATED: Pennsylvania Health Secretary Says Residents May Be Wearing Masks ‘To The End Of 2021’)

Dr. Rachel Levine (Biden-Harris transition team official portrait)

“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said in a press release circulated Tuesday morning. “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris added that Levine is “a remarkable public servant with the knowledge and experience to help us contain this pandemic, and protect and improve the health and well-being of the American people.”

The Biden team noted that Levine received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her medical degree from the Tulane University School of Medicine. Additionally, she was thrice confirmed by the Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Senate for both her current position and to serve as the state’s physician general.

This is a developing story and will be updated with new information as it becomes available.

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Insider Q&A: Mark Weinstein, MeWe’s anti-Facebook CEO

Reported By FRANK BAJAK | January 17, 2021

This undated photo provided by MeWe shows MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein. MeWe is a 4-year-old, full-featured social media company positioned as an anti-Facebook. It says it does not collect data on its users, and features a Privacy Bill of Rights. In the past year, MeWe more than doubled its membership to nearly 15 million. (MeWe via AP)

BOSTON (AP) — Some users have fled Facebook and Twitter after the platforms booted President Donald Trump and some of his confederates for inciting unrest and spreading false claims about election fraud. Some migrated to far-right friendly sites like Parler or Gab. Others joined a service that aims to stand apart.

MeWe is a 4-year-old, full-featured social media company positioned as an anti-Facebook. It says it does not collect data on its users, and features a Privacy Bill of Rights. In the past year, MeWe more than doubled its membership to nearly 15 million. In the week ending Jan. 12, it was downloaded 787,000 times from Apple and Google’s U.S. smartphone app stores, according to SensorTower.

While Trump supporters’ disaffection with Facebook has surely helped, CEO Mark Weinstein says MeWe owes its growth to “everyone who is infuriated by their data being sold down the river” by surveillance capitalists.

Weinstein spoke to The Associated Press from his Southern California home. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Where are your members? Under your “freemium” model, how many people pay for services such as additional data storage and video calling?

A: The members are 50% in North America, about 24% in Asia, 24% in Europe and 2% in Australia. Some are in South America, in Brazil and Argentina. We’re translated into 20 languages. Currently 3% to 4% of our members sign up for premium. We haven’t spent a penny on marketing. All our growth is organic.

Q: What does your capital investment and revenue look like? Who is behind the company?

A: We’ve got about $22 million from high net worth investors and our advisory board includes Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, and Sherry Turkle, perhaps the most esteemed academic expert on the impact of technology on human beings. We have fewer than 100 employees and we did $1.2 million in revenue in 2020. Revenue grew 300 percent from November to December.

Q: Your terms of service are explicit about prohibiting hateful and inciteful content and insist it will be promptly taken down. But I’ve seen some incendiary language in chats. The watchdog Alethea Group reported similar, and it was apparently taken down. How can you be sure you are adequately moderating the site, especially amid a growth spurt you say has hit 20,000 new users an hour? How many moderators do you have?

A: Social media can get messy in times like these. And just like Facebook and Twitter, and other sites that also moderate we are doing the very best we can. We are expanding our moderation team as rapidly as we can, and we’re investigating reports from our members, who are helping. (Weinstein would not disclose the size of his moderation team.)

Q: You say MeWe is not built, as its big competitors are, to serve up politically charged material.

A: We are absolutely not an opinion chamber of one side or another. We are fundamentally different by design from Twitter or Parler or Gab. We’re a social media platform like Facebook, where family members and friends connect. Your news feed is purely and exclusively everything you choose to connect to. There is nothing injected into your news feed by us or anybody else on the platform. We don’t have trending topics. We don’t have boosted content.

Q: What is your stance on potentially dangerous speech and misinformation of the type that could, say adversely impact public health during a global pandemic?

A: We have absolutely no censorship for good people who follow our rules. We don’t care what your opinion is, if you’re on the right or the left. That’s none of our business. Also, MeWe’s structural design prohibits the amplification (of misinformation). Members do moderation for us, but a very deep violation can lead to immediate removal and being reported to outside authorities. For others, a member can be placed “in jail” — temporarily suspended — and then a three-strike rule applies.

Q: You said in a 2019 op-ed piece that you don’t believe that breaking up Facebook will solve the problem of competition in social media. Is that still your thinking?

A: Breaking up Facebook would just create a lot of mini-Facebooks. It doesn’t solve the problem of surveillance capitalism.

Facebook has lobbyists worldwide influencing legislation and government officials. And it doesn’t comply with regulations, anyhow. Regulating Facebook more carefully will only serve to institutionalize surveillance capitalism, make it harder for competition and sort of legitimize their business model, which is really an illegitimate form of capitalism.

Pure capitalism is, plain and simple, delight your customer, build a relationship of love and trust. Respect them and they will be your customer for a lifetime. Facebook has completely broken that bond. Facebook is a marketing company. Facebook is a data company. They’re not a true social network. Their customers are advertisers, marketers and political operatives. MeWe’s customers are its members.

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Found on MeWe.com

This image was on my MeWe.com account this morning. Please come and see me on MeWe.com at https://mewe.com/myworld. I am moving over there to get away from BIG TECH. Please join us.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Parting Words

A.F. BRANCO | on January 19, 2021 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-parting-words/

Like Douglas MacArthur, President Trump is leaving his fight against the D.C. swamp hoping one day to return.

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L.A. Times: Joe Biden Will ‘Make America California Again’

Reported by JOEL B. POLLAK | Breitbart | January 18, 2021

The Los Angeles Times published an analysis of President-elect Joe Biden’s forthcoming policies and concluded that he wants to “make America California again.” Not the Ronald Reagan version: rather, the contemporary left-wing bubble.

The Times noted:

California is emerging as the de facto policy think tank of the Biden-Harris administration and of a Congress soon to be under Democratic control. That’s rekindling past cliches about the state — incubator of innovation, premier laboratory of democracy, land of big ideas — even as it struggles with surging COVID-19 infections, a safety net frayed by the pandemic’s toll, crushing housing costs and wildfires, all fueling an exodus of residents.

There is no place the incoming administration is leaning on more heavily for inspiration in setting a progressive policy agenda.

California has also supplied Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). But it is less a “model” of a particular set of policies than an example of what the left does when it no longer has an opposition.

California is one of the wealthiest states — and also one of the poorest, with a disproportionate share of the nation’s welfare cases. The middle class is emptying out — taking with it the state’s traditionally Republican constituency.

Geographer Joel Kotkin wrote in 2018:

Rather than serving primarily as a role model, California today should be seen as much a cautionary tale. We certainly produce great wealth, but also far too much poverty. To be sure, California is now home to four of the 15 richest people on the planet and 70 percent of the 56 billionaires under 40; the Bay Area remains the most prodigious producer of high wage tech-related jobs.

But for much of the middle and working classes, more serious has been the erosion of higher-wage blue collar jobs, which have dropped by 500,000 since 2000 and by over 300,000 since the Great Recession alone. In contrast, minimum or near-minimum wage jobs accounted in 2015-16, notes the state’s Business Roundtable, for almost two-thirds of the state’s new job growth.

As companies began fleeing the state’s high-tax, high-regulation environment, then-Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged the problem, but quipped that “smart people figure out how to make it.” Increasingly, they “make it” in other states, like Texas.

In very basic ways, California is utterly dysfunctional. Last year, it had to implement rolling blackouts because solar and wind energy, the result of years of “green” policy, could not provide the power to keep the lights on in a heat wave.

The Democrats who run the state are sheltered from the consequences of their policies by the fact that talented people are still drawn to Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the Golden State’s unparalleled climate. Thanks to the success of Big Tech and Wall Street, the state has a projected budget surplus of $15 billion in the middle of a global economic crisis.

California is expected to lose one congressional seat after the latest census, which showed the state losing population.

Read the full article: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/01/18/l-a-times-joe-biden-will-make-america-california-again/

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Former Facebook Exec Calls For OANN, Newsmax to be Deplatformed: ‘We Have to Turn Down the Capability of Conservative Influencers to Reach Huge Audiences’ (VIDEO)

Reported By Cristina Laila | Published January 17, 2021

Former Facebook executive Alex Stamos called for conservative news alternatives OANN and Newsmax to be de-platformed during his appearance on CNN Sunday.

Stamos said, “We have to turn down the capability of these Conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.”

“There are people on YouTube for example that have a larger audience than daytime CNN,” he added and CNN’s Brian Stelter nodded in agreement.

WATCH:

Alex Stamos left Facebook after a series of massive failures on his part such as allowing sexualized images of children on the platform yet he believes he is the arbiter of truth.

Cristina Laila

Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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OUTRAGEOUS: After Ten Days We Still Know Very Little about the Deaths of Four Trump Supporters at US Capitol – Why Is That?

Reported By Joe Hoft | Published January 17, 2021 at 12:11pm

Much has been written about violent events at the Capital on January 6th. But we really don’t know much and the DC and Capitol police have provided little related to the deaths from that day.

We’ve reported on how Antifa infiltrated the crowd at the Capital on January 6th and how Big Media is blaming their violent acts on Trump supporters. But overall we actually know very little about the events at the Capitol on that day. For example, what and who caused the deaths of the Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6th?

The policeman whom Big Media claims died from being hit by a fire extinguisher reportedly had medical conditions and died the day after the Capitol events:

We know that Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was killed in the Capital after being shot by a Capitol policeman. But we don’t know identity of the policeman. There are reports the policeman may have been anti-Trump. We cannot confirm this till we know the shooter’s name:

As far as the other Trump supporters killed at the Capitol we know little. One woman was reportedly trampled to death but what caused the stampede? There are reports the police started shooting tear gas without warning the Trump supporters outside the event. Is this what started the stampede?

The remaining two individuals reportedly died from natural causes. The police originally claimed the two men and Ms. Boyland died from medical emergencies (getting trampled apparently fits in this category):

The other three who died from medical emergencies were identified as 50-year-old Benjamin Phillips of Ringtown, Pennsylvania, 55-year-old Kevin Greeson of Athens, Alabama, and 34-year-old Roseanne Boylan of Kennesaw, Georgia.

Mr. Boylan reportedly died from a stroke and Mr. Greeson reportedly died from a heart attack. But were these emergencies caused by the police creating panic by sending flash bangs and tear gas into the crowd of peaceful Trump supporters?

We need more information on the deaths of the Trump supporters. How did they die and who fired the shots that may have killed them.

Big Media pushes the lie that Trump supporters are violent and President Trump incited a mob, ignoring years of violence from Antifa and BLM. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Joe Hoft

Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft. His posts have been retweeted by President Trump and have made the headlines at the Drudge Report. Joe worked as a corporate executive in Hong Kong and traveled the world for his work, which gives him a unique perspective of US and global current events. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy.

@joehoft

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Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Archive for January, 2021

A Christian university professor has been suspended from Facebook for voicing disagreement with President Joe Biden’s executive order allowing trans-identifying individuals to serve in the U.S. military.

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Reported by DANIEL HOROWITZ | January 29, 2021

The wall to protect Americans from illegal invaders is being dismantled, while a wall is being constructed between the politicians and the people around the Capitol complex.

Restaurants were shut down because of the COVID religion, but Walmart and Home Depot weren’t because they supposedly don’t spread virions.

Illegal aliens get court injunctions against deportations within hours of filing, even though they have no right to be here, while Americans have failed to secure an injunction against masking and lockdowns in nearly every state for 10 months.

BLM is such a religion that you can attend endless mass funerals for a career criminal like George Floyd, but not hold a 50-person funeral for your grandmother.

Hundreds of thousands of drug traffickers, gang members, and career violent criminals have been released from jail because they were considered “low-level,” while business owners are being threatened with jail time for exercising their property rights.

The elites disregarded their own unconstitutional COVID restrictions, and then the minute Trump left office, they called for the reopening of schools and restaurants (albeit with the abuse of masks), using data that we were censored for posting online.

The same courts that said states engaging in voter fraud and illegal election law changes mid-election were the business of the states blocked red states from requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

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Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jan 27, 2021 5:00 PM

— A bloody hatchet found near the Ryens’ home that was identified by two of the absentee homeowners as having come from their house. The sheath to the hatchet was still in the bedroom where Cooper had slept for two nights.

— A drop of blood in the Ryens’ hallway that was consistent with Cooper’s rare blood type, establishing that the murderer was an African American.

— Luminol tests revealing a large quantity of blood in a shower where Cooper had been hiding.

— a bloodstain inside the Ryen home;

— the cigarette butts found inside the Ryens’ stolen station wagon;

— a bloody T-shirt found near the Ryen home, which also contained Doug Ryen’s DNA.

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Front Guy

Biden is nothing but a mouthpiece for the radical left. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in America anymore.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – What A Knockout

Biden’s executive order on transgender athletic rights threatens women’s athletics in general.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tools of the Trade

Biden is Obama’s 3rd term implementing the same old radical failed policies.

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1990 Webster v. New Lennox School District (7th Circuit Court of Appeals). School districts may prohibit a teacher from teaching creation science. It further states that this is not a violation of a teacher’s freedom of speech.

2000 – Minnesota State Court rules that there is no right for a teacher to present evidence both for and against the theory of evolution. This means that teachers are not allowed to question evolution in their own classroom.

Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media.[4]

“That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”[5]

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“We wanted to recognize these frontline workers and show them that we appreciate all they do in this season,” said the church in a statement posted to Facebook on Saturday.

“We’re able to be a blessing in our communities because of faithful givers like YOU! Thanks to all staff & volunteers as well as the management at Southside Giant Eagle for making this an excellent initiative.”

“This is what it means to be a good neighbor. As a part of this particular outreach, we also gave $40,000 to local nonprofits who are doing transformative work,” he continued.

“For the past couple years, we have taken an entire weekend offering and devoted it to local nonprofits. We call it ‘Give100,’ since we are giving away 100% of what comes in.”

Ultimately, Edmonds told CP that he hoped the church taught people “that they are not alone, that they are appreciated, and that the love of God just might surprise you at the grocery store.”

“Our prayer is that someone’s faith is birthed, strengthened, or restored, as we are faithful to our calling to be the church,” he added.

“They shared with us that typically during the holidays, many donors want to provide toys and gifts for little kids but the teens are usually left out since they’re typically not interested in toys at that stage,” Ford said.

“They said if we could provide gift cards for local fast food restaurants or retail stores, that gives the teens a sense of independence. When they’re out with their friends, they can have a meal and enjoy themselves.”

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The newly confirmed U.S. secretary of state has vowed to support the LGBT agenda by flying pride flags at United States embassies and resurrecting the “special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons.”

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Maine Sen. Collins

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Out With the New

Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and ending the XL pipeline puts China 1st over America.

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Reported by CHRIS PANDOLFO | Tuesday, January 26, 2021

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Critical race theory has infiltrated Christian private schools and parents aren’t speaking up because they’re afraid, said one education activist.

“More than 4,500 classrooms around the country have begun to incorporate the 1619 Project curricular materials into their content,” she said.

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Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.

The order must be withdrawn or amended to comply with Federal law and policies. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward from hearing from you.

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Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media.^[4]

“That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”^[5]