The Los Angeles Unified School District Office of Human Relations, Diversity & Equity prepared a presentation that told students critical race theory isn’t being taught in schools while the district made presentations that did precisely that. The district also mandated that teachers take an “antiracism” course taught by a known critical race theorist who told them to “challenge whiteness.”
LAUSD Lies, Denies That Critical Race Theory Is Being Taught In Schools
A LAUSD presentation titled “Critical Race Theory and Racism in K-12 Education” starts out by defining the theory as a “Theoretical Framework through which researchers and scholars try to understand how structural and racial inequities exist and endure in our society.”
The PowerPoint implores students to rename a headline referring to critical race theory, “since we now understand that Critical Race Theory is not taught in schools.” A separate document, which claims “there is no evidence that CRT is widespread in K-12 education,” is also listed on LAUSD’s website.
Although administrators at LAUSD claim CRT isn’t taught in their schools, the district created lesson plans that embed the corrosive theory in their very own classrooms, all after the district brought in a critical race theorist to tell teachers how to “challenge whiteness.”
K-12 Students Subjected To Critical Race Theory By Diversity And Equity Team
The LAUSD Office of Human Relations, Diversity and Equity introduces its advisory lessons by highlighting their desire to speak with students “about power, privilege, oppression, and resistance.” The section of the website labeled “Human Relations, Diversity & Equity” lists several critical race theory-inspired presentations, including slideshows that teach Thanksgiving is evil and propose an alternative holiday.
One presentation told students to check their privilege and included a video called “What is Privilege.” It shows people engaging in a privilege walk, an activity that I had to do six years ago as a freshman at my California high school. In it, people line up and take steps forward or backward depending on their answer to a series of questions. It is incredibly easy to manipulate the results through selective questioning in order to make people believe CRT’s sweeping claims of privilege and oppression based on skin color.
The presentation claims that white people, among others, are uniquely privileged, before telling students how to become an ally of left wing social justice movements. There’s also a slideshow about the Black Lives Matter movement that includes a note signed by the LAUSD Human Relations, Diversity and Equity team. The presentation mocks the phrase “all lives matter” in a comic.
It also includes the infamous tagline “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and featured a grab bag of intersectional insanity, imploring students to “celebrate queer people,” “dismantle patriarchal practices,” and undermine “hetero normative thinking.” One graphic demanded that our society “fund counselors not cops” and “mandate black history and ethnic studies.”
The presentation discussed white supremacy, which it defined as “The belief that white people are better than other races” and claimed that “Some systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.”
The administrators are evidently not fazed by the irony of peddling the conspiracy theory that America’s schools are fundamentally controlled by hegemonic white supremacy while they, as influential members of the nation’s second-largest school district, engender animosity against their white students by offering a state-sponsored crash course on racial identity politics.
A wide variety of other presentations also peddled the same themes and pushed for CRT.
Teaching critical race theory and then lying about its presence in schools isn’t new. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has claimed CRT isn’t taught in schools after her organization boasted of teaching it on national television.
LAUSD Enshrines Core Tenets of Critical Race Theory
One slideshow focused on the Cleveland Indians changing their name, claiming that various teams were named after racial slurs and that Native Americans are the only people group whose identity has been turned into a mascot, conveniently forgetting about teams such as the Minnesota Vikings, Boston Celtics, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
A whole section on the LAUSD website is dedicated to “Election, Insurrection, and More.” One slideshow focused on “domestic terrorism,” invoking Jan. 6, 2020. It also features discussion of white supremacist domestic terrorism, while making no mention of Black Lives Matter riots or the rape and murder-infested Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
When asked why the Human Relations, Diversity and Equity team told students that CRT is not being taught in schools despite teaching it themselves, the team’s coordinator Judy Chiasson avoided the issue, responding, “We encourage students to hear different perspectives, become critical thinkers, and build camaraderie across identities so they may become the leaders of tomorrow.”
LAUSD Brings In Known Critical Race Theorist
Lest you believe these presentations were simply the handiwork of a rogue team of far left administrators, turn your attention to this memorandum from the LAUSD that mandates that teachers take a course dubbed the “Anti-Racist Journey.”
During the training, Howard tells teachers to “celebrate people of color,” and then discusses the need to “challenge whiteness,” which he bizarrely connects to ideas of merit and individualism. As Howard and one facilitator guide notes, “Whiteness’ … does not mean an indictment of white people and refers to a majority perspective and construct.”
But critical race theorists frequently use the term to secure this indictment. Psychoanalyst Donald Moss published an article claiming that whiteness is a “parasitic condition” without a “permanent cure,” while Noel Ignatiev, the communist and Harvard lecturer who founded the journal “Race Traitor” and claimed that “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity,” argued that “abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
Yet we’re somehow expected to believe that these critical race advocates are just trying to end racism. They’re not being anti-white. They’ve simply constructed an ideology around attributing some of the worst evils to “whiteness.”
In the face of the district’s lies, there might be reason to rejoice. It might be an indicator that even school districts in incredibly far-left areas have realized just how quickly they’re losing ground on the issue among decent people of all races. By lying, LAUSD might’ve accidentally admitted a greater truth about critical race theory: that parents and voters can stop it.
Howard, the LAUSD School Board, and Superintendent Reilly did not respond to requests for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
“I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes,” writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand. It sounds utopian, until she mentions that her every move is tracked and outside the city live swathes of discontents, the ultimate depiction of a society split in two.
China took the lead in 2017 with a market for trading the right to emit a tonne of CO2, setting the world on a path towards a single carbon price and a powerful incentive to ditch fossil fuels, predicts Jane Burston, Head of Climate and Environment at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. Europe, meanwhile, found itself at the centre of the trade in cheap, efficient solar panels, as prices for renewables fell sharply.
Using China, the most polluted country on earth as an example for a carbon tax is ludicrous.
Nation states will have staged a comeback, writes Robert Muggah, Research Director at the Igarapé Institute. Instead of a single force, a handful of countries – the U.S., Russia, China, Germany, India and Japan chief among them – show semi-imperial tendencies. However, at the same time, the role of the state is threatened by trends including the rise of cities and the spread of online identities,
The Marxists cheer as the only country stopping them from their world take over is destroyed from within.
Technology will have further disrupted disease, writes Melanie Walker, a medical doctor and World Bank advisor. The hospital as we know it will be on its way out, with fewer accidents thanks to self-driving cars and great strides in preventive and personalised medicine. Scalpels and organ donors are out, tiny robotic tubes and bio-printed organs are in.
Humans become machines and life is no longer relished for the sacred being it is.
Rather like our grandparents, we will treat meat as a treat rather than a staple, writes Tim Benton, Professor of Population Ecology at the University of Leeds, UK. It won’t be big agriculture or little artisan producers that win, but rather a combination of the two, with convenience food redesigned to be healthier and less harmful to the environment.
How can you have any pudding when you don’t eat your peas?
Highly educated Syrian refugees will have come of age by 2030, making the case for the economic integration of those who have been forced to flee conflict. The world needs to be better prepared for populations on the move, writes Lorna Solis, Founder and CEO of the NGO Blue Rose Compass, as climate change will have displaced 1 billion people.
Syrian refugees will take over after BLM becomes SRM.
What’s more, once we get there, we’ll probably discover evidence of alien life, writes Ellen Stofan, Chief Scientist at NASA. Big science will help us to answer big questions about life on earth, as well as opening up practical applications for space technology.
People will be begging to get off of this planet if the WEF’s predictions are right.
Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft, and a contributing editor at TGP. Joe’s reporting is often months ahead of the Mainstream media as was observed in his reporting on the Mueller sham investigation, the origins of the China coronavirus, and 2020 Election fraud. Joe was a corporate executive in Hong Kong for a decade and has years of experience in finance, IT, operations and auditing around the world. The knowledge gained in his career provide him with a unique perspective of current events in the US and globally. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of three books. Joe is currently co-host of the morning radio show in St. Louis at 93.3 “Tomorrow’s News Today”. His new book: ‘In God We Trust: Not in Lying Liberal Lunatics’ is out now – please take a look and buy a copy. @joehoft
Participants in the March for Life 2019 assemble at United States Supreme Court on January 18, 2019. | Photo: The Christian Post
On December 1, Roe v. Wade will face a significant threat: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
Capitol Hill police expect up to 20,000 protestors on the morning of December 1, a historic turnout of pro-life and pro-choice advocacy that will likely result in a larger crowd than any Supreme Court demonstration ever.
How is Dobbs different than other abortion cases?
The Supreme Court has reviewed several cases related to abortion since 1973’s Roe decision. But of these cases, only Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 addressed the Roe precedent. Other cases involving abortion were related to late-term abortions, free speech rights of pro-life advocates, and restrictions on abortion providers based on ambulatory care or proximities to particular medical services, among other issues.
Viability
A major component to Roe was the issue of viability. In Dobbs, the Supreme Court has agreed to address the question:
“Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”
Why is this question significant?
This question is significant because Roe forbids states from prohibiting abortion pre-viability. This prohibition is the very reason why lower courts have kept Roe in place. Indeed one of the judges that struck down Mississippi’s law in the lower federal courts said,
“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability. States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions.”
The fact that the U.S. Supreme Court is revisiting viability is entirely implicative that their decision will, in some fashion, directly impact the Roe precedent.
What are the potential outcomes to Dobbs?
There are essentially three possible outcomes of Dobbs: The Court can strike down the Mississippi abortion law, the Court can uphold the Mississippi abortion law while still maintaining Roe, or the Court can uphold the Mississippi abortion law and overturn Roe altogether. John Bursch, who serves as senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, spoke with the Freedom Center’s managing editor John Wesley Reid to expound on the potential outcomes of Dobbs.
Bursch has argued 12 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over 30 state Supreme Courts. According to the Federalist Society, Bursch has the “third-highest success rate for persuading justices to adopt his legal position,” compared to other lawyers not working for the federal government.
Option 1: A strike down of Mississippi’s 15-week ban
If the Supreme Court affirms the lower court rulings, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion will have reached its terminal demise. While Mississippi does have the option to request a reconsideration from the Court, such petitions are rare, their approval is rarer and a reversed decision is even rarer.
Ultimately, if the Supreme Court affirms the lower court rulings, the fight against abortion will remain in place as it was before Dobbs. For some pro-life advocates, this would be a debilitating setback. For others, it would inspire them to fight harder.
Option 2: A middle ground option
If the Court rejects the lower courts’ rulings and upholds Mississippi’s law, they could also uphold Roe. This would look like the Court rejecting the viability clause in Casey since viability is not objectively known. In 1973, the gestational age at which a child could generally survive outside of the womb was seen as later in the development stage.
But there have been great medical advancements in neonatology since even 1992 when Casey was heard, and so a child’s viability could be recognized by the Court as being much sooner in the development stage. In fact, with medical technological advancements, we now know that viability is sooner than the 24 weeks gestation that the courts have unofficially held to in the past. In fact, over the past few years, the world has seen multiple examples of babies surviving as young as 21 weeks, debunking the generalized 24 week idea. So, the middle ground option could appear as a new standard for statewide abortion regulation.
From a pro-life perspective, this option is an incremental victory, not a pragmatic victory. The vast majority of abortions happen before 15 weeks gestation. Thus, the middle ground option would bring pro-life efforts closer to their goal but would still only be a chip of their larger agenda.
Option 3: An Overturn of Roe v. Wade
If the Court sees reason to, a complete overturn of Roe v. Wade could result from the Dobbs decision. In the event of a Roe overturn, it is widely agreed that regulatory power will return to the states, enabling them to outlaw abortion if they so choose — and many of them are trying to do so already.
How will each justice likely rule in Dobbs?
It is naive to assume that a justice’s ideology will follow their decisions in every ruling and, by extension, an ideological majority should be seen with the same scrutiny. While it’s easy to assume that the right bloc will rule conservative and the left bloc liberal, that isn’t always the case on the ideological spectrum, even with specific issues. How the justices will decide the Dobbs case can subjectively be analyzed based on their prior rulings and personal positions towards abortion.
To be fair, not all of the cases below relate to the viability aspect of Roe and Casey. This arguably renders them irrelevant to the following analysis, except that some of the justices still refer to Roe and Casey in their opinions despite the case’s irrelevancy towards viability. So, even “irrelevant” cases are worth considering.
Listed by seniority, here are the current justice’s voting records and statements related to abortion:
Chief Justice Roberts
Conservatives have largely coined the Chief Justice as a wild card, given some of his decisions, which, technicalities aside, have not landed on the right, i.e. upholding “Obamacare” in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sebelius, effectively redefining “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Bostock v. Clayton County, among others. Some have gone so far as to call him a liberal. But that logic is self-defeating. That is, to ideologically categorize someone based on the minority of their opinions, what does that say to the majority of their opinions? If a reputably conservative justice rules in 10 cases, in which three they take liberal leanings, what is one to say of the liberal justice who votes conservative in three of ten decisions? The conservative court of public opinion would certainly not hail the liberal justice as a conservative.
To be fair, Roberts does push the envelope in general. But on abortion, Roberts has ruled ideologically right in most abortion-related cases before him.
In Carhart v. Gonzales, Roberts ruled in the majority to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003. He was joined by current Justices Thomas and Alito.
In Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt Roberts ruled in the minority to uphold a Texas law that would require certain restrictions on abortion clinics, such as shorter proximities to admitting hospital care. He was joined by current Justices Thomas and Alito.
In June Medical Services v. Russo, Roberts ruled in the majority against a law that mirrored the law in Hellerstedt. The curious move from the chief justice after he ruled to uphold the similar law in Texas was, in his words, because “the Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.” Even though Roberts voted to uphold the Texas law in Hellerstedt, since the majority opinion struck it down, Roberts felt that precedent takes priority over reconsideration. This is important to note since the upcoming Dobbs case directly counters the precedent set in Roe and Casey. Roberts may have jurisprudential reason to think that Roe was a bad call, but he also thought that about the Hellerstedt decision, and based his June Medical decision off of the precedent of a decision he dissented with.
In NIFLA vs. Becerra, Roberts ruled to strike down a California law that required non-abortive pregnancy centers to provide abortion referrals. While this case was more about free speech than it was about abortion, the Court ruled on ideological lines. Roberts was joined by current Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.
In addition to his rulings, Roberts was the signatory of a 1990 Bush Sr. White House brief that stated Roe was “wrongly decided” and “should be overruled.” Whether this brief may have been more in step with the administration as a whole and not just Roberts is debated. At the time, Roberts was the Deputy Solicitor General. During Roberts’ confirmation hearings both to the D.C. Circuit Court and U.S. Supreme Court, he was aggressively pressed for his position on abortion and Roe, to which he provided diplomatic non-answers, as is routine for federal judge appointees.
Verdict: Still a wild card, but evidence hints that he might uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban with the middle-ground option.
Justice Thomas
Thomas has ruled ideologically rightin every abortion-related case before him.
The longest seated jurist on the current Court, Justice Thomas’ record is perhaps the most absolute when considering whether he’d overturn Roe, since he in fact did rule to overturn Roe when given the chance. Thomas is the only justice on the current Court who was also seated during the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, for which he ruled in the minority.
Thomas opposes the Roe and Casey precedents — and enthusiastically so. In June Medical v. Russo, a win for abortion advocates, Thomas dissented and said of abortion precedents:
“But those decisions created the right to abortion out of whole cloth, without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text. Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled. Because we have neither jurisdiction nor constitutional authority to declare Louisiana’s duly enacted law unconstitutional, I respectfully dissent.“
Verdict: No wild card here. Justice Thomas looks like a sure win to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and overturn Roe.
Justice Breyer
Considered moderately liberal, Justice Breyer, the eldest of the justices, has ruled ideologically left in every abortion-related case before him.
Verdict: Justice Breyer is very likely to rule against Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
Justice Alito
Like Thomas, Justice Alito has ruled ideologically right in every abortion-related case before him.
While a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito was one of three judges to rule on Planned Parenthood v. Casey (before the case was heard by the Supreme Court). Alito was the lone dissenter in an overturn of the spousal notification portion of the law being challenged.
Alito also expressed personal opinions about abortion, particularly about Roe, before his career as a federal judge. In a 1985 memo, he said,
“We should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled.”
While this quote does not provide an absolute current position taken by Alito, it does reinforce the rest of his reputation towards abortion and Roe. To be fair, Alito is also on the record as having acknowledged that Roe is precedent. But in the same fairness, these remarks were made during his confirmation hearing to the Appeals and Supreme Court where any appointee will refuse to give their position on a judicial matter.
Verdict: Alito is very likely to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and overturn Roe.
Justice Sotomayor
The anchor of the Court’s left bloc, Justice Sotomayor has ruled ideologically left in every abortion-related case before her.
A constant supporter of abortion, Sotomayor has been less than shy in her dissents. In a 5-4 decision last September, the Court refused to interfere with the Texas heartbeat law, effectively upholding it. In her dissent, Sotomayor said,
“For the second time, the Court is presented with an application to enjoin a statute enacted in open disregard of the constitutional rights of women seeking abortion care in Texas. For the second time, the Court declines to act immediately to protect these women from grave and irreparable harm.”
Though the Court later decided to hear the case, Sotomayor gave a strong statement of opposition towards her juristic colleagues in reference to the Court’s original denial of injunctive relief. While addressing law students via virtual appearance, Sotomayor said,
“You know, I can’t change Texas’s law. But you can, and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don’t like.”
Verdict: Given her opinions, and the reasons for them, Justice Sotomayor is very likely to rule against Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
Justice Kagan
Similar to Justice Breyer, Justice Kagan is a moderate on the Court’s left bloc but has ruledideologically left in every abortion-related case before her.
The only hint she has ever shown towards abortion restrictions came while working in the Clinton White House, when she urged the president to support a partial-birth abortion ban, though it is generally agreed that her motive was for political purposes and not ideological. Regardless, partial-birth abortions are outside the parameters of Roe’s application. One can consistently support Roe while opposing partial-birth abortions, thus even if she is opposed to partial-birth abortion, her record shows unfettering support for Roe.
During the oral arguments for the Texas heartbeat law challenge, Kagan expressed her opposition to the law but also affirmed the Court’s precedent:
“The actual provisions in this law have prevented every woman in Texas from exercising a constitutional right as declared by this court … That’s not a hypothetical. That’s an actual.”
Verdict: Justice Kagan is very likely to rule against Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh
Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have much shorter records to analyze on abortion, though both have ruled ideologically right in every abortion-related case before them.
Gorsuch, while on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled on a unique string of abortion-related cases, though none that address the Roe precedent.
Off the bench, their personal opinions on abortion are also limited and not directly related to Roe.
For a clarifying point about Kavanaugh, many who opposed his appointment to the Supreme Court alluded to a 2003 email between Kavanaugh and James C. Ho, then-Chief Counsel for the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. An excerpt from the email reads,
“I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”
The email does not provide any substantial reason to suggest that Kavanaugh, who was working in the Bush Administration at the time, would overturn Roe, despite what his critics said of the email during his 2018 confirmation. Still, Kavanaugh was clear that precedent is not as concrete as perhaps Chief Justice Roberts would hold. So, if Kavanaugh did have reservations about overturning Roe, we can likely eliminate precedent as his hesitancy.
The three justices Kavanaugh was likely referring to were Thomas, Scalia and Rehnquist considering they were the only three justices on the Court in 2003 who ruled to overturn Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.
Verdict: It is likely that both Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will rule to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. Whether they’d take the middle ground option or overturn Roe is not clear.
Justice Barrett
The newest of the justices, and the youngest woman ever appointed to the High Court, Justice Barrett has ruled ideologically right in every abortion-related case before her — but it’s worth noting the secondary nature of abortion in these cases.
While on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett ruled on cases where abortion was secondary, including the disposal of fetal remains and whether abortion on the basis of race, sex, or gender is lawful. Barrett also favored a ruling that would require doctors to inform parents of a minor seeking an abortion.
While on the Supreme Court, Barrett has only had the opportunity to grant or deny injunctive relief when opposition tried to halt the Texas heartbeat law, which she refused along with Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
Despite her minimal ruling history on abortion, there is reason to believe Barrett is pro-life. In 2006, Barrett and her husband Jesse endorsed an advertisement with Right to Life St. Joseph County that condemned Roe v. Wade. In 2008, Barrett co-authored a journal entry for the Notre Dame School of Law which stated that abortion “is always immoral.” When questioned about this publication during her confirmation hearings, Barrett said that she and her co-author were referencing the standard of the Catholic Church’s teachings and said that if she was confirmed, her faith would have no influence “on the discharge of my duties as a judge.” While this could sound as if her pro-life position is dormant in her jurisprudence, it is crucial to remember the normalcy of neutral answers during confirmation hearings.
Verdict: Justice Barrett is likely to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and overturn Roe.
The Battle Timeline of Mississippi’s 15-Week Abortion Ban:
March 2018
On March 19, then-governor of Mississippi Phil Bryant signs the 15-week abortion ban into law. Hours later, the Center for Reproductive Rights files suit in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi.
On March 20, 2018, the Center for Reproductive Rights is granted their request of a temporary restraining order, blocking the 15-week ban for 10 days.
November 2018
The Center for Reproductive Rights is granted a permanent injunction by the same federal court, blocking Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion indefinitely. When issuing the order, Judge Carlton Reeves delivers a strong rebuke of the Mississippi legislature:
“…the real reason we are here is simple. The State chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. This Court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature.
“Mississippi’s law violates Supreme Court precedent, and in doing so it disregards the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of autonomy for women desiring to control their own reproductive health.”
December 2019
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the lower court’s decision, with Judge Patrick Higginbotham opining,
“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability. States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions.”
Mississippi then requests a hearing en banc, which would summon the entire 5th Circuit and not just a panel of three. This request is denied the following January.
June 2020
Mississippi files a writ of certiorari requesting the U.S. Supreme Court review the 15-week abortion ban.
May 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court grants Mississippi’s request.
December 1, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Dobbs.
First lady Jill Biden revealed the 2021 White House Christmas decorations on Monday, and the State Dining Room was adorned with stockings above the mantel. But there was one blatant problem with the decor.
According to Daily Mail reporter Emily Goodin, the stockings were meant to represent the Bidens’ grandchildren, with each one having the name of a different grandchild.
Trees in state dining room decorated with old photos of first families. Stockings on fireplace have names of Biden grandkids pic.twitter.com/pkFjrAPyhy
However, Twitter users quickly noticed a glaring omission from the mantle. Only six stockings hung above the fireplace despite the fact that President Joe Biden has seven grandchildren.
According to Marie Claire, Biden has three granddaughters from his son Hunter: Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy.
He has two more grandchildren from his late son, Beau: Natalie and Robert, who goes by Hunter after his uncle.
So who is Biden’s seventh grandchild? That would be Hunter Biden’s son with adult entertainer Lunden Alexis Roberts. The boy was born in 2018 and Hunter was proven to be the father in 2020, according to Marie Claire.
So that makes a total of seven grandchildren, one more than the number of stockings on the mantle.
Multiple people pointed out the omission on Twitter, including reporter Amber Athey of The Spectator.
Despite this seemingly obvious exclusion, the establishment media refused to report on it. (At The Western Journal, we fight to bring you the news other outlets will not. You can support us in the fight for truth by subscribing.)
Many social media users also speculated that Hunter Biden’s child with Roberts was the one grandchild who was left out.
In the photo above, some letters can be seen on the stockings. The beginnings of the names “Naomi,” “Finnegan” and “Natalie” appear to be written.
Since all the names cannot be seen, it is hard to confirm that Roberts’ child is the one left out. However, that does not make the Biden family look much better.
If the family left out Hunter’s son with Roberts, they were essentially ignoring him because they view him as an embarrassment. If it was a different grandchild who was left out, the family simply forgot one of their grandchildren.
Trees in state dining room decorated with old photos of first families. Stockings on fireplace have names of Biden grandkids pic.twitter.com/pkFjrAPyhy
Grant is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He has five years of writing experience with various outlets and enjoys covering politics and sports.
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that Americans worried about increasing gasoline prices should purchase electric vehicles to save money. Families that own an electric vehicle won’t ever have to worry about gasoline prices, Buttigieg told MSNBC in an interview Sunday. Americans who live in rural and urban areas would benefit most from buying an electric car since they currently spend so much at the pump, he said.
“Most of the physical infrastructure work was contemplated in the bill that was just signed, but there is more envisioned in the Build Back Better law,” the transportation secretary said during the interview. “It contains incentives to make it more affordable to buy an electric vehicle.”
“Up to a $12,500 discount, in effect, for families thinking about getting an EV,” he continued. “Families that once they own that EV will never have to worry about gas prices again.”
The $12,500 “discount” would be a tax credit under the Build Back Better Act, Democrats’ budget reconciliation package making its way through Congress. The credit would only be available for purchases of cars made by domestic union labor.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg looks on as President Joe Biden speaks during a cabinet meeting on Nov. 12. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
However, Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has opposed the provision, arguing that not all electric vehicles should be eligible for the credit, according to Automotive News. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, which isn’t unionized, in addition to foreign car manufacturers have also opposed the provision.
Gasoline prices, which are tied to the price of crude oil, have surged over the last several months, hitting multi-year highs, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed. Average nationwide gas prices were down slightly to $3.39 per gallon on Monday, according to AAA.
But the average cost of a new electric vehicle was $55,600 in 2019, nearly $20,000 more than the average price of all new cars, Quartz reported. Charging an electric car with a range of 200 miles costs about $9 and typically takes around eight hours.
Moreover, 60% of electricity generated in the U.S. originates from fossil fuel power plants, according to the EIA. Wind and solar account for 10% of the electricity produced nationwide.
President Joe Biden has stated that his administration will work to make the electric grid completely carbon-free by 2035.
House Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion spending package Nov. 19 after months of high-stakes negotiations, but it faces an even rockier path through the 50-50 Senate before becoming law. Though the bill faces another vote-a-rama, which allows Republicans the opportunity to force unlimited, politically tricky votes on various amendments, this may prove to be far from the biggest hurdle. Senators from Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the most conservative Democrat in the chamber, to Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, are already on-record opposing various provisions and are preparing to rework the House-passed bill.
After the bill passed the House on near party lines Nov. 19, leadership touted many of the provisions at risk of omission, saying that the differences between House and Senate Democrats were minimal.
“Ninety percent of the bill was written together — House, Senate, White House,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference shortly after the bill passed, adding that while “some minor changes” may occur, they would be “nothing major in my opinion.”
But Pelosi’s optimism may not pan out, as Senate Democrats zero in on policies from paid family leave to state and local tax (SALT) deductions. Other provisions from raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to overhauling IRS monitoring of personal bank accounts, have already been scrapped due to opposition from centrist Democrats like Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Below are several policies that may fall victim to Senate Democrats, despite their House colleagues’ best efforts to make them law.
Democrats react to the passage of the Build Back Better Act the morning of Nov. 19. Its passage was undoubtedly a victory Speaker Nancy Pelosi.(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Manchin has repeatedly said that he opposes paid family and medical leave’s inclusion in the package, though he has also said he would support a bipartisan bill establishing it in the future. While the original proposal included 12 weeks of paid family leave, the House-passed bill has just four and would not begin until 2024.
“That’s a challenge,” Manchin said in early November when news broke that Democrats were planning to re-add the provision to the bill despite his stated opposition. “I just don’t support ‘unpaid’ leave. That means getting more debt and basically putting more social programs that we can’t pay for.”
Manchin has also said that any reconciliation bill must include the Hyde Amendment, which bars Americans’ tax dollars from funding abortions in nearly all cases. The amendment was excluded from the House bill. House Democrats from high-tax states like California, New York and New Jersey insisted that the SALT cap be lifted from the current $10,000 cap adopted in 2017 as part of former President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In their version of Biden’s package, the cap would be lifted to $80,000 annually through 2030.
While the policy was touted by coastal House Democrats, including Pelosi, some of their Senate colleagues have staunchly objected to including a tax cut that would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy Americans.
“[I’m] not a big fan,” Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said of the SALT provisions after the House passed the bill. “I think it gives tax breaks to the wrong people: rich people.”
Sanders, who has long opposed raising the SALT cap, was even blunter. “I think it’s bad politics, it’s bad policy … The bottom line is, we have to help the middle class, not the 1%,” he said.
Even Manchin, who constantly torpedoed Sanders’ attempts to broaden the overall bill, has opposed reigning in how much in taxes Americans can deduct via SALT. While he has not commented publicly on the provision, he was the only Democrat who endorsed Republicans’ effort to establish the cap four years ago.
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with reporters as he leaves the Capitol in October. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Manchin has already scrubbed the White House’s proposed Clean Electricity Payment Program from the bill, and, along with Tester, ruling out a carbon tax as a replacement provision shortly after.
Manchin also reportedly objected to a union-made electric vehicle credit. The House-passed bill would allow for a $7,500 tax deduction on all electric vehicles and an additional $4,500 deduction on vehicles from companies meeting particular outlined criteria. As a result, an electric vehicle from General Motors or Ford could receive $12,000 in deductions, while one from Toyota, which has a large presence in West Virginia, could receive just $7,500.
“This can’t happen. It’s not who we are as a country. It’s not how we built this country, and the product should speak for itself,” Manchin told Automotive News on Nov. 11 while at a Toyota plant in his home state. “We shouldn’t use everyone’s tax dollars to pick winners and losers … Hopefully, we’ll get that … corrected.”
Climate change provisions also account for about $550 billion of the House-passed bill, and moderates, including Manchin, have insisted that the bill be fully paid for. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the package would add about $367 billion to the deficit over 10 years, not including potential revenue from IRS enforcement, meaning that the provisions could be tampered down if senators object to the bill’s overall price tag.
Included in the House-passed bill is a provision that would grant provisional work permits to as many as 6.5 million noncitizen immigrants. Democrats hope that this will be the first step on a pathway to citizenship, but their last two attempts to include some type of immigration reform have been blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian, who ruled that the changes didn’t directly impact the budget to a point where they could be included in the filibuster-proof legislation.
“I do support the immigration proposals that are being offered in the upcoming reconciliation package,” Sinema told the Arizona Republic earlier in November. “I also recognize that there are legal limitations to what can be done in a reconciliation package.”
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.
A Catholic student has filed a lawsuit against a New Hampshire school district, claiming he was punished for stating that there are only two genders in a debate with another student. The student, a freshman at Exeter High School identified in court documents as “M.P.,” was suspended from playing football for one game after saying there were only two genders. The school district contends that no rights were violated and the decision was made by coaches.
The lawsuit was filed in Rockingham Superior Court on Nov. 4, with the local school administrative unit, known as SAU 16, receiving a copy of the complaint last week. Cornerstone Action, a conservative group representing the student, argued in a statement on Monday that the punishment violated the student’s free speech rights. The group claims that a politically progressive student who is not trans-identified engaged the Catholic student in a debate over gender identity, in which M.P. argued that the only two genders are male and female. The progressive student allegedly turned over an exchange of text messages to Vice Principal Mary Dovholuk. The vice principal is accused of confronting M. P. with printed copies of the messages.
Of particular objection was the school district’s Gender Nonconforming Students policy enacted in 2016, which Cornerstone contends is used to coerce speech.
“In applying this policy, the defendants have not only punished a student for expressing an opinion, but seek to compel students to use ‘non-binary’ pronouns such as the singular pronoun ‘they,’” the lawsuit reads.
“M. P. did not harass or demean any student, but simply expressed his views on a contentious cultural issue. The key question before the court will be if Exeter’s Gender Nonconforming Students policy, nearly identical to the policy adopted by school districts across the state, can be used to suppress the free speech rights of students who hold dissenting views.”
In a statement shared with The Christian Post, SAU 16 Superintendent David Ryan said school officials “respect the right of coaches to make such decisions in a manner consistent with the standards for all student athletes.”
“While we cannot reveal all of the facts at this time, due to the pending litigation and involvement of a minor, it is our belief that once all of the facts are reviewed as part of the legal process, it will be clear that no rights were violated,” the superintendent stressed.
“SAU 16 remains committed to creating and sustaining a trusting, diverse, inclusive school community where all are welcomed, respected, valued and empowered.”
Ryan also defended the school district’s gender-nonconforming policies, saying that the measures “exist in order to meet the districts’ legal obligation under New Hampshire law to ensure that transgender students have equal access to educational opportunity and are protected from discrimination.”
“The policies do not mandate student discipline, but instead recommend corrective action for discrimination or harassment,” Ryan added.
“It is important to note that a coach’s decision is different from a suspension from school and that all student athletes are expected to serve as role models and to treat their fellow students with respect. SAU 16 is in full support of the measures taken by the coaching staff at Exeter High School.”
Photo Image courtesy International Lutheran Council
Meet the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for publishing long-held Christian beliefs. Juhana Pohjola wouldn’t be cast to play his own part if Hollywood made a movie about a bishop put on trial for his faith. The Finnish pastor has inherited a place in the church of Martin Luther, but it appears none of Luther’s pugnacity or vitriol. In person, Pohjola, 49, is forthright but unassuming, and gentle. Stereotypically, the Finn is thin and tall. He often pauses while speaking to carefully consider his next words. He listens attentively to others with far less impressive resumes.
In more than two decades as a pastor, Pohjola has ministered to congregations as small as 30. He has spent his life building a network of faithful churches across Finland, many of which started with a few people gathered for prayer, Bible study, hymn-singing—and communion, if they can get a pastor. In an in-person interview with The Federalist, Pohjola urged fellow Christian leaders to be willing to seek out “one lost sheep” instead of crowds and acclaim.
This is the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years. Also charged in the case that goes to trial on January 24 is Pohjola’s fellow Lutheran and a Finnish member of Parliament, Paivi Rasanen. Rasanen’s alleged crimes in a country that claims to guarantee freedom of speech and religion include tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. Potential penalties if they are convicted include fines and up to two years in prison.
Finnish Authorities: The Bible Is Hate Speech
Rasanen and Pohjola are being charged with “hate speech” for respectively writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains basic Christian theology about sex and marriage, which reserves sex exclusively for within marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman, for life. The Finnish prosecutor claims centuries-old Christian teachings about sex “incite hatred” and violate legal preferences for government-privileged identity groups.
Writer Rod Dreher pointed out the witch hunt nature of this prosecution: “Räsänen wrote that pamphlet seven years before LGBT was added to the national hate-speech law as a protected class. She was investigated once before for the pamphlet, and cleared — but now she’s going to undergo another interrogation.”
Rasanen and Pohjola both have adamantly affirmed“the divinely given dignity, value, and human rights of all, including all who identify with the LGBTQ community.” Christian theology teaches that all human beings are precious, as all are made in God’s image and offered eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In advance of the trial, Rasanen and Pohjola have been interrogated by police for hours about their theology. Pohjola told me in the interrogation police treated Christian beliefs as thought crimes. In a statement, Rasanen noted that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finland’s law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime.
“It is impossible for me to think that the classical Christian views and the doctrine of the majority of denominations would become illegal. The question here is about the core of Christian faith; how a person gets saved into unity with God and into everlasting life though the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus. Therefore, it is crucial to also talk about the nature of sin,” Rasanen told Dreher. “As we are living in a democratic country, we must be able to disagree and express our disagreement. We have to be able to cope with speech that we feel insults our feelings. Many questions are so debatable and contradictory that we have to have the possibility of discussing. Otherwise, the development is towards a totalitarian system, with only one correct view.”
Major International Implications
Humans rights lawyer Paul Coleman, who spoke to The Federalist from his Alliance Defending Freedom International office in Vienna, Austria, says Pohjola and Rasanen’s cases are a “canary in the coalmine” for freedom of speech across the West. ADF International is providing legal support for Pohjola and Rasanen’s cases.
“Although all European countries have these hate speech laws, and these hate speech laws are increasingly being used against citizens for things that they say, this is the first time we’ve really seen Christians face criminal prosecution for explaining their biblical views,” Coleman said. “…It’s unprecedented. We’ve not seen attacks on free speech on this level in Europe, and that’s why they are extremely important cases, not just for the people of Finland and Paivi Rasanen and the bishop themselves, but for all of Europe. If this is upheld in one jurisdiction, we will no doubt see it in other jurisdictions as well.”
Such “hate speech” laws exist in every European country and Western countries such as Canada and Australia, and descend from Soviet influence. Coleman called them “sleeper laws,” saying that in other countries “they could be used any time just like they are in Finland. People need to mobilize against these laws and overturn them.”
Legally privileging certain sexual behavior has thus broken western countries’ promises of equality before the law for all citizens, as well as enabling government discrimination against citizens who exercise their free speech and religious liberty, as in the Baronnelle Stutzman and Jack Phillips cases in the United States.
“Establishing standards of identity” also lets government meddle in theological controversies that are none of its business, said the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shaw, who directs church relations for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and has known Pohjola for decades. Pohjola’s church is an international partner of the LCMS.
From a natural law and historic Western perspective, “the government isn’t supposed to get into people’s brains and tell them what’s right and wrong to believe and say,” Shaw noted in a phone interview. “That’s not their realm. Their realm is in externals, things like protect people in their bodies, go to war when necessary, and punish criminals… This is really what’s at stake [in the Pohjola case]. Government has lost its moorings and doesn’t know its purpose.”
From Part-Time Pastor to Bishop
After theological study in Finland and the United States, Pohjola’s first congregation in Helsinki started with about 30 members, he says. It was only able to support him part-time at first. He remembered his wife accompanying the congregation’s hymn-singing on a piano while their firstborn daughter, a baby at the time, laid on a blanket on the floor nearby.
Finland’s state church began openly disobeying Christian theology concerning sex differences amid the global sexual revolution of the 1960s. So, Christians alienated by the state church’s embrace of anti-Christian cultural demands sought faithful pastors like Pohjola, who are known as “confessional” for adhering to historic Christian confessions. The resulting growth of his tiny congregation gradually led to establishing a seminary, then dozens of mission churches, which grew as the theologically unfaithful state church shrank. In 2013, 25 of these new confessional congregations formed the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Finland. Today, that diocese oversees 45 congregations and missions and is training 64 pastors.
That growth has been accompanied by suffering, including persecution first from Pohjola’s own church.
First Persecuted By His Own Church
In 2009, Pohjola was awarded the theological journal Gottesdienst’s Sabre of Boldness Award, which is granted “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity on behalf of the Holy Church of Christ, while engaged in the confession of His Pure Gospel in the face of hostile forces, and at the greatest personal risk.” The award honored Pohjola, with other faithful Finnish pastors, for standing firm as Finland’s state church sought civil charges against them for refusing to disobey the Bible’s commands that only men be sent to lead spiritual warfare as pastors.
Like Luther before him, Pohjola was expelled by his own church body in 2014 for adhering to God’s word on this matter. The notice of his discharge declared Pohjola was “obviously unfit to be a pastor.” At the time, he responded with grief but also by saying that he must obey God rather than men, lamenting: “Instead of the Church being purged with God’s Word, she is being purged from God’s Word.”
In the interview last week, Pohjola said being defrocked from “his baptismal church” grieves him to this day. On his mother’s side, Pohjola said, his family includes Lutheran pastors in that church going back to the 17th century Reformation. But he could not disobey God’s commands to retain his social status or employment.
Division or Unity? Yes
Pohjola’s separation from Finland’s state church also had the consequence of uniting him and his flock with other confessional Christians across the globe. The International Lutheran Council is a global network of theologically unified churches, and like the confessional churches in Finland, that network is growing.
Mathew Block, the ILC’s communications manager, noted that the heightened contradictions between increasingly unnatural pagan practices and historic Christian teachings are causing a global “confessional realignment.” It’s forcing people to make a real decision about where they stand rather than allowing them to inhabit the increasingly nonexistent, indecisive middle. This is affecting churches all over the world. While it means divisions in some areas, it also is leading to unity in others. For example, despite other important theological differences, all the world’s largest Christian bodies agree with the doctrines for which the Finnish government is persecuting Pohjola. That allows them to speak in chorus to government leaders.
Already many dozens of top religious leaders across the world have formally raised their concerns with Rasanen and Pohjola’s prosecution to the Finnish government and the United Nations. Several U.S. members of Congress have also asked U.S. agencies to take action against Finland for these human rights abuses.
“I encourage Roman Catholic ecclesiastical leaders and all those who care for souls to speak up and join hands and lock arms with us as we talk about the absolute necessity of our historic Christian values of one man, one woman, marriage, and the freedom to be able to believe it, to say it, to publish books about it, and find practical ways through hospitality, education, and other social engagement to make society strong that way,” Shaw said. “All churches—one could even say all religions but in particular the Roman Catholic faith—this reflects their historic commitments as well.”
The Shepherd Faces Wolf Attacks for the Sheep
In August 2021, the international Lutheran church recognized Pohjola’s steadfast leadership amid persecution by supporting his election to bishop of Finland’s confessional diocese. The ILC hosted Pohjola’s November 2021 speaking tour in the United States, and is raising funds across the world to raise awareness of his case.
“Our mission has been that, if the shepherd sees that one sheep is missing, he knows,” Pohjola said of the churches he oversees. He noted that many people coming to faithful Finnish churches are seeking love and connection from a church family as the secular world becomes increasingly isolated and family-less, in no small part because of pagan sexual behavior and beliefs.
“People don’t go to church for social capital now. This is a serious life and they want to be serious with God. So, churches have to build communities that stand on solid Lutheran, biblical doctrine,” Pohjola says.
While he may not share Luther’s temperament, Pohjola’s response to his own persecution by church and civil authorities does mirror Luther’s simplicity four centuries ago: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He adds a pastoral message to Christians watching governments turn on them today.
“We have to learn from the past, Christians who have suffered under persecution, and be prepared,” Pohjola said. “But it’s not something to be worried about, because Christ remains faithful to His church and wherever he is leading us, He will come with us. He will provide everything that is needed for the future of His Christians and His church.”
Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin redoubled his efforts to convince President Joe Biden to reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that it would bolster U.S. energy independence. Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, made the comments following Biden’s decision to tap into the U.S. emergency oil stockpile. The federal government will release approximately 50 million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the White House said Tuesday.
“I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built which would have provided our country with up to 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies,” Manchin said in a statement.
“To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country’s future,” he continued.
Sen. Joe Manchin stands next to Sen. Mitt Romney as they arrive before President Joe Biden takes part in a signing ceremony for the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Nov. 15. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Shortly after Biden revoked Keystone XL’s federal permit, Manchin urged the president to reconsider. Pipelines are the nation’s “safest mode to transport our oil,” the West Virginia Democrat stated at the time.
But the president has continued to pursue an aggressive, anti-fossil fuel agenda that includes nixing pipelines importing crude oil, ditching oil drilling projects and banning new oil and gas leases on federal lands. Biden has vowed to set the U.S. on course to having a carbon-free electric grid by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050.
“This is the decade that will determine the answer. This decade,” Biden said during an international climate summit on Nov. 1. “The science is clear: We only have a brief window left before us to raise our ambitions and to raise — to meet the task that’s rapidly narrowing.”
Manchin, however, has stood in the way of Biden’s climate agenda, causing Democrats to strike the $150 billion Clean Electricity Performance Program from the Build Back Better Act. It remains unclear whether he will vote in favor of the current form of the spending package which includes a tax on methane emissions.
Oil Prices Rise After Biden Announces Emergency Action
Reported by THOMAS CATENACCI | ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER | November 23, 2021
Domestic and international oil price indices rose Tuesday, even after President Joe Biden and other world leaders coordinated a release of emergency reserves.
The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil index, which measures U.S. prices, increased more than 2% to $78.44 per barrel while the European Brent Crude index ticked up nearly 3%, hitting $82 per barrel. But, in an effort to knock down high gasoline prices, which are tied to the cost of oil, Biden joined several nations, including China, Japan and the U.K., in releasing tens of millions of barrels of oil from emergency reserves.
The White House said the U.S. would withdraw 50 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), established in the 1970s for future energy crises and currently holding about 604 million barrels in inventory. The U.S. consumes 18-19 million barrels of oil per day, and the world consumes nearly 100 million total barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency.
“Joe Biden is going to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That is less than three days of U.S. oil consumption,” Steve Milloy, a former member of the Trump transition team, tweeted. “The release will have no meaningful impact on gas prices. Ridiculous.”
“Biden could collapse the price of oil today and create an economic boom by simply ending his war against fracking and returning to the Trump policy of energy dominance,” Milloy continued. “Instead, we get this trivial release of oil and a false accusation so price gouging.”
Indigenous environmental activists march through Black Lives Matter Plaza on their way to the White House as part of a protest against oil pipelines on April 1. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Energy industry experts and Republican lawmakers echoed Milloy’s comments Tuesday, arguing the move was driven by politics rather than a desire to lower prices over the long term. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, shared in the criticism, saying Biden should do more than apply a “band-aid” to fix the issue.
“Historic inflation taxes and the lack of a comprehensive all-of-the-above energy policy pose a clear and present threat to (Americans’) economic and energy security that can no longer be ignored,” Manchin said in a statement.
The president previously acknowledged that releasing emergency reserves would have a limited impact.
The price of oil is likely to stay elevated since the market has already reacted to the emergency reserve release, according to a recent Goldman Sachs industry report. Investors expected such a move, the report added.
“It’s going up because it’s not more, and (investors are) reading no changes in the US policies towards oil and gas production,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Biden has pursued an aggressive climate agenda, attacking the U.S. oil and gas industry by nixing pipelines, ditching drilling projects and introducing broad regulations. He also accused the industry of price gouging in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission.
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.
The Virginia police officer who abruptly lost his job after it was revealed he donated to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense fund wants his job back after a jury concluded that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and declared him not guilty of murder.
Norfolk Police Lt. William Kelly was fired in April after the Guardian revealed the names of police officers and other public officials who donated to Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund. Kelly reportedly donated $25, and used his department-issued email address while making the donation. Kelly also left a message on the crowdsourcing website that read, “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”
In terminating Kelly, Norfolk city manager Chip Filer said, “His egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve.”
Meanwhile, Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone suggested that Kelly’s comments eroded trust between police officers and the public.
Kelly, who was a 19-year-veteran of the police department, wants his job back. He spoke to the Daily Mail in an interview on Friday after the Rittenhouse verdict, explaining why he thought Rittenhouse was innocent.
“Everything I’m saying is just my personal opinion. I’ve been a homicide detective, a violent crimes investigator for years. I have a background. I watched the video of the shooting and I’d seen the video of the journalists of Mr. Rittenhouse before the shooting and the protesters before the shooting and I thought it painted a pretty clear picture that Mr. Rittenhouse had a very strong claim for self-defense,” Kelly explained.
“I was very surprised when he was charged soon after the shooting with these murders and the shooting of the third victim,” he added.
By donating to Rittenhouse’s defense fund, Kelly said he was promoting the foundational American ideal that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
“I was interested in giving him the chance to defend himself in front of a jury. I know that lawyers are expensive, and it’s hard sometimes to get the message out there. I wanted to make sure that he had the means necessary to make his claim in court,” Kelly told the Daily Mail. “It mattered. The comments I made, my belief that he has a strong claim for self-defense was a personal opinion. I didn’t want my city or police department to be associated with it, so I chose to donate anonymously.”
Kelly also said his opinion about the Rittenhouse case had “no impact on my ability to do my job as a police officer,” and should not have resulted in his termination.
“This is America. You can agree with your neighbors and other people in your community and you can disagree with them,” Kelly said. “Just because someone has a different opinion than you, it doesn’t mean you should destroy their lives, take their job away.”
“If I had a different opinion and I donated to a fund for the victims and made comments about how Mr. Rittenhouse was a murderer, nobody would have cared or tried to get me fired,” Kelly added.
When Kelly was fired, he was just 10 months away from his pension being vested. If he does not get his job back, he will never see the pension that he worked nearly 20 years to earn.
Kelly has filed a grievance seeking to be reinstated.
My dismissal reflects inconsistency, unfairness and discrimination by the City of Norfolk in regard to speech by members of the Norfolk Police Department. I engaged in speech which was private and anonymous but became public through no fault of my own, and which, when made public, upset a small number of vocal people for a very short time. The Chief of Police of the Norfolk Police Department, in contrast, has been permitted to parade through the streets of Norfolk, wearing his Norfolk Police Department uniform, holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign while marching with a crowd protesting against police and law enforcement…
Kelly told the Daily Mail he hopes for a hearing over his grievance by the end of January, but said his case could be resolved before then, especially considering the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial.
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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.
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.
Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, speaks as supporters rally around her in November 2016. | (Photo: ADF/Screengrab)
A Christian florist has agreed to pay $5,000 to end a years long legal battle centered on her refusal to provide floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding ceremony. She has also announced that she will retire so that her flower shop can be run by her employees.
Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, was sued by Rob Ingersoll, a man she had done business with in the past, because she refused to provide a floral arrangement for his same-sex wedding in 2013. Stutzman was represented by the conservative legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, while Ingersoll was represented by the progressive group the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU argued that Stutzman’s refusal was a violation of state discrimination law. The florist suffered legal defeats in lower courts before her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected earlier this year.
A settlement has been reached in the legal case that allows Stutzman to avoid having to pay crippling fines and legal fees. As part of the agreement, Stutzman will pay the same-sex couple $5,000 while the ADF will, in return, withdraw a petition to the Supreme Court for reconsideration.
During a Zoom call organized by ADF Thursday afternoon, the 77-year-old great grandmother announced retirement and plans to sell Arlene’s Flowers to her employees. She also intends to support others dealing with religious liberty legal battles.
“I’ve never had to compromise my conscience or go against my faith. I’ve met so many, many kind and wonderful people, who’ve generously offered me their prayers and encouragement and support,” she stated in a statement posted online after the Zoom call.
“There is a great deal of division at work in our country today, but God has shown me again and again that His love is stronger than the anger and the pain so many are feeling. And He’s given me countless opportunities to share His love with others along the way.”
In 2013, Stutzman refused to make flowers for the wedding of Ingersoll and Curt Freed because of her belief that the Bible describes marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. In response, Stutzman was sued by the same-sex couple, with a county court issuing a fine of $1,000 and deeming her liable for thousands of dollars in legal fees. Stutzman appealed the ruling, and the Washington Supreme Court ruled in February 2017 that she violated state antidiscrimination law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation when she refused to make the floral arrangement.
In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling against Stutzman and sent the case back to the state supreme court for further consideration.
The Supreme Court cited its 7-2 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The justices ruled that baker Jack Phillips was mistreated by the Colorado commission when he was punished for refusing to design a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2012. Same-sex marriage was not legal in Colorado at that time. However, Washington’s high court reaffirmed its earlier ruling against Stutzman in June 2019, stating that her conduct “constitutes sexual orientation discrimination.”
In July, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch believing the nation’s high court should have accepted the appeal.
“After Curt and I were turned away from our local flower shop, we cancelled the plans for our dream wedding because we were afraid it would happen again,”said Ingersoll in a July statement.
“We had a small ceremony at home instead. We hope this decision sends a message to other LGBTQ people that no one should have to experience the hurt that we did.”
ADF General Counsel Kristen Waggoner said that the settlement should not be seen as a “surrender of Barronelle’s beliefs.”
“Over the last eight years, Barronelle stood for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans, even those who disagree with her about a deeply personal and important issue like marriage,” Waggoner said. “And in so doing, she’s inspired millions of others in their own public and personal battles to live their faith without government interference.”
Waggoner further stated that Stutzman “laid the groundwork” for the Supreme Court to take on similar religious freedom cases.
Stutzman specifically mentioned her support for Christian web designer Lorie Smith and her company, 303 Creative. Smith pushed back on a Colorado law that she felt would require her to make services available to gay couples seeking help in creating wedding websites although same-sex weddings contradict the teachings of her faith.
This summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled against Smith. Smith has appealed her case to the Supreme Court for consideration.
“The Supreme Court needs to affirm the right of all Americans to speak and live consistent with their conscience,” Waggoner argued.
A New York City junior high is planning on separating students by race in order to discuss social justice topics next week, according to The New York Post.
According to an email sent to parents obtained by the outlet, the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School will conduct the activity in order to “…undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community.”
Principal Shanna Douglas wrote in the email that children in grades seven and eight will opt into one of five “affinity groups.” Asians, whites and multi-racial students will be in their own categories. African-American and Hispanic students will be combined into one group.
Douglas added that said she is emphasizing race this school year because “…students are talking about it since race has become a popular topic on social media, or parents are talking even more about it at home due to the recent incidents across the nation.”
She claimed that the school had failed to adequately address race issues before in the institution that is 44 percent Asian, 29 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent black.
An additional group will be offered for those uncomfortable with the format of the program. Nathaniel Styer, spokesperson for the Department of Education said that it is “…abundantly clear to both students and parents that anyone can opt-out of this two day celebration if they desire.”
The opening question for discussion will be “Why are we even talking about racial identity?”
Parents told the outlet that they are concerned that the program will be more divisive for students that that the politically charged program is being prioritized over traditional academics.
The House Friday morning passed its version of President Joe Biden’s spending package, sending the nearly $2 trillion bill to the Senate where it is likely to be picked apart by Democratic senators opposed to multiple provisions.
Included in the House bill are provisions on paid family leave, state and local tax (SALT) deductions, spending meant to mitigate the effects of climate change, and other items which have been met with resistance from Democratic senators whose votes are critical to passing the package in the 50-50 chamber.
The bill as written is the largest overhaul to the American social-safety net in decades, establishing or expanding programs including universal pre-K, Medicare expansions and price negotiations, the child tax credit and more.
“The Build Back Better Act will make transformational investments that will help more Americans access opportunities and achieve greater economic security,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. “This is truly for the people.”
The House Friday morning passed its version of President Joe Biden’s spending package, sending the $1.7 trillion bill to the Senate where it is all but certain to be picked apart by Democratic senators opposed to multiple provisions. Included in the House bill are provisions on paid family leave, state and local tax (SALT) deductions, spending meant to mitigate the effects of climate change, and other items which have been met with resistance from Democratic senators whose votes are critical to passing the package in the 50-50 chamber.
But despite the coming Senate hurdles and staunch Republican opposition — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke against the bill and Democrats’ “one-party rule” for over eight-and-a-half hours, blocking the bill from clearing the chamber Thursday night — House Democrats touted the budget as a win for families and the working class before it passed the chamber on a 220-213 vote. Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden was the only lawmaker to cross party lines, joining Republicans in voting no.
“The Build Back Better Act will make transformational investments that will help more Americans access opportunities and achieve greater economic security,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on the House floor Thursday to applause from his Democratic colleagues. “This bill is truly for the people. Not just those who have too much, but those who have too little.”
The bill as written is the largest overhaul to the American social-safety net in decades, establishing or expanding programs including universal preschool, Medicare expansions and price negotiations, the child tax credit and more. The House had moved toward a vote throughout the day Thursday, beginning the package in the morning and adjourning as lawmakers waited for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score it. The score, which moderate Democrats had insisted on before voting on the bill, came Thursday afternoon. The CBO estimated that the package would add $367 billion to the national debt over the next decade, not including $207 billion in revenue that could be generated from increased IRS enforcement.
Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a moderate Democrat who had insisted on a CBO score before voting for the package, said she would vote in favor Thursday night. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
While the analysis was enough to satisfy moderate Democrats, it bolstered Republican arguments that the massive bill would only worsen the national debt as America’s economic recovery already faced decades-high inflation and days after Congress authorized and Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
“Every page of this all new Washington spending will be paid for from you, the American hard-working taxpayer,” McCarthy said in the beginning of his overnight speech, where he criticized the bill, railed against Democrats, and lamented everything from inflation to China to former President Jimmy Carter to McDonald’s dollar menu to Elon Musk.
“I want the American people to know, it will not be one-party rule in one year,” McCarthy later said, predicting that the GOP would take back the House in 2022.
When the House reconvened at 8 a.m. Friday, Pelosi spoke before the vote, urging her colleagues to pass the bill and quipped about McCarthy’s tactics. “As a courtesy to my colleagues, I will be brief,” Pelosi said.
Though House Democrats successfully passed the budget before leaving Washington for an extended Thanksgiving recess, the bill faces a rocky path through the Senate before it can arrive on Biden’s desk. Multiple Democratic senators, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have already opposed specific provisions, meaning that whatever bill emerges is all but certain to have changed from what cleared the House Friday.
Most of Sanders’ opposition has focused on the SALT provisions, which he and Republicans alike have criticized as little more than a tax cut for wealthy Americans who live in Democratic-leaning states.
“I think it’s bad politics, it’s bad policy,” Sanders told reporters Thursday regarding the SALT deductions. “Bottom line, we need to help the middle class, not the 1%.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders holds a news conference about state and local tax deductions in early November. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Unlike Sanders, however, Manchin and Sinema have long objected to parts of the bill, with both of them vowing months ago to oppose its originally floated $3.5 trillion price tag. While Sinema already scrapped provisions raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans, Manchin has been outspoken against establishing paid family leave in the bill and has opposed several of the proposed climate change provisions.
“That’s a challenge. Very much of a challenge, and [top Democrats] know how I feel about that,” Manchin said earlier in November after news broke that House Democrats would include a paid family leave provision despite his opposition.
The Senate is set to take up the budget once it returns from Thanksgiving recess, coinciding with must-pass bills to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling.
“On a bill of this magnitude, this process takes time and patience,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a letter to Democrats Sunday. “We will update you regularly on these steps.”
New poll shows overwhelming majority of West Virginia voters support Joe Manchin’s opposition to Biden’s massive spending bill
New poll results show strong support for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and even more West Virginians applaud him in opposing President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar reconciliation spending bill. A poll conducted by MBE Research during the week of Nov. 7 among 702 registered West Virginia voters showed that Manchin is overwhelmingly supported by his constituents when it comes to taking a stand against Biden’s massive spending bill. The poll declared that 74% oppose President Biden’s reconciliation spending bill in favor of legislation that would control spending more.
Manchin has been the target of Democrats who are incensed that the senator would not fully support the massive spending spree. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) was so furious with Manchin for blocking Biden’s “Build Back Better” spending plan that she accused him of being “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant.”
“Joe Manchin’s opposition to the Build Back Better Act is anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant,” Bush proclaimed. “When we talk about transformative change, we are talking about a bill that will benefit Black, brown and Indigenous communities. Those same communities are overwhelmingly excluded from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. We cannot leave anyone behind.”
Earlier this month, Manchin explained his reluctance to support the huge spending bill.about:blank
“I’m open to supporting a final bill that helps move our country forward, but I’m equally open to voting against a bill that hurts our country,” Manchin said on Nov. 1, adding that the bill would end up “hurting American families suffering from historic inflation.”
Manchin said all he sees is “shell games and budget gimmicks” that mask “the real cost” of the “Build Back Better” bill, which he claims could end up being “twice as high” as advertised.
He declared that any bill that “expands social programs and irresponsibly adds to our $29 trillion in national debt” would be ill-advised.
When asked this week if West Virginia voters want the $1.75 trillion bill, Manchin responded, “I think my voters in West Virginia — but I don’t speak for the whole country, my voters … they’re very much concerned. Inflation has hit them extremely hard.”
“They have to drive … and the cost, they see it every day,” Manchin said of West Virginia voters on Tuesday. “And every day they go to fill up is a dollar and a quarter more a gallon. So they’re in $3.29, $3.39. A gallon of milk is now $4 in many places.”
“And it’s taking a toll,” Manchin continued. “And I hear it when I go to the grocery store, or if I go to the gas station. They say, ‘Are you as mad as I am?’ and I say, ‘Absolutely.'”
The MBE Research survey found that Manchin boasts a much higher approval rating than President Biden. Manchin’s approval rating is 60% compared to 37% who disapprove of his job performance. Meanwhile, President Biden only has a 32% approval rating from West Virginians and 65% who disapprove. Manchin said the poll demonstrates that he is doing what is best for West Virginia and not Washington.
“That poll showed that I’m not being controlled or led by anybody except the people of West Virginia,” Manchin said. “They know my job is to represent my state, and that comes first.”
“It tells me that I’m listening to West Virginians and what they’re telling me,” he added. “I come as frequently as I can — weekly if possible. I go to the grocery store, I go to filling stations and do everything that average West Virginians do when I’m home. I see the price increases, I see the concerns that people have, and when I come back to Washington I try explain to colleagues the people’s concerns.”
MBE Research pollster Mark Blankenship commented on the results, “Voters want to be listened to. When they feel like you’re listening to them, they will reward that either at the polls or in numbers like this. I think that’s what’s recognized here is that Senator Manchin is listening to the people of West Virginia.”
A new Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s job approval continues to fall. President Biden’s approval rating is now at 36% – down from 37% in October and 49% in February. There are 53% who disapprove of Biden – up from 52% in October. Specifically, 59% disapprove Biden’s handling of the economy and 55% disapprove of his foreign policy.
CHARGE: First-Degree Reckless Homicide, Use Of A Dangerous Weapon
VERDICT: Acquitted
The charge alleged Rittenhouse was responsible for Rosenbaum’s death under circumstances that showed an utter disregard for human life. The decision by prosecutors to charge reckless homicide rather than intentional homicide indicated the prosecution was unsure what Rittenhouse’s intent was. The charge carried up to 60 years in prison.
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CHARGE: First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety, Use Of A Dangerous Weapon
VERDICT: Acquitted
This charge relates to Rittenhouse’s alleged reckless endangerment of individuals on scene at the time of the incident, including Daily Caller Video Director Richie McGinniss, who testified he was in the line of fire when Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum. This charge carried a maximum 12 1/2 year sentence.
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CHARGE: First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety, Use Of A Dangerous Weapon
VERDICT: Acquitted
Video footage of the fatal night showed an unidentified individual, known as “Jump kick man” appearing to try and kick Rittenhouse as Rittenhouse laid on the floor just before Huber moved toward Rittenhouse with his skateboard. Rittenhouse appeared to fire two rounds at the unidentified individual but missed as the man ran away. This charge carried a 12 1/2 year sentence.
—-
CHARGE: First-Degree Intentional Homicide, Use Of A Dangerous Weapon
VERDICT: Acquitted
Prosecutors alleged Rittenhouse intentionally killed Huber, who had been seen on video attempting to hit Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard and trying to grab Rittenhouse’s gun before Rittenhouse fatally shot him. Prosecutors argued Rittenhouse pointing the gun at Huber and firing was intentional, though Rittenhouse’s right to self-defense trumped the intentional charge. A guilty verdict for first-degree intentional homicide carried a life in prison sentence.
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CHARGE: Attempted First-Degree Intentional Homicide, Use Of A Dangerous Weapon
VERDICT: Acquitted
Rittenhouse wounded Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm just after fatally shooting Huber. Grosskreutz was seen in video footage approaching Rittenhouse with a pistol drawn before Rittenhouse fired a single round at Grosskreutz, injuring his arm. The charge carried a maximum sentence of 60 years.
Judge Bruce Schroederdismissed the charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor Monday. Rittenhouse was 17-years-old at the time of the shooting. The charge only applied if the individual possessed, or was armed with a rifle or shotgun that was a short-barreled rifle or short-barreled shotgun, or if the person was not in compliance with certain hunting restrictions. Schroeder dismissed the charge on the grounds of an exception within the law relating to the gun’s barrel.
Schroeder had previously dismissed a curfew violation charge against Rittenhouse, with the judge agreeing with the defense that the prosecution had not provided sufficient evidenced that a curfew had been in effect.
This is a breaking story and will be updated as information becomes available.
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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.
Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial win in Virginia sent a clear message to government bureaucrats: treat parents with more respect. Parents are paramount to their kids’ welfare and education, and they have a right to be angry when treated otherwise. Yet parents should also reflect on how we got here and consider how they share at least some of the blame.
For decades, public schools have encroached on some basic parental responsibilities — from feeding kids to health care to helping with homework. Is it any wonder school officials view themselves as the leading authorities on your children?
Consider that, today, a huge number of kids are dropped off at schools before the classes even begin, as early as 6:30 a.m. Kids are watched and fed a simple breakfast. This program, known as “before care,” allows parents to head to work early, which may be necessary for parents who work an early shift. Yet it’s also used by parents who want an early start to the day and a hassle- and kid-free morning.
Many parents also seem happy to let schools feed their kids. The school lunch program, originally designed to help low-income families, is now feeding any child, regardless of need. In fact, according to the School Lunch Association, 7.7 million students paid full price for a school lunch in 2019, meaning the child’s family did not qualify for a reduced or free school lunch.
The full price for a school lunch varies but it averages at about $2.48 for elementary school and $2.74 for high school. Even with rising inflation, that’s enough to make a simple meal for a child. Yet so many parents who could easily do this themselves instead opt to let the school feed their kids because it’s convenient.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also funds weekend, holiday, and summer meal programs. This is on top of the generous food assistance that’s already provided to needy families through various programs. During the COVID shutdown of schools, even wealthy moms partook of these free food giveaways, since the USDA waived all requirements to show enrollment in the school meal program.
Working late? No sweat! Like the “before care” program, most schools now offer “after care” programs so that parents can work late. Participating students are typically assisted with their homework and fed. Not having to do homework with your kid sounds nice, but it also robs parents of knowing what is being taught and how their kid is doing with his or her schoolwork.
Students are even able to seek medical treatment without their parents’ consent. In Alexandria, Virginia, the high school’s “Teen Wellness Center” will alert parents if a child is seen for a cold, acne, or a few other minor illnesses. But parents are not informed if their child is there for a pregnancy test, diagnosis, and treatment of a sexually transmitted disease (including HIV), a prescription for birth control, “behavior change counseling,” mental health counseling, or substance abuse counseling. These services are all offered free of charge, so at no point would a student need to inform a parent.
Those who advocate for keeping children’s medical care private from parents often cite concerns about abuse arising from a parent finding out about their child’s sexual activity or its consequences. Yet school officials seem less concerned about the harms that could result from letting a child navigate these traumatic and potentially life-altering health conditions without assistance from their parents.
As for discipline, parents rarely have a place at the table. While schools used to be willing to contact parents, share information, and work as partners in setting kids on a better path, today, restorative justice programs cut out parents (and law enforcement), and reduce discipline to a performative joke.
If parents want to be respected by school officials, they need to stop ceding parenting basics to others. By placing these duties in the hands of teachers and school officials, parents have weakened their case that they are the primary caregivers for their children. I’m glad parents are fighting for their rights, but they should never have given up so much authority over their children’s upbringing in the first place.
Julie Gunlock directs the Independent Women’s Network and its Center for Progress and Innovation. She is the author of “From Cupcakes to Chemicals: How the Culture of Alarmism Makes Us Afraid of Everything and How to Fight Back.”
It is not an exaggeration to say that the United States is in crisis about the meanings of the words sex and gender. We are all victims of this crisis, but the primary victims are women and girls. Throughout U.S. law, the word sex is being completely redefined to mean “gender identity” or “transgender.” Congress is doing it. The Biden administration is doing it. The federal courts are doing it.
Most Americans have no comprehension of the implications of this, due to no fault of their own. Very few media outlets will permit us to talk about it. Yet feminists have been talking about it for a long time. The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has been talking about it since its founding in 2013 (I served on the board of WoLF from 2016-2020).
Jennifer Bilek talked about it in this publication in her 2018 essay, “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” She continues to talk about it in her outstanding 11th Hour Blog. The Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) has been talking about it globally since 2019 and in the United States since 2020 by advancing the aims of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which has been signed by more than 20,000 people and hundreds of organizations (I currently serve as the president of the U.S. chapter).
The mainstream media steadfastly ignores all of this and is engaged in a concerted effort to hide it from Americans. But Americans are waking up, due in large part to the steadfast work of radical feminists or, as some people might say, “TERFs.” The acronym “TERF,” said to mean “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” was created by misogynists to demean those of us who fight for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. Many feminists have chosen to reclaim the acronym, arguing that it stands for “Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools” or “Totally Excellent Radical Feminist.”
In October of this year, comedian Dave Chappelle made headlines when he proclaimed that he is “Team TERF” during his Netflix show “The Closer.” The hashtag #TeamTERF immediately started trending on Twitter. Chappelle did this in the context of defending British author J.K. Rowling, who has faced relentless abuse for her defense of women and girls and abuse survivors. If fighting for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls makes me a TERF, then so be it.
Many people will be angry with me for publishing in The Federalist because The Federalist is a conservative-leaning publication. I am not a conservative and never have been. I registered to vote as a Democrat in 1990. Since then, the only time I was not a registered Democrat was during a brief period in 2007 when I was registered Green (I re-registered as a Democrat so I could vote in the 2008 Democratic primary and have remained so ever since).
Still, I am grateful to The Federalist for publishing this because no one else will. That’s because U.S. media has been completely corrupted by an industry that is hell-bent on persuading ordinary Americans that there is such a thing as “gender identity” and that some people “are transgender.”
The truth is that “gender identity” does not exist in any real, material sense, and “transgender” is simply a made-up concept that is used to justify all kinds of atrocities, such as convicted male rapists and murderers being housed in women’s prisons with vulnerable women, men being permitted to parade around with erect penises in women’s sections of spas, and men participating in women’s sports. They are being permitted to do all of this on the basis that they have a so-called “female gender identity.”
All of “gender identity” and “transgender” politics is a men’s rights movement intended to objectify women’s bodies and erase us as a class. The entire edifice is a lie. It is left-wing misogyny on steroids.
Democratic Party leadership will not permit discussion about this, anywhere. But I assure readers that there are countless rank and file Democrats who are furious about it. I hear from them every day. Democrats are disgusted that party leadership is promoting the teaching of “gender identity” in schools down to the kindergarten level, celebrating the mutilation of healthy children’s bodies, and cheering on performances of “drag queen story hour” in public libraries.
The Democratic Party of today looks nothing like the Democratic Party that I was proud to be a part of just about all my life. Many Democrats share my despair. If the Republican Party manages to nominate just about anyone who is a decent human being for the presidency in 2024 (hint: “Grab ‘em by the p-ssy” guy is not included in this category), many Democrats will vote Republican.
Gender ideology is one of the reasons Democrats lost House seats in 2020 and one of the reasons Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia this month. I was proud to stand with parents in Loudoun County, and grateful to The Federalist for covering it (that coverage eventually got picked up in the U.K. via The Daily Mail). Gender will be one of the reasons that Democrats will lose more congressional seats in 2022 as well as the presidency in 2024.
I know people who have left the Democratic Party because of gender and become Independents. I know one woman who left the Democratic Party because of gender and registered Republican. I choose to remain a Democrat because I continue to hope the party will reverse course, as unlikely as that appears to be at this time, and have done my best to warn party leadership about what is coming here and here and here.
I am a second-wave feminist and a Democrat. I stand for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. These cannot be protected if sex is redefined incomprehensibly to include so-called “gender identity.”
Feminists have a saying: we cannot protect women and girls on the basis of sex if we cannot say what sex is. My hope is that lawmakers across the political aisle will get a grip and right the wrongs that have been perpetrated in the name of “gender identity.”
Every single human being is either female or male. No one “is transgender.” It’s long past time that lawmakers across the political aisle and members of corporate media said so.
Closing arguments of Wisconsin state prosecutors against Kyle Rittenhouse can best be summed up for the jury as, “Never mind! Don’t believe the video evidence or independent witnesses introduced in this trial; believe this alternate version of events that we’re telling you right now instead.”
Deliberations start Tuesday, and the jury has two options. It can acquit Rittenhouse based on scores of video evidence and testimony that show and say Rittenhouse shot three men who were chasing him and trying to get his gun. Or it can convict him based on a weird story that contradicts the state’s own witnesses and that requires a belief that 18-year-old Rittenhouse, for no obvious reason, felt like shooting some random people, all white men, that night last August.
During summations on Monday, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger claimed that Rittenhouse was in Kenosha, Wis., at the time because, “We all know someone like the defendant,” who “enjoys the thrill of telling people what to do without the courage or honor to back it up.”
This is the baby-faced, then-17-year-old jurors saw on video walking around that night with a medic kit calling out “medical” to protestors on the scene who might need assistance and “friendly, friendly, friendly” so rioters would know he posed no threat.
Binger then described Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, as having done no wrong that evening of rioting before he was hunted down by a bloodthirsty Rittenhouse. By contrast, jurors had seen Rosenbaum on video antagonizing others, lighting a dumpster on fire, and repeatedly yelling at someone, “Shoot me, n——!”
It was Rosenbaum whom witnesses said was yelling at bystanders that he would kill them. It was Rosenbaum who someone described as a “babbling idiot.” And it was ultimately Rosenbaum who then chased Rittenhouse into a dark parking lot before finding himself at the wrong end of an AR-15, and who, again, according to a witness, tried grabbing the barrel before being shot.
The overwhelming evidence showed that Rittenhouse shot someone who was pursuing him. After that, he headed in the direction of police as a mindless mob of rioters gathered to take him down. Two more men made attempts at taking Rittenhouse’s gun, with one of them striking him over the head with a skateboard while he was on the ground. The other one pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse.
Binger, however, is insisting to jurors that they disregard the video evidence and his own witnesses. They should instead trust in his personal assessment that Rittenhouse is a person who “enjoys the thrill of telling people what to do without the courage or honor to back it up.” Whatever that means.
If you told me Binger was given this case as part of a humiliating hazing ritual, I’d believe it. I’d even be relieved to know that he followed through with the case against his will and isn’t actually this stupid.
It’s possible that the jury, nervous about more rioting that an acquittal could bring, will choose Binger’s storyline. If they do, it will mean they followed the prosecutor’s suggestion to set aside what they saw on video and heard from Binger’s own witnesses.
Dr. Fauci on Sunday told CBS “Sunday Morning” senior contributor Ted Koppel that there’s a “misplaced perception” about people’s rights superseding “societal safety.”
“One of the things that to me was most difficult to accept is that we put together a good plan for how we were going to try and dampen down the spread of infection early on thinking that that was accepted by everybody,” Fauci said to Koppel. “And then, the next day you have the president [Trump] saying, ‘Free Michigan. Free Virginia.’ I didn’t quite understand what the purpose of that was, except to put this misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety. That, to me, is one of the things that, I think, went awry in all of this.”
“Did you ever raise that with President Trump?” Koppel asked.
And this is precisely why Fauci, an unelected bureaucrat (and sociopath), should NEVER make decisions for the American people.
VIDEO:
Fauci: There is a "misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety." pic.twitter.com/hBwObFKOI8
Christian devotees attend a Palm Sunday service at the Sacred Heart Cathedral church during the government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Lahore on April 5, 2020. | ARIF ALI/AFP via Getty Images
The family of a 12-year-old Christian girl from Pakistan’s Punjab province who was abducted by a Muslim man earlier this month fears she’s been forcefully converted to Islam and married to her abductor, just as many other girls have been in the past. The girl, identified as Meerab Abbas, has been missing since Nov. 2, although police later arrested two suspects, Asia News reported, adding that she lived with her mother, Farzana, a 45-year-old widow who works as a domestic worker in the Sahiwal area.
Meerab was allegedly abducted by 22-year-old man, identified as Muhammad Daud, a native of Balochistan province. The girl’s family believes the abductor took her to Balochistan to force her to convert to Islam and marry Daud.
A relative of the mother, Cecil George, was quoted as saying that Farzana’s mental health has deteriorated since her daughter’s abduction and she’s has been admitted to a hospital.
“Mareeb is only 12 years old, and she cannot marry,” Zahid Augustine, a pastor in Sahiwal, was quoted as saying. “The perpetrators commit these crimes in the name of religion. We just want justice.”
A 2014 report by The Movement for Solidarity and Peace Pakistan estimated that hundreds of women and girls from Pakistan’s Hindu and Christian communities are abducted, forcibly married and converted to Islam every year.
“Many victims are minors taken from their families, sexually assaulted, married to an assailant, and held in captivity justified by falsified marriage and conversion documents,” the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern says. “Violence, threats, and grooming tactics are used to compel victims to make statements in court supporting their captors.”
Religion is often injected into cases of sexual assault to place religious minority victims at a disadvantage, ICC previously reported, adding that perpetrators play upon religious biases to cover up and justify their crimes by introducing an element of religion.
In September, a court in Punjab province refused to give the custody of a 14-year-old Christian girl, who was allegedly kidnapped, forced to marry and convert to Islam, back to her parents, ruling that mental capacity gives more weight than age in child conversion cases.
The court rejected the petition filed by Gulzar Masih, a Roman Catholic rickshaw driver from Faisalabad city, seeking the regain custody of his daughter, Chashman, from her alleged abductor, Muhammad Usman, Morning Star News reported at the time. The judge, Tariq Nadeem, said in his ruling that Islamic jurists look at mental capacity and not a child’s age for conversion to Islam.“It is a matter of faith. … Hazrat Ali was only 10 when he accepted Islam,” he said, referring to the fourth caliph of Islam.
International watchdog group Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, ranks Pakistan No. 5 on its 2021 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. Pakistan is also listed by the U.S. State Department as a “country of particular concern” for tolerating in or engaging in egregious violations of religious freedom.
President Joe Biden’s administration is facing a daunting reality check after claiming for months that their spending agenda will “cost zero dollars,” with the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying the White House drastically overestimated the revenue the IRS could gain by cracking down on tax loopholes. Biden and numerous other senior Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill have repeatedlyinsisted that their $1.85 trillion social spending package will add nothing to the national debt. They argued the package included enough pay-fors to offset the spending programs. CBO chief Phillip Swagel brought that claim down on Monday, however, saying that the tax loophole crackdown in the bill would only garner $120 billion, a far cry from the White House’s projected $400 billion, according to The New York Times.
The CBO, which is a non-partisan organization, is set to release its official report Friday. The White House is shoring up support and urging lawmakers to disregard the report ahead of its release.
“In this one case, I think we’ve made a very strong empirical case for CBO not having an accurate score,” Ben Harris, assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, told the NYT. “The question is would they rather go with CBO knowing CBO is wrong, or would they want to target the best information they could possibly have?”
Republicans have also attacked the portions of the bill devoted to beefing up the IRS.
“The IRS will double in size. It will be more involved in the day to day lives of every American,” Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly said in late October. “And the result will be an invasion of privacy and the heavy hand of the government squeezing out smaller, more local businesses.“
Republican members of Congress have mocked the White House’s claim for months as “completely false,” and saying the president is “confused.”
It is now undeniable that in almost every part of North America, Europe, and East Asia, the pandemic is more prolific than it ever was before a single person was vaccinated, even though most of those countries have nearly every adult vaccinated. Thus, it is impossible to deny that vaccinologists like Geert Vanden Bossche and Luc Montagnier were correct when they predicted that mass vaccination with a suboptimal, non-sterilizing vaccine in middle of a pandemic would create vaccine-mediated viral enhancement. It’s hard to imagine how people who pushed this strategy didn’t see this coming.
The typical retort to this allegation is that it’s all the fault of “the Delta” and that somehow things would have been even worse without the shots. The problem with this assertion is that we are seeing the sharpest waves ever in the most vaccinated countries. Also, the fact that Sweden has never gotten a Delta wave demonstrates that natural immunity alone would have ended this pandemic.
Central and Eastern Europe are now on fire from the latest wave of the virus, which some researchers suspect is no longer Delta. Putting the variant aside, every single European country has gotten at least one wave of the virus — to varying degrees of severity — since Delta proliferated in June. The one exception is Sweden. The Scandinavian country now has the second lowest case rate in all of Europe, but more importantly, unlike Spain, which is the lowest, the Swedes never experienced a single Delta wave (as Spain did in July).
Even other Scandinavian countries like Iceland and Norway, which seemed nearly impervious to this virus until the past few months, are suffering their largest waves to date.about:blank
As you can see, even the Scandinavian countries or other countries that currently have low case rates all had one or two Delta waves since June – except for Sweden.
It is self-evident that Sweden’s natural immunity was able to preclude any major Delta wave — the only country in Europe to accomplish this feat. Although Sweden currently has a high vaccination rate — slightly higher than that of the U.S. — the Swedish government didn’t start its vaccination drive until much later than the U.S., U.K., and other countries that have had two Delta waves.
According to the narrative of the masters of the universe, Sweden should have been particularly vulnerable to Delta, while the U.K. should have coasted through it. Instead, the opposite occurred.about:blank
Let’s look at the vaccination curves of Sweden and Ireland and then compare their case rates over the past 4-5 months.
As you can see, the two countries have similar vaccination curves, but Ireland wound up jabbing an even greater percentage of its population. What are the results?
Thus, it wasn’t the vaccination success that stemmed the tide of this variant in Sweden, because Ireland should be doing even better. It’s that Sweden was lucky to have achieved herd immunity before the disastrous vaccination campaign made the pandemic worse. With most of the population likely already immune, they are not harmed by any form of vaccine-mediated viral enhancement.
If we look at other countries that have higher vaccination levels than Sweden, among them some of the most vaccinated countries on earth, they have all done worse than Sweden since the mass vaccination commenced in the spring. This includes both countries like Belgium that already had the virus bad, as well as countries like Iceland and Singapore, which never seemed to have a problem prior to the mass vaccination.
Case rates:
Vaccination rates:
What is abundantly clear is that a vaccine that, to begin with, doesn’t stop transmission and gradually wanes is not a vaccine and, in fact, makes the virus learn to grow stronger and more durable. “Delta” was not inevitable, nor are the coming variants. Sweden could have declined to vaccinate a single person and its curve would have looked the same, because it’s clear from its contrast to every other country as a stark control group that its population’s greater natural immunity is the active ingredient responsible for the country’s success. The mass vaccination, on the other hand, is now the greatest obstacle to ending this pandemic in countries that have not achieved herd immunity through prior infection.
Let’s not forget that Sweden conducted the most comprehensive long-term study of vaccine effectiveness in the world and found that after 6-7 months, “no effectiveness could be detected” from the Pfizer shot. In fact, the study found negative efficacy after 210 days for those over 50, which harmonizes with what we are seeing before our very eyes throughout the world. For some older adults, the shots are as much as -77% effective, and the numbers seem to drop every month.
As one retired California nurse asked of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, “Why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn’t protect the protected in the first place?”
Former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz blasted liberal media outlets such as CNN and the New Yorker over the weekend for their biased and erroneous reporting on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The scholar said the Illinois teenager charged with killing two men and wounding another during Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer “should be acquitted” and then should go on the offensive against the media outlets that have branded him a white supremacist vigilante before the conclusion of his trial.
“If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Saturday.
“Then he’ll bring lawsuits, and that’s the way to answer … vigilante justice is what CNN is doing, not what a 17-year-old kid under pressure may have done right or wrong. It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s the New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” he added.
Dershowitz compared Rittenhouse’s case to former Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann, who became the target of left-wing media attacks following an encounter with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. Sandmann later sued CNN and the Washington Post. Both the network and the paper ended up settling.
“The idea is to make the media accountable for deliberate and willful lies,” Dershowitz explained.
He added in a Sunday conversation with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak that “CNN and some of the other TV stations” are the “ones who want to put not the thumb, but the elbow on the scale of justice.”
“They want to influence the outcome of this case,” he argued. “And there are others who are threatening violence if there is anything but convictions in this case, as they threatened violence in previous cases and will in subsequent cases unless something is done about it. It’s the New Yorker and CNN that are the vigilantes. They’re the ones who are trying to influence justice without regard to evidence or the law.”
Rittenhouse is currently facing multiple felony murder charges — including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide — for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gage Grosskreutz, 28.
Rittenhouse’s defense team has maintained that their client was in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, to protect local businesses and provide medical aid during the uprising and that he was only acting in self-defense when he fired the shots.
Videos of the incidents seen by the public appear to show Rittenhouse being chased and physically threatened before firing his gun. The prosecution, however, argued that the defendant provoked the attacks by bringing an AR-15 to the protests.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the jury was still deliberating over the verdict.
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.
After witnessing Twix’s latest ad or hearing about Sex Offender Story Time, you might have mistakenly assumed that the left’s push to sexualize children and normalize pedophilia couldn’t be any more blatant. But alas, the word “restraint” isn’t in the vocabulary of those whose insatiable hunger for the most potent forms of moral rot have driven them to take bites out of the few remaining taboos that we haven’t “progressed” past quite yet.
The latest attempt to normalize pedophilia comes from Allyn Walker, an assistant professor at Old Dominion University who uses the nonsensical pronouns “they/them” and has advocated for pedophilia to be “destigmatized,” calling for pedophiles to instead be referred to with the insultingly euphemistic term “minor attracted persons.”
Walker is the author of the book “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit Of Dignity,” which challenges “widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors—often referred to as ‘pedophiles’—are necessarily also predators and sex offenders, this book takes readers into the lives of non-offending minor-attracted persons (MAPs).”
Walker’s attempt to legitimize non-offending pedophiles isn’t the first of its kind. Vice also looked into allegedly “non-offending” pedophiles, including a foster parent pseudonymously called Gary who, to no one’s surprise but everyone’s horror, was accused by one of his foster children’s biological mothers of sexually abusing her daughter.
There was also a man dubbed Ian who was so non-offending that he felt comfortable testing himself by working at a job that “involved children directly.” You might be a tad skeptical if your friend who was recovering from alcoholism took a job managing the local liquor store. That skepticism is all the more warranted when we’re running the risk of children being groomed and abused instead of overindulgence in a few too many handles of Old No. 7.
The Intellectualization Of Pedophilic Pathology
Take a look at this viral video where Walker promotes the book and explains why Walker uses the term MAP, saying that the phrase is “less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile.”
🚨🚨🚨This non-binary assistant professor at Old Dominion University is trying to normalize the term MAP (Minor Attracted Persons) pic.twitter.com/riD6TdIt8k
That’s the point. Pedophiles are stigmatized because pedophilia is and deserves to be accurately seen as unspeakably reprehensible. Stigmas are a way we socially communicate this reprehensibility. Any word, framing, or action that chips away at this stigma inevitably breaks down the guardrails against such evil actions.
Yet again we witness an instance of the left siding with the oppressor while pretending to advocate for the victim, this time under the guise of academic inquiry. One has to wonder if Walker has ever considered that our sympathies should lie not with pedophiles who don’t appreciate being called what they are but instead with their victims. Walker’s book intends to help pedophiles pursue dignity. How does a child robbed of his or her innocence pursue his or her sense of dignity?
After hiding comments on Twitter concerning the controversy, Old Dominion released a thoroughly insulting statement in support of Walker opening with the line, “An academic community plays a valuable role in the quest for knowledge.” It also included a statement from Walker, who wrote, “I want to be clear: child sexual abuse is an inexcusable crime. As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime.”
Framing this conversation as if it is a legitimate field of research that one delves into out of altruism doesn’t fool anybody when you come out and openly say that you’re trying to make pedophilia “less stigmatizing.” It becomes even more transparent when we discover who’s behind this movement and when all social and political indicators point towards a coordinated attempt to sacrifice children’s safety and innocence at the altar of limitless tolerance, the promotion of which has framed the unrelenting degradation of all moral standards as one of our society’s defining moral imperatives.
Meet the Groups Trying to Normalize Pedophilia
Walker is unfortunately not alone in the desire to normalize pedophilia. In defense of the term MAP, Walker cites an organization called B4U-ACT, a pedophile advocacy group. It was founded by a man named Michael Melsheimer, who was convicted of a heinous crime. Wondering what it is? Don’t think too hard. Bank robbery? Nope. Gambling? No. Jaywalking? Not quite. Melsheimer was a convicted pedophile who had served a sentence in federal prison.
In case there is somehow any confusion regarding the group’s character, note that their “About Us” page lists their values and mission without even once articulating a desire to mitigate sexual assault. Its FAQ section includes lines like, “We see minor-attracted people as whole human beings … not as criminals or ‘deviants’ who need to be controlled” as well as “We are not advocating treatment to change sexual feelings.” Allow me to ask, what exactly occurs when the sexual desires of someone who is attracted to children aren’t changed and then subsequently aren’t controlled?
B4U-ACT is not the only organization running cover for pedophiles. In fact, the video of Walker detailing Walker’s reasons for wanting to rebrand pedophilia comes from a conversation hosted by the Prostasia Foundation, which advocates for the same evil as B4U-ACT.
Here’s a section of Prostasia’s website called “Our campaign against doll bans.” What type of dolls exactly? Sex dolls that “governments define as ‘childlike.” The organization also works alongside the “MAP Support Club,” a “peer support chat” for pedophiles. It just so happens that the minimum age to join the chat is 13.
If you point out that taking children and sticking them in group chats with pedophiles sounds more like a recipe for child grooming than it does abuse prevention, Prostasia might just accuse you of being far right.
The organization’s talk with Walker was also conducted by their communications director Noah Berlatsky, who has a history of publicly advocating for pedophiles, whom he complains are part of a “stigmatized group.”
4W’s article “Prostasia Goal Is To Normalize Pedophilia” points out that the organization has also been home to other unsavory characters, including sex offenders Jeff White and Guy Hamilton-Smith.
‘Progress’ Doesn’t Have An Off Switch
If it feels like there is no limit to the degeneracy, and in this case genuine evil, that the left will attempt to mainstream, it’s because there isn’t one. “Tolerance” is a key staple of leftwing rhetoric, but no parameters have ever been set. Tolerance is not a virtue in and of itself. It is entirely dependent on what your society is tolerant of. For a wide swath of the left, their answer seems to be all sexual behaviors, with no limits.
There is no off switch to progress, no regulating mechanism within progressive ideology that can ever account for this degree of moral decline. Our rapidly decaying social standards and taboos used to be capable of slowing our descent, but now the brake lines have been cut.
You might get fired if you refuse to play into a transgender co-worker’s delusions and use biologically accurate pronouns. You might suffer the same fate if you come out too vocally against critical race theory in your child’s classroom or if you refuse a COVID-19 vaccine.
The unending march of “progress” has resulted in a society where any of these offenses against neo-liberal totalitarianism and woke ideology might leave you without a job, but you’ll be granted support from your university for being a pedophilia sympathizer, which is now entirely system-approved.
Progressivism evidently can’t be trusted to regulate itself. Any hope to stop and eventually reverse our decline lies solely within the prospect of a right that eschews the left’s bankrupt moral framework and the language used to justify it. Now that we know where it leads, we have no other option.
Neither Old Dominion University nor Walker responded to requests for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President and the Chief of Staff of the California College Republicans. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
IT Support Technician Michael Hakopian (R) distributes computer devices to students at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020, in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
At least 26 state school board associations have distanced themselves from the National School Board Association after it urged the Biden administration to use federal law enforcement agencies against parents who oppose the teaching of controversial curriculum in public schools by labeling them as potential “domestic terrorists.”
The national grassroots organization Parents Defending Education says the states that have distanced themselves from the NSBA’s letter include: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Out of these, 12 states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin — have taken further action to withdraw membership, participation or dues from the NSBA.
PDE wrote to NSBA member states for their comment on the Sept. 29 letter sent to them by NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven, which critics believe likened activism of concerned parents to “domestic terrorism.”
The letter said the NSBA had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to mobilize law enforcement agencies to respond to “threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators” as actions of “domestic terrorism.”
While some school board members across the nation have publicly shared incidents of threats they’ve purportedly received from angry residents, critics believe the request to get federal law enforcement involved is unwarranted and an attempt to silence parents. Specific examples of concerning actions included the disruption of school board meetings “because of local directives for mask coverings to protect students and educators from COVID-19,” the incitement of “chaos” at school board meetings by “anti-mask proponents,” and the confrontation of school boards by “angry mobs” that have led boards to “end meetings abruptly.”
John Halkias, the director of the NSBA’s Central Region, wrote to Slaven the same day, on Sept. 29, sharing his belief that “the Board of Directors should have been consulted before a letter like this was sent out publicly, and no less to the President of the United States and the National Press.”
“I also agree that the letter took a stance that went beyond what many of us would consider to be reasonable and used terms that were extreme, and asked for action by the Federal Government that many of us would not request,” he added. “In fact in a recent press conference, the White House Press Secretary stated that when these incidents occur, it is a matter for local law enforcement and local authorities, and NOT the federal government.”
In an Oct. 2 email, NSBA President Viola Garcia told the organization’s board of directors that “NSBA has been engaged with the White House and the Department of Education on these and other issues related to the pandemic for several weeks now.”
Five days later, the Department of Justice published a memorandum directing “the Federal Bureau of Investigations, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders within 30 days” to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”
Republican members of Congress also criticized the memo.
“As someone who was born in the Soviet Union, I am … disturbed, very disturbed, by the use of the Department of Justice as a political tool, and its power as the police state to suppress lawful public discourse,” Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said in a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. “The FBI is starting to resemble old KGB with secret warrantless … surveillance, wiretapping and intimidation of citizens.”
Imagine having an 80-14 majority in a red-state legislature a week after Democrats were defeated in a blue state, and you are considering legislation on Biden’s unprecedented injection mandate at a time when he likely has a 20% approval rating in the state. One would expect the GOP legislators to easily take “yes” for an answer from their constituents and categorically ban all COVID fascism. Instead, they listened to the special interests that are in cahoots with the federal government, rejected a popular bill that would have tackled the problem, and instead passed a bill that explicitly greenlights the mandate.
Last night, the North Dakota House passed HB 1511, a bill that essentially does nothing to protect North Dakotans. Sure, it bans state government mandates, but those were never really a threat. The issue at hand is that the federal government is threatening businesses that they must require injection passports for their workers. The only way to combat that mandate, and yes, restore the pre-COVID free market, is to ban (with the threat of legal action and/or fines) the imposition of such a mandate on employees.
So, what is in HB 1511? It never even attempts to ban the vaccine mandates, but only stipulates that employers must allow for exemptions, which include religious/philosophical objections, medical concerns, prior infection, and a testing opt-out. That might sound like a reasonable compromise that is worth passing, as other states have done, and if written properly, it would effectively protect anyone who wants out of the needle rape. The problem is that the final section of the bill voids even the religious exemptions to the extent that they conflict with the federal regulations. Thus, just like the Wyoming House did (with overwhelming GOP majorities), the North Dakota GOP opposed the federal mandate, unless the feds actually enforce it!
Even the rest of the bill is weak, and worse, it downright greenlights discrimination. The bill does bar any denial of service to customers based on vaccination status, but then places an exception for health care. Thus, at a time when we need a bill doing just the opposite – to ban hospitals from mistreating or denying surgeries and organ transplants to those without the unsafe and ineffective injections (as another draft bill that was rejected purported to do) – this bill explicitly blesses such immoral and illogical discrimination. This bill makes current law worse by explicitly blessing the requirement that someone gets a shot in order to obtain medical care, something that cannot be done under current state and federal anti-discrimination law.
Also, even the ban on vaccine mandates among state institutions was given a carve-out for all state colleges, which are now allowed to deny admission or employment based on someone’s injection status. The bill supporters hang their hats on the fact that the bill bans vaccine passports, but the issue is not a specific piece of paper. Students and others will still be required to show some proof of the shot.
There was a better bill that would have categorically banned most vaccine mandates and confronted the feds directly. HB 1510 was drafted similarly to the Montana bill, which was the first in the country to bar mandates. Even that bill had a compromise carve-out for health care. Shockingly, only 38 Republicans out of 80 voted for it!
Here is the target list for the upcoming elections:
The watered-down bill that did pass the House passed the Senate 33-14 on Friday. Ironically, even this bill, which in many ways makes current law worse, was too conservative for a handful of Republicans (there are only seven Democrats in the chamber).
The seven Republicans who thought somehow that even this bill was too compassionate for their constituents were:
Howard Anderson, District 8
Randy Burckhard, District 5
Karen Krebsbach, District 40
Judy Lee, District 13
Dave Oehlke, District 15
Nicole Poolman, District 7
Jim Roers, District 46
Watching the Senate debate this morning, I heard one Republican after another suggest, “There’s still people dying in the hospital,” “We’re all in this together,” and “We have responsibilities, not just rights.” Ironically, these are all arguments against the failed status quo that has gotten us to a point where things are worse than they were before the injections, yet North Dakota Republicans are now to the left of even what Bill Gates and others are now conceding about the failures of the shots.
Why is it that conservatives have to be made to feel like we are asking from our legislatures a trip to the moon? We are not asking to reform our entire government and end the Great Society. We are simply asking them to completely erase the now-discredited approach to COVID that has killed so many people without saving a single life. What is so hard? These are the types of bills you would pass when you have divided government, not when you have supermajorities at a time when Democrats are on the ropes and lives are on the line.
On a positive note, the House did pass HB 1514, a bill that bans the medical board from taking action against doctors or nurse practitioners who prescribe ivermectin and against pharmacists who fill the prescriptions. But the original proposal also stopped pharmacists from denying prescriptions, which is the bigger problem on the street. It also had a provision to allow patients in the hospitals the right to try ivermectin and barred any discrimination of care against those without the shots.
“Well, take what you can get, Daniel.”
But why should any of these provisions be removed from the bill? How could anyone – Republican or Democrat – be opposed to these ideas? Again, all these tactics are evil, are unscientific, and reek of medical fascism. The GOP’s reluctance to take a categorical stand is incomprehensible from a policy standpoint, as well as from a moral and even electoral standpoint.
And remember, at least North Dakota was willing to go this far. We have numerous other deep red states that won’t even get into session and haven’t passed a single meaningful bill in 19 months to push back against the greatest threats against our liberties, bodies, and well-being. The science is now 100% clear that all these measures are causing harm, making the virus worse, and blocking our ability to properly treat people. Ideally, if states would actually follow the law, science, and the Nuremberg Code, they would ban the administration of these shots altogether and completely reorient our approach to this virus. So what we are asking for, to begin with, is a compromise.
There’s a time to compromise on the will of the people, and there is a time to fully embrace the will of the people. When it comes to countering “Faucism” in red states, it is the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong issue to embrace compromise – especially one that actually makes current law worse.
Expressing the sentiments of RINO legislators across the country, Ohio Speaker Bob Cupp recently suggested it’s time for us to move on from fighting COVID fascism. “They are reflecting what they hear in their district, but it’s, it’s clearly time to move on,” Cupp recently said of efforts from his rank-and-file Republican members to fight for medical freedom. Well, if Democrat districts can get representation for their tyrannical views, why can’t our districts get representation for liberty and medical freedom? We will move on from fighting COVID fascism when the RINOs and Democrats move on from imposing it upon us.
A Fort Worth, Texas, parent supportive of teaching critical race theory in classrooms recently reportedly threatened other parents during a school board meeting, saying he’s got “over 1,000 soldiers ready to go” and that he’d be “locked and loaded” next time.
Officers were called on to escort the enraged parent, Malikk Austin, from the Fort Worth Independent School District board meeting on Nov. 9 after he turned around to face other parents in the room and shouted at them repeatedly, Fox News reported.
“For those who got an issue with this critical race theory equity, this is something I fought for, for my children,” Austin, who is black, said at the start of his remarks.
“How dare you come out here and talk about the things that my daddy and my grandparents went through, the lynching, the oppression, Jim Crow, and my kids are still being afflicted by this. How dare you come out here and challenge me on critical race theory,” he continued looking at other parents in the audience.
“Look up the word, ‘racism,’ this is something deliberately done to people of African descent,” he added. “They’re shackling us down. This hate, fear, [inaudible] ain’t gonna work no more.”
“We are not our ancestors. I got over 1,000 soldiers ready to go,” Austin then threatened, as seen in video of the contentious meeting.
A separate video posted on Twitter shows Austin warning, saying, “I’ll bring my soldiers with me next time … locked and loaded.”
He can be heard repeating the phrase “locked and loaded” several times as officers walk him out of the building.
A Far-Left activist in an FWISD Board meeting threatened parents all because they were criticizing CRT. The activist said that he would bring 1000 soldiers and that he will be "lock and loaded" next time. pic.twitter.com/VmqNaQQh10
Parents at the meeting reportedly told Fox News that Austin’s comments made them feel threatened and unsafe.
“Absolutely, it made me feel threatened,” Hollie Plemmons, a stay-at-home mother of three, said. “I’m scared and I’m afraid he’s going to do something.”
“Everyone there felt threatened,” Carol Guarneri, a grandmother of four students, added. “This gentleman was profoundly angry, he was not putting on a performance. When he made the statement that he had his thousand soldiers and they’d be back locked and loaded, it was very frightening to me.”
“I was thinking about calling my husband and having him come to the parking lot because I was afraid to come to my car,” she recalled.
According to Fox News, Guaneri claimed that Austin had attended a school board meeting in August wearing “tactical gear.” Fox noted that Austin can be seen wearing the gear at the 39-minute mark in this video.
When reached for comment, Austin reportedly told Fox News that it was not his intention to threaten anyone.
“First Amendment rights, freedom of speech, need to be implemented,” he argued, adding that “locked and loaded” is “a term I used when I coached football. It means, ‘Prepare and get ready.'”
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.
Parents in Leon County, Florida, are suing the school district for holding a meeting with their teenage daughter about her chosen gender identity without their knowledge or consent. The parents have warned that the district’s LGBT policies create a “wedge” between students and their parents.
January and Jeffrey Littlejohn filed a lawsuit against the school board, Superintendent of Schools Rocky Hanna and Assistant Superintendent, Equity Officer and Title IX Compliance Coordinator Kathleen Rodgers in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on Oct. 18.
In the lawsuit, the Littlejohns accuse the defendants of violating their substantive due process right to direct the education and upbringing of their children under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and other rights guaranteed to them by state and federal law by excluding them from a meeting with school officials discussing their 13-year-old daughter’s gender identity.
Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, a legal organization created two-and-a-half years ago “specifically to stand with and help parents who are in some way or the other … seeking to protect the well-being … of their child from gender identity ideology,” is one of the attorneys representing the Littlejohns in the litigation.
In an interview with The Christian Post, January Littlejohn and Broyles elaborated on the lawsuit and the events that led up to it.
Littlejohn explained that her daughter, who is now a high school student, began undergoing treatment for gender confusion in the summer before the start of the 2020-’21 school year. She attributed her daughter’s gender confusion to peer pressure from her “friend group because three other children in that same friend group had come out as nonbinary or transgender within the previous six months.”
While Littlejohn told one of her daughter’s teachers at Deer Lake Middle School that she was “seeking mental health counseling and she was experiencing distress that we weren’t affirming her at home because we didn’t feel like it was in her best interest,” she did not expect the school to begin referring to her daughter using they/them pronouns and give her the option to sleep in the same quarters as her male classmates on an overnight school field trip.
Littlejohn only found out that the school had taken such action because her daughter revealed to her that she’d had a meeting about her “nickname,” with the concerned parent telling CP that “that’s kind of what we refer to it as.”
She said her daughter then asked, ‘“isn’t it funny that they asked me what restroom I wanted to use?”’
“My daughter has ADHD … and so to her, this seemed like the silliest thing in the world that they asked her which restroom she preferred to use. That was my first indication that the school had met with her without … notifying my husband or myself,” she said.
“I immediately called her guidance counselor. The guidance counselor said she needed to call me back. She called me back with the assistant principal on the line. So right then and there, I knew something … felt different about the situation because I had spoken to the guidance counselor multiple times in the past because of my daughter’s 504 plan … for her ADHD.”
Littlejohn accused the school of “colluding with my daughter to deceive us so that we would never have known she was going by an alternate name.”
The concerned mother also insisted that she “absolutely should have been at that meeting” and expressed disbelief that the school that she volunteered at did not partner with them. “I was volunteer of the year at that school. It wasn’t like I was an unknown parent.”
Littlejohn recalled the detrimental impact of the school’s decision to hold meetings with her daughter about her gender identity confusion without her knowledge or consent, saying: “It created a huge wedge between our daughter and us, as her parents. We have worked very hard over the past year-and-a-half to stabilize the situation through counseling, and I do feel like she’s on a better path at this time.”
Broyles told CP that the purpose of the lawsuit was to get the school district to “rescind the guidance … that was in place that … basically instructed school officials not to inform parents when a child begins to indicate a transgender or LGBTQ+ identity.” The attorney expressed particular concern that the guidance implied that “outing a student to their parents could be dangerous to a student’s well-being.”
“Every time I think about this lawsuit, it really hits me: The district guidance had the message to parents that you don’t have the best interests of your child in mind. It sends the message that children need to … be protected from parents rather than by parents, and that is an earth-shattering message that cannot stand,” Broyles asserted.
Specifically, the guidance, part of the “LCS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide,” warned that “Outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the [student’s] health and well-being” because “some students are not able to be out at home because their parents are unaccepting of LGBTQ+ people out.”
The guidance maintains that “as many as 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+, many of whom have been rejected by their families for being LGBTQ+,” suggesting that “outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless.”
“We are seeking that guidance to be permanently removed and replaced with new guidance that complies with the Parents’ Bill of Rights there in Florida as well as the Florida and United States Constitution that honors the parents’ right to make decisions for their children,” Broyles added. “It’s really important to recognize that affirming a child’s discordant gender identity … involves a significant mental health decision that affects the well-being of children … and with potentially lifelong consequences.”
The lawsuit, as summarized by Broyles, is asking the school district to implement new guidance requiring school officials to notify parents whenever their child “expresses gender discordance, gender confusion, a different identity other than their physical, biological sex” and “new policies that provide public notice and a public hearing regarding the new guidance through the school board.” Additionally, the Littlejohns are seeking “some sort of monetary damages for the … pain and suffering and … the impacts this has had on their family.”
Broyles stressed that the situation facing the Littlejohns is not unique: “This violation of parental rights is driving a wedge between parents and their children by school officials. … It affects parents … all throughout the political spectrum on both political parties or independents, whether it’s Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics. … We’ve spoken to almost virtually every stripe of parent.”
The attorney maintained that the Child and Parental Rights Campaign is working on several similar cases: “We hear almost weekly from parents who have … something similar happening to them and their children.”
“This same guidance I described to you is present on the websites of at least 11 other school districts throughout Florida,” Broyles said. She further noted that the “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Student Support Plan” included in the “LCS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide” is also on the ACLU’s website.
“A lot of these documents are already out there and school boards, based on what I’ve been told, simply adopt those and put their name on them,” Broyles added.
“That’s why there seems to be the exact same guidance in multiple counties in the state of Florida and all over the country in all 50 states.”
Littlejohn told CP that she’s aware of other parents in Leon County that have found themselves in the same situation as herself.
“A lot of the parents are really scared to speak out or they don’t feel like they can speak out because it would jeopardize the very fragile relationship they have with their child who’s experiencing distress related to their gender.” She added that she speaks to other families “almost weekly to try to help them understand the situation at hand and help them get resources.”
She also pushed back on the claim that the school was conducting a “benign intervention”: “It’s the first step toward medical transitioning, which is why it is so imperative that parents be included [in] any discussion with their child that could impact the short-term and long-term mental and physical well-being of their child, whether it’s this issue or any issue. So fundamentally, this is about parental rights and what the schools can and cannot do … without their permission.”
Littlejohn emphasized that despite the harm this experience has caused to her and her family, “it’s made our faith grow” as Christians. She seconded Broyles’ assertion that “this issue affects all kinds of families” and “people of all faiths including atheists.”
In the time since officials at Deer Lake Middle School first met with Littlejohn’s daughter to discuss her gender identity, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the Parents’ Bill of Rights into law. The measure mandates that “important information relating to a child should not be withheld, either inadvertently or purposely, from his or her parent, including information relating to the minor child’s health, well-being, and education, while the minor child is in the custody of the school district.”
Additionally, the law directs school districts to work with parents, teachers and administrators to “develop and adopt a policy to promote parental involvement in the public school system.”
Superintendent Hanna reacted to the Littlejohns’ lawsuit in a statement to news outlet WCTV: “We certainly want to include parents, and with the Parental Bill of Rights, I understand and respect that, but we also have to respect the rights of the individuals, safety of the children we care for each and every day” because “while the children are under our care we act in loco parentis, on behalf of a parent while they’re under our care.”
The lawsuit follows a year of unsuccessful efforts to convince the school district to change its policy. Littlejohn insisted that “We tried to do this without filing a lawsuit, which was never our intention.”
While the complaint mentions that the district removed the guide from the publicly accessible portion of its website, it alleges that the district did not comply with the Littlejohns’ request to “publish on the Website a written statement that parents would be notified when their child/children express a discordant gender identity and included in meetings or discussions with their child/children regarding their gender identity.”
The complaint contends that “there is no indication on the website or otherwise that the Guide has been rescinded, only a notation that it is being revised.” Additionally, it states that “no revised guidance regarding parental notification has been published or provided to Plaintiffs.” The website of the Leon County Schools’ Equity and Diversity Department has a section devoted to the LCS LGBTQ+ Support Guide, which informs visitors that “[the] Guide is currently being reviewed and is under revision.”
The lawsuit against Leon County Schools comes at a time when parents have expressed an increasing amount of unease with some of the material their children are exposed to in school. In recent weeks, outraged parents and community members in several states have descended on school board meetings to condemn the inclusion of sexually explicit material in books available to students in school libraries and writing prompts in a textbook used in a college-level English class.
The Biden Admin is proving every day that Americans are not even their primary concern anymore. The Biden Admin is talking about compensating illegals for separating them at the border after they broke our law and came here illegally…
Angel Mom Kiyan Michael appeared on Fox News to call out this B.S. Michael lost her son after a twice deported illegal hit him with a car. The Illegal of course had no registration, license, or business being behind the wheel of a car in this country.
“Brandon should still be here. He was only twenty-one years old. He was engaged to be married, our middle child, and he was just beginning his life,” Michael explained.
“The Biden administration did not have to fix anything,” she continued. “If we just continued that on, there would be more Americans who would be safe right now, and it is infuriating because our children should still be here.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantisannounced over the weekend there were potentially over 70 flights that transported migrants from the border into Florida overnight, beginning in the summer.
Meanwhile, President Biden has also come under fire for reportedly considering massive payments, of $450,000, to separated migrants under the Trump administration.
Michael cursed the proposed payments calling it both “outrageous” and “unacceptable.”
“It is outrageous, the fact that he wants to reward people for breaking the law when we have legal avenues to come into our country,” Michael stated. “And to reward them when we know as Americans, if I break the law, I will be separated from my child.“
Michael continued, “If he wants to talk about separation, we are permanently separated from our son, Brandon, and not because we decided to break the law.”
“I do not believe Americans will fall for it for a moment; that our tax dollars would go and be utilized by this administration to reward bad behavior, to reward illegal activity — it’s preposterous.”
Biden was originally talking about giving these illegals about half a million in compensation, far more than any angel mom is getting after losing a child permanently. I know our country is rich but I didn’t realize we were just throwing money at people who break our laws now, well as long as they are foreign that is.
They must have mistaken her for a clown… If only she were joking when she was talking about this massive spending bill that is going to cost us $1.75 Trillion. But Pelosi became offended when she heard someone chuckle when she said the trillion-dollar bill is going to bring down the national debt.
” Pelosi held a press conference discussing the legislative agenda for Friday evening, addressing the Democratic infighting occurring in Congress over the infrastructure package and the Build Back Better bill for social spending.”
“Pelosi spoke in the House of Representatives, extolling the claimed benefits of the Democrats’ $1.75 trillion spending proposal…
“It will be one of the most significant legislative undertakings that any of us have ever been part of,” Pelosi said.”
“The speaker claimed that this bill will be even bigger and more effective than the Affordable Care Act, passed by former President Barack Obama.”
“So, if you’re talking about how we want to have immediate and enduring difference for the workers and families, creating jobs, securing middle-class tax cuts, lowering costs for families, and making the wealthiest pay their fair share, all the while contributing to reducing the national debt,” Pelosi said.”
Parents of students in the Scottsdale Unified School District were shocked to discover that a school board member had secretly compiled a dossier detailing parents who opposed critical race theory. The dossier was compiled on Google Drive and contained a list of parents who objected to teachings about CRT; it included photographs of both the parents and their children.
Parents who had been calling for the recall of Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg are now demanding he resign
over the secret dossier, to which he had access.
“I am calling for the immediate resignation of our board president Jann-Michael Greenburg,” said Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is now running for a seat on the Scottsdale Governing Board.“We cannot allow anyone in a leadership position to secretly compile personal documents and information on moms and dads who have dared speak out publicly or on social media about their grievances with the district,” she added.
The dossier included a trove of information on 47 parents, including home addresses, phone numbers, mortgage data, traffic tickets, family members, and social security numbers.
One of the videos on the drive showed Greenburg’s father wearing a bodycam before going out to record video of the parents.
The dossier was discovered when Greenburg sent a screenshot of his desktop to a parent that displayed the address of the link to the Google Drive.
Amanda Wray told KTVK-TV that she saw photographs of her children on the dossier and was horrified.
“When I first saw the contents of the Google Drive and I saw my 8- and 10-year-old’s photos, that was terrifying. And like, what’s he doing?” said Wray.
“But he has pictures of my vacation home, property records,” she added. “I’m not a political opponent, I’m an involved parent and that is threatening to me and it makes me wonder why and what he was planning to do with those photos.”
The district said in the letter that Greenburg could only be removed if he was recalled, if he resigned, or if he was voted out in the next election.
Attorney Alexander Kolodin told the Arizona Free News that Greenburg and his father could face criminal charges related to intimidation.
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.
Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Mission Diocese of Finland, speaks at the Alliance Defending Freedom office in Washington, D.C., to discuss his prosecution for sharing a document expressing support for Christian teachings about marriage and sexuality, Nov. 10, 2021. | The Christian Post
WASHINGTON — A Finnish religious leader facing prosecution for publishing a booklet promoting Christian teachings about marriage and sexuality is warning that “the Gospel of Christ is at stake” as Western governments liken such beliefs to hate speech.
The Rev. Juhana Pohjola, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, spoke at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty law firm, Wednesday to discuss the prosecution he faces for publishing a booklet titled Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.
Paivi Rasanen, a Finnish member of parliament and medical doctor, wrote the booklet in 2004 when Finland was passing laws treating same-sex relationships as equivalent to heterosexual relationships under the law. The booklet concluded that the recognition of same-sex relationships had a detrimental effect on society. At the time of the booklet’s publication, the Finnish government was considering legislation that would enable same-sex couples to adopt children.
In his address at Alliance Defending Freedom, Pohjola warned that his prosecution illustrates that “the Gospel of Christ is at stake” because of postmodernism and its accompanying cancel culture and hate speech laws, which he believes have been unfairly used against him: “When postmodernism first swept over Western countries, its basic core was denial of absolute truth. The only truth was that you must allow everyone to have his or her own subjective truth.”
“This hyper-individualism continues, but it has now a different tone. If you are against LGBTQ+ ideology, so-called diversity, equality and inclusiveness, you are not only considered to be old-fashioned … but rejected as morally evil. This is what the prosecutor general understands her duty to be, to protect fragile citizens and victims from the intolerant and hateful Christians.”
After expressing concern about the development of “cancel culture” in Europe and Finland,” he said he agreed with political commentators in the U.S. about “soft totalitarianism in Western countries when all aspects of life, media, business, education, culture, courts, army and church parties are taken over by the same ideology that suppresses freedom of speech and suffocates differing opinions and viewpoints.”
Pohjola devoted most of his speech to detailing the legal challenge he’s embroiled in. He recalled that on April 29, “the prosecutor general of Finland decided to bring charges against me and … a member of parliament, Mrs. Paivi Rasanen.”
The indictment accused them of “incitement to hatred against a group which falls under the section of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Pohjola read aloud the description of his offense, which stated that he “made and maintained available to the public opinions and allegations defaming and insulting homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
Previously, the Helsinki Police Department “pressed charges against me and Mrs. Rasanen arguing that the pamphlet found on our webpage was discriminatory toward homosexuals” in August 2019. While “the police in charge decided to drop the case,” it ended up on the “table of the general prosecutor’s office.” Pohjola added that on Reformation Day, Oct. 31, 2019, “the prosecutor general of Finland announced that she had ordered a preliminary investigation on the subject matter.”
“We were suspected of being guilty of incitement to hatred against a group,” he said. The Helsinki Police Department interrogated Pohjola on Feb. 11, 2020. He noted that “the interrogation took over five hours” and described the questioning as “cordial but tough.” When asked if he was “willing to take the pamphlet away from your website in two weeks,” Pohjola said no. He told the audience that “If I had said yes, the case … probably would have been settled.”
The booklet was one of several published by Pohjola in conjunction with the Detroit-based Lutheran Heritage Foundation. Other books in the pamphlet series discussed issues such as worship, the Lord’s Supper and sanctification. While the booklet did not generate “any media interest” at the time as “it was just one booklet among the other booklets,” it received renewed attention in recent years as the Evangelical Mission Diocese faced scrutiny for declining to embrace the “ordination of women” and what he described as “other unbiblical practices.”
“The series [of pamphlets] was later put on our webpage without any fuss,” Pohjola asserted in his remarks. “We handed out this Christian teaching on marriage even to all the members in the parliament.”
“When the prosecutor general has … publicly said that she will give special attention to the hate speech cases when she steps into the office, she, of course, wants to maintain classical Western liberal freedoms of speech and religion grounded on our constitution,” he maintained. “But she interprets these rights in the light of [the] Equality and Discrimination Act.”
Pohjola lamented that “the tendency is to interpret more broadly … vague terms like defaming and insulting speech. And the more broadly you interpret them, you do it at the expense of the freedom of speech.”
“She will take the case if needed through as many appeals through higher courts, even on European Union level, because at [the] European Union level, European Union legislation affects also the national legislation. So, we are prepared for it as well and the judgment is important due to [the] precedent that it sets for the future free speech cases.’
“Prosecutor general has taken out of the context one line from there and one from here,” he concluded. “In the police investigation … I tried to draw the big picture of the pamphlet, which consists of basic points of Christian teaching, which is clearly all found in this pamphlet.”
Pohjola emphasized to government officials that the booklet was based on the premises that “We are all created in the image of God, we are all equal and share the inherent equality,” “We are all part of [the] fallen human race and therefore we are all sinners, homosexuals are not greater sinners than all the others, but nevertheless it is sinful to live in a homosexual relationship according to our faith,” and “according to the Christian view, sexual life is made to be in the confines of marriage between one man and woman.”
While Pohjola stressed that “We have again and again said that we confess the God-given dignity, value and human rights of those who we identify them as homosexuals,” “we also call homosexual acts sinful and in discordance with the created order and the will of God as found in the Bible.” He believed that the prosecutor general did not accept this distinction “since sexuality is so deeply rooted in the identity of a person.”
According to the prosecutor general’s line of thinking, “If we call the homosexual living style sinful, we deny the dignity of homosexuals. In other words, to reject homosexuality is to deny their human value as human beings and thus degrading their intrinsic worth and thus insulting them and thus defaming them. If you follow this argument to its logical conclusion, the [ramifications] for Christian teaching and religious freedom are severe.”
Pohjola attributed his prosecution and the widespread acceptance of the aforementioned line of thinking to the rapid decline in religiosity that has come to define his country: “Finland is a modern, safe, clean, wealthy country but on the other hand, it is committing demographical suicide and is under enormous pressure to take more and more immigrants. It is secular and it has lost its Christian and Lutheran roots and families aren’t doing well,” he explained.
“This case is only a faint echo of the cultural eruption that is taking place in Western countries,” he explained. “Although we still have the blue cross in our flag, Finland is not a Christian nation anymore. Church attendance is about 1% and maybe less. The less people know about the basic Christian teaching, the less they understand it and tolerate Christian teaching in the public square.”
Pohjola vowed that despite the legal headwinds and consequences he may face, he would “hold on to this truth and publicly teach it no matter what the cost is not because we want to wage a cultural war in the society but to call people to repentance and through faith in Christ, receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life.”
When Pohjola finished speaking, Sean Nelson, legal counsel on ADF International’s Global Religious Freedom Team, discussed the legal implications of this case. Nelson reported that in many third-world and authoritarian countries, “We regularly see criminal prosecutions and convictions for blasphemy and so-called religious offense laws in these countries against many different religious minority groups including but not exclusive to Christians.” “What we see in many authoritarian countries [is] the use of blasphemy, apostasy and anti-conversion laws to force religious minorities to hide in the shadows in fear of fully practicing their faith,” Nelson lamented. “Dozens of countries are still regularly enforcing their blasphemy laws in favor of majority beliefs and against minorities.” He highlighted ADF’s mission to “support those charged with blasphemy” and seek “the worldwide repeal of such laws.”
Nelson characterized “hate speech laws that have gathered steam in Western countries” as “secular versions of blasphemy laws.” According to Nelson, “Both laws are justified by the alleged harm that minority views, very often religious views cause to the majority, that the offense causes emotional and societal harm, even when the speaker is only sharing their genuinely held beliefs. They both work to marginalize certain views and exclude people from government and positions of influence.”
“They both use broad, ambiguous language and definitions that make it impossible to know precisely what is prohibited and that open the door for arbitrary and biased enforcement and they’re used to coerce others to change their views so that they aren’t punished,” he added.
“These are also terrible precedents internationally as they provide cover to dozens of authoritarian governments that say, ‘If the west has no problem criminally prosecuting controversial speech, then what’s wrong with us doing that?’”
Pohjola’s speech at the ADF came on the same day that six Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to Nadine Maenza, the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, urging her to take the Finnish government’s actions “into consideration when recommending which countries should be added to the State Department’s Special Watch List,” which consists of countries that are hostile to religious freedom.
Former Trump administration State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus clearly made House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff uncomfortable when she pressed him on Tuesday about his promotion of the debunked Steele dossier.
Last week, special counsel John Durham charged Igor Danchenko with five counts of lying to the FBI. Danchenko is a Russian national who worked at the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and is believed to be a primary source of information contained in the infamous anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. That document was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and was used to help launch the Russia probe in search of ties between the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
Ortagus, who was a guest-hosting ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, questioned Schiff about his promotion of the Steele dossier and the false narrative underlying it.
“You’ve been really prolific over the past few years being the head of the Intel Committee. You defended, promoted, you even read into the Congressional Record the Steele dossier,” Ortagus said.
“And we know last week the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier. Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people?” she asked.
Schiff first responded in a reasonable fashion, saying any who lied to the FBI should be prosecuted.
He then defended his conduct.
“We couldn’t have known, for example, people were lying to Christopher Steele. So it was proper to investigate them,” Schiff said.
The congressman added that one benefit of the investigation was learning that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had given polling data to Russian intelligence. Schiff was playing pretty fast and loose with the facts. According to The Associated Press, Manafort gave polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant, who allegedly passed it along to Russian intelligence.
“But Mueller’s team said it couldn’t ‘reliably determine’ Manafort’s purpose in sharing it, nor assess what Kilimnik may have done with it,” the AP reported.
That sort of exaggeration by Schiff was typical throughout the Russia probe.
Ortagus reminded Schiff that Manafort was removed from the campaign in the summer of 2016 when questions arose regarding his past lobbying work for pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs. Further, it should be noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, though filled with Democratic investigators, “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated” with Russia, according to the Justice Department’s Mueller report.
Ortagus then brought the conversation back to Schiff’s role in promoting the whole collusion false narrative and the dossier.
“You may have helped spread Russian disinformation yourself for years by promoting this. I think that’s what Republicans and what people who entrusted you as the Intel Committee chair are so confused about your culpability in all of this,” Ortagus said.
“Well, I completely disagree with your premise,” Schiff responded. “It’s one thing to say allegations should be investigated, and they were. It’s another to say that we should have foreseen in advance that some people were lying to Christopher Steele, which is impossible of course to do.”
The Californian sells himself short. He was constantly out in front of the cameras claiming he was privy to intelligence that he could not share with the public validating the collusion charge. For example in March 2017, NBC “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd asked Schiff if there was anything beyond circumstantial evidence suggesting the Trump campaign’s connection to Russia.
“I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Schiff said.
Further questioned whether he had seen direct evidence, the representative responded, “I don’t want to get into specifics but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of an investigation.”
.@RepAdamSchiff on Trump/Russia connection: "There is more than circumstantial evidence now…and is very much worthy of investigation." pic.twitter.com/qvw7drsqQX
Despite making claims like that for many months, Schiff never came forward with such evidence, even after Mueller issued his report.
On Tuesday’s showing of “The View,” the Democrat pivoted away from discussing the dossier to raising the issue of the 2019 House Democratic impeachment of Trump and the Capitol incursion to prove investigating him was justified.
You’ll recall it was during the impeachment hearing that Schiff famously made up his own fanciful version of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to build his case that the American leader conducted a shakedown to secure an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in Ukraine. This performance was even after Zelensky himself said he felt no pressure from Trump’s call and his country launched no investigation into the Bidens.
Schiff told Ortagus, “None of that is undercut. None of that serious misconduct is in any way diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele.”
“No. I think just your credibility is,” Ortagus shot back.
Schiff then opted for the verbal attack of a schoolboy, saying, “I think the credibility of your question is in doubt.”
Having boasted about so much with so little pushback from the media, it was refreshing to see his feet actually held to the fire for once.
Randy DeSoto has written more than 2,000 articles for The Western Journal since he joined the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book “We Hold These Truths” and screenwriter of the political documentary “I Want Your Money.”@RandyDeSoto
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened this week to bus illegal immigrants to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware should the administration continue to pay for “clandestine” flights carrying migrants into the Sunshine State.
“If they’re going to come here, you know, we’ll provide buses and … I will send them to Delaware,”DeSantis warned during a press conference on Wednesday.
The governor’s tough remarks came amid a lengthy polemic against the president over his handling of the ongoing immigration crisis at the U.S southern border, during which he described the secretive process that the Biden administration has reportedly used to send some 70 flights carrying illegal aliens into his state and elsewhere around the country. One of those flights carried an illegal immigrant who allegedly went on to murder a father of four in Florida, DeSantis declared earlier this week.
“There’s no notification to the state of Florida,” DeSantis complained, noting, “These are done mostly in the middle of the night, and it’s clandestine. And we really have no say into it.”
“I know when we initially got wind of this, it wasn’t through normal channels, it’s people in the federal government who are effectively leaking this to us so that we have a heads-up on it,” he continued.
The governor then argued that if the president is unwilling to secure the country’s border with Mexico, then he should open up his home state to house the illegal immigrants rather than shipping them to other places around the country.
“If he’s not going to support the border being secured, then he should be able to have everyone there. So, we will do whatever we can in that regard. And we are absolutely going to do everything we can,” DeSantis insisted.
DeSantis also took issue with separate reporting that amid rapidly rising inflation in the country, Biden is considering handing out payments to some illegal immigrant families who were separated at the border under the previous administration.
“The president has said that basically, they want to even pay reparations to people who came illegally, just think about that,” the governor said. “You as an American, you get higher gas prices, you get higher grocery bills, you get told, basically, to just grin and bear it.”
“But someone breaks the law, comes illegally, and they’re going to cut him a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he continued. “That is just unbelievable. But that’s what we’re dealing with.”
As Americans suffer the consequences of rising inflation, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is saying that “the inflation tax is real” and Washington cannot keep ignoring the financial hardships people are experiencing.
“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not “transitory” and is instead getting worse. From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” Manchin’s tweet declared.
His comments came as newly released data revealed that consumers continue to face rising prices.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index has risen 6.2% over a 12-month period, marking the largest one-year jump in more than three decades.
“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.9 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.4 percent in September,” according to the department. “Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 6.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.”
The cost for necessities like food and energy have risen significantly during the past year.
“The all items index rose 6.2 percent for the 12 months ending October, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1990,” the department said. “The energy index rose 30.0 percent over the last 12 months, and the food index increased 5.3 percent,” the department reported.”
As President Biden and congressional Democrats push for the passage of a massive spending plan, Manchin has been a persistent obstacle in his party’s path, refusing to back their proposal. The senator has said that he will not “support a package that risks hurting American families suffering from historic inflation.”
Proponents of the proposal contend that passage of the massive spending plan would actually combat inflation.
“The best way to address inflation is to pass a bill that creates jobs, reduces bottlenecks, and is totally paid for by making sure the wealthy pay their fair share. That’s just what we’re doing with the Build Back Better Act,” a tweet shared on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) account claims.
The Consumer Price Index increased 0.9% in October, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 6.2% as supply shortages continue and demand grows, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday. The year-over-year inflation figure is an increase from September’s 5.3% level, marking the highest level in 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected the CPI would increase to just 5.9% in October.
The core price index, which excludes volatile categories like food and energy, jumped 0.6% in October, an increase from September’s 0.2% figure, according to the BLS.
“I do think we’re moving into a new phase where inflation is broader and where things are going to get a little more intense,” Laura Rosner-Warburton, senior economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives, told the WSJ. “Part of that reflects that [supply-chain] bottlenecks are not resolved going into the holiday season, when a lot of purchases get made, and that the economy is doing really well, so you have strong demand.”
Food prices increased 0.9%, the same increase experienced in September, while the energy index jumped 4.8%.
Additionally, the Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, rose 8.6% year-over-year as of October, the BLS announced Tuesday. The Federal Reserve announced on Nov. 3 that it would begin scaling back its monthly bond purchases by $15 billion starting in November to combat growing inflation. The Fed did not say it would raise interest rates from around the current near-zero level.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The White House’s official press release announcing the Build Back Better Act (BBB) pitches it as a “PLAN TO REBUILD THE MIDDLE CLASS.” It rhapsodizes about “working families” squeezed by the economy, and reminds voters that “Biden promised to rebuild the backbone of the country — the middle class.”
A cartoon illustrates the sort of person who would benefit from Biden’s Build Back Better programs: “Linda,” a white woman, who works at a manufacturing plant but struggles to raise her son, “Leo.”
One thing the White House’s official press release did not mention is that almost all of the $2 trillion doled out under BBB is expressly designated for Black, Latino, Native American, Asian American, Pacific Islander and non-English speaking individuals. White Americans will get nothing and like it.
Over and over again, the bill is written expressly NOT to help the hardworking Linda, apparently because she is white. Here are just a few examples:
— $1 billion to Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities for housing “needs.”
— $500 million for minority-serving schools of medicine.
— $112 million for teacher preparation programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).
— $75 million for culturally appropriate care management and services for older individuals who are racial and ethnic minorities or are underserved due to sexual orientation or gender identity.
— $75 million to study maternal health for pregnant and postpartum minority individuals.
— $50 million study maternal mortality among minorities.
— $50 million to improve behavioral health outcomes for communities of color with substance abuse.
— $75 million to increase research capacity at minority-serving institutions.
And on and on and on.
The very first item in Title II of the bill, titled “ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION,” is a program to distribute more than $100 million in grants to address “low diversity within the teacher and school leader workforce.” To be eligible for a grant, the recipient must have a plan “to increase the diversity of qualified individuals entering into the teacher, principal, or other school leader workforce.”
Similarly, the first provision of BBB’s “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT” section is: “Minority Business Development Agency.”
But wait — here’s a plot twist! This part also includes something for rural America! (So Democrats have heard of Appalachia.) Twenty-one percent of the country is rural. Twenty-four percent is non-white. Guess how the money is divvied up?
One billion dollars for minorities and $200 million for “rural business centers.”
Even provisions that don’t explicitly exclude whites, turn out, on closer examination, to exclude whites. I’ve never seen so many synonyms for “non-white,” such as “persistent poverty communities,” “historically economically distressed,” “historical injustice” and “underserved communities.”
Hang on, Ann — what makes you think “underserved” means “non-white”?
I refer you to page 111 of the bill:
“This section also defines an ‘underserved community’ as a group of people who have been systematically denied the full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life. Underserved communities include Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, other persons of color, [etc.].”
How about changes to our environmental laws? White people love the environment! Sorry, out of luck, again, white boy.
BBB allocates almost $7 billion for “national service programs to carry out projects related to climate resilience and mitigation.” Unfortunately, however, all those billions have to go to “entities that serve and have representation from low-income communities …; utilize culturally competent and multilingual strategies; … implemented by diverse participants from communities being served.”
One billion dollars of the “Climate Resilience and Mitigation” loot is specifically directed to “individuals who were formally incarcerated.” [Sic.] Sure, climate change is important — but not as important as giving money to convicted felons!
What the hell happened to Linda?
Linda is wearing a hardhat, so her job has probably been outsourced. Maybe she’ll be helped by BBB’s humongous expansion of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA). That’s the law passed in the 1960s to compensate American workers whose jobs have been shipped abroad by globalist swine who couldn’t care less about their fellow Americans and don’t mind that every single thing we need, including masks and medicine, is made in China.
Surely, some white people will qualify for that — steelworkers, autoworkers, glass, plastic and paper manufacturing employees.
In fact, the BBB hijacks the whole idea of compensating globalism’s losers and turns the TAA into just another massive welfare scheme. Both the eligibility requirements and payment amounts are expanded beyond all reason, entitling “workers” to years and years of payouts, with no minimum employment period required, and no stipulation that trade has anything to do with the loss of their jobs.
Thus, for example, a program that is — again — meant to remunerate workers whose jobs were shipped abroad will now offer assistance to public sector employees. How does a government employee lose a job at all — much less to trade? (I only wish we had Chinese people running our grade schools.)
Naturally, states will be required to work with “training providers” that have a proven track record serving “Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, other persons of color, members of other minority communities” and so on.
Republicans seem to think that if they just talk about how much Biden’s BBB plan costs, their job is done. They ought to read the bill. It might prompt them to finally say something about the Democrats’ clear animus against white Americans.
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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.
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.
Americans have two political parties, both of which we loathe. We take turns punishing one by rewarding the other. Our political elites depend on this vicious cycle, and it’s why the only thing both parties ever seem to agree on is screwing ordinary Americans like a two-headed weasel in heat.
It’s easy to think it’s merely that vicious cycle at work in Virginia’s recent election upset: Democrats came out hard in favor of enabling bathroom rape, teaching kids that white skin is evil, and alerting the FBI about parents who expressed concern over such things.
So they got punished for it, and now Republicans have a new opportunity to squander. After that, Americans would normally punish the GOP for failing their mandate by reelecting Democrats who finally rediscovered how to shut up about their true intentions for five minutes.
But the opportunity presented to Virginia Republicans goes beyond another chance for the GOP to suckle on a fresh serving of voters’ goodwill. The massive rightward shift in Virginia wasn’t just business as usual. It was driven by a growing number of parents choosing to reclaim their authority over their households.
Parents Awaken to Their Responsibilities
Providence has given parents the awesome responsibility to raise and provide for the well-being of their children. Like any true responsibility, it comes with the authority to carry it out. When parents are unable to fulfill those responsibilities alone, they delegate.
For example, if parents cannot reliably protect their household from murderers, rapists, and robbers, they collaborate with institutions that can. If they cannot adequately educate their children alone, they enlist the help of teachers. This delegation is ultimately why any and every government institution exists: to assist families in some way or another.
It is precisely this authority Democrat Terry McAuliffe openly tried to usurp. As a result, the election became a referendum on whether children belong to the state. Enough parents were willing to say “no” that a blue state turned red overnight.
Parents can be tricked into delegating their authority to the unfit if they can plausibly tell themselves their children will be fine. The public school system is proof enough of that.
But the past couple of years have rapidly eroded that plausibility. We’ve seen schools forcibly cover children’s faces and isolate them from friends over an illness that poses virtually no threat to them. Remote learning also exposed their curriculum to an extent most parents had never witnessed before. The promotion of sexual degeneracy by schools is likewise coming home to roost more and more often.
Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied
It’s also not just Virginia and not just the schools. Our state and federal governments have spent two years devastating our economy, stripping our stores bare, and inflating our currency, making it harder than ever to care for our children. Our media has spent even longer lying to us about all this and more, and it is only doubling down on censorship for the sake of our elites. Worst of all, the Biden-Harris administration has tried to threaten our families with destitution unless we submit to vaccines whose risks often far outstrip any potential benefit.
These are not things parents will forget—especially when committed by those to whom we delegated our authority for the sake of our children. There are also limits to how long any parent is willing to simply wait and hope for improvement before taking action for our children’s sake.
This reclamation of authority by parents is still a work in progress, certainly—McAuliffe only lost by two points, after all. But it is in progress, and it’s not easily reversible.
Once a parent realizes someone has threatened his child, he will never trust that person again. If parents cannot disassociate the people threatening them from the institutions these people run, then they will not trust the institutions either.
Nobody who’s gotten a good look at the true face of progressivism is going to forget it anytime soon. This new dynamic is not stopping. It is accelerating.
If Republicans Don’t Use Their Power, They’re Toast
That brings us to the opportunity for Republicans. I’ve seen a lot of people are calling this a seismic shift in government. But the only reason parents voted for Republicans is that they still hold out hope that the GOP might willingly serve on their behalf.
Should that hope prove false, parents won’t stop trying to reclaim their authority; they will just start doing so in even more earth-shaking ways. One way or another, America’s vicious two-party cycle is not going to persist for much longer. This is the bare minimum Republican office-holders need to do to keep that hope alive.
First, education needs to be addressed, and a few token policy changes aren’t going to cut it. Those faculty and administrators who betrayed parents’ trust need to be removed.
The person who was distributing pornography to your children in school, for example, won’t suddenly become trustworthy because someone makes a rule. The same is true of teachers and administrators who hate your child because of her skin tone. Those people need to go—some fired, some even prosecuted.
Public universities that train teachers to act this way likewise need to be addressed. No program peddling degeneracy and critical race theory to aspiring educators should receive any state funding.
To the timid who complain, “But that’s cancel culture!” I simply respond, “Yes.” If someone starts shooting at your children, you aren’t “sinking to their level” by returning fire. It is parents’ moral obligation to fight back. Leftist institutions chose to escalate to this level of aggression, and they can choke on the consequences.
Yes, this will certainly be a long and difficult battle, which is why parents should immediately be given school choice until it’s resolved. Let parents take their tax dollars away from these errant institutions so they can enlist the help of real schools instead.
Faith In Election Integrity Must Be Restored
Republicans’ second job should be to decisively end voter fraud in their municipalities so parents are guaranteed a voice in their government. There is no point in winning votes if we lose on counting votes.
Do a full forensic investigation of elections you won whether you think there was fraud or not. Prosecute every violation you find whether it made a difference in the outcome or not. And after the investigation, enact common-sense fraud control to address everything you found.
Americans deserve to have confidence in their elections, and parents need to know they still have a say. Republicans need to teach by example that any state or municipality that refuses to transparently ensure the fairness of its elections is doing so because they have something to hide.
Third, Republicans need to use their state and local offices to protect people against the corporations and the federal government that are actively attacking families. Ban corporate mask and vaccine mandates. Provide compensation and other assistance for people being fired for their consciences. Enact laws explicitly holding corporations responsible for the side-effects of any medical treatment they mandate. And, of course, prevent schools from forcing vaccines and other procedures on students—or encouraging such things behind their backs.
Sanctuary States for Right Voters
Now that federal officials are trying to classify outspoken parents as domestic terrorists, states and municipalities will also need to protect their people from those agencies. Republicans should be as diligent about creating sanctuary cities for their own people as the Democrats are about creating sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
Republicans and other conservatives have been great at making careers out of complaining about the left, but that isn’t going to cut it anymore. Parents are finally acting like parents again and taking back their God-given authority. They are offering Republicans a chance to assist them. They aren’t going to stop taking action just because Republicans fail yet again.
The left can complain about white women voting for white kids all they want, but mothers and fathers are almost always going to vote for their children—not because they’re white, but because they’re their children. No adequate parent really cares about someone’s motive for viciously attacking his family; parents are still going to defend their kids no matter what it takes.
Matthew’s writing may be found at The 96th Thesis. You can also follow him on Twitter @matt_e_cochran or subscribe to his YouTube Channel, Lutheran in a Strange Land. He holds an MA from Concordia Theological Seminary.
An analyst who was a primary source for a 2016 dossier of allegations against Donald Trump has been arrested on charges that he repeatedly lied to the FBI about where and how he got his information, officials said Thursday.
Igor Danchenko’s role in providing information to British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the accusations about Trump in a series of reports, has long been a subject of scrutiny from internal Justice Department investigators and special counsel John Durham, according to people familiar with the investigations. Steele presented the dossier to the FBI, and it was part of the basis for secret surveillance court orders targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page as the FBI investigated possible ties between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
A 2019 report by the Justice Department inspector general found major problems with the accuracy of Danchenko’s information. But the 39-page indictment unveiled Thursday paints a more detailed picture of claims that were allegedly built on exaggerations, rumors and outright lies. The indictment is likely to buttress Republican charges that Democrats and FBI agents intentionally or accidentally turned cheap partisan smears into a high-stakes national security investigation of a sitting president.
The indictment also suggests Danchenko may have lied to Steele and others about where he was getting his information. Some of the material came from a Democratic Party operative with long-standing ties to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, according to the charges, rather than well-connected Russians with insight into the Kremlin.
The allegations cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post.
Danchenko appeared briefly Thursday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where his lawyer tried to enter a plea of not guilty on his behalf for five counts of making false statements. The judge did not accept the plea because the hearing was not an arraignment, and Danchenko was released.
His lawyer declined to speak to reporters outside the courtroom.
Durham’s probe into the FBI’s Russia investigation has also led to the indictment of a lawyer connected to Democrats, on a charge that he lied to the FBI. In addition, a former FBI lawyer who worked on the Page surveillance application later pleaded guilty to altering an email related to that case.
Former FBI officials have said the dossier did not launch their Trump campaign investigation, nor was it a factor in the conclusions reached by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. But the dossier did play a critical role both in how the FBI sought court-approved surveillance and, after it was published by BuzzFeed News in 2017, the public debate about Trump and Russia.
Trump and his supporters have accused FBI officials of trying to discredit or defeat him through an unfair investigation premised on false accusations. The FBI’s defenders, however, say the agency was obligated to examine allegations of Russian interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign during the election.
Then-Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Durham in 2019 to investigate the origins and handling of the Russia investigation.
Steele’s reports on Trump were based in large part on a person he called his “primary sub-source,” which was Danchenko, according to people familiar with the matter. Danchenko, a 43-year-old Virginia resident and Washington-based researcher, was hired by Steele to talk to people he knew in Russia about any possible ties Trump may have had to the Kremlin.
Steele, in turn, was paid by a research firm, Fusion GPS, that had been hired by a law firm that represented Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. A lawyer for Fusion GPS declined to comment on the indictment on Thursday.
Lawyers for Steele did not immediately reply to requests for comment, though ABC News recently aired an interview with him in which he insisted much of the dossier was accurate and would be proved so eventually.
The indictment charges that Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI in interviews in 2017 as agents sought to get to the bottom of claims made in the dossier. It also notes that the FBI “was ultimately not able to confirm or corroborate” most of the dossier’s substantive claims.
An FBI spokeswoman referred questions about the indictment to Durham’s office.
Danchenko allegedly lied to agents when he said he had never communicated about the dossier allegations with a U.S.-based public relations executive “who was a longtime participant in Democratic Party politics.”
The indictment does not identify that individual, but it is Charles Dolan Jr., according to Ralph Martin, a lawyer representing Dolan. Martin said in an email Thursday that his client was a witness in the case; he declined to comment further, and a spokesman for Durham declined to comment on the claim that Dolan is a witness.
The indictment charges that in fact, Danchenko used Dolan as a source for some of the dossier’s allegations.
Dolan had served as a state chairman of Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and a volunteer on her 2016 campaign. While in the White House, Bill Clinton appointed Dolan to two four-year terms on a State Department advisory committee, according to the legal filing.
Dolan’s ties to the Democratic Party were so extensive that they bore upon his “reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source of information” about Trump, the indictment says. Danchenko “gathered some of the information . . . at events in Moscow” organized by Dolan, who invited him to attend, the indictment charges. The indictment also suggests — but does not say outright — that Danchenko may have relied on information provided by Dolan to fuel the most salacious accusation to come out of the dossier: that Trump supposedly had a liaison with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel and that a video existed of the encounter that could be used to compromise the presidential candidate.
The indictment notes that in June of 2016, the executive received a tour of the Moscow hotel, including a presidential suite in which Trump had once stayed. According to another person who was on the tour, the indictment said, the hotel employee who led the tour never suggested anything sexual or untoward about Trump’s stay. Trump has always denied the allegations.
The indictment suggests that while Danchenko allegedly misled people about his conversations with Dolan, the executive also misled Danchenko. Dolan allegedly told Danchenko in 2016 that a Republican friend described internal Trump campaign discussions surrounding the ouster of a senior campaign official. That allegation became part of the dossier. But when the FBI spoke to Dolan, he claimed the anecdote was just supposition on his part and there was no Republican friend who had said that to him, according to the indictment.
Dolan also wrote an email in early 2017 that suggested he knew that Danchenko was assembling allegations for the dossier, according to the indictment.
“I’ve been interviewed by the Washington Post and the London Times — three times over the last two days over the Dossier on Trump and I know the Russian agent who made the report (He used to work for me),” Dolan allegedly wrote. It was not immediately clear to what conversations the executive was referring.
The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about interactions he claimed to have had with the then-president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the USA. The indictment doesn’t identify that person, but people familiar with the case have previously said it is Sergei Millian.
Danchenko falsely claimed to have had a phone conversation with a person he thought was Millian as part of his information-gathering for the dossier, according to the indictment, which says the two agreed to meet later in New York. “Danchenko fabricated these facts,” it alleges.
While leading others to believe he was in contact with Millian, Danchenko had allegedly been unsuccessful in trying to speak with him, according to messages that Danchenko sent at the time that were cited in the indictment.
Early in the Russia investigation, law enforcement officials were told Millian was the source of a key claim in the dossier that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russia. But the indictment charges that Danchenko didn’t speak to Millian. It notes that Danchenko sent an email to a Russian journalist in late August 2016 asking for help connecting with Millian because he “doesn’t respond.”
For his part, Steele told the FBI that Millian was one of Danchenko’s sources, according to the indictment. Danchenko told the FBI that he knew Steele believed that he had direct contact with Millian and that he “never corrected” Steele about that “erroneous belief.”
Efforts to reach Millian on Thursday were unsuccessful, but a Twitter account bearing his name posted a message calling on news organizations to correct their past reporting about him.
The Post and other news organizations reported in 2017 that Millian was a source of key information in the dossier, including the anecdote about the Moscow hotel room. The Post reported that Millian had shared the information with an associate, who passed it on to Steele.
“The indictment raises new questions about whether Sergei Millian was a source for the Steele dossier, as The Post reported in 2017,” Post executive editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement Thursday. “We are continuing to report on the origins and ramifications of the dossier.”
Danchenko’s alleged lies were material to the Russia investigation because chasing them down consumed a significant amount of the FBI’s time and resources, the indictment says. It adds that Danchenko’s claims “played a role in the FBI’s investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
A Justice Department inspector general report issued in late 2019 was highly critical of how the FBI used Steele’s allegations. The report found that when the FBI later questioned Danchenko about the allegations contained in Steele’s dossier, Danchenko tried to distance himself from some of the claims, saying the dossier overstated the information he had originally provided to Steele.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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