CNN host Dana Bash grilled Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday over why the House Jan. 6 committee is not hearing from witnesses who counter the committee narrative about the United States Capitol riot and former President Donald Trump.
At the end of Schiff’s interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Bash observed that every public witness the Jan. 6 committee has called thus far only confirmed the committee’s narrative.
“Why aren’t you calling witnesses in a public way who might challenge the committee?” Bash asked. “Is that intentional, because you don’t want to deviate from the storyline that you’re trying to present to the public and, of course, potentially to the Justice Department?”
Schiff denied that it is “intentional” and claimed the committee is willing to hear from any witness who possess “relevant evidence.” But he did not state whether the committee has, in fact, heard from any witness who challenged their narrative.
“So, like, why not subpoena Mike Pence, for example?” Bash pressed in response. “I know you asked him to testify voluntarily. That didn’t happen.”
The Jan. 6 committee is not “taking anything off the table,” Schiff responded, “in terms of witnesses who have not yet testified.” He claimed there are several “high-profile” people whom the committee would like to speak with but declined to identify them and whether they would offer testimony challenging the committee’s narrative.
In the end, Schiff admitted that former Vice President Mike Pence is “certainly a possibility.”
Hear what Schiff wants to know from Ginni Thomas youtu.be
Bash’s line of questioning highlighted a problem that former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy brought attention to last week, namely that the committee is conducting its public hearings in a manner akin to a kangaroo court.
As I’ve said from the beginning, they’ve got a very good story to tell. The problem is, they’ve set it up in a process that is not a fair process that’s aimed at getting to the truth and giving whatever contra arguments there are on their day in court.
And as a result, it’s more like messaging than it is like a real investigation. And if you would try this in court, you know, I could have been very impressive in court if there were no defense lawyers, you know. Like the government put on its own case, own witnesses, own exhibits, and then no cross-examination and no defense arguments. I’d have been 1000 – 0.
Earlier in the interview, Bash grilled Schiff after he claimed the Jan. 6 committee has evidence Trump was involved in a scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Schiff claimed the committee “will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme.” But when Bash repeatedly asked whether the committee has evidence showing that Trump directed it — asking, in fact, three times — Schiff repeatedly dodged the question.
“I don’t want to get ahead of our hearing,” Schiff said.
I spent a lot of time this weekend contemplating “Juneteenth,” our newest federal holiday. I first heard of it in 1985, when a college football teammate from Texas chastised a group of us for being unaware of the celebration. He explained the history of it to us. As a boy from Indiana, I understood his appreciation for Texas history but didn’t think it applied to me or my family.
I never celebrated Juneteenth. I never gave it much thought. I’ve lived in Indiana, South Carolina, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, California, and Tennessee. No one in any of those states ever invited me to a Juneteenth party.
I suspect most people don’t fully comprehend or get Juneteenth. It’s a national holiday because of the death of George Floyd, not because our political leaders had a sincere interest in celebrating the emancipation of slaves in Texas or across the South.
This weekend, the New York Times ran an op-ed from Casey Gerald, an author and a native of Texas. Here are his opening lines:
“I won’t pretend Juneteenth has always meant a lot to me.
“I was born in Texas, as were my parents and most of my kin, all the way back to at least the 19th century, when some of them were enslaved. Still, for most of my life, the day was just another holiday marked on the community calendar — even if it was our day, a day for black Texans. Perhaps one sign that a thing belongs to you is that you take it for granted.
“The past few years have forced some stronger feelings to the surface.”
The “Summer of George Floyd” forced those stronger feelings to the surface.
A weekend article in the Washington Post spelled out the impetus for those stronger feelings, writing:
“During the summer of 2020, amid the racial-justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, millions of white Americans became aware of Juneteenth for the first time. Some companies announced they would give employees the day off on Juneteenth, and momentum grew to make it a national holiday. Last summer, the U.S. did just that, as President Biden signed a bipartisan bill into law on June 17.”
David Kaufman, writing in the New York Post, agreed with the Washington Post assessment:
“At a time when there is so much rewriting of American history, Juneteenth proves why history should be kept intact.
“Officially declared a national holiday by Congress last year in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, the day marks the emancipation of black slaves by President Abraham Lincoln in January 1863. As we prepare to celebrate it for the first time as a nation on Monday, it feels as important as the Fourth of July.”
Juneteenth’s connection to the George Floyd riots undermines the holiday’s ability to unify Americans. A lack of unifying messaging undermines the success and purpose of a national holiday.
What’s the purpose of Juneteenth?
Opal Lee, known as the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” offered this explanation:
“Juneteenth asks Americans to recognize that our nation’s principles are neither grossly hypocritical nor naively aspirational. We have inherited lofty yet practical ideals, and it falls to us to implement them as best we can.
“In 1865, that meant fighting attempts to reimpose slavery through violence. In 2022, it means opposing new forms of violence, whether it is violence that comes from within a community or violence perpetrated by the police.”
I like the first part of Lee’s explanation. It’s unifying and inspirational. But the second half falls flat. She analogizes slavery to violent police misconduct. The end of slavery freed 2.5 million black people. Slavery was codified into law and custom. The rare instances of illegal police violence are not backed by law or even custom. They’re aberrations.
Casey Gerald summarized his thoughts on Juneteenth this way:
“Let us grieve for our forebears and feel deep gratitude as we think of the enormous price our people paid so we could be free. Let us remember that despite the degradation of slavery, they lived fully human lives, too. They laughed. They loved. They dreamed. They ate sweet treats. Let us pray to them and say, this year and always: Thank you.”
Gerald’s definition leaves out the price paid by the hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers whose enormous price included the sacrifice of their lives. Gerald wants a black national holiday, not a unifying one.
My point is, as black people, we can’t fully explain or justify the Juneteenth holiday. Most black people did not care until George Floyd died. The black female mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, best represents our confusion.
Over the weekend, she unveiled a monument she had erected at Lafayette Square in celebration of Juneteenth. The monument is an afro pick with a clenched fist. She said the sculpture represents the freedoms we’ve gained. New Orleans’ next sculpture will be of a durag and a can of Murray’s hair grease.
Let me take a crack at defining Juneteenth.
American black people did a lot of celebrating in 1865.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9 of that year, ending the Civil War and kicking off the official death of slavery.
Twenty-two days later, more than 10,000 freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, held a parade honoring deceased Union soldiers. The event is credited with starting the Memorial Day tradition.
In June 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and enforced Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans adopted June 19th as a day to celebrate their freedom.
In early December, the United States ratified the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery.
The year 1865 is as important to American history as 1776. America was reborn, reimagined, and resurrected from the dead. The year marks black Americans’ central role in this country’s march toward freedom and exceptionalism. The African-American journey has been America’s north star, its moral compass.
The fact that Juneteenth is such a divisive and polarizing issue speaks to how far this nation and its citizens have strayed from our shared moral struggle, purpose, and values.
I wish we could rebrand Juneteenth as 1865 Day. We could spend the day honoring the people who sacrificed everything for America to experience a rebirth. Right now, it’s a celebration of George Floyd. I feel sorry for George Floyd. I have no interest in celebrating him.
In a move of staggering stupidity and hubris, Lithuanian banned the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad effective today, June 18, 2022. Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland on the west and Lithuania on the east, is home to almost a half-million Russians and the headquarters for the Russian Navy’s Baltic Sea force.
Lithuania claims it is simply abiding by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. After all, Lithuania is a member of the European Union and NATO. But that is the point. This is a deliberate provocation. It is laying economic siege to a vital interest of Russia. While there is no immediate danger to the Russian population of Kaliningrad, this is a flash point that could lead to an actual war as opposed to a special military operation.
What is the difference between a special military operation and war? In the SMO you leave communications, electrical infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and fuel depots largely intact. In the SMO you try to minimize civilian and military casualties.
War on the other hand is terrifying. If Russia opts for a war footing, the restraint that characterized its activities in Ukraine will be replaced by a full-on attack on key military installations and assets in the region as well as the destruction of the communications, electrical, transportation and fuel resources of the adversary. This probably includes taking out critical satellite communications and intelligence collection systems of the United States and Europe.
Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg, was put under Soviet control in 1945 according to the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, which was backed by the United States and Great Britain. The Russian people paid blood for this land in 1945 and are not going to relinquish it in the face of bullying or threats from the west. If you are going to poke an angry bear with a stick, you better be damn sure that bear is locked up and can’t get you. Russia sure as hell is not secure in a cage.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden signs an executive order on advancing equality for LGBT individuals as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (L), Vice President Kamala Harris (2nd L), first lady Jill Biden (3rd R) and Javier Gomez (2nd R) of Florida and other LGBT advocates look on during a pride event at the East Room of the White House on June 15, 2022 in Washington, D.C. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Joe Biden signed an executive order seeking to stamp out a practice critics refer to as “conversion therapy” and circumvent state laws that he characterizes as hostile to LGBT rights, sparking divergent reactions from religious freedom advocacy groups and LGBT activists.
Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Individuals” Wednesday at the White House, marking the middle of the month LGBT activists recognize as “pride month.”
The executive order calls on the administration to “safeguard LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy’ — efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The American Psychological Association defines conversion therapy as “counseling and psychotherapy to attempt to eliminate individuals’ sexual desires for members of their own sex.” The association criticizes “ex-gay” ministries and “religious groups that use religion to attempt to eliminate those desires.”
Critics of “conversion therapy” bans contend such policies prohibit licensed Christian counselors from counseling based on their religious beliefs to individuals experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion.
The president’s order claims conversion therapy is a “discredited practice that research indicates can cause significant harm, including higher rates of suicide-related thoughts and behaviors by LGBTQI+ youth.”
Biden’s executive order directs Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra to “establish an initiative to reduce the risk of youth exposure to so-called conversion therapy.”
The order urges Becerra to “consider whether to issue guidance clarifying for HHS programs and services agencies that so-called conversion therapy does not meet federal criteria for use in federally funded health and human services programs.”
Biden also directed the Federal Trade Commission to determine “whether so-called conversion therapy constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice, and to issue such consumer warnings or notices as may be appropriate.”
Biden also ordered several executive agencies to work together to “develop an action plan to promote an end to [conversion therapy’s] use around the world.”
Julie Marie Blake, senior counsel with the conservative religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, expressed concern in a statement Thursday. She argues that the executive order would “mandate what Christian counselors can say, or not say, in private conversations with their clients” and “demand faith-based foster care and adoption homes” who object to placing children with LGBT couples “violate their religious beliefs or lose needed funding to help children find a forever home.”
Another provision in the order instructs Becerra to “use the Department of HHS’ authorities to protect LGBTQI+ individuals’ access to medically necessary care from harmful state and local laws and practices” and directs Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to “support LGBTQI+ students, their families, and other school personnel targeted by harmful State and local laws and practices.”
While Biden did not mention any “laws and practices” by name, he could have been referring to bans on medicalized gender transitioning for minors in Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas, as well as laws passed in more than a dozen states requiring athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their biological sex as opposed to their stated gender identity.
Advocacy organizations on both sides of the LGBT debate quickly reacted to Biden’s executive order.
Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles Project, cited the executive order as evidence that the president “fully supports sex changes for kids” and “plans to impose his view on the rest of the country, by any means possible.”
“One obvious intention of this order is to seek ways to punish states that are protecting children from experimental and dangerous sex-change treatments as well as preserving girls’ athletic and private spaces,” he said in a statement. “Never mind that all these efforts have the overwhelming support of voters; the woke Left cannot abide such democratic lawmaking. Instead, the Biden administration will try to undermine these popular laws however possible.”
Schilling also said it’s “ironic” that the executive order condemned conversion therapy “when, in fact, that is exactly what it is promoting.”
“What the administration really wants to do is lock mentally distressed children into the sex-change process and criminalize any attempts to make them feel comfortable in their own bodies,” Schilling argues.
“This isn’t just bad healthcare; it’s also a morally reprehensible effort to appease radical ideologues and increase Big Pharma profits at the expense of vulnerable kids who cannot adequately consent to the procedures being pushed on them,” he added. “This disgraceful action by President Biden will only serve to further hurt children and tear families apart. Leaders in Congress and the states must continue to vigorously oppose this administration’s dangerous policies in every way they can.”
ADF’s Blake said that “the president is threatening to erase the entire category of women’s sports — egregiously, on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the civil rights law designed to protect fair competition for women.”
The National Black Justice Coalition, which describes itself as a “leading Black LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” praised Biden’s executive order.
In a statement, Victoria Kirby York, deputy director of the NBJC, said the executive action is “a great example of governing for all of us” that “includes several policy proposals that the National Black Justice Coalition has supported and recommended — most recently federal government action on the slate of state attacks on Black, gay, and transgender children in education and healthcare.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
The Capitol Police debunked a serious accusation that Democrats have lodged against House Republicans. Democrats have repeatedly claimed that Republican lawmakers led “reconnaissance” tours through the United States Capitol Complex the day before the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Republicans, however, deny that such tours took place. The House committee investigating Jan. 6 has not released any evidence corroborating the shocking accusations.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), a target of the accusation, has admitted to providing a tour to constituents the day before Jan. 6. However, Loudermilk said last month the group never entered the Capitol itself, but toured parts of the office complex instead.
Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger wrote a letter on Monday confirming there is no evidence that Loudermilk gave a “reconnaissance” tour.
According to Manger, video surveillance showed that Loudermilk hosted a group of 12 people, which eventually grew to 15 people, at the Rayburn House Office Building on Jan. 5. The group also traveled in the basements under the Capitol complex, traversing areas under the Cannon House Office Building and Longworth House Office Building.
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Manger declared. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.’
“At no time did the group appear in any tunnels that would have led them to the U.S. Capitol,” he explained. “In addition, the tunnels leading to the U.S. Capitol were posted with USCP officers and admittance to the U.S. Capitol without a Member of Congress was not permitted on January 5, 2021.”
#January6 Capitol Police Chief J.Thomas Manger, “There is no evidence that Rep. Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021. We train our officers on being alert…we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.” pic.twitter.com/VAsFVMilsx
The House Jan. 6 committee pushed back against Manger’s statement, releasing video footage on Wednesday of the group in the tunnels under the Capitol complex. The video, however, does not show any person from the tour enter the U.S. Capitol. Still, the committee, writing in a letter Wednesday, implicitly suggested the group was guilty of wrongdoing because “individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints.” The committee also claimed one member of the tour was present for the Jan. 6 riot, but they have not provided evidence that man entered the Capitol.
Loudermilk responded to the letter and new video by accusing the House committee of dragging out already-debunked accusations.
“The Capitol Police already put this false accusation to bed, yet the Committee is undermining the Capitol Police and doubling down on their smear campaign, releasing so-called evidence of a tour of the House Office Buildings, which I have already publicly addressed,” Loudermilk said, CNN reported.
“As Capitol Police confirmed, nothing about this visit with constituents was suspicious. The pictures show children holding bags from the House gift shop, which was open to visitors, and taking pictures of the Rayburn train,” he explained. “This false narrative that the Committee and Democrats continue to push, that Republicans, including myself, led reconnaissance tours is verifiably false. No where that I went with the visitors in the House Office Buildings on January 5th were breached on January 6th; and, to my knowledge, no one in that group was criminally charged in relation to January 6th.”
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, andWhatDidYouSay.org.
Well, that didn’t last long. Chesa Boudin, the “progressive” district attorney of San Francisco, was recalled in a landslide election on Tuesday. Evidently, even that city’s progressive voters finally got tired of replacing their car windshields. (On the upside, once out of office, Boudin can keep prosecuting as many criminals as he did while in office.)
Quiz for Republicans:
In a shocking upset, the most liberal city in the nation just voted to recall a pro-criminal D.A.
Q: Should you be dedicating your time to:
— Ukraine
— Tax cuts
— Abortion
— Crime
[Sen. Lindsey Graham frantically waving his hand: UKRAINE!]
Crime is primarily a state and local issue, but there are some things the federal government can do. How about auditing the “homelessness” industry for fraud, graft and corruption? (And the drug rehab industry, while you’re at it.) In the last decade, homeless “advocacy” seems to have displaced Hollywood as the most well-compensated and glamorous industry in California.
Michael Shellenberger’s 2021 book, “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” details how progressives are foisting drug-addicted mental patients on an unsuspecting public. The problem is less the homeless — the drug-addicted mental patients you will always have with you — and more the well-healed liberals getting rich off the homelessness racket.
He begins by quoting all manner of homeless “advocates” — i.e., people who make money off of homelessness — such as Dr. Margot Kushel of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), who insists that homelessness has NOTHING to do with drugs or mental illness. “We’ve always known,” Kushel said, “that most homelessness is a result, pure and simple, of poverty.”
A lot of valuable information comes from sentences that begin with “we’ve always known.”
Convinced of the truth of this preposterous maxim, San Francisco has been doling out billions of dollars to solve homelessness, by providing the homeless — or as we are now commanded to call them, “our unhoused neighbors” — with shelter, food and massive cash payments.
Also free needles! Because homelessness is just a matter of being poor, as “we’ve always known.”
On the other hand …
In 2004, nearly 5,000 homeless people were offered housing by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. Only 131 accepted.
And because, as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of excellence — isn’t that the quote? — San Francisco just keeps trying the same thing. Under a different mayor, about 15 years later, 150 vagrants were removed from a homeless encampment and offered free housing. Eight accepted.
But that makes no sense! Homeless advocates assured us our unhoused neighbors are just like you and me, except they can’t afford the rent.
Another possible cause of homelessness is hinted at in a recent Harvard University study of chronically homeless people in Boston who were given permanent housing. After following the group for 14 years, last year the researchers released their results: 86% of their subjects were beset by the “tri-morbidity” of mental illness, substance abuse and medical illness. After 10 years, only 12% were still housed. Forty-five percent died before the completion of the study.
Similarly, in 2019, San Francisco’s health department found that fully half of the city’s homeless population — currently housed or not — are both mentally ill and drug addicts. About 1,600 of the city’s estimated 8,035 homeless “frequently used emergency psychiatric services.”
The pernicious — but profitable! — idea that homelessness is caused by poverty has led the city to lavish unimaginable aid on the “poor.” In straight cash welfare, SF offers $588 a month to the poor — and that doesn’t include $192 in food stamps. Compare that to Los Angeles, where the maximum cash payment to the poor is $221, or New York City, where it’s $183.
That $780 a month in cash and food stamps doesn’t include all the free stuff given to the homeless through cutout agencies, like churches and nonprofits, funded by taxpayer dollars and tax-deductible “charitable” donations.
Tom Wolf, a formerly homeless drug addict, said that, thanks to all of San Francisco’s giveaways, he was able to spend his entire general assistance payment on heroin. Which San Francisco also helps out with, giving away 6 million free needles to drug addicts every year. That’s more than New York City dispenses — with a population 10 times larger.
As a result, drug overdose is the leading cause of death among the homeless in San Francisco.
The mother of a drug-addicted, homeless young man told Shellenberger that he describes San Francisco as “Pleasure Island” in the movie “Pinocchio”:
“On one side of the street are people giving you food and clean needles. On the other side of the street are all the drug dealers. It’s like getting all the candy and treats that you think you want. You think you’re having fun. But little by little it’s taking away your humanity and turning you into something you were never meant to be, like how the kids start turning into donkeys in ‘Pinocchio,’ and then end up trapped and in cages.”
What kind of sick society would do this to people?
One possible answer: a society that rewards money-grubbing narcissists with no concern for their fellow man, masquerading as giants of compassion. There’s a ton of money to be made in the helping-the-homeless business. As the formerly homeless Wolf told Shellenberger, “[The homeless nonprofits’] whole intention is to keep more people in this cycle because they’re getting money for it.”
Say, whatever happened with UCSF’s Kushel — of the “we’ve always known” metric? In 2019, she was the lucky recipient of a $30 million grant from San Francisco billionaire Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder) to study homelessness.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
Here is the erstwhile journalism foundation, Poynter, campaigning for red flag laws. Beware of misinformation about red flag laws, including critics who say they lack due process, which is not accurate. Another false claim is that the laws allow people with a grudge, such as an ex-spouse, to take guns away.
Beware of misinformation about red flag laws, including critics who say they lack due process, which is not accurate. Another false claim is that the laws allow people with a grudge, such as an ex-spouse, to take guns away. https://t.co/6hY8VcICNR
Let’s imagine a law that empowered a court to temporarily nullify the free speech rights of journalists who are accused by a third party of being potentially dangerous. Let’s imagine that the nullification could be enforced before the journalist even had a chance to respond to any of the allegations leveled against them. Would Poynter argue that the proper standard of due process was met? Because that’s what numerous red flag laws allow.
Let’s then imagine that this law demands the journalist prove their innocence, rather than the state prove their guilt, before reinstating First Amendment rights. And until the journalist can offer a compelling enough argument to convince a judge that they would not commit a crime in the future, the state would continue to strip them of their rights. Would Poynter argue that such a law lacked proper due process? (Considering journalism’s embrace of censorship, perhaps not.)
Let’s imagine now that the law also allowed the free speech rights of journalists to be canceled, not over a pre-crime, but because of “overblown political rhetoric” — as the ACLU, hardly the NRA, warned about Rhode Island’s red flag law. Does Poynter believe people who are offended by, say, social media posts should be able to petition a judge to shut down the rights of individuals? Does that law meet the proper standard of due process? (Again, these days, I’d be nervous to hear the answer.)
Or let’s imagine that the law also permits cops to show up at the home of the journalist, search it, and demand they hand over property, without offering any evidence that they committed, or ever planned to commit, a crime. Do laws that allow the authorities to circumvent normal evidentiary standards and procedures to help in investigations meet Poynter’s acceptable standard of due process? Because red flag laws allow for that kind of abuse.
Whether it’s the First or Second Amendment, the underlying due process arguments remain the same. It’s one thing — an authoritarian thing, for sure — to argue that some of our rights are so dangerous that we should now ignore fundamental Constitutional protections, but it’s another thing to claim that even pointing out this reality is “misinformation.”
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
Fact Checkers from the far-left media giant CNN have now pushed back on claims made by President Biden last month in which he said, “I reduced the federal deficit.”
In a speech last month, Biden repeated the claims of personally reducing the national deficit. “Let me remind you again: I reduced the federal deficit,” Biden said.
“All the talk about the deficit from my Republican friends, I love it. I’ve reduced it to $350 billion in my first year in office. And we’re on track to reduce it, by the end of September, by another 1 trillion, 500 billion dollars, the largest drop ever.”
CNN noted in their fact-checking article that the deficit did go down during the 2021 fiscal year. But, they pointed out that the decline was far less than expected. According to CNN, economic experts say Biden is “distorting reality when he claims that he is personally responsible for the deficit going down.” Despite the drop in the national deficit, the reduction would have been more significant if the Biden administration had continued with laws put in place when Trump left office.
Dan White, senior director at Moody’s Analytics, said, “The actions of the administration and Congress have undoubtedly resulted in higher deficits, not smaller ones.”
“It is encouraging that the administration has proposed some initiatives to bring down the deficit, but so far, none of those initiatives has been seriously considered,” he continued.
The Congressional Budget Office stated that the deficit decline should have been more than $870 billion instead of the $360 billion the Biden administration saw during the fiscal year 2021. By the way, Biden was only in office for eight of those months for 12 fiscal months.
Some of the lack of results can be blamed on the massive $1.9 triliion pandemic relief package passed in the early days of the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden will direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to expand access to “gender-affirming” care at a Pride month event Wednesday, the White House said. Biden will issue an executive order telling HHS to strengthen efforts to ban conversion therapy and increase access to sex change treatment for transgender Americans, including for children. The order will also target legislation passed in some Republican-led states to limit the promotion of LGBT material to children, such as Florida’s parental rights law.
Breaking: President Biden has signed an executive order blocking federal funding for conversion therapy. https://t.co/iXbzR6vhO0
The executive order explicitly endorses “gender-affirming” care, a euphemism for treatments, oftentimes irreversible, that facilitate a sex change, such as hormone therapy or sex-change surgeries. The Biden administration has staunchly supported providing those treatments to children.
“The President’s Order charges HHS to work with states to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “The Department of Justice has intervened and filed statements of interest in lawsuits across the country challenging state laws that seek to ban transgender children from accessing gender-affirming health care and participating in school activities as unconstitutional.”
Biden will sign the order surrounded by LGBT childrenfrom Texas and Florida, two states which
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the first openly-transgender American to serve in a Senate-confirmed position, reportedly endorsed the order in a statement: “Today’s executive order continues the Biden Administration’s work against prejudice and makes it easier for people living in this country to live their lives openly and freely without fear of harassment, scorn or attack.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
If it were in fact a ‘lie’ to charge that an election had been unfair, even stolen, we’re going to need a few more special committees just for Hillary Clinton.
So the slam-dunk argument congressional Democrats have so far made during their obscenely boring Jan. 6 hearings is that Donald Trump not only lied about voter fraud in the 2020 election but that he knew he lied. How can we as a nation look at ourselves in the mirror ever again after that shock revelation?
Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, who sits on the Jan. 6 committee, summarized the conclusion on Sunday. “I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew because he was surrounded by lawyers,” he said on CNN.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Trump must have been willfully dishonest when he said over and over again that he lost the election because it was rigged and fixed to ensure his defeat. After all, his lawyers had told him it was a lie!
The only problem with that open-and-shut case, to the extent that it’s supposed to mean anything to anyone, is that it ignores the lawyers and aides who were telling Trump the opposite, plus the all-too-likely possibility that Trump simply didn’t believe anyone who was telling him he had lost.
None of this is new. Trump White House assistant Peter Navarro was telling the president he had won the election, even publishing a three-part report making the case that the race was stolen. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was telling him he had won. Plenty of others inside and outside the administration were also arguing that state election laws had been illegally altered by lower courts, giving Democrats an unfair advantage.
It was supposedly “devastating testimony” (at least according to CNN’s Jake Tapper) by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr on Monday (previously recorded) when he recalled telling Trump in person that the Justice Department was unable to substantiate any widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election. That story is three months old. Barr recounted it first in the Wall Street Journal during which he said he told the president he found no evidence of fraud and that the president was resistant: “There is a mountain of evidence,” Trump said, according to Barr.
But people told Trump he lost! So he knew he was lying!
That’s not how lying works. The Justice Department swears at this very moment that “white supremacy” is our greatest domestic threat. I say it’s not and I can tell you why I disagree. That doesn’t make me a liar. And if it were in fact a “lie” to charge that an election had been unfair, even stolen, we’re going to need a few more special committees just for Hillary Clinton.
A subsequent point Democrats are aiming for is that Trump had also stated even before the election that his loss could only occur if Democrats cheated, thus he must have had a diabolical plan all along. But guess who made the same assertion? Democrats!
Back in August 2020, CNN hosted a segment with fire-breathing liberal Ana Navarro, Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, and Democrat former Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. Here’s what each of them said in the span of five minutes:
“The only way he feels now he can win this against the Biden-Harris ticket is to straight out steal it, and he’s doing it in plain sight, and we cannot let it happen.”— Boxer
“This man is not going to win fairly. So why are we supporting crooked activity?”— Clyburn (Yes, the James Clyburn who is credited with having “saved” Biden’s campaign.)
“[H]e’s going to find every single way he can to steal this election, to rig this election in his favor.”— Navarro
Is it only worth an investigation when Republicans do it or…?
I get that Democrats are trying to make a broader case that Trump’s election claims were part of a conspiracy that ultimately led to the riot in the Capitol in 2021, but if reaching that point first requires that they ignore the gaping holes in the fundamental assertion that Trump purposefully lied to the public, the committee hearings are basically just re-runs of Lawrence O’Donnell’s programming of the past year.
And we haven’t even gotten started on the role that the pandemic hysteria and Black Lives Matter violence, intentionally instigated and exacerbated by Democrats, played in the lead-up to Jan. 6. I’m sure the committee will use at least one day to get into that. Surely!
U.S. gas prices hit an average of $5 per gallon for the first-time last week, according to AAA. Americans are having to spend more of their hard-earned money on energy. But who is really to blame?
It is probably helpful to start with a breakdown of the components of the price of gas.
The cost of crude oil is the biggest cost component of a gallon of gas and can skew the cost. In January, via the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the cost of crude was just over half the cost of gasoline, at 52%. In February it was 61%, and as of March 2022, it was 59% of the total cost of a gallon of “regular” gasoline (diesel varies slightly). Given its overall weighting to cost, changes to crude oil prices have an outsized impact on final gas prices.
The remaining major cost areas include refining, marketing and distribution, and taxes. As of March 2022, refining was about 18% of the total costs, distribution and marketing about 12%, and taxes (federal, state, and local) about 12%, depending on your location.
It is worth noting that gas stations make very little, and they don’t reap windfalls when prices go up. Most gas stations are independently operated, even those that bear a brand associated with a major oil company. It is estimated that a retailer’s markup on a gallon of gas is around 15 cents, and the profit after expenses averages around 2 cents per gallon. Because of this low take, most gas stations supplement their business with selling a variety of other things, from cigarettes to beverages.
The cost of crude
The cost of crude oil is set by factors of supply and demand. Supply/demand imbalances can lead to major swings in the price of oil, as we have seen recently. Of course, there is also a major oil cartel that decides how much to produce at given times, which factors heavily into supply.
On the demand side, the world has seen massive shifts because of decisions made around the world related to the pandemic and the changes in behaviors that brought about. As people were locked down, demand plummeted, and as people emerged from lockdowns, demand increased. When China fully emerges from another series of lockdowns, as the number-one importer of oil in the world, it will add demand to the worldwide market.
In 2021, the U.S. used almost 20 million barrels per day; worldwide, around 100 million barrels per day were used. You can see why President Biden’s PR stunts of releasing a small amount of inventory from the U.S. strategic reserves wasn’t going to have a meaningful, lasting impact on pricing.
On the supply side, in addition to the whims of OPEC+ regarding production, a variety of domestic and international factors impact oil production. The push for green energy has thwarted the progress that the U.S. was making in energy independence and increasing supply. The Biden administration canceling oil and gas leases, shutting down pipeline progress, and having substantial red tape for drilling and production all factor into the market calculations on what supply will be like today and going forward.
Additionally, the demonization of this critical industry, including the push of ESG initiatives to direct capital away from traditional energy projects, has led to substantial under-investment in the sector, which also materially impacts the supply side of the equation. It is estimated that as much as a trillion dollars in investment has been postponed or canceled over the past few years, with a large part of that related to the ESG and green energy pushes.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, looking at the U.S. field production of crude oil, while the U.S. was producing almost 13 million barrels per day of crude oil before the pandemic, we are now only at 11.655 million barrels per day (as of March 2022).
Europe has largely done the same and is paying the price, quite literally, for it. The Russian invasion of Ukraine took already increasing prices and added a new supply constraint on them, to some extent. The EU is still buying, and with the higher prices Putin is on track to make more money on oil and gas exports this year than last year!
Of course, if the U.S. and Europe had been leaning into more traditional sources of energy (along with expanding their green initiatives instead of trying to substitute the latter ahead of time), the supply would be closer to parity with demand than it is today, even with the invasion.
There is also a monetary policy component to this. If the Federal Reserve had been managing interest rates appropriately and not printing trillions of dollars, we wouldn’t be seeing inflation in everything, including oil and gas, at the same levels as they are at today.
Refining
People tend to forget about some of the other costs of gasoline. Refining is the process that turns the crude oil into not only gasoline but a variety of other products and components for products. These costs depend on the time of year and geography, based on laws that require different blends for different times of year and the associated climates. Input costs of items that may also be refined with the gasoline can also impact this cost (think ethanol). The supply-constrained labor market also makes wages more expensive throughout the organizations that do the refining.
Distribution and marketing
Oil needs to get from its location to the refinery. Once the oil is processed into gasoline, it doesn’t magically appear at the gas stations, either. All of the distribution related to eventually getting gas to you is intricate and expensive. Given that energy is required to transport the oil and gas, increasing energy costs end up being a double whammy for you at the pump. Again, the labor market is also making wages in distribution more expensive. The American Petroleum Institute (“API”) says on the marketing side, “Marketing costs are incurred to support the sale of gasoline by the refineries, distributors and wholesalers and the retailer.”
Taxes
API estimates that on average, 57 cents per gallon of gasoline goes to taxes. The federal tax is constant at 18.4 cents per gallon. State and local taxes vary widely. The high is California at 68 cents, and the low is Alaska at 15 cents, with the state average around 39 cents.
At least this is better than in Europe. Accounting firm UHY says that “on average taxes comprise 59% of the cost of the price of petrol and 52% of the cost of the price of diesel.” This high taxation is meant in part to discourage the use of such fuels.
Are the oil companies and greed to blame?
Oil companies work to supply you with gasoline, as well as other petroleum byproducts, regardless of the broader economic situation.
As noted, the biggest component price in gasoline is set by the market, with a thumb on the scale from OPEC+. With several U.S. companies delivering gas products, if one company wanted to charge even more for its products, other companies could take market share by setting a better price. Obviously, the constraint of supply factors in here as well.
During the sharp reduction in demand during the pandemic, major oil companies took huge losses. The five biggest companies (aka “Big Oil”) lost a combined $76 billion. But if you needed gas, they were still there for you. Furthermore, nobody offered to pay more to help them out.
Now that demand has increased far ahead of supply, the market has driven crude prices up, which has given them more revenue and, as that works, more profit.
In a June 10 tweet, Fox Business host Charles Payne said, “In 2020 Exxon lost $22.4 billion; federal government made $25.8 billion on gas taxes,” and pointed out the federal government is likely making much more today.
While people like to look for a scapegoat, price gouging isn’t what we are seeing today.
While it is easy to focus on gas prices because you see them every day, the supply/demand imbalance in the availability vs. need for traditional energy sources shows up elsewhere. It flows (no pun intended) through the entire economy, from the cost of moving goods and components for services to their destinations to a myriad of byproducts, including those impacting the availability and cost of food.
Some may say that price controls are the answer. They are never the answer. They lead to hoarding and less supply and never have the intended outcome.
You may hear that we should nationalize the oil companies. One only needs to look to Venezuela, which used to be the fourth wealthiest country in the world before nationalizing its oil. Now its citizens have a median net worth of zero.
The reality is we need energy. We needs lots of it. We need more of it. All kinds of energy. While new, “greener” sources of energy are being developed and scaled, we should, side by side, be investing in more traditional sources of energy as well, including nuclear energy.
President Biden could change all of our fortunes today and for the future by changing his energy policy. Signal to the markets that more investment will be going to traditional energy, alongside green initiatives. Clear the red tape and reinstitute drilling, leasing, and pipelines.
While we can’t turn on a tap overnight, those kinds of policies would start to show relief at the pump today, but even more importantly, secure our future, financially and in national security.
Editor’s note: This story has been edited to indicate the correct number of barrels per day produced by the U.S.
They did this under the guise of science and saving lives. We now have a generation of children who are delayed in language, social skills, and educational attainment, while overburdened with mental, emotional, and behavioral ailments. And yet it was all done for absolutely nothing – no gain, all pain. This has been appallingly obvious since schools were shut down and then children masked in 2020, but a new study from Sweden – the global control group – demonstrates the scope of this crime with unmistakable clarity.
A study by Swedish researchers published in the International Journal of Educational Research found that in this Nordic country, “word decoding and reading comprehension scores were not lower during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.” This is simply astounding, given what we have witnessed in almost every other country. The researchers analyzed 97,000 Swedish primary school children from 248 different municipalities, 1,277 schools, and 5,250 classrooms.
Just contrast this to a McKinsey study that analyzed more than 1.6 million K-12 students in over 40 U.S. states that found that students were, on average, five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading. An investigation by WBFF’s Project Baltimore from the local Fox affiliate found that 62% of middle schoolers in Baltimore County had one or more failing grades by the third quarter of the 2021 school year, up a whopping from 35% from before the shutdowns. Investigators also found that 41% of Baltimore high schoolers had a grade-point average of 1.0 or below, an increase of 24% since before the school closures in March 2020. The education situation in a state like Maryland is so dire that 81 percent of all Maryland students tested last year in grades three through five were not proficient in math, and 76 percent were not proficient in English language arts.
It makes you wonder if Swedish kids might outshine American children one day in English in addition to their native language! What was the secret to their success? They simply followed science and morality and kept schools open without dystopian plexiglass and masks. There was no fearmongering, social isolation, learning impediments, or learning stoppages. And of course, there is no evidence that a single child died from COVID as a result of schools being open. All gain and no pain.
In the light of international studies on reading skills in younger students during the pandemic, we conclude that the decision to keep schools open benefitted Swedish primary school students. This decision might also have mitigated other potentially negative effects of school closures, especially for students from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
Never before in our history has there been such a grave policy promulgated by government that was known up front to have no benefit but induced cataclysmic damage. It’s not just the learning disorders that are plaguing a generation of kids. A 2021 paper in the Lancet found, based on data from 204 countries, a 27.4% increase in major depressive disorders globally, accounting for an additional 53 million cases. Additionally, researchers found a 25.6% increase in cases of anxiety disorders, accounting for another 76 million cases globally.
One cannot possibly quantify the long-term effects to society of driving such a ubiquitous mental and emotional health crisis. According to the CDC, a third of high school students reported poor mental health during the pandemic, and 44% said they “persistently felt sad or hopeless.”
What is going to become of those kids? Many of them will live unproductive and sad lives, but many others will die young. A paper published recently in JAMA found that the rate of drug overdose deaths doubled among adolescents during the pandemic. In 2019, the overdose fatality rate among adolescents was 2.36 per 100,000, very consistent with the previous decade. In 2020, it shot up to 4.57 per 100,000, and for the first six months of 2021, the rate increased another 20%, to 5.49 per 100,000.
Kids should never have been made to feel anxious about the virus or about the response to it because it should never have affected them. It was known early on that not a single one of Sweden’s nearly 2 million children died of COVID during the initial wave in the spring of 2020 when Sweden kept its schools open (without mask requirements) and the rest of the world shut their schools.
Rather than admitting their mistake and committing to never shutting down schools again, governments are once again foisting a policy with all pain and no gain on the youngest of children. Later this week, the FDA will likely approve Moderna’s and Pfizer’s outdated shots on babies and toddlers, for a virus that never harmed them. We have never pushed novel therapies on children, especially those who already have numerous documented problems, for something that poses such a low risk, especially when the vaccine is outdated and doesn’t work for the variants circulating today.
As of June 3, there were already 49,878 children (ages 0 to 17) reported in VAERS who have experienced an adverse event from one of the COVID jabs. 7,547 of the childrenwere hospitalized, and 125 died. Remember, this is for a virus that no longer exists in that original form and from which there was a near-zero risk to children.
Between March 2020 and December 2021, according to researchers from the U.K. Health Security Agency, even among the rare documented pediatric COVID deaths, 56% of those under age 20 “were due to unnatural causes or due to causes unrelated to COVID-19.” Even among the remaining 81 deaths in the entire country under age 20, 75% had significant co-morbidities. Yet we are giving them a novel therapy Pfizer itself admitted is associated with hundreds of adverse maladies based on de facto zero risk, just like we shut down their classes, socially isolated them, and mummified their faces for the same nonexistent risk. What will it take to suspend these immoral experiments on our children?
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
Carol Braddock of Los Angeles casts a vote to take advantage of early voting at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office in Norwalk, California October 25, 2012. | (Photo: Reuters/Alex Gallardo)
Every day, there are examples of Americans pushing back against the agenda of the radical left. And every day, there are more signs that there could be a major political reaction against the leftist agenda in the midterm elections. But even with the best possible electoral outcome, without a sweeping revival in the church, America could still collapse.
That’s because America’s greatest problems are spiritual and moral first, leading to the larger societal, political, and economic challenges we face. But unless the heart is cured, the body will die.
One of my colleagues is an astute Christian attorney who has been on the front lines of the culture wars for decades, from the local courthouse to the Supreme Court.
He recently tweeted this to a small group of leaders: “Unless something dramatic happens, the midterms will be a blood bath for progressives. VA was the first canary in the coal mine. The San Fran recall shows the train is picking up steam. Biden’s appearance on J Kimmel was an embarrassment, and Kimmel had to intervene to rescue him from rambling and losing his train of thought.”
He continued, “A poll released today had his approval at 35% – lowest I’ve seen yet. If either chamber flips (and it likely will be both), it limits the harm he can do the last two years.”
But then, the major caveat – and the real thrust behind his text.
He wrote, “I think our biggest challenge may be communicating that a political reprieve is insufficient, and maybe even a distraction as a false sense of security; only a revival will save the nation. We’re fighting human nature. People are angry and frustrated. They will express it on Election Day and then settle back to life as usual, unaware the declining trend will continue. I’ve never seen so much focus on pride month as in this year, and the culture has largely caved into joining the celebration of sin. The election won’t do much to change that if there is not spiritual renewal.”
I could not agree more, both in terms of his diagnosis of the problem and his warning about the danger.
Bear in mind that this attorney has been politically active for years. In fact, I remember him speaking for our school and congregation back in the summer of 2009 when he told us about a major case that would make its way to the Supreme Court regarding same-sex “marriage.” He spoke of it as if it were a fait accompli, explaining that the deciding vote would be cast by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
That is exactly how it played out, with Kennedy making the infamous choice to be the swing vote that redefined marriage in America.
The organization that my colleague served for many years provides legal support for Christians and others whose rights are being challenged, helping them to fight back in their schools and places of business and churches. Their winning percentage is incredibly high, and to this day, I refer my friends to this organization when they come under attack for their religious beliefs and convictions.
All that to say that my colleague is not encouraging political passivity. Quite the contrary.
But he is reminding us that, even with a major shift towards the right and even with the potential of a Republican president and Congress by 2024, we will still have a massive amount of moral and cultural and spiritual rot at the core of America. Only a massive revival and awakening can turn the tide.
That’s why, when I wrote Revival Or We Die in 2021, there was not an ounce of hyperbole in the title. (The subtitle was A Great Awakening Is Our Only Hope, also without any hyperbole.)
That’s why it is imperative that we continue to emphasize the importance of personal and corporate repentance. And the centrality of prayer. And the priority of evangelism and disciple-making and church planting. And the ongoing need to build healthy bridges of reconciliation.
That’s why we must keep the main things the main things. Otherwise, if we take our foot off the gas pedal of spiritual urgency, we will quickly find ourselves sliding further backward.
Put another way, and to use a medical analogy, it is true that the patient is suffering from a host of ailments and sicknesses. But unless the doctors can stop his heart from failing, he will not be long on this earth.
First, get the heart pumping blood and out of danger. Then, address the other ailments and sicknesses.
Or, from another angle, it’s great that the other conditions are getting better, but it will be lost if the heart fails.
Since then, I have filed scores of articles and stories detailing that very trend. Americans are saying enough is enough on many fronts, and they are pushing back.
This is all encouraging and positive, and some of it is the direct result of men and women standing up for their spiritual and moral principles.
But, as we move closer to the midterm elections, we do well to heed my colleague’s concerns. To that end, you might want to bookmark this article and refer back to it from time to time.
Demonstrators stand outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. during the oral arguments for Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health on Dec. 1, 2021. | Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
Euphemisms are always meant to sound true, not be true. In fact, they intentionally try to prevent people from knowing the truth. Reproductive Freedom. Women’s Healthcare. Reproductive Justice. Women’s Right to Choose. Abortion Care. It’s all just clever but cunning branding. But it has fatal consequences.
“Right to life is short, catchy, composed of monosyllabic words — an important consideration in English. We need something comparable. Right to choose would seem to do the job.” These are the words in a 1972 memorandum from the late Episcopal priest, Jimmye Kimmey, who is credited with coining the deceptive phrase “pro-choice.”
The majority of America’s leading news outlets have given power to “pro-choice” propaganda ever since by giving the public virtually no choice in hearing the truth. The last time major news media ever did real investigative work to look beyond the euphemism was in 1978, with an incredible series by the Chicago Sun-Times called “The Abortion Profiteers.” We don’t have that kind of mainstream journalistic will today (which is why David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt are heroes for exposing a corrupt abortion industry).
Here are just a few examples of the fraud that is the “pro-choice” movement:
California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra (now the head of the Department of Health and Human Services or HHS), sued pregnancy centers and tried to force them to promote abortion. (The Supreme Court, thankfully, slapped him down.) That’s not “pro-choice.”
Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations fight“Women’s Right to Know” bills (which provide mothers comprehensive information about abortion, its impact, and resources available if they choose life). That’s not “pro-choice.”
Planned Parenthood demonizes adoption falsely claiming: “The psychological responses to abortion are far less serious than those experienced by women bringing their unwanted pregnancy to term and relinquishing her child for adoption.” That’s not “pro-choice.”
“My Body! My Choice!” politicians and activists demand all American taxpayers’ bodies fund the violence of abortion via Obamacare, Medicaid, state Medicaid programs and over half-a-billion annual dollars to Planned Parenthood. That’s not “pro-choice.”
For years NARAL Pro-Choice America has tried to shut down alternatives to abortion by falsely branding (state certified) pregnancy medical clinics as “fake clinics” and as an “insidious threat to reproductive freedom.” (NARAL’s own founder, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, admitted NARAL was a serial liar especially in its fabrication that 5,000-10,000 women died per year, pre-Roe, from illegal abortions; official figures were 160.) That’s not “pro-choice.”
In 2019, pregnancy help centers and medical clinics distributed 1.3 million diapers, 2 million baby outfits, 50,000 car seats and strollers, and hundreds of thousands of other items of material support. They provided 291,000 clients with parenting classes. All for free. Planned Parenthood reported providing zero of these items or services. That’s not “pro-choice.”
President Biden’s HHS has erased Trump’s Protect Life Rule, refunneling Title X money to abortion giant Planned Parenthood (despite it violating Title X rules) and mandates medical professionals participate in or refer for abortion. That’s not “pro-choice.”
The ACLU sued a Catholic hospital system for refusing to commit abortions against its First Amendment rights. That’s not “pro-choice.”
Extremist pro-abortion groups, Planned Parenthood and the Women’s March, recently declared a “Summer of Rage” as pregnancy medical clinics and pro-life organizations have been firebombed, vandalized and threatened (only to silence from our pro-abortion politicians, President, and celebrities). That’s not “pro-choice.”
LGBT groups, like Lambda Legal and the ACLU, have been systematically working to shut-down faith-based adoption agencies that believe vulnerable children who’ve escaped the violence of abortion or exit the foster care system deserve a mom and a dad. That’s not “pro-choice.”
Fake news leader, MSNBC, declares adoption “isn’t always a safe route, particularly for black and brown kids,” as it touts its undying support for abortion in the black community. Abortion is the leading killer of black lives. That’s not “pro-choice.”
Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer, threatened conservative Supreme Court justices with violent rhetoric at a pro-abortion rally: “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have unleashed the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” That’s not “pro-choice.”
A crazed pro-abortion activist with a loaded gun was just arrested for seeking to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh for siding with the majority in the leaked draft Dobbs opinion that overturns Roe. That’s not “pro-choice.”
America has a decades-long pro-abortion movement that celebrates violence, diminishes our humanity, subverts the Constitution, and demands inequality among women and men. It’s a movement whose judicial allies have aborted the intent and wording of the 14th Amendment to conjure up a right to slaughter the innocent. It’s a movement that works tirelessly to eliminate any standards for abortion businesses that real medical facilities have to abide by. It’s a movement that ignores the collateral damage of women who’ve died from legal abortions. It’s a movement that’s dedicated to ensuring only one choice remains: a self-policing, unaccountable, taxpayer-funded abortion industry that kills with impunity.
It’s not “pro-choice.” It’s faux-choice. And it kills those with no choice over 2,300 times a day in our nation. As an adoptee conceived in rape but adopted in love, as an adoptive father, as a husband to an incredible woman who rejected the violence of abortion when she was a single mom, I’ll keep exposing the fraud that targets the vulnerable and exploits fear for profit. I’ll keep illuminating the inherent and irrevocable worth we all possess. I’ll keep helping to meet the needs of those facing unplanned pregnancies through our organization (The Radiance Foundation), pro-life pregnancy centers, maternity homes and adoption agencies.
While the Left wages its “Summer of Rage,” the Pro-Life movement will continue its “Summer of Love.” We’ll keep showing how we care for people, while pro-abortion activists tragically focus on how to scare people.
Ryan Bomberger is the Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of The Radiance Foundation. He is happily married to his best friend, Bethany, who is the Executive Director of Radiance. They are adoptive parents with four awesome kiddos. Ryan is an Emmy Award-winning creative professional, factivist, international public speaker and author of NOT EQUAL: CIVIL RIGHTS GONE WRONG. He loves illuminating that every human life has purpose.
Secular intolerance has a “chilling effect” on Christians who are having to practice “various forms of self-censorship” as they’re finding it difficult to express their faith freely in society, according to a new report detailing accounts from four countries.
“Secular intolerance has a chilling effect on Christians, which directly affects their capacity to express their faith freely in society and is leading to various forms of self-censorship,” says the report, titled “Perceptions on Self-Censorship: Confirming and Understanding the ‘Chilling Effect,’” which includes case studies from France, Germany, Colombia and Mexico.
“Some people do indeed fear being subjected to legal proceedings or being criminally sanctioned on charges of discrimination, while others fear being subjected to disciplinary proceedings in their work or places,” notes the study, compiled by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America and the International Institute for Religious Freedom.
“With some exceptions, the majority chose to keep its expressions of faith or its opinions on issues related to life, marriage and the family from a Christian doctrine perspective private because they had witnessed sanctions or prosecutions to which colleagues or peers had been subjected,” it adds.
Many incidents cited in the report might seem insignificant, the authors say, but “these many small things together cause ‘death by a thousand cuts.’”
“A few cuts do not kill you and barely hurt. But continuous small strikes eventually have an impact. We posit that the accumulation of seemingly insignificant incidents creates an environment in which Christians do not feel comfortable — to some degree — to live their faith freely. Indeed, Western Christians experience a ‘chilling effect’ resulting from perceived pressures in their cultural environment, related to widely mediatized court cases.”
Further, the study observes, “Because of the subtle and generally non-physically violent nature of the chilling effect, it is often misunderstood or even ignored and therefore largely remains invisible.”
“This is the main reason why the phenomenon is not recognized in religious freedom datasets such as the Pew Research Center indexes,” the authors add.
The report also warns this form of censorship is not only limiting people’s exercise of religion or their right to manifest their convictions, “but also that these violations to the right to religious freedom can cause the disappearance of religion in a given context.”
Madeleine Enzelberger, executive director of OIDAC Europe, said the study “raises the legitimate question of: how is it possible in a mature, liberal democratic society that stands for tolerance, diversity, and inclusive and open discourse, that people are frightened to freely speak their minds?” according to Christian Today.
Many Christians interviewed as part of the study did not realize they were self-censoring. In some cases, they had self-censored to the extent that they now “stop seeing the characteristics related to self-censorship as a problem.”
As one of its conclusions, the study laments that “the Church has allowed itself to be self-censored … Christian religious leaders have more freedom to express themselves freely (but they do not always take advantage of it).”
To remedy this form of censorship, the authors suggest there’s “an urgent need to educate policymakers, public servants (including the police) and judges about religion to increase their religious literacy.”
“We have seen that a high degree of religious illiteracy leads to misunderstanding of how religion informs behavior in different spheres of society and what the legitimate role of religion in the public domain is. Illiteracy therefore can consequently be the cause of ‘practical intolerance’ against Christians.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) refused to say Sunday whether the House Jan. 6 Committee has evidence that Republican lawmakers sought pardons from then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots. At the prime-time Jan. 6 Committee hearing last Thursday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) claimed multiple Republican lawmakers contacted the White House seeking presidential pardons. Cheney singled out Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
“As you will see, Rep. Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after Jan 6. to seek a presidential pardon,” Cheney said, adding, “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”
The committee, however, failed to present evidence at the hearing supporting the claim, and Perry has since denied the allegation.
“The notion that I ever sought a Presidential pardon for myself or other Members of Congress is an absolute, shameless, and soulless lie,” Perry said last Friday.
During an interview with Raskin on “State of the Union,” CNN host Dana Bash pressed Raskin on those explosive claims and whether the committee has evidence to corroborate them. The Maryland Democrat, however, refused to directly answer the question.
“How many of your colleagues in Congress did that? And what evidence do you have?” Bash asked. “Because you know that congressman Scott Perry is denying it.”
“Yes,” Raskin responded. “Well, the seeking of pardons is powerful demonstration of the consciousness of guilt, or at least the consciousness that you may be in trouble. And that’s what’s so shocking about this. It’s not just one. It’s —”
“And you have evidence that has happened?” Bash interjected.
Raskin responded using passive language, claiming that “in due course” the details of the allegation “will surface.”
“So, yes, there’s evidence?” Bash followed up.
“Everything we’re doing is documented by evidence,” Raskin claimed, adding that “everything” the Jan. 6 Committee is doing is “based on facts.”
At no point in the interview did Raskin offer anything to prove the committee’s claims, nor did he directly answer whether the committee, in fact, has the evidence to prove that multiple GOP lawmakers sought presidential pardons.
Bash asks Raskin if he thinks Trump should be indicted youtu.be
At any rate, the committee’s talking points are clear. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) used the exact phrase that Raskin used regarding the pardon allegation — “consciousness of guilt” — in an interview last Thursday.
Left-wing protesters blocked intersections Monday leading to the Supreme Court in anticipation of a possible verdict on the abortion decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade. Protest group ShutDownDC said it successfully blocked several intersections Monday morning after previously having posted its plans to do so “to rise up for the transformative change that our communities need” on its website.
“We have successfully split off into different groups to hold multiple intersections #ShutDownSCOTUS,” the group tweeted.
The website lists instructions for what protesters should do if they’re arrested, including filling out a “jail support form.” There is also a form to sign up for an “affinity group,” with an option for “people who have been organizing protests at conservative justice’s homes.”
Monday is one of the Supreme Court’s decision days, and the court has not issued a verdict on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which could overturn Roe v. Wade — for over a month. The draft opinion was leaked May 2 indicating the majority of the court would vote to overturn it. (RELATED: SCOTUS Intends To Overturn Roe V. Wade: REPORT)
Several protesters held posters with conservative Supreme Court justices, calling them “liars.”
A man was arrested and charged with attempted murder Wednesday after claiming he wanted to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Police said they caught him with a weapon and burglary tools outside Kavanaugh’s home. The left-wing protest group Ruth Sent Us gathered at his home the same night.
Pro-abortion protesters with ShutDownDC protested at Kavanaugh’s home in 2021.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
Even if it means granting the communist Chinese government economic alleviation, Biden is willing to throw his own countrymen under the bus in pursuit of his nonexistent, 100 percent renewable energy utopia.
Since assuming the presidency last year, Joe Biden has been a tremendous gift to the communist Chinese government. Whether it’s repeatedly fumbling the ball on Taiwan or shutting down a Department of Justice initiative aimed at identifying and preventing spying activities by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Biden’s administration has been at the forefront of empowering an increasingly aggressive China that seeks to replace the United States as a regional and global hegemon.
On Monday, Biden decided to add another item to his ever-expanding list of policies that strengthen the CCP, with the Democrat president declaring an emergency under the Tariff Act of 1930 that exempts “certain solar cells and modules” originating from several Southeast Asian countries from new tariffs for the next two years.
“In recent years, the vast majority of solar modules installed in the United States were imported, with those from Southeast Asia making up approximately three-quarters of imported modules in 2020,” the emergency declaration reads. “Recently, however, the United States has been unable to import solar modules in sufficient quantities to ensure solar capacity additions necessary to achieve our climate and clean energy goals, ensure electricity grid resource adequacy, and help combat rising energy prices.”
“This acute shortage of solar modules and module components has abruptly put at risk near-term solar capacity additions that could otherwise have the potential to help ensure the sufficiency of electricity generation to meet customer demand,” it added.
While the declaration and Biden’s subsequent abuse of the Defense Production Act to boost domestic solar panel production will undoubtedly evoke cheers from climate alarmists, the emergency order simultaneously undercuts a significant ongoing investigation by the Commerce Department “into whether Chinese companies are circumventing existing tariffs on Chinese imports to the U.S. by setting up shop in [Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia] to finish products whose life begins in China.”
Required by law, the investigation was first launched on April 1 at the behest of Auxin Solar, a U.S.-based solar module manufacturer that alleges Beijing conducts such actions as a means to “avoid the U.S. tariffs” by claiming that the components weren’t manufactured in China.
While Biden’s emergency declaration doesn’t halt the investigation outright, it does allow for CCP-connected businesses to go unpunished for skirting existing tariffs. As reported by NBC News, “Biden’s move Monday effectively takes the issue off the table for two years by ensuring no new solar tariffs on the Southeast Asian countries regardless of what the investigation determines.”
“Assistant Commerce Secretary Lisa Wang said that if the investigation finds new tariffs are in order, they’d kick in after the two-year period,” the NBC News report reads.
Axium CEO Mamun Rashid was quick to blast Biden over the emergency declaration, saying in a statement that the president “is significantly interfering in Commerce’s quasi-judicial process.”“By taking this unprecedented — and potentially illegal — action, he has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of US trade law,” Rashid said.
The Monday announcement from Biden came a day after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo revealed that the administration is considering a reduction of tariffs on various Chinese goods “in an effort to combat record-high inflation in the U.S.”
“We are looking at it. In fact, the president has asked us on his team to analyze that,” Raimondo said. “And so we are in the process of doing that for him and he will have to make that decision.”
Under Biden, China Wins and America Loses
Rather than boosting U.S. domestic production of oil and liquified natural gas as a means to lower rising energy costs and provide the country with a reliable source of efficient energy, Biden has instead opted to put the craven demands of radical climate alarmists above the general well-being of the American public. Even if it means granting the communist Chinese government, whose members have committed some of the most heinous human rights abuses in world history, economic alleviation, Biden is willing to throw his own countrymen under the bus in pursuit of his nonexistent, 100 percent renewable energy utopia.
While China’s state-owned solar manufacturers will flourish under Biden’s energy policies, U.S. fossil fuel producers and the American people will continue to suffer under the leadership of a confused, senile man, whose short presidency has completely destroyed the energy independence and sustainability of the United States.
Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 launched the public phase of its proceedings Thursday night in a prime-time hearing with all the fanfare of a Soviet show trial, complete with production assistance from a former president of ABC News.
Just as the communists gathered in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 to purge their political opponents in public show trials, nine members of the lower chamber filed into the Cannon House Office Building to demonize their political opponents as domestic enemies.
“I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching,” Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said in his opening. “I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021.”
Thompson went on the brand today’s political opposition as modern-day Confederates and “domestic enemies of the Constitution,” cloaking his own authoritarian admonishment under the moral righteousness of preserving American democracy.
“The world is watching what we do here,” Thompson said. “America has long been expected to be shining city on the hill, a beacon of hope and freedom, a model for others when we are at our best.”
The hearing, however, possessed all the signature hallmarks of the infamous Moscow Trials nearly 100 years ago, in which opponents to Joseph Stalin’s regime were hauled before the public and charged with treason and sedition. And those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 are far from the only targets of the witch hunt spearheaded by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Thompson.
Legitimate political opposition on Thursday was absent from the hearings. No counternarrative was allowed by the regime, which barred the opposing party’s selected representatives as every cable network except Fox News carried the programming live. Members conducting the show trial accused their opponents of conspiracy to topple the U.S. government, just as the Soviets accused Old Bolshevik leaders of plans to terminate Stalin. Never mind that American institutions held on Jan. 6, and the federal government came nowhere close to collapse when congressional proceedings were interrupted.
The trials in Moscow culminated in the “Great Purge” of dissidents to the incumbent regime, with defendants given death sentences. The Jan. 6 proceedings are aimed at the ultimate purge of former President Donald Trump and his supporters, albeit through societal exile and jail sentences as opposed to execution. According to whistleblowers in the FBI, a purge within the federal law enforcement agency has already begun.
On Tuesday, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray detailing allegations of multiple whistleblowers who reported they were terminated for their dissident (conservative) views from the agency.
“[He is a] decorated Iraqi War veteran being run out of the FBI,” Jordan said on Fox News Tuesday night of one whistleblower. “His allegiance to the country is being questioned because he had the gall to say something that offended the FBI leadership about the Jan. 6 investigation.”
The other [individual] is also having the same thing happen to them simply because, on an anonymous questionnaire, they said something that the leadership disagreed with them about Jan. 6.
Six in total have come forward, Jordan told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 Committee’s prime targets have included prominent members of the prior administration, just as Stalin’s deputies prosecuted leaders of the old regime. On Friday, former Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro was taken by the FBI in handcuffs and charged with crimes stemming from the committee’s work. On Thursday morning, hours before the Jan. 6 Committee’s prime-time show trial, lead Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested by the same agency.
Of the more than 100 subpoenas issued by the Select Committee ostensibly established to probe the Capitol riot, less than 10 percent, according to a Federalist analysis, have targeted individuals directly involved in the chaos. The rest have gone after Americans who committed the now-apparent crime of holding a peaceful demonstration at the White House and espoused unacceptable views in the eyes of the incumbent regime.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
While Democrats continue exploiting the Uvalde shooting victims to prattle on about “assault weapons” and so-called “common-sense gun control,” another school was attacked on Thursday, but it won’t make the headlines. That’s because this school — Walnut Park Elementary School in Gadsden, Alabama — didn’t have any victims except the would-be invader, who was shot dead by police after he tried and failed to bust into the building. Here’s how it all reportedly went down.
A passerby saw a man “aggressively” trying to get into the school building. When the man was unsuccessful, he tried several other doors, all of which were locked. The responsible observer called to report the man, the school principal put the building on lockdown and called in a police officer who doubles as the school resource officer, and that officer called for backup. If the reports are correct, the chain of command worked smoothly thanks to decisive action and quickly followed protocols. The resource officer reportedly engaged the would-be invader, who then also allegedly attempted to forcefully enter a marked police vehicle and to take the officer’s gun. More police officers rushed to the scene to help, and the assailant was shot and killed. According to the city’s school superintendent, the schoolchildren who were there “seemed to be unaware the incident occurred.”
In other words, a man who “aggressively” tried to break into a school and take the firearm of a police officer was stopped because doors were properly locked and police officers acted bravely and urgently.
Hmm. That’s interesting. Because according to President Joe Biden, failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, rom-com celebrity Matthew McConaughey, and late-night political scold Jimmy Kimmel, the only way to end the “carnage” of schoolchildren being murdered is to pass anti-gun laws or issue executive orders that radically infringe on the Second Amendment but are slapped with an innocuous “common-sense” qualifier so they don’t sound so bad.
Nothing else would do the trick, such people say — despite the fact that the Uvalde killer had no problem passing a background check, entered through an unlocked door, and faced little resistance from law enforcement for a disgustingly long time.
When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to the Uvalde murder with calls for better school security in the form of locked doors and single-point entry, which could have prevented that killing, leftists and the corporate press ridiculed him for focusing on doors. “[S]enator Ted Cruz comes out bravely against doors,”scoffed The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast on Twitter. “Are they really gonna make it about ‘too many doors on the school’? They are, aren’t they?”chimed in woke comedian Patton Oswalt.
Meanwhile, nobody on the left wants to talk about the criminal failures of the Uvalde police and the Department of Public Safety. That’s in part because if they had done their jobs rather than standing outside like cowards for the better part of an hour, lives undoubtedly would have been spared. It’s also because the implication of Democrats disarming responsible citizens is that the only remaining defense will be armed government employees, who may or may not have the courage to actually help anyone.
Thankfully, in Alabama on Thursday, police did have that courage, and lives were saved because of it. But Democrats and their media lapdogs won’t speak a word of Walnut Park Elementary because it obliterates their gun “do somethingism.”
It turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and sweeping gun control to keep schoolchildren safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
File photo shows men kissing each other during a gay protest in front at Nossa Senhora da Paz church in Rio de Janeiro, August 3, 2003. | (Photo: REUTERS/Bruno Domingos)
This month, the Church is confronted with a great opportunity as individuals, companies and the LGBTQ community celebrate “Pride Month.”
I was 18 when it was revealed to me that a family member had come out as gay. Shocked, embarrassed, and more concerned with how it might make “me” look, I responded out of anger that looked like hate more than anything else. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I viciously lashed out and actually told this individual I was ashamed of her, that she was no longer my family, and that I never wanted to speak to her again.
Sure, it was a different day and time, but that is no excuse. At the time, same-sex relationships were mostly covert and culturally viewed in a completely different light than they are today. Those who “came out,” at least in the South where I lived, were usually met with a dump truck of condemnation and at the very most a thimble of love and compassion, especially from people like me who were legalistic, judgmental, and filled with self-righteousness.
My actions erected a barrier between us as big as the great wall of China, and I kept it intact for the worse part of the next two years. It lasted until something major happened in my life; I went from a religious person who knew about Christ to a person who had received Him and had Him living in my life. Only then, did I realize how wrong I had been.
I reached out and expressed my regret, apology, and unconditional love. That simple act instantly restored a severed relationship. Of course, we had different opinions and convictions but never again was there any division or separation. I am proud to say we both began to genuinely love and respect one another, and it has continued this way in the decades since.
Regrettably, my original response is often the same that many other professing believers continue to serve on plates of false superiority.
For believers, the non-negotiable template has been given to love others…regardless! We must not forget the example of Christ who commonly showed love, concern, and compassion to people who had fallen into an array of transgressions. Jesus never categorized wrongs but made it clear that each of us has fallen extremely short and are in need of forgiveness and grace.
Why are we so eager to receive mercy yet so unwilling to dispense it to others?
Jesus made it clear it is not our duty to “change” anyone. This alone is the work of God. Our job is to pray for people and recognize EVERY person on earth has worth in the sight of God. It is an undeniable truth that Christ did not come to save “some,” and we would do well to remember the well-known verse that states “God so loved the world.” He did not select a few or the religious, righteous, or untainted but the entire world.
We as believers need to stop categorizing the failings of others. Have we dismissed the admonition to first take the plank from our own eyes? Jesus did not treat the thieving tax collector any different than the demon-possessed man or the adulteress woman. He did not berate, condemn or belittle anyone except an occasional religious phony. It is quite possible, maybe even likely, if He were on earth today, that the group He would chastise the most would not be those who had fallen into adultery, same-sex relationships, or fornication, but rather those of us who are busy quoting His words but not living them.
Our call is certainly to speak the truth but NEVER, absolutely never, without love or the recognition that we are also severely stained and not without fault. Jesus said love covers a multitude of faults and is the greatest gift of all. Speaking love alone is not enough; it must be shown through words and deeds, or otherwise it is nothing more than an annoying, empty sound.
During not only this month but every day of the year, this is what I hope we can remember most.
I just hung up the phone with the family member I wrongly judged and mistreated. I wanted to ask her permission to write about the incredible relationship we have shared for countless years. She gladly agreed and told me she couldn’t wait for me to meet her new boyfriend this July – the first guy she has dated in over three decades.
God’s love always wins!
Jay Lowder is an evangelist and founder of Jay Lowder Harvest Ministries. He is also the producer of “The Darkest Hour” television program and author of “Midnight in Aisle 7.”
Gun rights activist Lucretia Hughes delivered powerful testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday, making her case for why more gun control laws will not solve gun violence problems. During testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Hughes told lawmakers how her son became the victim of gun violence six years ago when he was shot “point blank in the head.” But her tragic loss only emboldened her belief that the Second Amendment is necessary for protection, and that gun control laws will never rectify the problems that led to her son’s murder.
“My son’s death resulted from a criminal with an evil heart and a justice system failing to hold him accountable for laws he had already broken,” Hughes said. “You see, a convicted felon killed him with an illegally obtained gun. Gun control lobbyists and politicians claim their policies will save lives and reduce violence. Well, these policies did not protect my son.”
Importantly, Hughes noted that cities with the strictest gun control laws often struggle most with gun violence. She called lawmakers “crazy” if they think more laws are the solution. Instead, Hughes said the Second Amendment and defending one’s right to self-defense is the correct path.
“How about letting me defend myself against evil? Do you think I’m not capable or trustworthy to handle firearms?” Hughes said. “You who call for more gun control are the same ones that call to defund the police. Who is supposed to protect me? We must prepare to be our own first responders to protect ourselves and our loved ones. I am a legal, law-abiding citizen.‘
“I don’t need the government to save me,” she declared.
Mother of son killed in gun violence testifies on Capitol Hill www.youtube.com
Instead of gun control, Hughes said schools need more armed personnel and mental health professional to ward off future mass shootings. She also advocated for the elimination of gun-free zones and more firearm education. She outright said the Protecting Our Kids Act, the Democrat-pushed gun control bill passed after Uvalde, will not make Americans safer.
“Despite living with the heartache of the loss of my son daily, I believe that it is our God-given right to defend ourselves from acts of violence,” Hughes said. “Taking away my rights and the rights of law-abiding citizens will not bring [my son] Emannuel back, but it will embolden criminals. We all want the same thing. To be safe.‘
“Gun owners are not the enemy, and these gun control policies are not the solution,” she concluded.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
The same party that wants to raise the legal age for rifle purchases to 21 is also pushing to let minors kill preborn babies and mutilate their own genitals. American adults aged 18-20 already aren’t allowed to purchase handguns (and many states don’t allow them to obtain a concealed carry permit), more or less blocking them from practicing the basic self-defense precaution of stowing a defensive weapon to stop a bad guy with a gun. Now, Second Amendment deniers also want to bar these Americans from owning a rifle, a popular choice for home defense.
But while Democrats want to punish millions of law-abiding, prospective young gun owners for the evil, disturbed actions of a few of their peers, they’re also demanding that kids far younger be allowed to commit infanticide and mutilate their own bodies.
Letting Teens Commit Baby Murder
The radical abortion bill that Democrats renewed after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade sought to virtually eliminate any restrictions on abortion up to the point of birth. Minors are already allowed to obtain abortions, but the legislation would also nuke state laws mandating parental notification for such young girls. Lest you think this is an incidental inclusion, Democrats have specifically attacked state parental notification laws.
Planned Parenthood’s website doesn’t even try not to sound like a pervert offering kids candy: “If you’re under 18, you may or may not have to tell a parent in order to get an abortion,” it teases.
The ACLU estimates that 350,000 girls younger than 18 get pregnant in America every year, and that 31 percent (or roughly 108,500) of them choose to terminate their babies’ lives. There were 652,639 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control in 2014; in the same year, the Guttmacher Institute found that 0.2 percent of abortions — or roughly 1,300 — were executed on girls 14 years old or younger.
Fighting for these young, impressionable girls to get abortions doesn’t just push them into the commission of murder, with the likely accompaniment of lifelong guilt, it also subjects them to trauma themselves. Sarah Eubanks, a former abortion facility employee, described one 12-year-old girl whose grandmother brought her in for an abortion:
I remember that look on her face that she just didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t want to be there. She started moving around and the doctor said, ‘You need to hold her down.’ I did put my hands on her and said ‘You have to settle down, you gotta be still, you’re gonna hurt yourself. You have to be still.’ And within an instant, she pushed her feet out of the stirrups and started running down the hall with the speculum in her vagina with blood running down her legs. The doctor said, ‘I’m not touching this.’ She was that upset. She just didn’t want to be there. She was screaming.
The hundreds of thousands of preborn babies’ lives lost to the abortionist’s scalpel every year haven’t dampened Democrats’ desires to let adolescent girls (or any women) make the decision to take a human life. But at the same time, the left will throw gun death numbers in your face to push their anti-gun agenda, even when firearm-related homicides are a fraction of abortion numbers, and are far outpaced by defensive gun use. Pew reported 19,384 murders involving a firearm in 2020, compared to up to 3 million “defensive gun uses by victims” per year, according to a CDC study.
Not only do Democrats want to let children kill their babies, they want to let children make damaging and irreversible changes to their own bodies.
Letting Children Sterilize Themselves
A report from Florida Medicaid found that “Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical intervention is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” and “the available evidence demonstrates that these treatments cause irreversible physical changes and side effects that can affect long-term health.” As a result, Florida Medicaid found that experimental procedures like cross-sex hormones or surgeries were insufficiently safe for coverage.
The report also listed the irreversible or potentially irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones, including facial and body hair growth, male pattern baldness, a deepening voice, and an enlarged clitoris for females taking male hormones, and breast growth, infertility, and sexual dysfunction for males taking female hormones. The irreversible effects of surgical interventions, such as elective mastectomies or genital amputations, are obviously far higher.
But those concerning effects didn’t stop the Biden administration’s Justice Department from sending an ominous memo to state attorneys general, threatening legal violations for states that don’t offer various damaging interventions to children.
“A ban on gender-affirming procedures, therapy, or medication may be a form of discrimination against transgender persons,” the memo stated. It also had the arrogance to claim that “it is well established within the medical community that gender-affirming care for transgender youth is not only appropriate but often necessary for their physical and mental health.”
The Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs further spelled out just what is meant by “gender-affirming care,”including social treatment of a child as the opposite sex, puberty blockers, artificial pumps of hormones like testosterone or estrogen, or surgeries like elective mastectomies and amputation of reproductive body parts. OPA recommends“social affirmation” for“any age,” puberty blockers at any time during puberty, hormones beginning in early adolescence, and surgeries for adults or “case-by-case in adolescence.” Some parents try to claim their children “came out as trans” as toddlers.
But No Guns for Law-Abiding Young Adults!
These procedures threaten lifelong damage to children who undergo them, yet the Biden administration and other Democrats want unfettered access to them and punishments for health professionals and parents who question them. They also celebrate the idea of teenage girls taking the lives of their preborn babies, with no parental consent and with no consideration of whether a child has the mental maturity to make such a decision — never mind the fact that it’s an act of murder.
But Democrats are all too happy to further erode Americans’ Second Amendment rights by arbitrarily raising the minimum purchase age for a rifle from one adult age to another. Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm. On the contrary, it often protects against it.
Yet Democrats support letting pubescent children abuse themselves and adolescents kill their children, while insisting that an 18-year-old who passes a federal background check can be denied the constitutional right to self-defense. Are 18-year-olds too immature for constitutional rights? Are children and teenagers old enough for a concocted right to harm themselves and others? I would argue it’s neither — but it can’t be both.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Shattered glass from a window lies outside the CompassCare clinic in Buffalo, which was firebombed in one of many acts of vandalism to take place ahead of an expected U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion. | CompassCare
A pro-life pregnancy center in upstate New York was firebombed Tuesday morning, making it the latest
pro-life organization to experience vandalism ahead of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion.
CompassCare, a group of pro-life pregnancy centers committed to “serving women in Buffalo and across NY State” and “erasing the need for abortion,” announced Tuesday that its Buffalo office was “firebombed by abortion terrorists.”
According to the statement, police and firefighters responded in the early morning to a report of smoke at the office on Eggert Road.
“The windows in the reception room and nurses’ office were broken and fires lit. Graffiti on the building left by arsonists refers to the abortion terrorist group Jane’s Revenge, reading ‘Jane Was Here.'”
As the statement explained, Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for a similar act of vandalism at a pro-life pregnancy center in Wisconsin. Following the attack on the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison, the group released a manifesto demanding “the disbanding of anti-choice establishments, fake clinics, and violent anti-choice groups within the next thirty days.”
“Wisconsin is the first flashpoint, but we are all over the US, and we will issue no further warnings,” the manifesto reads. “And we will not stop, we will not back down, nor will we hesitate to strike until the inalienable right to manage our own health is returned to us.”
In subsequent weeks, the group has claimed responsibility for other acts of violence.
In a statement, CompassCare CEO Jim Harden described the violence as “the pro-abortion ‘Kristallnacht.'”
“[B]ecause of this act of violence, the needs of women facing unplanned pregnancy will go unmet and babies will die,” Harden said. “CompassCare will rebuild because women deserve better.”
He vowed that “CompassCare will not stop serving because pre-born boys and girls deserve better.” The clinic offers confidential abortion information, pregnancy diagnosis and STD testing and treatment.
CompassCare alerted the local police and FBI. According to reports, local Amherst police, the district attorney and the FBI are investigating the possible arson.
Town of Amherst Supervisor Brian Kulpa said in a statement shared with media that two volunteer firefighters “were admitted to the hospital after they were overcome while battling a suspected arson fire.” According to police, the firefighters were treated for minor injuries.
“With reports that this fire was set intentionally, I am disgusted that lives were put at risk,” Kulpa said, according to WKBW. “Our thoughts are with the firefighters as they recover. A violent response is never the answer. There is no place in Amherst for such attacks. Amherst Police are working with our partners to continue its investigation to hold those responsible accountable for their actions.”
Harden said CompassCare has consulted with security professionals for a safety plan “and engaged a security firm who were expediting the installation of armored glass for the Buffalo office.”
Harden elaborated on the organization’s next steps in a video Tuesday, reporting that the vandalism caused “extensive damage that’s going to take months to repair.”
“They broke glass in the middle of the night, under cover of darkness, to keep us from doing the work of the Lord, from being the light of the world,” he said. “We offer absolutely necessary services, ethical medical care and comprehensive community support to women seriously considering abortion and they’re trying to keep us from doing that.”
Harden said that organization would operate out of a new facility starting Wednesday.
“We’re looking at a more medium-range facility to house our services short-term while this facility gets repaired,” he said.
CompassCare, which operates several pro-life pregnancy centers throughout New York State, had its Buffalo office firebombed in one of many acts of vandalism to take place ahead of an expected United States Supreme Court decision on abortion. | Screenshot: Google Maps
The vandalism at CompassCare comes just over a month after Politico published a leaked draft opinion in the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. The draft opinion, which is not final, indicated that a majority of justices were inclined to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Should the Supreme Court overturn Roe as expected, abortion would not automatically become illegal in all 50 states. Instead, states would decide the legality of abortion.
In the absence of Roe, 21 states would either completely ban or restrict abortion more severely than they do now. Sixteen states that have codified the right to abortion into law would continue to allow abortion late into a pregnancy or up until the moment of birth. Ten states would likely continue enforcing their current abortion restrictions, while the three remaining states may soon put the future of their abortion laws in the hands of voters in the form of ballot referendums.
Next week, the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will meet to likely offer emergency use authorization for Moderna and Pfizer’s biological products to be injected into babies as young as six months old. No amount of evidence demonstrating negative efficacy and enormous side effects will factor into its decision. Never mind the fact that there never was an emergency for young children to begin with, and there certainly isn’t one now.
Yet the FDA will undoubtedly approve a shot that has failed and is outdated – so much so that two weeks later, it will meet about updating the formula for new variants, of course, after having injected the outdated formula into the arms of babies and toddlers. One data point that certainly will be missing from the meeting is the observation about Portugal.
According to Statista, Portugal has the highest vaccination rate of any country in Europe aside from the tiny island of Malta. Nearly every adult is vaccinated in this nation of 10.3 million, 94% of all people (including young children) have received at least 1 dose, and 70% have received boosters. In fact, the New York Times ran an article about Portugal last year, noting that “there is no one left to vaccinate” there.
Yet, Portugal now has the highest case rate and COVID death rate per capita in Europe and the second highest COVID fatality rate in the world behind Taiwan, according to Our World in Data.
Here is the case rate map of Europe:
And here is the death rate map:
At 2,293 cases per 1 million individuals, as of June 7, Portugal’s 7-day rolling average case rate is seven times greater than that of the United States and is now higher than the worst peak of cases in America. Moreover, it’s not that Portugal never had a big wave – it has already experienced a peak in the winter that was three times as great as the worst days in the U.S. So even after many people already had the virus, officials keep testing positive for the virus despite – or perhaps, because of – the near universal vaccination rate.
It is true that Portugal has a high rate of testing, but not that much higher to account for exponentially higher case rates. As of June 1, Portugal’s positivity rate was nearly four times that of the U.S.
Then there are the COVID deaths. At 4.1 deaths per million, Portugal is now far outpacing all the other European countries with high case rates by over 60%. Its current death rate is more than four times that of the U.S. This simply should not be happening now that everyone is vaccinated and everyone who is vulnerable is boosted if the shots are anywhere near as effective as we are told.
The Portugal News reported that between May 24 and May 30, the southern European nation “recorded 175,766 infections, 220 deaths associated with COVID-19, and an increase in hospitalizations and intensive care.” Health Minister Marta Temido said last week that “Portugal is probably the European country with the highest prevalence of this sub-lineage and this partly explains the high number (of cases) we are seeing.”
But that really doesn’t explain it. Why would Portugal have a much worse problem with these variants than the country in which they were first detected — namely South Africa? Is this not a fulfillment of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s warning that the sub-optimal evolutionary pressure of these shots, originally designed for the Wuhan strain, would work against the body for future variants?
Let’s a take a look at South Africa’s BA.4/BA.5 wave from late May as compared to Portugal’s? Can you even detect it?
South Africa’s recent peak, which is now over with, was one-twentieth the size of Portugal’s – and this is after Portugal already had exponentially more cases from the previous wave. However, even as it relates to death rates, the afflicted country is outpacing South Africa.
Keep in mind that Portugal is still experiencing higher death rates even after having already incurred a lot of deaths from the original pool of vulnerable people during the first winter. It simply makes no sense for Portugal to be experiencing this many deaths with Omicron, which does not replicate well in the lungs. Remember, while Portugal has run out of people to vaccinate, according to the New York Times, less than a third of South Africans are vaccinated with very few having had boosters. Also, South Africa’s life expectancy is 18 years lower, and 20% of the population has AIDS.
For how much longer is the FDA going to be allowed to ignore a year’s worth of signals not just indicating cataclysmic safety concerns but negative efficacy – and downright perpetuation – of the virus? Just look at this week’s Walgreens COVID-19 testing index, and you can once again see that higher positivity rates are associated with those with more shots, especially as time goes on.
The mendacity of obfuscating the truth about these shots has gotten so ludicrous that the media and medical associations are now chalking up the rash of sudden cardiac deaths among young people as an unexplained “sudden adult death syndrome.” And now they want to inject these products into the final group of unvarnished children. What does that say about who we are as a people if we let it happen?
In the New York Times article from October crowing about “no one left to vaccinate” in Portugal, Laura Sanches, a Portuguese clinical psychologist, is quoted as bemoaning the fact that Portugal doesn’t “really have a culture of questioning authorities.” Well, here in America, we once did have such a culture. Reagan once said that “freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things,” an understanding “that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions … to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people.” Will we finally exercise that freedom?
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYousay.org.
Well, that didn’t last long. Chesa Boudin, the “progressive” district attorney of San Francisco, was recalled in a landslide election on Tuesday. Evidently, even that city’s progressive voters finally got tired of replacing their car windshields. (On the upside, once out of office, Boudin can keep prosecuting as many criminals as he did while in office.)
Quiz for Republicans:
In a shocking upset, the most liberal city in the nation just voted to recall a pro-criminal D.A.
Q: Should you be dedicating your time to:
— Ukraine
— Tax cuts
— Abortion
— Crime
[Sen. Lindsey Graham frantically waving his hand: UKRAINE!]
Crime is primarily a state and local issue, but there are some things the federal government can do. How about auditing the “homelessness” industry for fraud, graft and corruption? (And the drug rehab industry, while you’re at it.) In the last decade, homeless “advocacy” seems to have displaced Hollywood as the most well-compensated and glamorous industry in California.
Michael Shellenberger’s 2021 book, “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” details how progressives are foisting drug-addicted mental patients on an unsuspecting public. The problem is less the homeless — the drug-addicted mental patients you will always have with you — and more the well-healed liberals getting rich off the homelessness racket.
He begins by quoting all manner of homeless “advocates” — i.e., people who make money off of homelessness — such as Dr. Margot Kushel of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), who insists that homelessness has NOTHING to do with drugs or mental illness. “We’ve always known,” Kushel said, “that most homelessness is a result, pure and simple, of poverty.”
A lot of valuable information comes from sentences that begin with “we’ve always known.”
Convinced of the truth of this preposterous maxim, San Francisco has been doling out billions of dollars to solve homelessness, by providing the homeless — or as we are now commanded to call them, “our unhoused neighbors” — with shelter, food and massive cash payments.
Also free needles! Because homelessness is just a matter of being poor, as “we’ve always known.”
On the other hand …
In 2004, nearly 5,000 homeless people were offered housing by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. Only 131 accepted.
And because, as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of excellence — isn’t that the quote? — San Francisco just keeps trying the same thing. Under a different mayor, about 15 years later, 150 vagrants were removed from a homeless encampment and offered free housing. Eight accepted.
But that makes no sense! Homeless advocates assured us our unhoused neighbors are just like you and me, except they can’t afford the rent.
Another possible cause of homelessness is hinted at in a recent Harvard University study of chronically homeless people in Boston who were given permanent housing. After following the group for 14 years, last year the researchers released their results: 86% of their subjects were beset by the “trimorbidity” of mental illness, substance abuse and medical illness. After 10 years, only 12% were still housed. Forty-five percent died before the completion of the study.
Similarly, in 2019, San Francisco’s health department found that fully half of the city’s homeless population — currently housed or not — are both mentally ill and drug addicts. About 1,600 of the city’s estimated 8,035 homeless “frequently used emergency psychiatric services.”
The pernicious — but profitable! — idea that homelessness is caused by poverty has led the city to lavish unimaginable aid on the “poor.” In straight cash welfare, SF offers $588 a month to the poor — and that doesn’t include $192 in food stamps. Compare that to Los Angeles, where the maximum cash payment to the poor is $221, or New York City, where it’s $183.
That $780 a month in cash and food stamps doesn’t include all the free stuff given to the homeless through cutout agencies, like churches and nonprofits, funded by taxpayer dollars and tax-deductible “charitable” donations.
Tom Wolf, a formerly homeless drug addict, said that, thanks to all of San Francisco’s giveaways, he was able to spend his entire general assistance payment on heroin. Which San Francisco also helps out with, giving away 6 million free needles to drug addicts every year. That’s more than New York City dispenses — with a population 10 times larger.
The mother of a drug-addicted, homeless young man told Shellenberger that he describes San Francisco as “Pleasure Island” in the movie “Pinocchio”:
“On one side of the street are people giving you food and clean needles. On the other side of the street are all the drug dealers. It’s like getting all the candy and treats that you think you want. You think you’re having fun. But little by little it’s taking away your humanity and turning you into something you were never meant to be, like how the kids start turning into donkeys in ‘Pinocchio,’ and then end up trapped and in cages.”
What kind of sick society would do this to people?
One possible answer: a society that rewards money-grubbing narcissists with no concern for their fellow man, masquerading as giants of compassion. There’s a ton of money to be made in the helping-the-homeless business. As the formerly homeless Wolf told Shellenberger, “[The homeless nonprofits’] whole intention is to keep more people in this cycle because they’re getting money for it.”
Say, whatever happened with UCSF’s Kushel — of the “we’ve always known” metric? In 2019, she was the lucky recipient of a $30 million grant from San Francisco billionaire Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder) to study homelessness.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
The 2021-2022 school year is coming to a close. As usual, students, parents, teachers, and administrators are looking over the past year to see what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve.
This year, the educational establishment’s report card is even worse than usual. It has failed to address the learning losses due to unnecessary Covid lockdowns and inspired parental uproar over critical race theory and LGBT advocacy in the classroom. It has suffered a surprising electoral defeat in Virginia and a not-so-surprising legislative setback in Florida, as well as an unprecedented number of school board recall elections. Most damaging of all, close to 2 million students have abandoned government schooling for greener (not to mention safer) pastures.
Faced with such massive public losses, one might think a little self-reflection would be in order. Instead, the educrats, with the help of their friends in the legacy media, have decided to address these serious problems by gaslighting the American public.
Avoiding Accountability at All Costs
The most recent example of this deception comes from the continuing saga of the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) effort last fall to smear parents who complain at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.” The now infamous letter and even more infamous Department of Justice memo that followed it represent the depths to which the educational establishment was willing to sink to protect itself from accountability to the families it theoretically serves.
A recently completed independent review exonerated the NSBA’s board from culpability in this fiasco, fixing the blame for “both the ‘origin and substance of the letter’” on former Interim Director and CEO Chip Slaven. The review also found that while unnamed members of the Biden administration “collaborated” with Slaven, it “did not find direct or indirect evidence suggesting the administration requested the letter.”
In an effort to “clear the record,” Slaven recorded an interview last week with Fox News Digital, where he whined about being “betrayed” and “completely backstabbed” by the organization that he led. He also admitted that he disagreed with the NSBA board’s futile efforts to walk back the language of the letter, claiming that “it drenched an already inflamed and out-of-control narrative with another helping of gasoline.”
Neither Slaven nor the NSBA’s announcement bothered to address the elephant in the room: that the
organization sees engaged parents and community members who attend school board meetings as potential threats that need to be watched and possibly prosecuted by federal authorities. When pressed about this during the interview, Slaven lamely defended the substance of the letter he penned by saying, “The word ‘parents’ is not in the letter anywhere,” despite the examples cited in the letter’s footnotes.
The NSBA has offered vague platitudes about “advocat[ing] for local control” and being “committed to parent engagement” as it pursues its “nonpartisan” goals. These attempts to rewrite history come as 25 state school boards have chosen“to withdraw membership, participation, or dues from NSBA.”
Meanwhile, an FBI whistleblower has claimed that “counterterrorism tools” were indeed used against parents in accordance with the DOJ’s memo. It remains unclear whether these efforts continue presently despite the NSBA’s repudiation of the letter and its alleged author.
Legacy Media Provide Covering Fire
Of course, the left-wing corporate media have gone all in to support educrats’ efforts to deceive the public into believing they remain the valiant heroes in this ongoing drama. Lately, they’ve decided to focus their attacks on a favorite target of the left: homeschooling families.
This is hardly surprising, as the number of these families at least doubled during the lockdowns of 2020-2021. What’s more, that number has been largely maintained despite schools re-opening in the fall of 2021.
On Mother’s Day, Keith Olbermann fired an opening salvo in this new campaign against educational choice when he tweeted that a homeschooling mom was “ruin[ing] the lives of five innocent children.” Not to be outdone, MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler initiated a preemptive strike against Kirk Cameron’s upcoming documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” by disingenuously linking homeschooling not just with conservative Christianity, but also with the “segregation academies” of the post-Brown v. Board of Education South.
After grudgingly admitting the recent increase in homeschooling “may [in part] be attributed to Black parents and other diverse groups” who might not otherwise dare to disagree with her leftist party line, Butler ended her hatchet job with a dire warning:
Homeschooling may have greater appeal now because of these debates and the desire for parents to play a big part in their children’s educational life. It may also arise out of pandemic concerns, but parents unfamiliar with the existing networks of homeschooling run the danger of being drawn into Christian conservative networks and theocratic teaching. [Cameron] says that people choosing homeschooling are having an awakening, but the public needs to awaken to the reality that public schools may disappear if people with his extreme beliefs have their way.
The left’s message to parents is loud and clear: Exercise your right to homeschool your kids and you are complicit in the cold-blooded murder of public schooling.
Institutional Suicide
In these efforts, Slaven, Olbermann, Butler, and their comrades studiously deflect from the simple truth: If American government-run schools are dying, it is not a case of murder, but of suicide.
The self-inflicted wounds keep coming despite all the warning signs of the past academic year. Last month, the school district in Kiel, Wis., accused three middle schoolers of sexual harassment for failing to refer to another student by her chosen pronouns. What parent wants to go through that as a consequence of sending his kids to public schools?
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools is planning to adopt a policy to suspend or even expel students who “maliciously misgender” classmates. The vote, originally scheduled for May 26, has been suspiciously delayed until June 16, perhaps so the happy chaos of the last day of school will allow the board to avoid further public scrutiny and outrage.
As kids across the nation start their summer vacations, the battle for their minds and souls rages on. True to form, the educational establishment fights dirty, using cheap manipulation tactics to distract the public from its pursuit of ideological “business as usual.”
Robert Busek is a Catholic homeschooling father of six who has taught history and Western Civilization in both traditional and online classrooms for over twenty years. His essays have also been published in The American Conservative and The American Spectator. The views he expresses here are his own.
A group of far-left organizers sponsoring watch parties for Thursday’s show trial hearing by the House Jan. 6 Committee demanded soft treatment for a pair of attorneys sentenced last week in firebombing a New York City police car. Demand Progress, a project of the leftist Sixteen Thirty Fund, is named as a partner organization for January 6 Watch Events gearing up for Thursday’s prime time programming to “uncover the truth, demand accountability and ensure violence like this never happens again.”
“We need to make sure these hearings break through the busy news cycle and reach the American public,” the event website’s description reads. “We cannot allow Trump Republicans to successfully cover up one of the greatest attacks ever planned against American’s freedom to decide who governs in our name!”
The flagship watch party across from Capitol Hill Thursday night will even feature free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream while attendees watch what Democrats routinely characterize as the worst assault on American democracy on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The committee recruited a former ABC News executive to up the drama for prime-time television.
While Demand Progress sponsors parties to raise the alarm over right-wing “insurrection,” the group demanded soft sentencing for two radical attorneys who torched a New York City police vehicle two years ago amid nationwide street violence over George Floyd’s murder.
On Thursday, attorneys Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman each pled guilty to conspiracy charges in a deal struck with federal prosecutors for tossing the Molotov cocktail at a Brooklyn riot on May 30, 2020. The pair had previously pled guilty to possession of a destructive device in October, but the threat of added years through a “terrorist enhancement” remained. In the plea deal landed last week, prosecutors dropped the enhancement and requested maximum prison time of two years as opposed to the decades they faced months ago. Mattis and Rahman officially pled guilty to conspiracy to commit arson and to make and possess an unregistered destructive device.
In a coalition letter with more than a dozen other leftist groups on June 22, 2020, Demand Progress condemned the prosecution as “excessive and politically-motivated charges.”
“The Trump Administration is wielding the punitive force of this system against Colin and Urooj, who are Black and South Asian, respectively, in order to chill popular protest against the unjust status quo,” the coalition wrote led by the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We call for the immediate release of Colin and Urooj on bail and for the federal government to drop these excessive charges.”
A day later, the Demand Progress shared the letter on Twitter demanding charges to be dropped.
Demand Progress’ about-face on criminal prosecution over civil unrest marks another episode of endless double standards for political violence. Democrats on Thursday will pursue wall-to-wall coverage of the events on Jan. 6, 2021 after spending the entire summer and fall preceding the Capitol riot normalizing violent uprisings when it served their cause.
“This is more proof that socialist Democrats don’t care about rioting,” Matt Schlapp, the president of the American Conservative Union, told The Federalist. “They want to put on a show to attempt to distract from their failures.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The same agency that investigated hate crime allegations that a garage pull cord was a noose is failing to investigate arson, death threats, and terror threats from pro-abortionists.
Pro-life centers in nearly half of U.S. states have been attacked following a premature leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson, but the FBI’s plans to address threats of past or future violence, especially if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade, are not clear.
This is where the FBI often comes in when the victims are favorable to the political left, but so far, the same agency that flocked to Talladega Superspeedway over hate crime allegations that a garage pull cord was a noose designed to target NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace and spied on a presidential candidate because Hillary Clinton said he colluded with Russians doesn’t seem to have the same urgency about life-forward centers that care and advocate for mothers and babies.
There are many open calls for violence against Supreme Court justices and anyone who believes unborn babies have a right to life. The Department of Homeland Security warned in a May memo of future threats that may come from a “broader ideological spectrum” than they previously notated.
To put it simply, DHS, the same agency that established a disinformation governance board headed by a Russia collusion hoaxer acknowledged that “grievances related to restricting abortion access could fuel violence by pro-choice abortion-related violent extremists and other [domestic violent extremists]” are finally on their radar.
Yet at the time DHS issued this memo, multiple pro-life centers had already been vandalized and harmed by what appeared to be pro-abortion activists. A mysterious anarchist-connected group called Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for some of these attacks, including one on the Wisconsin Family Action building. That burned after aggravators graffitied the walls with ominous messages and threw Molotov cocktails. They also threatened to continue “adopt increasingly extreme tactics to maintain freedom over our own bodies” and carry those out across the United States
The FBI field office in Milwaukee reportedly joined local law enforcement for an investigation into the Wisconsin bombardment but told The Federalist that the Madison Police Department “remains the lead agency for information and updates on the investigation.” When asked whether the FBI plans to investigate Jane’s Revenge, a spokeswoman told The Federalist that “As a matter of longstanding policy, the FBI does not comment upon the existence or the nonexistence of any investigation.”
Other pro-life centers that experienced damage from similar attacks involving lit Molotov cocktails including Oregon Right Life in Keizer, Oregon, however, did not appear to have the benefit of an investigation. The FBI field office in Oregon told The Federalist that “the FBI cannot confirm the existence of an investigation” into the break-in and fire that damaged the ORL building.
Not only have the feds overlooked some of these crimes but corporate media, which loves to highlight every time an abortion clinic feels threatened, has been relatively silent.
DHS claims that it, in partnership with the FBI, will “continue to share timely and actionable information and intelligence with the broadest audience possible,” but where is the information on this group that has threatened to strike again?
“While we have no comment on any specific incidents, the FBI remains vigilant and continues to work every day with our law enforcement partners to detect and disrupt any potential threats of violence in our communities,” the FBI told The Federalist in a statement. “As always, we remind members of the public that should they become aware of any suspicious activity to immediately contact law enforcement.”
Pro-life centers and churches openly fear more violence and destruction in wake of the imminent Dobbs v. Jackson ruling but their resources for protection and prevention are already limited by their own states. Even though pregnancy centers, including one that was set on fire in Buffalo, are clearly at risk if the court decides to overturn Roe, Democrat-led states such as New York are focused on funneling $35 million in taxpayer funds to beef up security at abortion facilities instead.
That combined with the FBI and DHS’s vague plans to prevent attempts to browbeat pro-life organizations and people leaves organizations that advocate for life and take care of babies and mothers vulnerable.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Just as the humanitarian crisis at the border is the predictable result of the left’s open-borders policies, so our crime wave is a consequence of their anti-punitive philosophy of criminal justice.
Since a spate of recent shootings, Democrats led by President Joe Biden have been busy exploiting the tragedies to call for more gun control, go after the “gun lobby” bogeyman, and yell that we must “do something!” about firearm-related crime. They’ve been clear that they aren’t interested in talking about effective solutions that don’t involve gun-grabbing, so they probably also don’t want to talk about who’s responsible for America’s unsettling crime wave: the left.
Meanwhile, as of late Tuesday night, the Associated Press projected that San Francisco voters had handily recalled left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose soft-on-crime policies wreaked havoc on the California city.
While a prosecutor recall might seem disconnected from an uptick in mass shootings and subsequent gun-control chatter, the two are intertwined. Just as the humanitarian crisis at the border is the predictable result of the left’s open-borders policies, our crime wave is the inevitable result of their anti-punitive philosophy of criminal justice. And the biggest culprits are progressive prosecutors like Boudin who champion Democrats’ policies and have been installed across the country after being bankrolled by left-wing radicals like George Soros and other groups.
Prosecutors Who Don’t Prosecute
According to a new report out from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), Soros alone has poured a staggering $40 million into prosecutor races to help elect 75 leftists that have contributed to the crime wave, and he’s just one of many billionaires working to destroy law and order, influence elections, control the media, and otherwise destroy the country.
The left and its skeptics continue to use guns as a scapegoat and say there’s no direct correlation between left-wing prosecutorial philosophies and crime, but the evidence suggests otherwise. According to the LELDF report, more than 40 percent of the roughly 22,500 homicides in 2021 — so more than 9,000 — happened in these 75 district attorneys’ jurisdictions, which accounted for more than one-third of last year’s violent crimes and property crime.
These DAs’ decisions produce consequences even in the areas they don’t oversee, however, since there’s nothing keeping released offenders in the prosecutors’ jurisdictions. Light sentences, low cash bail, and other slaps on the wrist send criminals right back onto their streets and those of their neighbors.
“These radical activists now preside over 72 million Americans and 40% of US homicides,” said LELDF President Jason Johnson, noting that Soros has already spent another $1 million to date this year to boost his preferred prosecutors. “Soros is using that campaign money and the hundreds of millions more for supporting organizations to quietly transform the criminal justice system for the worse, promoting dangerous policies and anti-police narratives to advance his radical agenda.”
The country saw the effects of progressive prosecutors up close over the last holiday season. The Waukesha parade murderer didn’t need a firearm. To kill six people and injure 62 more, he needed only a vehicle, a soft-on-crime district attorney’s office that let him out on a pittance of bail, and leftist policies that “guaranteed” offenders would kill people. It’s evil like that, enabled by leftist policy failures, that expose America’s crime problem as being so much bigger than a few psychopaths with guns.
Democrats’ Progressive Dream
But the rise in crime is much bigger than Soros and 75 district attorneys too. More fundamentally, it’s the predictable result of a long list of so-called leftist policy goals and beliefs that are prevalent not only among the radicals of the left, but also among the mainstream Democrat Party.
For a particularly grotesque example, look at cities in blue bastion California — particularly Boudin’s San Francisco, where the sidewalks are littered with used needles, passed-out junkies, and homeless encampments, and street sightings of human feces number in the tens of thousands each year. Facing an explosion in shoplifting, retailers in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco were helpless to do anything but reduce store hours. As a Wall Street Journal article noted in October 2021, “Walgreens has closed 22 stores in [San Francisco], where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized.”
That little $950 tidbit is courtesy of Democrats’ woke Proposition 47, which more than doubled the amount a person could steal before facing a felony. In other words, Prop 47 reclassified felonies as no-biggie misdemeanors. Crime in the Bay Area has gotten so bad that even Democrat Mayor London Breed was forced to admit that the left’s soft-on-crime approach has led to “all the bullsh-t that has destroyed” San Francisco.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Los Angeles experienced its highest number of homicides in 15 years, and looters ran rampant on that area’s train tracks, with some railroad companies reporting a “160% increase in criminal rail theft,” and “approximately $5 million in claims, losses and damages” to the train companies alone.
The Left’s Culture of Crime
The crime wave isn’t confined to California, though. It’s swept through Democrats’ strongholds across the rest of the country too. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd wrote in January, “New York, D.C., and Chicago all saw ‘record-high‘ murders in 2021 while Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; Louisville, Kentucky; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, ‘had their deadliest years on record.’”
And let’s not forget the scores of rioters, looters, and vandals who went unpunished after the 2020 summer of rage that resulted in billions of dollars in damages. In fact, rather than condemn them, prominent Democrats including our very own Vice President Kamala Harris helped bail out of jail those who were caught. It was Minneapolis Democrats who voted to dismantle its police department in 2020, enabling a crime wave there. And Democrat lawmakers joined the chorus of those calling to “defund the police,” only stopping when they realized that abhorrent position could hurt them politically.
It’s hard to take Democrats’ tired calls for gun control seriously anyway, given their debunked talking points and faulty logic. But it’s especially disqualifying for the left when you take into account all the lawlessness and violence they enable as hallmarks of their criminal justice platforms. If voters in far-left San Francisco can see it, it’s a safe bet the rest of the country can too. America’s culture of crime belongs to Democrats, and no amount of gun control can fix it.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
Repentance from sin plus faith in Christ equals a new life. | Pixabay
In a recent documentary, I discussed the rapid decline of America and the desperate need for serious prayer and fasting. To say that we are at a crossroads is an understatement — we are in the crosshairs.
This is an urgent call to the pulpits of America. America’s lukewarm temperature is caused by a lack of fire in the pulpit and apathy in the pew. Leonard Ravenhill once lamented, “We need more prophets in our pulpits and less puppets.” That same cry goes out today. We simply cannot remain silent.
Is saving America the mission of the Church?
CNN recently released an article quoting pastor Andy Stanley who said, “saving America is not the mission of the church.”
I don’t know Pastor Stanley, nor do I know his heart, but he highlights a real dilemma in our nation — prophetic voices who lack humility. In short, many bold preachers don’t weep before they whip (cf. John 2:13-16). But balancing love with anger over the condition of our nation, families, and churches is a hard balance to find.
People who say things such as, “Saving America is not the mission of the Church,” often use this phrase to justify their silence on important issues. Biblically speaking, it’s impossible to be non-confrontational to a culture hell-bent on rejecting God. We can’t be “unhitched” from God’s Word.
But Shane, can you answer the question?
Back to the question, “is saving America the mission of the Church?” Of course not, but shouldn’t we desire godly leaders and laws that align with God’s Word and not be shamed for it? Shouldn’t we want to protect our borders and our children without being chastised? Shouldn’t we be a voice to those who have no voice and stop the slaughtering of the innocent?
The dilemma Pastor Stanley and others face is that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. They can’t avoid controversial topics in the hopes of not offending. Watering down difficult topics is exactly why America is drowning in a cesspool of moral relativism.
CNN quotes Stanley because, in their eyes, he supports their narrative. You won’t find secular news outlets quoting and supporting bold preachers. Why? Because bold, Christ-centered, truth elevating preaching exposes and dismantles their agenda. If secular news outlets are on your side, are you sure that you’re on the right side?
Weak and woke won’t awaken
My goal isn’t to divide the Body of Christ, but to convict it. I don’t have a beef against Pastor Stanley (I’m sure he’s a great guy), but if a Christian leader says controversial things, can’t we lovingly challenge their words? This isn’t dividing the Body, rather it’s sharpening our iron (Proverbs 27:17).
Many of us are becoming weary of the silent pulpit that seems more comfortable slamming bold saints than confronting blatant sinners. Weak sermons from woke pastors won’t convict the sinners who need redemption.
A person who is considered “woke” prides themselves on being extra sensitive and aware of racial and social discrimination and injustice. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on the motive of the person using the phrase.
If we repent of our skin color, dislike policemen, disdain America, and support sexual perversion by our silence (all under the banner of “wokeness”), we are in deep trouble. If we won’t preach the truth because some in our audience are on the other side of the political spectrum, we aren’t pastors, we are appeasers.
Love of country over love of people
Love of country shouldn’t take precedence over love of people, but doesn’t loving people also mean loving the country in which they live?
What many are really saying is: If you vote for a mean-tweeting president, care about God-given freedoms, and talk about hot-button issues, you don’t love people. With all due respect, that simply is not true!
Is it even possible for Christians to embrace a political party without hurting the feelings of the other party? No, it’s not. This is the dilemma of Pastor Stanley and other leaders. Instead of asking, “How can we not offend others?” they should be asking, “Are we offending God?”
There must appear a new type of preacher
A.W. Tozer hit the nail on the head decades ago: “If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used … there must appear a new type of preacher.”
Tozer continues, “The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.”
He concludes, “Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.” God, give us more prophets and less puppets!
Appeasement — an exercise in futility
Those who have been called to preach will confront compromise, condemn moral digression, and powerfully denounce sin in the hope of reconciling man to God. The world despises them because they challenge the sin the world enjoys. Trying to please a Christ-rejecting world is an exercise in futility.
Although ruffling feathers is not our goal, we will step on toes from time to time when we speak the truth. This can’t always be avoided, nor should it be.
Weak and woke won’t turn America around, but neither will pride and arrogance. Speaking the heart of God flows from a reservoir of brokenness and time spent with Him. How are you doing in this area?
Whether you’re on the Right or the Left, you must be on the right side of God’s Word.
We need more men like the Old Testament prophet Micaiah, who said, “As surely as the Lord lives, I will speak whatever the Lord tells me” (1 Kings 22:14).
Notorious former Hollywood overlord and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein will reportedly be charged Wednesday in a new assault case in the U.K. Weinstein, who was allegedly the inspiration behind the Orcs in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, will be charged with two counts of indecent assault against a woman in London, according to the BBC. The assaults allegedly took place in the U.K.’s capital in 1996, but no further details have been released on the identity of the woman or the scope of the investigation, the BBC noted.
The head of Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime division, Rosemary Ainslie, said that the charges were authorized after a thorough investigation by London’s metropolitan police, the BBC continued. (RELATED: Kevin Spacey Charged With Four Counts Of Sexual Assault)
Superstar Actress Describes Feeling Like ‘Meat’ In Audition Process For Epic Film https://t.co/PIjoCC4gIp
The disgraced former producer recently tried and failed to have his 2020 rape conviction overturned in New York. A five-judge panel unanimously decided to dismiss his appeal, ensuring that Weinstein continues serving his 23-year prison sentence. In July 2021, Weinstein pleaded not guilty to sex crimes charges in Los Angeles, California. Should he be convicted on these charges, he faces up to 140 years in prison in the U.S.
Accusations against Weinstein started in October 2017 after a detailed expose by The New York Times was released. To date, at least 87 accusers have come forward against Weinstein and he has denied every allegation of non-consensual sex, according to USA Today.
Jonathan Capehart, a black editor at the Washington Post and an MSNBC contributor, wrote in a column Tuesday that he and his white husband might flee the United States over a growing fear of “crazy white people.” He never stated where he and Nick Schmit might relocate, or which nation would be more welcoming of love-the-fruit-hate-the-tree negroes. He omitted their dream destination because he knows black people experience a higher standard of living, life expectancy, and safety in America than anyplace on earth. Nowhere else on the planet could a dark-skinned man as intellectually compromised and limited as Capehart find high-profile work as a public intellectual and white liberal puppet. Capehart and his boo-thang would not abandon America at gunpoint.
So, what is the real point of Capehart’s Tuesday column, “Why black people are afraid of ‘crazy’ white people”?
In it, he argues that the Buffalo mass shooting illustrates that white people’s fear of demographic changes as a result of illegal immigration is causing white people to turn crazy and potentially violent toward black people. He cites polling from the Southern Poverty Law Center that states that 70% of Republicans believe in the “great replacement conspiracy.” He connects the SPLC poll to a Washington Post poll that states 75% of black people worry that they or a loved one will be physically attacked because they’re black and believe white supremacists are a major threat to black people. These polls justify Capehart’s writing one of the most morally bankrupt and racist opening paragraphs in the last 50 years of mainstream newspapers:
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Black people are not afraid of white people. We’re afraid of ‘crazy’ white people.”
That sentence is the equivalent of a white columnist writing: “I’m going to let you in on a little secret: White people are not afraid of black people. We’re afraid of n*****s.”
Jonathan Capehart is not a racist. He loves white fruit (Nick Schmit). He pretends to hate the tree (America). Capehart is a soldier in the BLM-LGBTQ+ Alphabet Mafia. His purpose and point are no different from the Black Lives Matter movement. His job is to wrap the agenda of the LGBTQ movement in black advancement packaging. He’s tying the freedom and treatment of black people to homosexuals and transgenders. That’s why he made this ridiculous and illogical reference to Philando Castile when arguing against the Second Amendment and self-defense.
“Think about it. Imagine I get a gun for self-protection (not that I ever would but stay with me). A situation arises in which I use it to protect myself. But then the cops arrive, see a gun, ‘fear for their lives,’ and, well, the rest writes itself. Remember Philando Castile? We can’t win.”
A Minnesota police officer shot and killed Castile during a routine traffic stop. Castile legally carried a firearm. A jury acquitted the officer of manslaughter. The tragedy that befell Castile is an extremely rare occurrence. Capehart knows this. But he’s an operative in the real replacement theory sweeping Democratic politics. Black is the new gay and trans. He’s an executive producer of a new movie, “BrokeBlacks Mountain.” Capehart ties his plot twist together toward the end of his column, writing:
“It’s not just race, either. The SPLC report notes a correlation between the obsession with ethnic ‘replacement’ and a fixation on gender identity. And look: More than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed this year alone, many of them targeting trans children and their families. This is not to mention the threat to abortion access or to other rights (such as my marriage) that could fall like dominoes.”
There it is. Capehart’s real passion is protecting his marriage to Nick Schmit.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Capehart would not piss on a heterosexual black man set ablaze at the White House. He loves fruit and hates the way God made him.
For stating this obvious truth, I’ll be accused of homophobia and transphobia. It’s not true. I despise dishonesty and lies. I’m tired of black elites disconnected from the reality of working-class people standing on the caskets of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown to advance the plight of the Alphabet Mafia.
Capehart is using black people to promote an agenda that directly contradicts the gospel spelled out in the Bible.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “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 President Donald Trump.
A sign outside a classroom taken in 2016. | REUTERS/Tami Chappell
A group of parents and teachers have sued a Virginia school district over a policy requiring teachers to use the preferred pronouns of trans-identified students. The plaintiffs, whose names have been redacted, filed a lawsuit last week in the Circuit Court of Rockingham County against the leadership of Harrisonburg City Public Schools.
At issue is the school board’s decision to add “gender identity” to the school district’s nondiscrimination policy. The policy forces teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns and withhold information about students’ gender identity from their parents if the student requests they do so. The lawsuit claims the policy “compels teachers to violate their religious convictions about gender and honesty” and “violates parents’ rights by interfering with their ability to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
“Plaintiffs … are HCPS teachers and parents who object to HCPS’s policy on free-speech, religious-freedom, and parental-rights grounds,” the complaint reads.
“Plaintiffs deeply care about their students and children. They see the growing number of children struggling with gender dysphoria and want those children to experience love and support. But like many, Plaintiffs recognize that a policy of immediate social transition and unquestioning affirmation without parental involvement for every case of gender dysphoria in minors is harmful, not to mention contrary to science.”
The plaintiffs are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit that has filed similar litigation against other school districts.
“Public schools should never hide information from or lie to parents about a child’s mental health,” the complaint reads. “And schools should never compel teachers to perpetrate such a deception.”
ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert said in a statement that he believes parents “have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, care, and education of their children.”
“Teachers and staff cannot willfully hide kids’ mental health information from their parents, especially as some of the decisions children are making at school have potentially life-altering ramifications,” Bangert stated.
“As the clients we represent believe, a teacher’s role is to support, not supplant, the role of the parent.”
HCPS posted a statement on its website stating that the school board “maintains a strong commitment to its inclusivity statement.”
“In specific student situations, the focus is always to foster a team approach that includes and supports the unique needs of the student and family on a case-by-case basis,” stated HCPS.
“We are dismayed that this complaint is coming to us in the form of a lawsuit in lieu of the collaborative approach we invite and take to address specific needs or concerns, an approach that we believe best serves the interests of our students, staff, and families.”
HCPS adopted the policy after the Virginia Department of Education mandated school divisions adopt similar policies to a model policy that it supported during the 2021-2022 school year. Other school districts adopted similar policies. In addition to the HCPS lawsuit, ADF oversees litigation against Loudon County Public Schools in Virginia over a similar measure known as Policy 8040.
According to the Loudon County policy enacted last year, school faculty and staff must use the chosen name and pronouns of a student who identifies as “gender-expansive or transgender.”
“School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their consistently asserted gender identity,” read the policy.
“The use of gender-neutral pronouns is appropriate. Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy.”
Last year, the Loudoun County Schools suspended teacher Tanner Cross after he voiced objection to what at the time was a proposed Policy 8040 during a school board hearing. He said the policy would “damage children” and “defile the holy image of God.” He argued that affirming students’ preferred pronouns is “lying to a child.”
After a judge ordered the school district to reinstate Cross, the school district argued that it had received complaints from students and parents who “expressed fear, hurt and disappointment about coming to school” in light of Cross’ comments. Loudoun County Schools said addressing those concerns was “paramount to the school division’s goal to provide a safe, welcoming and affirming learning environment for all students.”
The Virginia Supreme Court rejected the school district’s appeal of the court’s order to reinstate Cross.
Recently released handwritten notes reveal the FBI either lied or U.K. intelligence fed information to the U.S. agents investigating Donald Trump and his associates.
Recently released handwritten notes from a briefing of the acting attorney general on the status of Crossfire Hurricane reveal the FBI either lied about the source of intel or the British intelligence community fed information to the U.S. agents investigating Donald Trump and his associates. As part of the pre-trial discovery in the government’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, the special counsel provided defense lawyers notes taken on March 6, 2017, during a high-level briefing of acting Attorney General Dana Boente about the then-ongoing investigation into supposed Russia collusion.
Boente, who held oversight of the DOJ and FBI related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation because of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal, received an update during the meeting from the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, then-assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap, and Counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. DOJ officials Tashina Gauhar, Mary McCord, and Scott Schools took notes during the briefing, and those notes became public during the Sussmann trial that ended in an acquittal last week.
Soon after the release of the notes, Hans Mahncke and Stephen McIntyre detailed for The Federalist, several passages that indicated the FBI had lied to the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting in numerous ways. From the cryptic notes, Mahncke and McIntyre deciphered and exposed several significant false storylines sold to the acting attorney general, making their article a must-read.
While any lies, misrepresentations, or material omissions matter—or should, especially when told to the acting attorney general related to an investigation connected to the president of the United States, the note’s references to “CROWN reporting” prove particularly significant because of the FISA court’s insistence that the DOJ included Christopher Steele’s background as an MI6 agent in the FISA application prior to the secret surveillance court issuing an order to surveil Carter Page.
The phrase “CROWN Reporting” appeared multiple times in one set of handwritten notes taken during McCabe, Priestap, and Strzok’s March 6, 2017, FBI briefing of the DOJ and Acting Attorney General Boente. Next to “CROWN Reporting,” the notes referenced “convention,” Crimea” and “NATO” and “soften stance for exchange of Russian energy stocks.” These notations fell under the header of points related to Manafort.
A second reference to “CROWN source reporting” came during the FBI’s briefing of Boente concerning the investigation of Carter Page, with the notation following the general discussion of Page.
Huge Implications No Matter the Source
The notes do not elaborate on the “CROWN source” or who provided the “CROWN source reporting.” There are two possibilities, both of which have huge implications for the ongoing special counsel investigation.
First, the claimed “CROWN source” could be former MI6 spy Steele. To date, Steele remains the only person with a connection to British intelligence publicly known to have provided the FBI with information related to Trump and individuals connected to Trump during the Russia collusion investigation. But if by “CROWN source” the FBI meant Steele, the individual briefing Boente lied to him in several ways, did so in a material way, and there is likely a paper trail that can confirm an earlier, similar lie by FBI agents. While Steele had at one time served in the British intelligence service, his MI6 status ended long ago, when he retired in 2009 to start the private intelligence service Orbis Business Intelligence. Further, as the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported more than two years ago, Steele told the OIG that the source network he used to compile the memoranda, referred to colloquially as the Steele dossier, did not involve sources from his time as an MI6 agent. On the contrary, his sources were “developed entirely in the period after he retired from government service.”
So not only was Steele not a “CROWN source,” his supposed “intel” also lacked any connection to “Crown Source Reporting.” Accordingly, unless the FBI had a still publicly unknown “CROWN source” who provided the information on which agents briefed the DOJ during the March 6, 2017 meeting, they lied to the DOJ.
If They Lied, It Really Matters
Falsely attributing “intel” to a “CROWN source” proves significant, and not merely for Boente’s oversight of Crossfire Hurricane, but also for Boente’s decision to approve the third application to surveil Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). And the DOJ’s representation of a connection between Steele and British intelligence in the FISA applications appeared dispositive to the FISA court’s decision to authorize surveillance of Page.
Two little-noticed passages, separated by some 50 pages in the OIG’s 478-page report on FISA abuse, revealed the importance the FISA court put on Steele’s connection to British intelligence in ordering surveillance of Page. According to the OIG, before filing its official FISA application, the DOJ submitted a “read copy” to the FISA court to obtain feedback from the FISA court’s legal advisor on whether the application met the statutory requirements and on any issues of concern raised by the legal advisor or the FISA judge handling the application.
In the first read copy submitted to the FISA court related to Page, the application “contained a description of the source network that included the fact that Steele relied upon a Primary Sub-source who used a network of sub-sources, and that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported.” The draft application “also contained a separate footnote on each sub-source with a brief description of his/her position or access to the information he/she was reporting.”
After reviewing the read copy, the FISA court’s “legal advisor asked how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources.” In response, the government’s Office of Intelligence (OI) attorney “provided additional information to him regarding Steele’s past employment history.”
The FISA court’s legal advisor then requested that additional information be included in the final application, resulting in the final version of the October 2016 FISA application including a footnote detailing Steele’s prior work for British intelligence. The FISA court granted the revised FISA application, ordering surveillance of Page to begin in October 2016. The FISA court renewed the surveillance order three additional times, once in December, again in March, when Boente signed the application, and finally on June 29, 2017, when Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed the final FISA application.
All of the applications referenced Steele’s past service in British intelligence, but, as noted above, Steele’s source network was unrelated to his government work and came entirely from his private work. Given that the FISA court’s legal advisor questioned “how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources,” and that the advisor directed the OI attorney to expressly include Steele’s previous work as an MI6 agent in the application, the FISA court clearly believed Steele’s network of sources came from his time as a British agent.
Further, given the significance the FISA court placed on that fact, it seems likely the FISA court would have denied the surveillance order had it been told the truth—that Steele’s network of sources had been privately acquired.
FBI Liars Could Still Be Held Accountable
The FBI’s representation during the March 6, 2017 meeting that the supposed intel related to Manafort and Page came from “CROWN sources,”—again, assuming the agent meant Steele—suggests the Crossfire Hurricane team deceived the DOJ from the beginning, resulting in the OI attorney representing to the FISA court that Steele’s network of sources were sources used by British intelligence. That deception also likely affected Boente’s decision to sign the second renewal application.
While these events occurred more than five years ago, and a five-year statute of limitations governs false statement offenses, the D.C. Circuit has held that if a defendant engages in a scheme “to falisf[y], conceal[], or cover[]up” material facts, the limitations period does not begin to run until the scheme ends.
In this case, then, any FBI agents involved in concealing from the DOJ during the final preparation and review of the June 29, 2017, FISA application that Steele’s sources were not “CROWN sources” or connected to his work in British intelligence could still face criminal liability.
Go Get ‘Em, Durham
Further, while the Sussmann trial proved memories fail—sometimes conveniently—uncovering the individuals responsible for representing Steele’s source network as connected to his past life as an MI6 agent seems a relatively straightforward venture given what we learned from the special counsel’s conviction of Kevin Clinesmith.
Clinesmith pleaded guilty nearly two years ago to altering an email related to Page to make it appear that Page “was not a source” for the CIA. Clinesmith’s undoing came from the fact that in preparing the FISA application and renewals, the various government actors used email to confirm details, including with Clinesmith.
The OIG report on FISA abuse detailed that process, noting there were many “back-and-forth exchange[s]” “between the OI Attorney and the FBI, during which the OI Attorney asked many questions about Page, as well as about Steele’s reporting and the structure and access of his source network.” “To further address reliability, the OI Attorney sought information from the FBI to describe the source network in the FISA application,” according to the OIG report. And that information-gathering process included email exchanges and written summaries of briefings.
Either that briefing left the OI attorney with the impression that Steele’s source network came from his MI6 work, or after the FISA court legal advisor asked, “how it was that Steele had a network of sub-sources,” the OI attorney pushed the FBI for more information. If the latter, emails likely memorialize the exchanges.
Whether the FBI agents affirmatively misrepresented Steele’s source network as connected to his British intelligence work in their communiques with the OI attorney, and in turn the OI attorney relayed that information to the FISA court, is unknown to us, but hopefully not to Special Counsel Durham.
Even if no one lied to the OI attorney and he merely assumed Steele’s source network carried over from his time with MI6, a misrepresentation to Boente during the March 6, 2017, briefing that Steele was a “CROWN source” still matters because the FISA surveillance orders were renewed two more times after that meeting.
That, of course, is assuming the FBI meant Steele when they referenced a “CROWN source”—something not entirely clear. More on that shortly.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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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
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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