TSA Officer watches people go through the security checkpoint at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on November 24, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia. FAA expects the number of travelers for Thanksgiving to reach pre-pandemic levels, with more than 53 million people traveling around the holiday. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Parents are advised to be extra vigilant this year in checking what their children bring home on Halloween after agents in Los Angeles seized around 12,000 fentanyl pills packaged in several bags of candy, the latest incident of the deadly drug being disguised as something innocuous.
According to a statement from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a suspect carrying packages of fentanyl pills attempted to go through a TSA screening at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, trying sneak past screening and board a plane. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Narcotics Bureau Detectives and Drug Enforcement Agency agents assigned to the airport discovered the pills inside boxes of Sweetarts, Skittles and Whoppers. The person carrying the drugs fled before he or she could be detained, but the suspect’s identity is known. An investigation into the matter is ongoing.
“With Halloween approaching, parents need to make sure they are checking their kids candy and not allowing them to eat anything until it has been inspected by them,” officials with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department warned in the statement.
“If you find anything in candy boxes that you believe might be narcotics, do not touch it and immediately notify your local law enforcement agency.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 71,000 overdose deaths from synthetic fentanyl in 2021, up from 57,000 deaths in 2020.
Last month, New York authorities arrested a New Jersey woman after discovering she had 15,000 rainbow-colored fentanyl pills inside a lego box. The DEA reported the incident was the largest fentanyl seizure in New York City history. The 48-year-old suspect, Latesha Bush, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Sept. 30. A criminal complaint filed by the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor (SNP) against Bush charged her with one count of first-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.
New York authorities investigating suspected narcotics trafficking stopped Bush’s vehicle and found the two black tote bags and a Lego package containing fentanyl pills in the car. The pills were imprinted with “M” and “30” to resemble Oxycodone pills.
“Disguising fentanyl as candy — and concealing it in children’s toys — will never hide the fact that fentanyl is a deadly poison that harms our communities, our families, and our city,” Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell said in a statement.
Investigators claim Bush traveled from New Jersey to Manhattan in a rental car, and the pills she was carrying originated from Mexico. Investigators said disguising fentanyl as candy or other prescription drugs is a tactic used by the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, two Mexican drug cartels.
Earlier this month, the DEA announced the results of its One Pill Can Kill initiative, which led to the seizure of more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder from May 23 through Sept. 8. Out of the 390 cases investigated, 51 were linked to overdose poisonings, and 35 were connected to one or both of the Mexican cartels.
In a national survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC for Rasmussen Reports, 91% of participants said they believe the country’s fentanyl issue is serious, with 73% describing it as a “very serious problem.”
The survey was conducted from Sept. 26 to Sept. 27 by phone, with a margin sampling of error of is +/- 3 percentage points and a 95% confidence level.
On “The Rubin Report,” Blaze TV host Dave Rubin shared a clip of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson tearing into Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s insane new COVID “misinformation” law that essentially makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with the government and Big Pharma.
Under California Assembly Bill 2098, physicians and surgeons can be charged with “unprofessional conduct” for “disseminate[ing] misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
“Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a bill that will punish doctors for the crime of disagreeing with Gavin Newsom,” Tucker said.
“Remember, it’s just between you and your doctor, right? But now, Gavin Newsom — who’s not a doctor, he’s a moron — is somehow telling your doctor what to think? Yeah. Under this new law, doctors can no longer spread ‘false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, … its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.’ In other words, you’re not allowed to criticize Pfizer. It’s now a crime in California,” he added. “Shareholders of Pfizer, anyone? Probably.”
“This is really extraordinary stuff, and this is a massive, massive escalation on the assault on free speech, which is just endlessly happening to us virtually every day,” Dave commented.
Watch the video clip below to catch more of the conversation. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
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.
1st Amendment Praetorian, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech rights, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against a former staffer for the Jan. 6 Committee and publishers of his insider story of the investigation that labeled the group of former veterans as “domestic violent extremists” and a “militant group,” and portrayed the nonprofit as responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
News broke last month that a former senior adviser to the Jan. 6 Committee, Denver Riggleman, had penned a behind-the-scenes book purportedly detailing the inner workings of the Jan. 6 Committee. Riggleman’s book, “The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6,” was released last month, with Esquire publishing an edited excerpt of it.
The book and the Esquire excerpt both spoke of “the militant groups that took part in the attack, namely the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 1st Amendment Praetorian,” adding that the committee was looking at the storming of the building as a military operation. “The targets of our investigation were divided up into five major categories,” Riggleman wrote, with one group consisting of “domestic violent extremists,” which the former Jan. 6 staffer claimed, “included militant groups like Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 1st Amendment Praetorian.”
Those statements were false and defamatory, according to the lawsuit filed by 1AP in a federal court in Virginia on Wednesday that named as defendants Riggleman; Hearst, which publishes Esquire; and the publishers of “The Breach,” the Holt and MacMillan publishing companies.
“Mr. Riggleman’s book pushes the Democrat talking point that military veterans who defend the First Amendment are violent extremists. We are not. We love America and it is our mission to guard its cherished values,” a representative of the 1AP told The Federalist. “Riggleman’s arrogance and reckless disregard of basic facts is not surprising. This book is low on intelligence and full on propaganda,” 1AP’s representative added.
Riggleman and the other defendants are not the first to falsely portray 1AP as “violent extremists” and “militant groups.” In July, The Federalist reported that in the days before the long Independence Day weekend, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told The New York Times that when the Jan. 6 Committee reconvenes public hearings in July, “he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack.” According to the Times, “Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.”
Raskin’s comments followed a year of the Jan. 6 Committee falsely portraying 1AP as “right-wing, paramilitary, or even a militia.” Lawyer Seth Abramson went further, claiming 1AP and its members were involved in the Capitol riot and are “insurrectionists” or “seditionists,” resulting in the group filing suit in a federal court in New Hampshire against Abramson for defamation.
Following Raskin’s comments, Leslie McAdoo Gordon, a lawyer representing 1AP in connection with the Jan. 6 Committee, corrected the record, telling The Federalist, “No matter what you think of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, 1st Amendment Praetorian in no way resembles those groups.” Rather, 1AP “provides pro bono security services at events to ensure a heckler’s veto does not interfere with the speakers’ constitutional right to express their viewpoint,” McAdoo Gordon explained.
McAdoo Gordon stressed these points in a letter to the Jan. 6 Committee in response to subpoenas issued to 1AP; its founder, Robert Lewis, a retired United States Army Green Beret and recipient of the Bronze Star; and 1AP member Philip Luelsdorff, who is a former U.S. Army Ranger. Among other things, the subpoenas demanded that 1AP provide “documents sufficient to identify all employees, officers, and board members” of the nonprofit, as well as “all agendas, minutes, notes, or other records related to meetings” of the nonprofit.
McAdoo Gordon rejected the committee’s demands, telling The Federalist that to use subpoenas “to demand financial and fundraising records (including bank account information) and ‘recruitment’ information from a nonprofit civic organization, especially a civil liberties group, is wholly unacceptable,” and “a gross affront to [the] First Amendment.” McAdoo Gordon stressed that her clients had nothing to do with the violence at the Capitol and were instead targeted because of the individuals with whom they associate.
The letter to the Jan. 6 Committee further detailed 1AP’s activities in D.C., noting that the group provided security for a rally held on Jan. 5, 2021, but the planned tasking to provide security in D.C. ended after that rally. While most members of 1AP left D.C. after the Jan. 5 rally, Lewis and Luelsdorff, who had remained, were asked to provide some additional protection services for the media outlets covering the protest at the Ellipse. They were later asked by the staff at the Willard Hotel to help “maintain order given the flood of people into the lobby and around the hotel after the Ellipse events ended.” They had nothing to do with what occurred at the Capitol.
Not only did the Jan. 6 Committee know these details in April, when McAdoo Gordon first responded to the committee’s subpoena, but by early July, the information was made public — well before the publication of Riggleman’s book and the Esquire excerpt. Nonetheless, the defendants called 1AP a “domestic violent extremist” and “militant” group.
In addition to the lawsuit against Riggleman and the publishers, an attorney for 1AP is calling for the Jan. 6 Committee to respond to the false claims pushed by their former adviser.
“If the J6 Committee had an ounce of integrity, it would denounce Riggleman’s lies and admit that there is no evidence that 1AP participated in a plot to attack the Capitol on January 6,” Virginia attorney Steven Biss told The Federalist.
With midterm elections less than a month away and the Jan. 6 Committee still pushing its partisan goals by subpoenaing former President Donald Trump, that outcome seems unlikely.
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.
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina claimed during a Thursday MSNBC appearance that the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats knew some of their moves would spur inflation.
“All of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise. And we do know that price gouging takes place and that’s what Senator Warnock is concerned about in Georgia,” Clyburn told host Jose Diaz-Balart. “We knew the moment we went to aid the Ukrainians, the Russians would do what they could possibly do to undercut this administration, so they cut this deal with OPEC nations to reduce the production of oil so as to drive the price of gasoline up.” (RELATED: JPMorgan Chase CEO Issues Another Warning On US Economy: ‘This Is Serious’)
President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which had $1.9 trillion in spending, into law in March 2021. Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which largely consists of green energy programs, healthcare spending and a massive increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service, into law in August 2022.
WATCH:
The Consumer Price Index increased 8.2% year-to-year in September after rising by 8.3% in August, 8.6% in July, 9.1% in June and 8.5% in May. The Biden administration and Democrats have blamed high gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin, but some experts have said that President Biden’s hostility towards fossil fuel production is to blame.
“We are not going to allow these kinds of intimidations be it by big, corporations who are raising prices when they should not be or foreign countries who are doing untoward things in retaliation for our assisting our alliances that’s not going to trump, and that’s an intended pun, there our concern for people getting back on their feet in this country, getting more cash in people’s hands, getting people back to work, fixing our infrastructure,” Clyburn said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On “The News & Why It Matters,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Jason Buttrill and Matt Kibbe discuss a bombshell report about ABC News producer and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist James Gordon Meek, who has not been seen in public since the FBI raided his Washington, D.C., home in April.
According to reports, heavily armed federal agents seized classified information from Meek’s laptop during a raid on his Virginia home on April 27. Colleagues at ABC News told Rolling Stone that Meek “fell off the face of the Earth” following the raid.
“He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months,” said another colleague.
Neighbors reported that they have not seen Meek since the raid and that his home appears to be vacant.
Meek won several awards for his investigative work on extremely sensitive topics, including exposing a U.S. military cover-up of the deaths of four American Green Berets in Niger, which he made into the acclaimed Hulu documentary “3212 Un-Redacted.”
Meek’s attorney told Rolling Stone that Meek was “unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents. If such documents exist as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing.”
Meek was working on a book that was critical of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I just find it really strange that [Meek] was criticizing the Biden administration and the FBI raided his home, and now nobody has seen him,” Sara commented.
“Yeah, this sounds almost to the letter like exactly what happened under Obama during the James Rosen affair. There were multiple AP reporters, same thing,” Jason added.
Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of “The News & Why It Matters” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
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.
Of all the things that the occasionally interesting Kanye West has said over the course of the past week, the one that can’t ever be called sociopathic or pathological is what he said about George Floyd, patron saint of Hennepin County.
But of course, the historical revisionism of Floyd’s death is an enduring priority of the Democrat Party. They can’t justify their political violence without it. So that West more or less told the truth about Floyd has the corrupted national media (a.k.a. the Democrat Party) performing emergency clean-up for their cause.
Like almost everything West says in interviews, his remarks on Floyd on a show last weekend weren’t delivered with much precision. “They hit him with the fentanyl,” he said. “If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that. When he said ‘mama,’ mama is his girlfriend. They said he screamed for his mama. Mama was his girlfriend.”
The bulk of that is demonstrably true, but Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson falsely claimed this week — lie! lie! lie! — that, “None of that is true.”
A separate news article in the same paper said Kanye had made “false claims about the Black man’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police.”
An NBC News report also referred to West’s “false claims” related to Floyd.
Let’s take them one by one.
It’s a fact that Floyd had lethal levels of fentanyl in his blood. The medical examiner’s report said at the time of his death, there were 11 nanograms of the drug per milliliter. That report noted that “severe respiratory depression” — trouble with breathing — is a common symptom of fentanyl toxicity, and that fatal blood levels of the drug have been recorded at as low as 3 nanograms per milliliter. Floyd had nearly four times that.
Also present in his system were methamphetamine, other opiates, and morphine, which the report said, have the effect of “respiratory depression” as well.
West’s assertion that Derek Chauvin’s knee “wasn’t even on his neck like that,” is likely a reference to a line of defense put forward by Chauvin’s legal team. At trial, defense attorney Eric Nelson zoomed in on video from Floyd’s run-in with the police. Nelson suggested that the images showed Floyd’s neck was, at least for some period of time, not in direct contact with Chauvin’s knee, and that when it was, the applied pressure was justifiable for the circumstances. The jury didn’t buy the defense, but the medical examiner’s report said there were no injuries to Floyd’s neck nor to the cartilage of his larynx. There was no bleeding or bruising on his neck. There were, in fact, no injuries to any of his organs at all.
That Floyd referred to his girlfriend as “mama” is also just a fact. And we know that because his girlfriend and drug buddy, Courteney Ross, said so in court. I know that it’s more romantic and thus useful for the media to claim Floyd used his final gasps to call for his mother, but she died in 2018, two years before the incident.
What West didn’t say in the interview was that Floyd also had “severe” heart disease, with some of his arteries blocked by up to 90 percent. His heart was enlarged, and he suffered a history of hypertension. And that leads us to why the medical examiner declared Floyd to have died of “cardiopulmonary arrest,” triggered by the stress of contact with the police. And it’s no small point that the contact was made after the 6’4”, 223 lb. Floyd, hopped up on drugs, attempted to purchase a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit bill. When police showed up, he was panicked, delusional, and either unable or unwilling to cooperate with police. Maybe it was both.
In the end, the medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, did determine Floyd’s death to formally be a “homicide,” though the term in his profession simply means another person was a factor. At trial, Baker said, “In my opinion, the law enforcement subdual, restraint, and the neck compression was just more than Mr. Floyd could take, by virtue of those heart conditions.” In other words, Floyd would have survived the incident if not for his severely compromised heart.
Guess who had no clue that this giant man had a sick and fragile heart before that fateful day? Precisely no one, least of all the police who were tasked with subduing his massive frame in his erratic condition.
Kanye West made no false claims against our lord and savior George Floyd. He told the truth, as sad as it may be.
A sign outside a classroom taken in 2016. | REUTERS/Tami Chappell
A group of detransitioners spoke at a recent school board meeting in California amid concerns about public schools exposing students to gender ideology, warning that such content increases the likelihood that minors will rush to embrace “irreversible” decisions to their long-term detriment.
Three young adults who formerly identified as trans spoke at a school board meeting for the Conejo Valley Unified School District in Ventura County, California, last week. Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old woman who has launched a support group for individuals who have come to regret undergoing gender transitions called Detrans United, was among three detransitioners who told their stories to the school board at a recent meeting.
Detrans United shared their testimonies on its Twitter account Thursday, noting that the purpose of their remarks was to “voice our concerns about their policies that allow confused children to come to harm.” Cole indicated on her Twitter account that the distribution of a book introducing 8-year-olds to the word “transgender” was the primary reason she decided to call into the school board meeting.
Cole shared screenshots of the book, titledCall Me Max, which declared that although “transgender is a long word,” it “means something simple.” The book laid out how “trans means going across” while “gender means being a boy or girl or a little of both.” Another page of the book adds, “When a baby is born, a grown-up says, ‘IT’S A BOY!’ or ‘IT’S A GIRL!’”
Call Me Max embraced the idea that trans-identified children know that they were born in the wrong body from birth: “If a brand-new baby could talk, sometimes that baby might say, ‘NO I’M NOT!’ When a baby grows up to be transgender, it means that the grown-up who said they were a boy or a girl made a mistake.”
Will be calling in to give my public comment at a Conejo Valley USD board meeting. The meeting is at 6PST and I could be allowed my two minutes as late as 6:45PST. This was reading material given to an 8 year old student w/o parental consent. LINK—> https://t.co/hH0IPzag06pic.twitter.com/l8wym6GBNZ
The school board meeting that Cole and the two other detransitioners called into was held on Oct. 11, which coincided with National Coming Out Day, an occasion that encourages LGBT youth to come forward about their sexual identities. One speaker addressed National Coming Out Day in her remarks.
“Growing up, I hated dresses and skirts. I hit puberty at 9 years old and I hated my developing breasts,” Cole recalled. “I hated growing into a woman. I didn’t identify at all with the women around me.”
Cole explained that her discomfort with her biological sex led her to decide that she “wanted to become a boy.” She began socially transitioning by adopting a boy’s name for herself, cutting her hair and wearing boys’ clothes.
“My parents were supportive but they weren’t sure what to do with me, so they sought the help of mental professionals who manipulated them into allowing me to do whatever I wanted to do with myself,” Cole said. She began to take puberty blockers at age 13, and had her breasts amputated at age 16.
Cole lamented the lack of time between her initial referral to receive the double mastectomy and the surgery itself, which amounted to six months. “Very quickly, I was given what I wanted but it was far from what I needed. Two years later, I was still suffering from major complications,” she added. While Cole did not specify when exactly she began to regret taking significant steps to change her gender, she elaborated on the long-term consequences of her hasty decisions.
“I will not be able to breastfeed any children I have in the future and my sexuality has permanently been affected because I was allowed to make adult decisions starting at 13, and then again at 15.This is what happens when children are sexualized and exposed to developmentally inappropriate and confusing content and ideas from a young age. This is what happens when we treat children like adults and expect them to have the mental faculties for proper long-term decision making.”
Cole concluded her testimony with a message to the school board: “You are placing children in direct harm. Children deserve better.”
A round of applause followed Cole’s remarks. After Cole finished speaking, another detransitioner, Cat Cattinson, began to outline her concerns about gender ideology in public schools in remarks delivered via telephone: “I was introduced to gender ideology when I was 13 years old. I began identifying as the opposite sex, a man, and believing this negatively affected me for the next 15 years.”
“For the record, coming out as gay is entirely different than coming out as another gender,” she suggested. Cattinson condemned surgeons who are performing mastectomies on underage girls, saying it’s an “irreversible procedure that will prevent this person from ever breastfeeding.” In addition to her status as a detransitioner, Cattinson used her experience as a molecular biologist to dismiss the central idea of gender ideology.
Cattinson added: “Humans cannot change sex. It’s impossible and trying to appear as the opposite sex comes with significant health risks such as infertility, osteoporosis and many more as well. Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries are irreversible.”
As her remarks came to a close, Cattinson contended that “there is a serious lack of quality research that any of these interventions improve mental health or prevent suicide in the long term.” Like Cole, Cattinson’s remarks drew a round of applause.
Abel Garcia, a male detransitioner, also addressed the board to speak out against “the push that they are doing right now to our children with the transgender ideology.” Garcia stressed that “we cannot expect children as young as they are right now to believe that they can change their sex with cross-sex hormones and irreversible surgeries.”
Garcia detailed how he had breast implants at age 21. Implying that he did not have the maturity to make such a decision, the detransitioner told the board: “I cannot expect a child, a high school male or elementary child, to understand the full extent of damages that will be done to their bodies if an adult like myself wasn’t able to.”
For her part, Conejo Valley Unified School District Trustee candidate Lisa Powell insisted in a Twitter post shortly after the board meeting concluded that “CA state law requires schools to support and affirm transgender students.” “As a trustee, I will support and affirm our transgender students — not only because it’s the law, but because it’s the right thing to do,” she vowed.
CA state law requires schools to support and affirm our transgender students. As a trustee, I will support and affirm our transgender students – not only because it’s the law, but because it is the right thing to do.— Lisa Powell (@Powell4CVUSD) October 12, 2022
At the previous school board meeting on Sept. 20, a parent slammed the Conejo Valley Unified School District for its response to a seventh-grade boy masturbating in class. She attributed his inappropriate behavior to the school district’s sex education curriculum.
Conejo Valley USD board member justifies a 7th grader MASTURBATING in front of the entire class claiming it is not “anything outside the norm.” The boy was back attending school the NEXT DAY. pic.twitter.com/htrzt9ETcX
“It does not take an expert to figure out what happens to a 13-year-old boy when he’s staring at mostly naked girls wearing underwear to school and being exposed to concepts like oral and anal sex in seventh grade,” she said. “They let children write the dress code. The Teen Talk comprehensive sex ed is not age-appropriate and neither are supported by parents and teachers have spoken out adamantly against this.”
In a statement published Monday, the Conejo Valley Unified School District has decried what it has described as “on-going social media warfare and print disinformation campaigns” as part of an effort to “create false narratives from email snippets, social media posts, half statements made at Board meetings, and printed disinformation.”
According to district leadership, “What was once lively discourse at our Board of Education meetings during public comments and agendized topics has escalated to a concerted and organized effort to create chaos and further narratives that are unfounded and simply have nothing to do with current action items nor Board duties and business.”
Besides noting that district officials experienced death threats, the statement did not provide specific examples of actions it found troubling. It did, however, proclaim that the “sensationalizing of rumors and months-old reported incidents must stop,” in what appeared to be a veiled reference to the remarks at the Sept. 20 board meeting regarding the in-class masturbation that took place in May. District officials suggested that “these fictitious narratives are being wrongly used to politicize incidents involving our students.”
The Conejo Valley Unified School District crafted a fact sheet, which was last updated on Oct. 14, to respond to parental concerns about the sex education curriculum. It states that parents can opt out of the curriculum if they so choose.
‘MAGA Republicans want women arrested for having an abortion,’ Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeted.
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Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell has released a campaign ad that features a dramatic scene in which police arrive at a family’s home to arrest a woman for having an abortion and even draw their weapons during the tense episode. In the video, two police officers arrive at the house as the family is apparently having dinner. An officer informs the woman that he has a warrant for her arrest, and when the husband asks what the arrest is for, the officer explains it is for illegally terminating a pregnancy.
As a little girl looks on, the officer notes that the mother’s medical records were subpoenaed and then names a doctor who is in custody. The officer then informs the woman she will need to undergo a “physical examination.”
“What? By who?” the distressed woman asks.
When her husband steps forward and vehemently objects, the police draw their guns. The officer then apparently handcuffs the mother before saying, “We’re just enforcing the law here.”
The ad, paid for by Swalwell’s campaign, urges people to “Vote Democrat on November 8th” and “Stop Republicans from criminalizing abortion everywhere.”
“MAGA Republicans want women arrested for having an abortion. This is what that looks like,” Swalwell tweeted while also adding the hashtag “#LockHerUp.”
The video the congressman tweeted has racked up more than 2 million views so far on the social media platform.
“Now post a video of an abortion — you know, something horrific that actually happens. Or maybe a video of a peaceful pro-lifer being arrested, which also actually happens. It’ll be much easier. You won’t have to hire actors and stage everything,” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted in response to Swalwell’s post.
Earlier this year, Democrats bewailed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that returned to the states the authority to determine how to handle the issue of abortion, including whether to ban it. In a statement at the time, Swalwell described the decision as “a dangerous and deliberate attack on our most basic freedoms.”
Screenshot taken from video posted on Old Nick’s Pub Facebook page
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Old Nick’s Pub in Eugene, Oregon, is advertising an upcoming event where an 11-year-old drag queen will be among those performing.
“Are you excited for Drag queen story time brunch this Sunday morning!? Well, lets meet our performers! Vanellope is here to show you what a 11-year-old drag queen can do. With all the charm and sweetness of a bowl of sugary cereal, Vanellope is here to brighten up your morning with all her drag talent,” a Facebook post reads.
The event is being billed as open to people of all ages. According to a Facebook post, the event will be free for kids under the age of 11.
“Join us for an all-new journey into Fantasy and Story with local favorite drag queen, Maliena! She will enchant us with fairytales new and old! With special guest queens and performances woven within, this is a new All Ages Drag event you won’t want to miss!” a post on the establishment’s website reads.
According to the Daily Mail, the child has performed at the establishment before — the outlet refers to the child as a girl. In September, the pub posted what appears to be a photo of the child reading a book. “Move over Maliena because Vanellope may be our new favorite!” the post declares. The pub is standing behind its move to allow the child to perform and is arguing that drag is not necessarily sexual in nature.
“Dear friends, our youngest drag queen is being targeted by a hate campaign on Twitter right now. We LOVE AND SUPPORT VANELLOPE. Drag is an art form. It is not an inherently sexual act to dress in drag, and those sexualizing her are falling into a very typical societal trap of misogyny that views any female performance as sexual,” the pub declared in a Facebook post. “We think she’s gonna be a star on the big screen someday, so if you can come pack the house on Sunday and show her how loved and supported she is, we will force the darkness out once again with our light.”
Old Nick’s posted a video last month advertising a drag queen story time event. In the video, a drag queen said there would be “queens of all ages” at that event.
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A girls’ high school volleyball player in North Carolina recently suffered severe injuries to her head and neck after a trans opponent spiked a ball into her face.
Early last month, Hiwassee Dam High School competed against Highlands High School in a girls’ volleyball tournament. During the game, an unnamed biological male playing for Highlands spiked a ball over the net and hit an unnamed Hiwassee Dam player directly in the face. Though video of the incident is grainy, the unnamed female player can clearly be seen lying on the floor for some time before recovering enough to walk off the court on her own power. The girl is still said to be experiencing long-term concussion symptoms, such as vision problems, and has not been cleared to return to play either by a physician or a neurologist.
As a result of her injury, the Cherokee County Board of Education voted 5-1 to cancel all future volleyball games against Highlands High School, citing a “safety issue.”
One long-serving coach allegedly persuaded at least one board member to vote in favor of canceling the games. Cherokee board member Joe Wood said that “a coach of 40 years said they’d never seen a hit like this. That was really what sealed the decision, at least on my part.”
The Post Millennial claims to have confirmed that assertion from the unidentified coach.
Fellow board member Jeff Tatham added that the ball had allegedly been traveling at 70 mph when it struck the girl’s face. “I don’t know if that’s faster than normal, but it seemed like it was coming off very fast, abnormally, especially fast,” Tatham said. “It not only hit her in the face, then the ball came off of her face with enough force to then go back through the net.”
In addition to the safety concerns, the board also said it believes that male competitors have a “competitive advantage” over female opponents.
“The competitive advantage issue certainly has to come up in any scenario with that type of transgender conversion, per se,” said Jeff Martin, vice chair of the board. “I can tell you that the board wasn’t searching out this kind of thing. It was brought to our attention based on safety concerns.”
However, despite the concerns voiced by the board, some local residents have chided the decision to cancel district games against Highlands.
“All the events for one incident? It’s not right,” said Tony Graham. “There’s risk getting out of bed in the morning, crossing the street, and going to the store. I’m sure the teammate that did get hurt wants them to go out there and fight for it, right? That’s what we do.”
Board member Arnold Mathews reiterated that the decision applies only to Highlands and only to girls’ volleyball. The North Carolina High School Athletic Association confirmed that each “local school system” can decide not to play games against particular opponents or schools.
“While we would prefer that schools or teams play all games it schedules,” the NCHSAA said, “that latitude does exist.”
Though the WTVC video below does contain clips from the Hiwassee Dam/Highlands game, it does not depict the spike in question. The MaxPreps video for this particular game also appears to be unavailable.
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President Joe Biden suggested Tuesday his top priority is codifying abortion rights into federal law. But the White House says his top priority is combatting inflation. So, on Tuesday, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy grilled White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for clarity on the clear contradiction.
Biden promised that if Democrats retain control of Congress after the 2022 midterm elections, his number-one priority will be passing a federal law granting abortion rights.
“Here is the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade,” Biden said Tuesday.
So which is Biden’s top priority, Doocy asked, abortion or inflation?
“You just said [inflation is] ‘his number-one economic priority.’ We’ve heard the president say inflation is his top domestic priority, but now he’s saying, come next year, his first bill would be abortion-related,” Doocy began.
“So is his number-one domestic priority abortion, or is it inflation?” he asked.
Instead of answering the question, Jean-Pierre said Biden has made the economy his top priority over the last 19 months and that he is “working on the economy every day.”
If that is true — that Biden is working on the economy “every day” — then Doocy followed up: Why are Bloomberg economists now predicting there is a 100% chance the U.S. economy plunges into a recession when Biden claimed the economy is“strong as hell” just days ago?
The press secretary, however, claimed a recession is not coming “because of the work that this president has done.”
“We are seeing an economy that is resilient. We are seeing an economy that is going into a transition with more stable growth, more steady growth. And that is because of the work that this president has done,” she claimed without citing any specific work.
Resilient??? Transition???Stable Growth??? what THIS President has done???
10/18/22: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre youtu.be
Despite Biden’s promise to codify Roe v. Wade into law, poll after poll shows abortion is not a winning issue for Democrats. Instead, Americans are most concerned with the economy, crime, and immigration. Biden, therefore, would do well if he actually focused on policy that helps the inflation crisis instead of passing inflationary legislation that overheats an over-baked economy.
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.
CNN’s Dana Bash is trying to make the number of dangerous criminals pouring over the southern U.S. border sound far lower than it really is.
“Less than 1 percent of migrants encountered at the border have a criminal record,” Bash said while interviewing Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Sunday, claiming to cite Department of Homeland Security figures.
“I’m going to have to disagree with you on that figure you just put out,” Lake countered. “We don’t know what their background is. There’s a reason they’re trying to get in unnoticed; it’s because they have a criminal background.”
“We know that [DHS has] tracked down terrorists, they have tracked down people wanted for murder,” Lake continued. “We’ve got people with rape records, you name it, we’ve got hardened criminals.”
“Let me just tell you that this stat that I just cited comes from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 1 percent of migrants,” Bash doubled down.
DANA BASH: DHS says less than 1 percent of migrants encountered at the border have a criminal record
KARI LAKE: I have to disagree with you on that figure … we have murders coming in, we have people with rape records
To the half-listening viewer, “less than 1 percent” sounds like a small figure. But when you consider that border enforcement officials have encountered more than 2 million illegal aliens pouring over our southern border so far during fiscal year 2022 — with another month to go before the year concludes — that figure begins to tell a fuller story.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 2,150,639 apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border between October 2021 and August 2022, the most on record and more than four times the total apprehensions recorded in 2020.
DHS is up to 2,000,000 migrant encounters in 2022. Their numbers show hundreds of violent criminals crossing every year and thousands of criminals overall. https://t.co/LRm7G8yZr3pic.twitter.com/TRu8dUnLGO
CBP’s Office of Field Operations, which operates at ports of entry, reported 15,558 encounters of noncitizens “who have been convicted of crime, whether in the United States or abroad, so long as the conviction is for conduct which is deemed criminal by the United States,” during fiscal year 2022 so far. Border Patrol, which operates along the border between entry ports, reported 10,778. Combined, that’s more than 25,000 convicted criminals — a whopping figure, far more alarming and newsworthy than the “less than 1 percent” talking point parroted by CNN. For Americans, who count immigration among their top three concerns headed into the midterm elections, tens of thousands of criminals pouring over the border is no small figure.
Of the more than 10,000 criminals apprehended by Border Patrol this fiscal year, more than 1,000 had prior convictions for “assault, battery, [or] domestic violence,” 60 had been convicted of homicide or manslaughter, and more than 2,000 were convicted of “illegal drug possession [or] trafficking.” More than 300 had been convicted of “sexual offenses” and nearly 800 of “burglary, robbery, larceny, theft, [or] fraud.”
Just two weeks ago, a Guatemalan national in the U.S. illegally was arrestedfor stabbing eight people on the Las Vegas Strip. An illegal immigrant from Mexico is accused of fatally shooting his partner, two of her children, and two neighbors last month in McGregor, Texas. Earlier last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it had arrested an Ecuadorian man who had repeatedly entered the U.S. illegally and is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in Ecuador. When a 10-year-old girl in Ohio made headlines for seeking an abortion after she was raped, her alleged rapist was revealed to be an illegal alien.
The significance of 25,000 convicted criminals crossing the southern border notwithstanding, merely looking at criminal records vastly undercounts the number of likely criminals the Biden administration is inviting to the border. Impunity rates in Mexico and Central American countries are ludicrously high, meaning the vast majority of people who commit crimes are never convicted.
As NBC News reported a year ago, “the think tank México Evalúa found that 94.8 percent of the cases reported in Mexico go unpunished.” Another group suggested that number was even higher, with only 1.3 percent of crimes in the country ever solved. The Associated Press cited one estimation that “as of 2020, almost nine of every 10 homicides in Mexico go unpunished.” Another group found that “Over a period of four years, prosecutors’ offices managed just 35 convictions nationally in a universe of more than 82,000 investigations of forced disappearance in Mexico.”
In Guatemala, the next most common country of citizenship among illegal immigrants encountered by Border Patrol, impunity rates are comparably high. Despite the efforts of a UN-backed commission targeting corruption and impunity, “94 percent of crimes went unpunished on average over the last decade in Guatemala,” according to the think tank InSight Crime. “In 2018 alone, the impunity rate was almost 98 percent.”
Those sky-high impunity rates suggest that the number of people arriving at the southern U.S. border who have committed crimes — which were likely never prosecuted by corrupt, backlogged law enforcement in their home countries — is far, far higher than the nice-sounding “less than 1 percent” figure rolling off of Bash’s tongue. Furthermore, any person who breaks into the United States illegally is automatically committing a crime by violating our immigration laws.
No matter how hard CNN and the rest of the corporate press try to spin the facts into a different story, they can’t deny this one: More criminals are illegally entering our country than ever before because illegal immigration is at an all-time high as a direct result of the Biden administration’s policies.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
Children in America are in need of protection now more than ever. The leftist tide is coming at them in full force, pushing a radically sexualized agenda on minors both mentally and physically, robbing them of their innocence and their childhood. That’s why legislators like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., are introducing legislation to protect children from dangerous experimental procedures such as puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and ill-named “gender-affirming” surgeries.
Instead of being allowed to enjoy the innocence of childhood, develop imagination, cultivate friendships, develop curiosity, and enjoy the satisfaction of learning facts, figures, and formulas, children are assaulted with sexualized content fueled by a radical agenda. If you think it’s not having an effect, just look at a sampling from Maryland schools. According to school surveys in Montgomery county, over the last two years, the number of students identifying as gender nonconforming has increased by 582 percent. This survey includes children in elementary school.
At the very least, parents should be fully aware of any and all exposure their children have to sexualized content, and they have the primary right to know of any confusion or distress their children may be experiencing in school. Yet somehow it is becoming more to push policies to keep parents in the dark. Most schools cannot even prescribe aspirin to a child without parental consent, yet they see no issue with socially transitioning a minor without parental involvement. The disparity gives every cause for concern.
And when the parents do know about their child’s gender confusion, the agenda becomes even more radical, pushing parents to “affirm” their child’s choices to extreme degrees. Whether you embrace the ideology, no amount of parental concern can justify even the slightest delay in transitioning a child.
Compliance, Not Concern
One lesbian couple had already transitioned their eldest son when their second boy started asking to be called a girl. Unlike their first child, who had preferred playing with girls and had a gentler side, the younger acted like a typical boy, so his mother suspected that he was simply mirroring his older sibling’s behavior. But what happened when she voiced her concerns to a gender therapist?
“She [their gender therapist] expressed that it was transphobic to believe there was anything wrong with our younger son wanting to be like his older transgender sibling. When I pushed back, and asserted that I was not yet convinced our younger son was transgender, she told me that if I did not change his pronouns and honor his identity, he could develop an attachment disorder,” the mom recalls.
Instead of addressing the mother’s fears, the therapist merely preyed on them further.
It’s horrible to emotionally blackmail loving parents while blatantly ignoring their genuine concerns, but this is mild compared to the psychological manipulation that’s been waged on other parents, who have been told “comply or they die,” with doctors insisting that any questioning of their child’s feelings will result in further depression and suicide.
Meanwhile, these “experts” are not basing their methods in science at all.
So Much for Science
According to the recent Heritage report, “Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones, & Youth Suicide” by Dr. Jay Greene, stats show that the exact opposite may be the case. He writes, “Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable.”
That’s right, here it seems that access to these “life-saving drugs” has actually increased suicide rates. The fact is, there is no golden standard study proving the “lifesaving” claims of transition, yet left-wing politicians insist that it is the only path forward.
There isproof that these drugs are dangerous on their own, and there is no certifiable data proving the long-term harmlessness of puberty-blocking drugs and wrong-sex hormones, despite leftist claims to the contrary.
This isn’t health care. This isn’t science. We need to stop using children to wage ideological warfare, and we must stop the progressive tide before every child pays the price.
A Reason for Hope
Rep. Taylor Green is trying to do just that. She recently released the Protect Children’s Innocence Act (H.R.8731), which, if passed, will charge anyone who knowingly performs “gender-affirming care” — including the administering of puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones — with a class C felony.
The bill will prohibit the federal taxpayer funding of so-called gender-affirming care, forbid institutions of higher education from providing instructions on such care, and will prevent aliens who have performed such procedures from receiving a visa. If they already have a visa, they will be eligible for deportation. It is designed to protect children from abusive experimental procedures from every angle.
Victims of surgery who realize their mistake and choose to detransition have recourse to the courts through a private right of action levied against anyone who took an active part in their transition, including administering puberty blockers and performing surgeries. There is no statute of limitations, ensuring that anyone involved in destroying a child’s life will be held accountable in perpetuity.
This bill also looks out for those victims who have already suffered at the hands of misleading therapists, doctors, and propaganda. While it does ban transition attempts on minors, it explicitly states that it in no way prohibits doctors from helping patients handle complications due to those interventions, regardless of whether they were received illegally. In every aspect, this bill holds the health of these patients as its primary object, not monetary benefits and soul-sucking propaganda.
Fighting on defense in the culture isn’t enough. We’re losing — more and more children are being subjected to these horrific “treatments” every single day. We need to fight back legislatively. We need to protect the innocence of children and demand justice for those who have already been deprived of that privilege. If the battleground is in our backyard, this bill gives us the chance to push back enemy lines, to establish a first line of defense that will allow our children the space they need to grow and thrive.
The character of our country will be determined by whether we are willing to defend our innocents. Children being mutilated and castrated openly is the moral issue of our time. Will we stand up and fight? Or will we let these evil monsters continue to wreak havoc on the helpless?
Sandra Kirby is the Government Affairs Manager at American Principles Project. Follow her on Twitter @SandraK1776.
Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday if anybody approves of the administration’s handling of inflation.
Doocy asked the press secretary why inflation is continuing to skyrocket despite President Joe Biden continuously promising to tackle the issue. Jean-Pierre expressed the administration’s understanding of the American people’s frustrations and warned that Republicans are going to make inflation worse by repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act.
“The president understands, and we’ve talked about this many times, that inflation is an issue. High costs, costs, is an issue for the American people and so he’s been very clear about making that his number one economic priority,” Jean-Pierre said. “And he has done the work, and he’s done the work with congressional Democrats when you think about the Inflation Reduction Act which is going to lower the cost for our seniors, millions and millions of seniors across the country. When you think about that $2,000 cap on their own Medicare prescription, when you think about the thousands of dollars that our seniors pay a month, now that’s going to be $2,000 a year.”
“That is the work that congressional Democrats and the president has done. Republicans did not vote for that at all and what Republicans want to do is that they want to repeal that very historic piece of legislation that is also going to lower energy costs, that is also going to help fight climate change. They want to get rid of it. So there is a contrast that we are going to make which is how Republicans are actually going to make things worse and Democrats want to do the opposite and make things a little easier,” she continued.
“But, who exactly think the president is doing a good job on inflation because we’ve got a new poll that finds he receives his lowest job ratings on inflation at -38 points,” Doocy said.
“Republicans in Congress refuse, they refuse to be partners with us on this,” she answered. “They refuse to help us. You think about the American Rescue Plan that has helped create an economy that is indeed resilient, that created jobs, they refuse to help.”
The Fox News reporter pointed out a general consensus held by most economists that the American Rescue Plan “has contributed” to inflation. She referred Doocy to Treasury Department Janet Yellen’s scheduled statement on these reports, then argued that the pieces of legislation passed by the Biden administration are “popular with the American people.”
“They are popular. They are popular with the American people,” she said. “They understand, the American people understand what these pieces of legislation that we have worked so hard to get across the line, that are now law, is going to change lives of the American people. Now, is there work to be done? There’s always more work to be done but we are taking the steps to do that. Again, congressional Republicans, they are doing nothing, absolutely nothing. They want to repeal, they want to take away the advances we have made.”
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) indicated that inflation rose 8.2% year-over-year in September. The issue has remained a prioritized issue among the majority of potential voters in the midterm elections.
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Ohio Senate candidates Rep. Tim Ryan (D) and venture capitalist J.D. Vance (R) got into a heated exchange at Monday night’s debate in Youngstown that devolved into personal insults and veiled accusations of racism.
The candidates met Monday for their final debate before the Nov. 8 election, which proved contentious after a moderator asked Ryan for his opinion on the “Great Replacement Theory.” The conspiracy theory is a fringe belief that Jewish elites are organizing the mass importation of non-white immigrants into the United States to dilute the white vote and seize power.
Democrats and media figures have conflated the Great Replacement Theory with conservative opposition to illegal immigration in order to demonize their opponents as racists and xenophobes. Ryan attempted to do the same to Vance, linking the conspiracy theory to the deadly mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in May, in which the perpetrator targeted a predominantly black community, and accusing Vance of holding similar views to the shooter.
“I think it’s nonsense. I think it is grounded in some of the most racially divisive writings in the history of the world, and this is who he’s running around with,” Ryan said, pointing at his Republican opponent.
“It’s shameful for you to accuse me of that, given my family,” Vance interjected.
\u201cJ.D. Vance: “My own children, my biracial children, get attacked by scumbags online and in person because you are so desperate for political power that you’ll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism. We are sick of it.”\u201d
“My turn, pal,” Ryan said, continuing with his response. “This great replacement theory was the motivator for the shooting in Buffalo, where that shooter had all these great replacement theory writings that J.D. Vance agrees with,” Ryan charged, pointing again. “Some sicko got this information that he’s peddling. Again, those extremists that he runs around with: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, all these guys just want to stoke this racial violence. We’re tired of it, J.D.!”
Vance, who has three children with his Indian American wife, was visibly angry as he responded.
“This is disgusting,” he said. “Here’s exactly what happens when the media and people like Tim Ryan accuse me of engaging in the Great Replacement Theory. What happens is that my own children, my biracial children, get attacked by scumbags online and in person because you are so desperate for political power that you’ll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism. We are sick of it!‘
“You can believe in the border without being a racist. You can believe in the country without being a racist. And this just shows how desperate this guy is for political power,” Vance said, gesturing toward Ryan.
Turning to his opponent, Vance said, “I know you’ve been in office for 20 years, Tim, and I know it’s a sweet gig. But you’re so desperate not to have a real job that you’ll slander me and slander my family. It’s disgraceful.”
Ryan answered with an amused expression on his face, “I think I struck a nerve with this guy.”
The clash over Great Replacement Theory took place near the end of what was otherwise a civil debate at Stambaugh Auditoriam hosted by WFMJ-TV. Ryan, a 10-term congressman, and Vance, a venture capitalist and best-selling author, answered questions on inflation, abortion rights, the opioid crisis in Ohio, and more.
Polls show a very close race, with Vance leading by two points in the RealClearPolitics average. Surveys taken in October have shown Vance with one-, two-, or three-point leads, within the margin of error. The candidates are competing to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), with Democrats spending millions to flip the seat and potentially increase their Senate majority.
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A group of GOP Michigan state representatives has introduced legislation that would make it first-degree child abuse to allow a child to undergo gender transition surgery or take cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers. This would apply to an individual who “knowingly or intentionally consents to, obtains, or assists with a gender transition procedure for a child,” according to the text of the bill. “For purposes of this subdivision only, ‘person’ means a child’s parent or guardian or any other person who cares for, has custody of, has authority over a child regardless of the length of time that a child is cared for, in the custody of, or subject to the authority of that person, or a physician or other licensed medical professional.”
“Child abuse in the first degree is a felony punishable by imprisonment for life or any term of years,” the bill notes.
Republican state Reps. Ryan Berman, Steve Carra, Luke Meerman, Beau LaFave, and Steve Marino introduced the measure.
“People are abusing these children,” state Rep. Beau LaFave told The Hill. “The idea that we would be making potentially life-altering changes to 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids when it is illegal for them to have sex is insane. I mean, they’re not responsible enough to smoke a cigarette until they’re 21.”
LaFave noted that he is optimistic that most GOP members of the state legislature will support the bill and said that while he thinks most state Democrats actually agree with those pushing the measure, Democratic figures would face the risk of hurting their political careers if they openly backed the bill.
While Republicans have a majority in both chambers of the state legislature, they do not have enough of an edge to muster the two-thirds vote required in each house to override a gubernatorial veto. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would almost certainly veto the measure if it were ever to reach her desk. Whitmer is currently seeking reelection during the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election.
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.
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss signaled support for a police investigation into the trans charity Mermaids, saying it should be “properly looked at” during prime minister’s questions in the Commons Chamber.
The Department for Education in England has stopped referring schools to the controversial charity, which promotes transgenderism to youth, amid increased scrutiny of the organization’s health recommendations for children and a scandal involving one of its trustees giving a speech for an organization that promotes resources for pedophiles.
As The Times reported Wednesday, the Charity Commission is assessing complaints against Mermaids following a report by The Daily Telegraph last week that the group sends “chest binders” to girls as young as 13 without their parents’ knowledge. Binders are often used by girls seeking to flatten their breasts to resemble a boy, and they can potentially cause breathing difficulties, damage healthy breast tissue and lead to cracked ribs.
On Wednesday, Miriam Cates, the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, asked the prime minister: “Does my right honorable friend agree that it has taken far too long for these concerns to be taken seriously and does she also agree that it is high time for a police investigation into the activities of Mermaids?”
Truss replied: “What I would say on the subject of the investigation she raises, of course those matters should be … properly looked at.”
Earlier this month, The Times also reported that Jacob Breslow, a trustee for Mermaids, resigned after it was discovered he spoke at a U.S.-based B4U-ACT event in 2011. The organization promotes resources for individuals who are sexually attracted to children. In his presentation, Breslow reportedly claimed that pedophiles are misunderstood.
Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, credited parents Nigel and Sally Rowe for the Education Department’s decision to stop promoting Mermaidsas a mental health resource in schools. The British charity affirms children’s gender confusion and is led by Susie Green, whose son identifies as female and was put on puberty blockers at age 12.
Williams noted that the focus must now be directed toward the Church of England, which still utilizes Mermaids’ strategies in its “Valuing All God’s Children” (VAGC) guidance. In 2017, VAGC cited Mermaids as a model of care. While this citation was removed in 2019, the content reportedly still influenced the current trans-affirming approach, according to CLC. Over 4,000 of the Church of England’s primary schools utilize the VAGC guidelines, according to a November 2017 Daily Mail report.
“The Church of England has over one million children under its care — will senior leaders finally listen and scrap this untenable advice?” Williams asked.
Christian Concern, the organization associated with CLC, launched a petition Tuesday that will be delivered to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, calling for the Church of England to scrap its trans-affirming policies. The petition currently has over 12,150 signatures.
In addition to instructing schools not to require students to wear uniforms that may “create difficulty for trans pupils,” VAGC discourages using faith or the Bible to justify refusals to accept a child identifying as the opposite gender.
You can’t be serious?!?! Valuing All God’s Children, supposedly a Christian organization, does not want scripture used to make the point that all this transgenderism is NOT of God. Do we really look that stupid? – Jerry Broussard
Last week, the Rowes penned a letter to the archbishop, urging the Church of England to discard its VAGC policies, expressing concern that the guidance allows children as young as 5 to identify as the opposite sex.
“In U.K. law you cannot change legal gender until you are 18 years old. Scientifically, you cannot change your biological sex,” the parents wrote.
“Furthermore, basic Christian teaching is that we are all created male or female and that the differences between the sexes are beautiful, designed and complementary, and should be respected in society. We are all created male and female (Genesis 1:27).”
Despite opting to homeschool their children, the parents wrote that they remain concerned about the effect that the school’s policies may have on other children. According to the Rowes, much of the “confusion” and “distress” their sons experienced in school from having to refer to their friends as the opposite sex has lifted since their parents pulled them out.
The letter follows a $24,956 (£22,000) settlement the Department of Education paid the Rowes in September for “legal costs and a commitment from the government to reform transgender policies,” according to the Christian Legal Centre.
The CLC supported the parents’ taking legal action against the department in 2021 after the Church of England’s Portsmouth Diocesan Board of Education dismissed their complaint in 2017, citing the VAGC guidelines. One of the Church of England’s primary schools had labeled their son “transphobic” for refusing to abide by the school’s trans-affirming policies.
The parents also raised concerns about the school allowing two 6-year-old boys in their sons’ classes to identify as girls without a psychological assessment. In opposition to the school’s policies, the Rowes decided to homeschool their children instead.
The letter cites an August speech at the Policy Exchange by Suella Braverman, who was then the attorney general, and said there is no “absolute legal obligation” to affirm children who might be questioning their gender identity. She noted that schools sometimes allow children to use pronouns or compete on sports teams designated for the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge.
“Anyone who questions such an approach is accused of transphobia. In my view, this approach is not supported by the law,” Braverman said.
The Rowes contended in their letter that this statement from the then-attorney general proves that the Church of England’s VAGC policies in schools have no legal basis.
“We, therefore, ask you to commit to scrapping the Valuing All God’s Children guidance as a matter of urgency so that staff and children in Church of England schools are properly safeguarded and protected from harmful transgender ideology and practice,” the parents wrote.
“We also request a meeting with you to discuss these points and what the Church of England will do about them at your earliest convenience.”
In July, the Church of England responded to a question from the General Synod, the denomination’s legislative body, about its definition of a woman. The Rev. Robert Innes, the denomination’s bishop in Europe, responded that “There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as reflected in the marriage liturgy.”
Innes cited the church’s “Living in Love and Faith” project, which the church website describes as a “discerning way forward” for the church regarding “identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage.”
Pointing to “the marriage complexities associated with gender identity,” Innes claimed that the project “points to the need for additional care and thought to be given in understanding our commonalities and differences as people made in the image of God.”
Brittany Mayer, a mom and who is from the Christian-based parental rights group Rooted Wings, speaks to the Encinitas Union School District Board in San Diego County, California. | Screenshot / Twitter
Parents are rallying behind a mother who blasted a Southern California school district for its plans to host a “family-friendly” Halloween drag show, which she said amounts to “pimping out our kids” in an already “hyper-sexualized” culture.
In a video that went viral on social media, Brittany Mayer from the Christian-based parental rights group Rooted Wings spoke at the Encinitas Union School District Board meeting in San Diego County, California, accusing them of acting as “groomers and activist pimps” for the “Boo Bash” drag queen show planned for the Saturday before Halloween, Fox News reported.
“What is it about a grown man costumed in a sparkly bra with augmented boobs busting out and wearing a miniskirt barely covering his twerking a** with duct tape on his front while spreading his fish-netted legs as he writhes on the ground, grinding his groin next to a minor, family-friendly?” she asks the board in the video.
On Twitter, Mayer revealed that the drag queen show was sponsored by a local San Francisco gender reassignment surgery center in collaboration with a popular gay nightclub. “While we have a culture that has a huge problem with child porn and with sex trafficking, Encinitas Union School District in CA, made the decision to feature an event to sexualize young children,” she wrote.
She told the board, “You all played the activist pimp for Align Surgical center and for a 21-plus gay bar. It makes you groomers and activist pimps and we won’t have those sitting on a school board that oversees the education of our children.”
Elected San Diego Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer criticized the parents, saying on Twitter that they “should be ashamed of themselves for pushing hate and intolerance on all of us.” She also said she would be taking her 3-year-old to the event.
Carrie Boller, a mother of two and a community activist, pulled her kids out of the district, ABC 10 reported. The Encinitas Union School District said it’s not hosting or sponsoring the Oct. 29 event but shared it on a community information hub called Peachjar to notify parents about opportunities for families in the district.
However, Boller said, “Our message is very clear. We don’t want strip shows, we don’t want drag shows, and definitely not sent out inviting the parents and kids in our district.”
Justin Ried, a parent of two children who is also running for school board, was quoted as saying, “We certainly want to be an inclusive community and support groups of all kinds, but the question is where do we draw the line?”
The district said the flyer had been taken down as it did not meet district approval criteria, and it has reviewed and adjusted procedures for approving fliers in the future. But parents are demanding to know who approved it for promotion and want the district to apologize.
Mayer told Fox that she and dozens of other parents showed up at the school board meeting last Tuesday to confront the leadership, which had been requested several times to stop promoting the event and issue an apology.
“We asked the board again and again to reconsider and to issue an apology and an explanation, which they didn’t, which is why we decided to show up,” she was quoted as saying.
She added that the planned show was not an isolated incident.
“This is coming to every school across the nation,” she said, adding that “… We’re not going to play by the rules, that we’re supposed to be afraid, that we’re going to be punished if we don’t speak up now.”
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A Democratic operative was sentenced to jail for allegedly harvesting ballots during the 2020 primary election. Guillermina Fuentes – a 66-year-old school board member and former mayor of the small border city of San Luis – pleaded guilty to collecting four early ballots in the 2020 primary. On Thursday, Fuentes was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years of probation for her alleged election crimes.
In the plea deal, prosecutors dropped three felony counts claiming that Fuentes filled out one voter’s ballot and forged signatures on some of the four ballots she illegally returned for non-family members.
Arizona prosecutors had sought a year in jail for the crimes committed by Fuentes. Meanwhile, the attorneys for Fuentes argued for probation.
KSAZ-TV reported, “Fuentes collected the four completed mail ballots from acquaintances in San Luis, and gave them to co-defendant Alma Juarez while working a table outside a polling place where she was urging people to vote for a slate of city council candidates. Juarez carried them inside and put them in a ballot drop-off bin. Election officials in Yuma County confirmed that the ballots were legitimate and the mail-ballot envelopes were signed by qualified voters, so they were counted.”
Yuma County Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson considered being more lenient on Fuentes if she had admitted that she had committed a crime. Fuentes reportedly declared, ‘I’m not a criminal.”
Nelson blasted back, “Well, you are a criminal. You committed a criminal offense. I don’t think you recognize that as a criminal offense. That’s the problem that I have.”
Nelson continued, “It’s been an issue for a long time, or at least it’s been alleged that it’s an issue, that people vote for others, take their ballots. Everybody that’s involved in politics in this area knew that a new law was passed. You certainly knew it, that that law was new, even went up to the Supreme Court.”
“Many of the things that were put forward as mitigating factors, I think they’re also aggravating factors,” Nelson added. “You have been a leader in the San Luis community for a long time. People look up to you, people respect you, and they look to what you do.”
Fuentes’ attorney – Anne Chapman – railed against the punishment, “The Court’s sentence today is an unjust result in a political prosecution where the only alleged harm was the delivery of four lawfully voted ballots.”
Fuentes reportedly lost her school board seat and cannot serve in an elected or appointed post unless the felony conviction is dropped to a misdemeanor.
In the most recent episode of “The Rubin Report,” Kelly declared that there are only two ways that DeSantis could replace Trump as the favorite candidate for the GOP’s presidential nominee in the 2024 election.
Rubin asked Kelly if DeSantis had a chance if he got on a debate stage with Trump.
“No. No. I don’t even think that a little,” Kelly replied. “I think Trump sucks up all the energy in every room – no matter what. And even someone who’s skilled as a politician and smart policy-wise as DeSantis can’t overcome that – he can’t.”
Kelly said that there are only two ways that DeSantis could become the Republican presidential nominee over Trump in 2024.
Kelly said, “The only way DeSantis is going to become the Republican nominee is if Trump chooses not to run and endorses him or dies.”
The former Fox News host said that if Trump declared that he wants to be the Republican nominee and he lost to DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary that Make America Great Again supporters will not desert Trump – even for DeSantis. Kelly said that she talks to Trump supporters “all of the time,” and that they won’t abandon Trump for DeSantis. She said that Trump supporters “like” DeSantis, but they feel as though Trump was “screwed out of his first term” because of the Russiagate allegations. Kelly said Trump supporters believe that he “deserves” a second term.
Kelly declared, “And so unless Trump gracefully and graciously says, ‘Get behind DeSantis,’ I wouldn’t put any chips on DeSantis at all.”
Rubin added that DeSantis and Trump should get together to iron out any differences to empower the best candidate to beat the Democrats. Rubin conceded that there is a “certain portion” of Trump supporters who would rather “burn everything down” if Trump isn’t the nominee in 2024.
Kelly replied, “But it’s a huge portion, Dave. Like the hardcore Trump faithful is unshakable.”
Kelly said that Trump supporters “like” DeSantis, however, “they would never cross Trump for him.”
“And they think DeSantis owes his political career to Trump,” she added. “If forced to choose, they will choose Trump. So, DeSantis can’t take him down.”
Kelly proclaimed, “DeSantis has got to either be crowned by Trump or he shouldn’t run.”
“I was gonna say it’s not gonna be a kamikaze mission because he wouldn’t take down Trump,” she continued. “Only Trump can take down Trump. But he won’t win over Trump. I’ll stand by that. You can play it against me if I’m wrong, but I won’t be.”
Rubin – who moved to Florida this year – said that he selfishly wants DeSantis to remain governor of Florida because the governor “loves Florida so much.”
“Let’s let’s keep running with this thing and see how great we can make this state,” Rubin said.
Kelly suggested that “it wouldn’t be bad” if the executive branch was frozen because it has “gotten too big and too out of control.”
She added that before the potential presidential gridlock, “There’s a lot of stuff that Biden’s done that needs to be undone.”
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Voters in nine Oregon counties have already supported ballot measures that express their counties’ desire to leave Oregon and join Idaho, and two more may follow this trend in November. As noted by CBS News, a growing number of activists in the eastern part of Oregon are seeking a divorce from their state’s reliably Democratic largest city, Portland, which dominates the entire state’s political scene. These activists feel that the state’s coastal areas, which contain a majority of the state’s population, do not represent them or their values and that they would be more at home in conservative-leaning Idaho than they are in Oregon.
Activist Mike McCarter, who leads an organization called Move Oregon’s Border, told CBS that, “In talking to a legislator over in the Portland area, I said, ‘The legislature doesn’t listen to our people, our representatives over here.’ He said, ‘Whoa whoa whoa, stop, Mike. We hear what they’re staying. We just out-vote you.'” So McCarter decided to take matters into his own hands and start a movement to separate the state’s eastern portion, which constitutes a majority of the state’s land area, from the western portion.
McCarter and other activists in the state have managed to successfully have the question placed on the ballot in 11 counties so far. Nine of them voted to leave Oregon and join Idaho. Only two – the western counties of Douglas and Josephine – voted against the measure. And the measure will now be on the ballot in Morrow and Wheeler counties this November, where activists think the measure will pass.
Activist Sandie Gilson noted, “When you have a government that won’t listen to the opposition, or take into account those of us that live out here, then we have no government representation… They won’t hear our concerns, they don’t understand our lifestyle.”
These resolution, are, of course non-binding and the activists behind them know that it will be extremely difficult to actually pull off the change they are seeking. However, as Gilson noted, “I look at it like the American Revolution was a big hurdle to make, and they did it.”
The latest big flare-up over public education institutions sponsoring explicit sexual materials for kids occurred in Dearborn, Michigan, on Thursday. The community’s majority-Muslim school parents pitched a royal fit at two school board meetings last week over homosexual and transsexual books for kids on public school library shelves.
They verbally clashed with teachers union and other LGBT activist groups and locals. The pro-LGBT speakers insisted that attempting to keep sexually explicit materials from kids amounted to “erasing” homosexuals and transexuals and an act of “hate” against their identities.
At Dearborn Schools Board meeting, Brian Stone, who is LGBTQ, calls for tolerance of all, but is loudly booed by crowd. He has been outspoken over the years in defending Muslims against hate from the right. Crowd of 600 appears to be majority-Muslim. pic.twitter.com/BxbI7QePy6
There are few opportunities for compromise here. The two groups want exactly opposite things: more books about gay sex for kids versus no books about gay sex for kids. Even a compromise such as requiring parental approval for kids to view books about gay sex is offensive to both sides.
LGBT people told the board they view that as “erasing” their identity. They say denying support for homosexual and transsexual behavior emotionally and physically endangers children with sexual proclivities like theirs.
Traditional religious people are repulsed by being forced to subsidize the promotion of sexual behaviors their religions teach are evil and disordered and therefore will lead to human unhappiness and self-destruction. For them, being forced to subsidize sexually explicit materials for kids is in the same repellant category as being forced to subsidize abortion.
Essentially, both sides believe the other’s position enables child abuse. If you are the logical kind — and there are fewer people capable of logical thinking now, in our degraded age — you realize that both sides cannot be correct. Either one side is right that the other’s position equals child abuse, or they both are wrong. That’s a starting point for figuring out what to do.
Yet one of these sides doesn’t care about using logical tools to seek truth. It rejects the very idea of a truth that applies to all people and insists that each person is the arbiter of his own truth, his own reality, right down to where he insists on placing his body parts or even chooses to sever some. This is therefore not a practical disagreement, but a fundamental philosophical difference that really does not allow for a compromise.
That is part of why the debates over these issues are so emotional and so resistant to persuasion. People resist changing their understanding of sex (and many other fundamental realities) because they implicitly understand it would require shaking up their understanding of what is ultimately good, and it would implicate their own choices.
Our society used to be better at publicly honoring those who change their minds and facilitating discourse as a means to discover truth. That reduces the psychological barriers to being persuaded by good reason, allowing people and society to grow.
But identity politics’ cultural Marxism rejects the very idea of truth, of a fixed human nature, of eternal moralities that transcend and refine all our desires. This turns dialogue from an exercise in seeking truth for the purpose of acting upon it into an exercise of power.
Cultural Marxism discards truth for endless power plays because it rejects the source of truth, which is ultimately God. So, it’s no accident that we see such public clashes between people whose fixed truth is that there is no truth outside themselves and people whose fixed truth is that the ultimate truth is outside themselves and its author is divine.
It’s impossible for these two irreconcilable frames for the world not to clash. They are fundamentally two different religions.
A societal disagreement such as this destroys the possibility of a truly public square, or any kind of society at all. The very existence of a public square requires a public — not just a collection of assorted people who happen to be in the same place, but people who share an identity.
You can’t really have a society without shared core assumptions about the world and man’s proper place in it. As the great Russell Kirk taught us, culture is a descendant of religion. Culture flows from what we worship. Some of us worship God, and some worship their own id. The latter faction in the United States has now grown and seized enough power to subjugate the former majority.
That’s ultimately the origin of our culture wars and why they are so intractable. They are a civilizational clash between the people who believe man is his own god and people who believe man is created by God and owes Him reverence.
Our culture war is religious at its root. To modify Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dividing line between these two irreconcilable religious views runs through our own neighborhoods, cities, states, and country. And the self-deifying pagan Marxist view now controls our nation’s institutions.
Educating children is a fundamentally religious endeavor, and most American parents are sending their kids to schools that preach secular paganism. The pagan self-supremacists want to keep kiddie sex books in schools because they believe sex is an encounter with the divine — the divine self. These book-banning fights are just proxy wars over what religion will be taught to American children, as more parents discover that a religion opposed to theirs receives huge government preferences.
It will be interesting to see how much porn in schools and libraries parents are willing to tolerate before they’re done letting secularists who are so morally bankrupt as to think porn is great for kids control their kids’ education. The battle lines are already drawn in Dearborn, and that town is not alone.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
A.F. Branco and his wife April had a fantastic time with great friends and great music at the Mount Richmore MAGA party in Nashville. Thank you John Rich for hosting this amazing get-together… Here are the pics
Tony and his wife April with Devin Nunes
Nick Searcy, Devin Nunes, A.F. Branco, John Rich, Joe Dan Gorman
Tony, Rodney Good, Jimmy Murphy, Patty Murphy, and Country Music Star Jami O’Neal
Tony and Nick Searcy
Benny Johnson (NewsMax) and Cartoonist A.F. Branco
Joe Dan Gorman, Comedian Jim Breuer, and Tony
Cartoonist Tony Branco and Actor Nick Searcy
Jake Little, Jack Stout, Tony, And Joe Dan Gorman (IntellecualFrogleggs.com)… Thank you, Jack and Jake, for helping to pull off an amazing party.
Tony, April, and Joe Dan Gorman… Joe Dan, April, and I want to thank you so much for the hospitality at your home. You made us feel so welcome. Check out his website – IntellecualFrogleggs.com
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.
Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images
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A Democratic Virginia state lawmaker wants to pass legislation that would make parents face criminal charges if they refused to affirm their child’s sexual orientation and gender identity. Delegate Elizabeth Guzman said that she will introduce the proposal in the next session of the Virginia legislature. The social worker said that the new law is meant to be a rebuke of Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s issuance of new rules on transgender students in schools.
“The day that Governor Youngkin wanted to implement this policy, I immediately texted the policy lead of that committee and said, this is how we’re going to push back,” Guzman said to WJLA-TV.
Guzman’s bill would include refusal to accept gender and sexual identity in the definition of child abuse.
“If the child shares with those mandated reporters what they are going through, we are talking about not only physical abuse or mental abuse, what the job of that mandated reporter is to inform Child Protective Services,” Guzman explained.
“And then that’s how everybody gets involved,” she added. “There’s also an investigation in place that is not only from a social worker but there’s also a police investigation before we make the decision that there is going to be a CPS charge.”
She said the punishment could have deep consequences for the parental offenders.
“It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment,” Guzman said.
When challenged that the proposed law might infringe on parents’ religious freedom, Guzman claimed the Bible says everyone should be accepted.
“The Bible says to accept everyone for who they are. So that’s what I tell them when they asked me that question, and that’s what I will continue to tell people,” she responded.
Here’s more about Youngkin’s trans policies:
‘This is the law’ | Youngkin tells schools they should comply with new transgender policy www.youtube.com
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.
Google-owned YouTube has been flexing its censorship muscles against conservative voices for a while, but the Big Tech company’s tactics just got even worse: Now, tacked onto the posts of pro-lifers, YouTube is directing users to pro-abortion information.
This means that life-affirming videos — such as those that tell the truth about the grisly details of abortion, share deeply held Catholic beliefs on the sanctity of life, and discuss alternatives to abortion, such as the life-saving pregnancy centers Democrats have slandered — will now have links slapped onto their videos that direct viewers to the pro-abortion talking points they’re advocating against. YouTube is following its predictable partisan pattern, using the cover of “misinformation” and “context” to dehumanize unborn human lives.
YouTube’s purported “context” accompanying the videos reads “abortion health information,” with a definition from the National Library of Medicine (NLM): “An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the embryo or fetus and placenta from the uterus. The procedure is done by a licensed healthcare professional.” And though YouTube hides behind the cover of medical “experts” at the NLM, like it did when it censored Covid-19 dissenters, it’s notable that NLM is just another hub of progressive federal government bureaucrats within the National Institutes of Health that plugs abortion and has reportedly published thousands of papers on “racism and medicine.”
YouTube’s “context” disclaimer also includes a link to the NLM’s abortion informational page, which suggests ways to abort a child: “medication abortion” or “procedural abortion.” The former is a chemically induced abortion in the first trimester, during which time babies’ limbs, skeletons, and major organs are fully developing, their hearts are beating strong, and they can taste and feel pain. In this type of abortion, the mother takes a pill that blocks nourishment and blood from the unborn baby, which kills it. The mother then takes a second pill to cause contractions and severe cramping and bleeding, leading to the delivery of her dead child.
“Procedural abortion” after the first trimester entails a dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E), in which an abortionist dilates the mother’s cervix and then uses a suction tube and sopher clamp to kill the unborn child by ripping its body apart limb by limb. The National Library of Medicine page linked by YouTube describes this in wholly dehumanizing terms, describing the dismemberment abortion as “a procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus.”
Under the “Learn More” section of this NLM abortion information webpage, it includes links to pages such as “Abortion Care,” “Ending a Pregnancy,” and “Know Your Rights: Reproductive Health Care,” but no pro-life pages or post-abortion testimonies discussing the horrific realities of abortion, such as this Live Action video to which YouTube attached its abortion-sanitizing “context.”
Live Action
“Adding these disclaimers is clear political bias on the part of YouTube against pro-life groups and messaging,” policy analyst Clare Morell told the Catholic News Agency. “Rather than allowing for free speech and debate in today’s modern public square, YouTube is preferring one side and position over the other by adding these disclaimers. And attempting to prejudice viewers against the pro-life position.”
This is certainly not the first time Big Tech has attempted to choke out pro-life perspectives. In August, after pressure from House Democrats, Google announced it would change its search results “to distinguish pro-life pregnancy centers from abortion clinics in search results for people dealing with crisis pregnancies.” In other words, Google would ensure that women exploring abortion online wouldn’t stumble on a wholistic women’s pregnancy center that would give them a different choice.
Google’s YouTube is not new to putting disclaimers on videos in the name of fighting misinformation, either. The tech giant has added so-called context to videos discussing Covid-19 too, and it even went so far as to suspend people from its platform — including Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. — for purportedly “spreading misinformation” on the topic.
Sophia is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Le Moyne College. She majors in English and intends to pursue a career in journalism.
Inflation increased 0.4% in September from August as “core” inflation, measuring the price of goods excluding food and energy, soared above expectations to a 40-year-high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The decline in overall inflation can be attributed largely to a decline in energy costs, although they remain elevated by 19.8% year-on-year compared to 23.8% in August, according to the BLS. Food costs remain historically high, with the overall food index falling slightly to 11.2% annually, down from 11.4% in August.
The big US data event today is, of course, the release of CPI #inflation where consensus forecasts are looking for 8.1% headline and 6.5% core. Earlier today, #Germany's annual inflation rates for September came in at 10.0% (1.9% MoM) and 10.9% (harmonized–2.2%), same as August. pic.twitter.com/CMTEjPHgb2
With both headline and core inflation still well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, the Federal Reserve is unlikely to halt its aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes, CNBC reported Wednesday. Goldman Sachs warned investors late September that even in the event of a so-called “soft landing,” where the Federal Reserve tames inflation without inducing a recession or a significant increase in unemployment, the Fed is likely to continue aggressive rate hikes through the end of the year, raising rates from the current baseline of 3.25% up to 4.5%.
The U.S. added 263,000 jobs in September, the slowest rate of the year, as the labor market continued to cool. Bank of America’s chief U.S. economist Michael Gapen warned Monday that unemployment could spike if the Fed continues its rate hikes, pushing unemployment as high as 5.5% from its current level at 3.5%, costing the U.S. 175,000 jobs per month early next year.
“No doubt the Fed still has its work cut out for them, and if tomorrow’s CPI read is hot, don’t be surprised to see some investors come to grips with how long the road to tamer inflation may be,” Mike Loewengart, head of portfolio management at Morgan Stanley told CNBC.
Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican candidate J.D. Vance, faced off during their first debate of the general election held earlier this week. When asked about their views on abortion, Vance, who is fundamentally pro-life, said he would support “some minimum national standard” to limit elective mid- to late-term abortions.
“We’re talking about 5-month-old [gestational age] babies, fully formed babies, who can feel pain. No civilized country in the world allows elective abortion that late in pregnancy. I don’t think the United States should be an exception,” he said.
Vance went on to specify that he does believe in “reasonable exceptions” to abortion laws, citing the highly publicized case of the 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel out of Ohio to get an abortion. He then turned the tables on Ryan, noting that the child’s alleged rapist was in the country illegally.
“I have said repeatedly on the record that I think that that girl should be able to get an abortion if she and her family so choose,” Vance said. “But let’s talk about that case, because why was a 10-year-old girl raped in our community, raped in our state in the first place? The media and Congressman Ryan, they talk about this all the time. The thing they never mention is that that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien, somebody that should have never been in this state in the first place. You voted so many times against border wall funding, so many times for amnesty. Tim, if you had done your job, she would have never been raped in the first place. Do your job on border security. Don’t lecture me about opinions I don’t actually have,” he added.
The look on Ryan’s face as stood in chastened silence spoke volumes.
On “The Rubin Report,” BlazeTV host Dave Rubin shared a clip of the fiery exchange and noted how it’s the Republicans who are now more moderate on abortion, as most support some exceptions and are willing to compromise even though they are basically pro-life, while Democrats such as Tim Ryan want no limits on abortion at all.
“J.D.’s position is that he allows for exceptions, okay, in the case of rape and health of the mother, etc. So that’s somewhat of a moderate position, okay?” Dave said. “By the way, Florida … which is thought of as this very red state with a very mean guy named Ron DeSantis in charge, has a 15-week ban on abortion, which is basically three and a half months into a pregnancy. And nobody’s arguing about abortion here in Florida … because that’s a compromise,” he added.
“Let’s compare and contrast that with Tim Ryan’s position on abortion,” Dave said to introduce a clip of Ryan telling Fox News’ Bret Baier he doesn’t believe in “any limits to abortion at any time.”
“Okay, so you tell me, guys, which is the moderate position?” Dave asked.
Watch the video clip below to catch more of the conversation. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
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JPMorgan Chase informed Kanye West this week that the bank is canceling its relationship with his companies and told him to find a new bank. Candace Owens, a friend of West, posted to Twitter late Tuesday an email that West received from JPMorgan Chase. The message said the bank is canceling West’s services by Nov. 21.
The email said, in part:
We are sending this letter to confirm our recent discussion with [redacted] that JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A (the “Bank”) has decided to end its banking relationship with Yeezy, LLC and its affiliated entities (collectively, the “Company”). To provide the Company with sufficient time to transition to another financial institution, we will continue to maintain the accounts (attached as Exhibit A), including all related products and services, until November 21, 2022.
To avoid any transaction delays, we suggest that you stop processing Company transactions and/or using any products associated with the accounts five business days before the scheduled closure date set forth above. After that date, the Bank will close any open accounts, and after deduction of any permissible service charges and pending transactions, remit all remaining funds in the form of a check delivered to the Company at the address of record.
The message, however, does not disclose why JPMorgan Chase chose to end its relationship with West and his companies.
TheBlaze reached out to JPMorgan Chase, but the bank declined to comment. However, the New York Times reported Thursday that it confirmed JPMorgan Chase is ending its banking services with West.
Earlier today I learned that @kanyewest was officially kicked out of JP Morgan Chase bank. I was told there was no official reason given, but they sent this letter as well to confirm that he has until late November to find another place for the Yeezy empire to bank. pic.twitter.com/FUskokb6fP
Meanwhile, West has been openly critical of JPMorgan Chase recently, rebuking “executives Bill Grous at JPMorgan’s wealth management business, investment banking Vice Chair Jing Ulrich and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon,” Bloomberg reported last month.
“I feel like there’s a lot of controlling and handling to suppress my ability to affect the American economy and industry,” West told Bloomberg of the bank.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R-N.Y.) was blasted over her voting record on sending weapons and aid to Ukraine. AOC was confronted by protesters during a sparsely attended town hall event in New York City on Wednesday. A man is heard on video telling Ocasio-Cortez, “You voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine!”
In May, AOC and all Democrats – including all of the “Squad” members – voted in favor of sending $40 billion in aid to Ukraine following the invasion by Russia. During the “Legislative Victories & Opportunities for Constituents” town hall event, the man then asked why Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t leave the Democratic Party like former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.
On Tuesday, Gabbard announced she was departing the Democratic Party because it is an “elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution.” Gabbard also declared that the Democratic Party is “dragging us closer to nuclear war.”
The man said Gabbard left the Democratic Party “because they’re a bunch of war hawks.”
“You ran as an outsider,” the man said. “Yet you’ve been voting to start this war in Ukraine. You’ve been voting to start a third nuclear war with Russia and China.”
He asked, “Why are you playing with the lives of American citizens?”
Another man chimed in, “You voted to mobilize and send money to Ukrainian Nazis.”
He yelled, “You’re a coward!”
The man questioned how AOC could be a “progressive socialist” while voting to send American funds to Ukraine.
He screamed during the town hall event held in the Bronx, “You have done nothing!”
The man declared, “Tulsi Gabbard has shown guts while you have shown cowardice.”
“I believed in you and you became the very thing you sought to fight against,” the alleged supporter said. “That’s what you’ve become. You are the establishment.”
He continued, “And you are the reason why everybody will end up in a nuclear war, unless you choose to stand up right now and denounce the Democratic Party.”
The man ranted, “We could be in a nuclear war at any minute, and you continue to fund it. That’s what’s going on.”
AOC refused to address the man’s claims, but she did call him “rude.” He retorted, “You’re the liar here. Nobody has held you accountable.”
The man concluded, “And it is time for you to stand up and realize that what you’ve been saying has been lies. Let your conscience come through for once.”
AOC humiliated at a Town Hall:
"You ran as an outsider yet you voted to start this war in Ukraine. You're voting to start a nuclear war with Russia and China" pic.twitter.com/dSldpyKVLT
One of the protesters shared a screenshot of an email he allegedly sent to Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, in which he was hopeful that the up-and-coming New York politician would assist him in a dispute with his landlord.
At the time of publication, AOC – who is extremely active on social media – has yet to address being confronted about her voting record on funding Ukraine.
Regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine, Ocasio-Cortez has never mentioned the conflict on her massively popular personal Twitter account with more than 13.5 million followers. On her much less popular government Twitter account, she has mentioned the conflict three times – the last being in March.
“As Ukraine fights against the Russian invasion, we have a moral obligation to assist any way we can,” AOC tweeted on March 28. “The Ukraine Comprehensive Debt Payment Relief Act would work to support the immediate suspension of Ukraine’s debt payments, help coordinate comprehensive debt relief, and more.”
In April, Ocasio-Cortez voted against the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction Act. The bill that passed in the House gives the president the power to “seize and confiscate assets belonging to any sanctioned foreign person whose wealth is derived through support for or corruption related to the regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
In January 2020, Ocasio-Cortez proclaimed that “war is a class conflict.”
“The rich and powerful who open war escape the consequences of their decisions,” AOC tweeted. “It’s not their children sent into the jaws of violence. It is often the vulnerable, the poor, & working people – who had little to no say in conflict – who pay the price.”
Previously, AOC declared that “the whole point of protesting is to make people uncomfortable.”
“Activists take that discomfort w/ the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in December 2020. “Popular support often starts small & grows. To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable… that’s the point.”
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and What DidYouSay.org.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
New York Mayor Eric Adams would have been the Democrats’ runaway choice for president if only he’d kept his campaign promise and cut crime in the Big Apple. No mayoral candidate talked about “safety, safety, safety” more than he. As Adams told MSNBC during the campaign:
“Public safety and justice is the prerequisite to prosperity. And I think that we have become too symbolic, instead of realistic, on how you keep cities safe. And it’s time for the Democratic Party to understand this. America wants to be safe. And we can do it with justice at the same time.”
If a black mayor had saved New York City, no one could have beaten him. Not only that, but Adams has a black deputy mayor for public safety (Phil Banks), a black police commissioner (Keechant L. Sewell) and a black district attorney (Alvin Bragg).
As conservatives never tire of pointing out, murder victims are overwhelmingly black (as are murder perpetrators, but let’s not mention that). In a world that has only recently discovered that “Black Lives Matter,” wouldn’t an all-black law enforcement team come down like a sledgehammer on crime?
Adams wasn’t setting some pie-in-the-sky, impossible goal for himself. You don’t have to go back to the 1950s to conceive of a safe New York. Just think back to about five years ago. New Yorkers lived in a virtually crime-free city for 20 years under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
In fact, those mayors made the city so safe, even communist Mayor Bill de Blasio couldn’t wreck it overnight. It took a virus from China (which apparently required that criminals be released, but citizens be locked up) and a fentanyl addict dying in Minneapolis for him to spring the criminals it had taken Giuliani and Bloomberg 20 years to catch.
The point is: You can’t fool New Yorkers anymore. They know it’s possible to keep violent psychos off the street.
Just not by a Democrat.
The problem is, no Democrat can support any policy that would reduce crime because, unfortunately, that would simply not be possible without putting more “black bodies” in prison.
SIRENS BLARE! TA-NEHISI COATES DESCENDS FROM THE HEAVENS.
The Democratic Party treats black criminals as sacred beings, much like the temple in India where they worship rats.
Recall that when Bloomberg ran for president in 2020, he had to apologize for policies that reduced murders from 600 a year to an astounding 300 a year — in a city where more than 60% of murder victims are black, and nearly 90% are black or Hispanic.
Apology not accepted!
Yes, perhaps vastly more black lives would “matter” in the sense of continuing to exist. But more “black bodies” would be subjected to stop-and-frisk by the police. Obviously, that’s a no-go. Unpack your invisible backpack, white supremacist!
Liberals love to boast about New York’s murder rate going up at a less astronomical clip than other crimes. Well, yeah — criminals are notoriously poor marksmen. They are approximately as likely to hit small children and elderly bystanders as their intended target. Congratulations, New York!
On the other hand, shootings in the city have gone from about 900 a year in 2018 to nearly 2,000 a year, according to The New York Times.
It turns out Adams is the Democrats’ Donald Trump: All talk, no action.
There were hints that Adams wasn’t going to get the job done when, earlier this year, Politico reported he was meeting with crime experts Al Sharpton and Joe Biden. He proudly noted that he’d recently thanked a group of police officers … for letting a perp get away. (At least no black bodies were hurt!) He even suggested that a video of the escaping suspect be screened for officers to show them how it’s done.
Commenting on the episode, Adams said, “You have to inspect what you expect or it’s suspect.” Doggerel from elected officials often precedes a collapse in crime rates.
Apart from encouraging cops not to do their jobs, Adams’ main anti-crime initiative has been to slap “Gun Free Zone” signs around Times Square.
So how’s it going? In addition to the shootings, since Adams has been mayor, forcible rape is up 63%, grand larceny 38%, robberies 24%, car theft 25% and major felonies in the transit system 51%.
Every single day, there’s a new mind-blowing crime in New York.
Here are a few vignettes from Life in the Big City: On Tuesday this week, a 19-year-old public school teacher’s assistant in Brooklyn was shot in the head outside his school in the middle of the day. Last Thursday, three New Yorkers were stabbed on the subway within seven hours, one fatally. The previous Saturday night, nine (extremely body-positive) women dressed from head to toe in neon green bodysuits boarded the subway at Times Square and proceeded to pummel and rob a couple of 19-year-old girls. Days earlier, a random psycho stabbed an EMS worker to death in a frenzied attack in broad daylight outside a Queens deli.
The bad news for New York is that unless Lee Zeldin is elected governor this November, there is no hope. Things will continue to spiral downward into a dystopian horror. The good news for the country is that at this stage, it looks like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t even going to have to campaign to be our next president.
Revolutionary elites who push utopias are always a small minority. In order to get all of society on board, they must enlist mobs to promote the illusion of compliance with their visions. Mobs enforce the narrative, often through violence. They help censor any competing views through intimidation and various forms of book burning.
We ought to study how radical utopian revolutions got a foothold in the past in order to better understand the 21st-century incarnation. Mob action was a major catalyst for the French Revolution, accelerating Maximilien Robespierre’s brutal dechristianization campaign and Jacobin revisions of history. Private life came under direct attack after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. Those attacks reached terrifying new heights during Stalin’s Reign of Terror.
Identity politics and pseudoscience played out to a gruesome degree during Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, causing intense hostilities in the society. And American immigrants from communist China can recall the cruel legacy of mob-led struggle sessions during Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Some have publicly expressed alarm at seeing similar dynamics develop in their adopted homeland.
But many who sense the brewing of a totalitarian revolution in the 21st century are puzzled because it doesn’t appear to have a central operator. Yes, there remain many dictators on the world stage, as always. But there is no single figure like Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Robespierre, or even Oliver Cromwell, who has been at the center driving all the changes. There has been no single nation-state leading the charge. No specific revolutionary party. No one corporation giving directives to all.
Rather, it all seems more hydra-headed, coming from all directions and from many different sources with seemingly different interests. Indeed, Big Tech selectively bans political speech on social media platforms like Facebook. Twitter even suspended the account of a sitting U.S. president. Big Media is a mammoth propaganda operation with little actual news reported. Financial institutions became more apt to regulate the donations of their customers, some eager to freeze bank accounts of citizens they deem politically incorrect.
Then there’s the World Economic Forum, whose founder Klaus Schwab has incessantly spoken and written about a “Great Reset,” which would lead to a more centrally controlled social order of the entire world. Over the years Schwab groomed a coterie of young leaders, including Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister of France Emanuel Macron, who cooperate to establish such an order.
The 2020s also opened with more federal judges blatantly legislating from the bench, more military officers requiring recruits to be indoctrinated in woke ideologies, medical organizations promoting vaccine mandates, and more pediatricians endorsing hormone regimens and genital surgeries on children without parental consent. Meanwhile, academia continued its war on freedom of expression, and K–12 educrats grew increasingly hostile to the parents of the children they supposedly teach.
People felt gut-punched by so many unexpected invasions of privacy and attacks against free speech in a nation trusted to protect it. How did so much sudden disregard for due process arise, so little regard for reason and reality? And from so many different places?
It’s All Tied Together by the Machinery of Loneliness
Although all these developments have come at us from different directions, they have a machinery in common. The common denominator of such revolutions past, present, and future is the weaponization of loneliness. All its features pit people against one another. All were at work in various ways in past revolutions of modern history. And all result in our further atomization, our further separation from one another.
The most critical features are the forces of identity politics, political correctness, and mobs. Identity politics is clearly meant to divide us into hostile groups, such as oppressor and victim, based on race or sex or any other demographic grouping. Political correctness induces us to self-censor, which means we drive ourselves into further isolation by limiting our exchanges with others to avoid the risk of social rejection. Mobs then serve as agitation forces that push propaganda into action. They intimidate others into silence and compliance and finally can cause any agenda—no matter how fringy—to become policy.
Another way to think about the machinery is as a combustion engine that can’t operate without ignited fuel. The fuel is our conformity impulse, and the spark is our fear. Without them, the machinery of loneliness simply can’t operate. So if we cannot shake off our conformity impulse and fear of isolation, we will remain self-silenced, isolated, and obedient to the mob. We will end up lonelier, more exhausted, and conditioned to repeat the cycle.
There Is Hope
The good news is that there is a wealth of neglected research on these matters of social psychology. We need to make that research common knowledge by discussing it often. In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted experiments on the conformity impulse. Later, Asch’s student Stanley Milgram studied the pattern of obedience to malevolent authorities.
In 1960, acclaimed Nobel laureate Elias Canetti produced his classic study on the behavior of mobs, “Crowds and Power.” In 1957, Vance Packard published his explosive bestseller “The Hidden Persuaders,” which explored the uses of depth psychology by advertisers to manipulate people’s desires and fears.
Eminent psychiatrists like Margaret Thaler Singer and Robert Jay Lifton investigated the practice of coercive thought reform. Singer analyzed cult dynamics that led nearly a thousand people in Jonestown, Guyana, to commit “revolutionary suicide” at the order of Jim Jones in 1978. The term “Stockholm syndrome” had already come into circulation to describe the phenomenon of captives bonding with their captors.
Even earlier, however, scholars were reflecting on the dynamics of mobs, including Gustave LeBon, who in 1895 published “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.” And early in the 20th century, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci theorized that the power of culture, especially as expressed through modern communications, shaped social attitudes far more effectively than any appeal to economic interests.
In the 1930s, the neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt School accepted and applied Gramsci’s theory. We can see it in today’s aggressive media campaigns, the shift to “social justice” action in academia, and Big Tech’s censorship of dissenting views.
The key ingredient of groupthink has always been the fear of social isolation, which leads us to be swept up by propaganda. It’s a fear so pervasive that—like fish in water—we are rarely aware of the effect it has on us.
We can see how this phenomenon worked in totalitarian societies like Stalin’s Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, where people betrayed neighbors and even family members to avoid becoming “nonpersons” in society. The great irony here is that by breaking bonds of family and friendship, people only dig themselves in deeper. They cement their dependency on the state while also helping the state destroy the private sphere of life, which is their only path to escape and resistance.
Hence, totalitarians have always targeted the private sphere of life for destruction. The rallying cry “Abolish the family!” comes straight from “The Communist Manifesto.” Nothing could be more alienating to a human being than to be deprived of healthy familial bonds. The ramifications are vast because strong communities depend upon strong families.
Tyrannical systems also seek to abolish traditional religions and the fellowship of the faithful. Opportunities for such societal breakdown today have accelerated as never before. In the extremist reaction against the Dobbs decision, we saw how state and corporate actors supported by media propaganda can promote an antifamily ethos that produces atomization.
How Tech Tears Us Apart
The machinery of loneliness is running in high gear due to the revolution in communications technologies. This revolution handed us each a “device” that draws us into the web of the internet, often in literally hypnotic fashion. The seduction is so powerful that one can reasonably ask if the endgame is a vast hive mind.
The technological media constantly distract us, prod us, probe us, and flood us with suggestions. We each end up knowing a whole lot less about a whole lot more. At the same time, we become increasingly disconnected from real life among our flesh-and-blood brethren.
Communications professor Marshall McLuhan famously warned in 1964 that electronic media acts within each of us as an extension of our central nervous system. We may think we are gleaning the medium for content, but any content is incidental to the real message. The real message, he insisted, is in the medium itself, which rewires us neurologically. As we allow our devices to pull us into the cyberworld, we become isolated by detaching ourselves from the real world.
When we delve into the internet or connect to our devices, we are not consumers. Rather, we are products—raw material for advertisers— as we let the whole world know what we like and what we don’t like, who we know, where we are located, our habits, our dreams, our desires.
We may offer such data in a quest to be connected with others. But we don’t realize how that information is also pure gold for developers of artificial intelligence who can use it to develop algorithms that predict and modify our behaviors, and even program behaviors into us that actually isolate us further. No medieval wizard or alchemist could have imagined such a boon for his designs or such an infrastructure to empower him.
People are now more easily separated through social pressures that involve shunning and vilification, often magnified through propaganda that is exponentially amplified through Big Tech and Big Media. In the meantime, all these drivers of social decay result in institutional decay, which further contributes to a dangerous state of atomization. The subversion of education is key because education is upstream from all the other institutions, including our legislatures, courts, media, the arts, the corporate world, finance, medicine, and even the military.
Once that “march through the institutions” is complete, then the primordial institutions that shelter our private lives—family, faith, and community—are set to come under direct attack. So if our isolation continues unchecked, it easily becomes a tool to dismantle freedom, no matter the intentions of those who act to dismantle it. Nothing is left but the vast mass state directing the lives of individuals, all virtually separated from one another.
Victory in the war against tyranny depends more than anything else on understanding how imposed loneliness works on our psyches and how it is an indispensable tool of totalitarianism. Once comprehended, we can begin to neutralize its effects and defend ourselves against its inherent machinery.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.
Online retail giant Amazon is being accused of selling “suicide kits” to teenagers in a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit was brought on by the families of two teenagers, 16-year-old Kristine Jónsson of Ohio and 17-year-old Ethan McCarthy of West Virginia, who used the items to take their own lives. According to the lawsuit, when users went to purchase sodium nitrite, a food preservative that in high doses can end someone’s life, Amazon would recommend they buy a scale to measure the dose, an anti-vomiting drug, and Amazon’s edition of a handbook on assisted suicide.
“The rare exception exists in eleven states where physicians are allowed, under exceedingly narrow, legislated medical circumstances, to carefully facilitate the death of a proven terminally ill patient. Contrary to what Amazon and Loudwolf may think, there is no exception that allows for corporate-assisted suicide,” the lawsuit asserts.
Lawyers representing the families say that this is a “case about the most powerful, wealthy, and trusted corporation in America knowingly assisting in the deaths of healthy children by selling them suicide kits.”
“These kits are comprised of Sodium Nitrite—a soluble solution that when mixed with water and drunk can render a person unconscious within twenty minutes,” the lawsuit states. “Along with Sodium Nitrite, Amazon recommends that customers also purchase a small scale to measure the right dose, Tagamet to prevent vomiting up the liquid, and the ‘Amazon edition’ of the Peaceful Pill Handbook which contains a chapter with instructions on how to administer these ingredients together to die.”
The lawsuit continues, “even after parents and regulators warned Amazon that Sodium Nitrite had no household use, Amazon continued to sell it to households, for under twenty dollars, and with two-day delivery.”
“This is different from them selling rope, knives, or other implements that can be used for death because there is no household use for [sodium nitrite] at the level of purity (98-99%) it sells it,” Carrie Goldberg and Naomi Leeds, two attorneys for the families from the firm C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, said in a statement, obtained by NPR.
The Sodium-Nitrate being sold by Amazon had such a high purity that the legal team maintains a single teaspoon is enough to be fatal.
Amazon defended the sale, telling NPR that they send their “deepest condolences” to the families, but maintain that they did nothing wrong.
Cassandra Fairbanks is a former leftist who came out in support of Donald Trump in 2016. She has been published in the International Business Times, RT, Sputnik, The Independent and countless other publications.
Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening why she left the Democratic Party, saying it is “controlled by fanatical ideologues.”
“I love our country and I took an oath as a service member, as a soldier, as well as a member of Congress to support and defend the Constitution. That’s an oath I take extremely seriously,” Gabbard, who serves in the National Guard, told Carlson. “When you look at this party, today’s Democratic Party, it’s controlled by fanatical ideologues who hate freedom. They despise the Constitution. They actively find ways to undermine our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution like freedom of speech.” (RELATED: Watch Tulsi Gabbard Demonstrate Her Deadly Marksmanship Skills)
Gabbard announced her decision to leave the Democratic Party Tuesday, citing “anti-white racism” and claiming it was controlled by an “elitist cabal.”
WATCH:
“They will do all that they can to destroy you, silence you, smear you, work with Big Tech, work with corporate media to actively destroy anyone who dares even question their agenda. They are against freedom of religion,” Gabbard said. “They are hostile towards people of faith, people who have their own spiritual practice, especially Christians, finding ways to be vindictive, to discriminate, to punish people who happen to exercise that freedom of religion. The list goes on and on but the foundation of freedom is really what was at the heart of my making this decision that I cannot be a member of the party that is against freedom and actively trying to undermine it.”
Gabbard ran for president in 2020, suspending her campaign at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing her desire to be ready should she be activated. She harshly criticized Democrats over the border and their rhetoric against Republicans, called the Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate owned by former President Donald Trump, a “blatant abuse of power.”
Gabbard also blasted the Biden administration over its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Rather than taking a stand for peace, for prosperity, security and freedom of the American people, we have too many people in Washington who are warmongers subservient to the military-industrial complex and continuing to put their own selfish interests or the interests of their donors first with no mind for the cost and consequence that their decisions have on the American people,” Gabbard said. “This is exactly what we are seeing right now with President Biden and leaders in Congress whose decisions are actively pushing us to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.”
President Joe Biden claimed the risk of nuclear war was the highest it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis during a Thursday evening fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier confronted a former CIA officer on Tuesday for endorsing claims that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
After the New York Post dropped the pre-election bombshell in October 2020, the laptop story was quickly denounced as Russian disinformation. The media pushed a letter from dozens of former intelligence officials that claimed the story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” No real evidence, however, was ever presented to corroborate that claim.
Of course, the laptop story is not Russian disinformation, and media outlets like the New York Timesand Politico have since verified the authenticity of the laptop.
While interviewing former CIA officer David Priess — one of that infamous letter’s signatories — Baier directly asked about his decision to advance false claims.
“Why did you sign on to that?” Baier asked.
Priess, however, defended his endorsement and tried to claim the letter was neutral, such that it did not outright call the laptop story Russian “disinformation.”
“Because of what it says. It has all of the classic earmarks of one of these operations,” he said. “You’ll note elsewhere in the letter, if you read it, that it also says we don’t know if this is a Russian operation at all. That has been dramatically changed in the retelling of the story.”
“The letter is merely pointing out that this is the kind of thing that time after time after time that people who study Russian disinformation, intelligence officers who look at Russian tactics, over the long period of time — this is the kind of thing they like to amplify, to sow discord within target countries,” he continued. “The fact is, the tactic is an old one, a tried and true one, and it’s been successful in the past.”
“But in this case it was not true — it was not true,” Baier fired back, citing media outlets that authenticated it.
But the former CIA officer remained stalwart. Priess told Baier he does not regret signing the letter and claimed it did not change the outcome of the 2020 election, despite President Joe Biden citing the letter during a debate with Donald Trump. Priess, in fact, said the letter was not wrong because it did not call the laptop story “Russian disinformation,” but one that has the “earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“It’s not my fault if people don’t look up definitions,” Priess said smugly.
“I know, but the purpose of the letter is to have an effect,” Baier shot back. “And the nuance that you’re talking about never made it to candidate Biden, because he said it plainly on a debate stage.”
While the nuance that Priess drew out may be true, one wonders why those intelligence officers did not rush to correct the media and Biden if they were wrong by calling the laptop clear Russian disinformation. As Baier pointed out, the intelligence officials allowed the letter to be used as “Biden information,” rhetoric that helped his campaign.
In less than one month, if Proposal 3 passes, children will have a right under the Michigan constitution to walk into one of Planned Parenthood’s 12 so-called “gender affirming” facilities in the state and, without parental knowledge or consent, obtain puberty blockers. And with Planned Parenthood of Michigan promising “gender affirming” care “via telehealth in the coming months,” Michiganders’ kids won’t even need to leave their house to obtain these sterilizing drugs.
Passage of Prop 3 will also give boys a constitutional right to be castrated and girls the right under Michigan’s constitution to be sterilized by way of a hysterectomy or the removal of their ovaries — all without their parents’ consent.
Deceptive marketing by Planned Parenthood and far-left politicians, such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, hides this reality from Michigan voters, leading Prop 3 to be uniformly referred to as “the abortion amendment” even though the expansive language of the proposed constitutional amendment reaches far beyond abortion. And on abortion alone, notwithstanding proponents’ claims that “passing this amendment simply restores the same protections that Michiganders had for five decades under Roe v. Wade,” Prop 3 goes far beyond the controlling Roe-Casey precedent: If passed, the constitutional amendment would create an extreme regime in Michigan of abortion on demand, at any time, for any reason, without informed or parental consent, and paid for by taxpayers.
The expansive and legalistically worded language of Prop 3, crafted by Planned Parenthood and left-wing backers, however, extends beyond abortion to create a constitutional right to several aspects of what transgender activists call “gender-affirming care,” despite it being neither affirming nor caring. And Prop 3 extends that right to all individuals, including children.
This is not merely a political point, and it is not a worst-case-scenario argument based on how some liberal activist judge or justice might interpret Prop 3. This reality flows from the plain language of Prop 3 and rests on general legal principles of constitutional construction.
It’s Right in the Text
Here is the pertinent language Prop 3 would etch into the Michigan constitution as Article 1, Section 28, with the key language underscored:
“(1) Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care. An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, burdened, nor infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means. …
(2) The state shall not discriminate in the protection or enforcement of this fundamental right.
* * *
(4) For the purposes of this section:
A state interest is “compelling” only if it is for the limited purpose of protecting the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of practice and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision-making.
* * *
(5) This section shall be self-executing….
Prop 3 Applies to Men and Women AND Boys and Girls
By its express terms, Prop 3 applies to “every individual” and guarantees an “individual’s right.” The proposed constitutional amendment further provides that “the state shall not discriminate in the protection or enforcement of this fundamental right.”
As a matter of constitutional interpretation, then, the rights guaranteed by Prop 3 would be rights that both adults and children possess as “individuals,” and the rights apply equally to males and females.
This proposal represents a huge demarcation from controlling Michigan law, under which minors must have parental consent to obtain medical treatment or receive prescription medications, with the only current exception being the judicial bypass provisions governing minors seeking abortions. Specifically, Michigan law currently provides that to obtain an abortion, females under the age of 18 must have the written consent of one parent or legal guardian, but the law allows a girl to seek permission for an abortion from a judge, called a “judicial bypass.” A court must grant a judicial bypass if the judge finds either that “the minor is sufficiently mature and well-enough informed to make the decision regarding abortion independently of her parents or legal guardian,” or “the waiver would be in the best interests of the minor.”
In the context of abortion, Prop 3 guts Michigan’s requirements for either parental consent or a judicial bypass, first by declaring that the amendment applies to all “individuals” and second by expressly providing that “the state shall not discriminate in the protection or enforcement of this fundamental right.” Treating females under 18 differently than those 18 or over is a textbook example of discrimination.
Section 4 of the amendment further cements the reality that minors must be treated equivalent to adults for purposes of the rights Prop 3 would establish. That section of the proposed amendment expressly limits the justifications allowed for regulating abortion or the other rights Prop 3 would inscribe in the constitution.
Under Section 4, the state may only regulate abortion and the other rights covered by the proposed constitutional amendment if it is necessary to “protect[] the health of an individual seeking care,” and “does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision-making.”
The rights of parents do not matter; Mom and Dad have no rights. And even the health of the girl does not matter because, under the plain language of the amendment, the state’s interest cannot “infringe” on the “individual’s autonomous decision-making.”
This legal analysis flows straight from the plain language of Prop 3, but case law from other states where a state constitutional right to abortion exists confirms this analysis. For example, in Alaska and Florida, courts have declared parental consent and parental notification statutes unconstitutional. And courts in California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have struck parental consent statutes.
Prop 3’s grant of such “autonomous decision-making” is not limited to abortion, however. Rather, the plain language of the proposed constitutional amendment provides that the right to “reproductive freedom,” “entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to … sterilization … or infertility care.”
Under Michigan law currently, minors cannot be chemically or surgically sterilized (or rendered infertile) without their parents’ consent, and even then most physicians would refuse to sterilize a minor — except in the case of transgender-identifying patients.
The modern medical community has embraced the transgender ideology that teaches that human beings can be born “in the wrong body,” and that the appropriate treatment for such individuals consists of making their bodies appear to conform to their “internal sense” of gender.
The first step in such wrongly named “gender-affirming” medical response consists of prescribing puberty blockers to children. Puberty blockers, at a minimum, render children temporarily infertile by preventing them from maturing sexually, and a longer-term use renders them sterile. The surgical procedures used under the guise of “gender confirmation” — castration, hysterectomy, and the removal of ovaries — likewise sterilize the patients.
In fact, it is this very destruction of children’s future fertility and the medical rendering of them sterile that has led to several states banning the use of puberty blockers and surgical “gender confirming” procedures on minors. For instance, in Iowa, the Legislature made these legislative findings to explain its proposed ban on puberty blockers and surgical procedures that sterilize children:
Puberty blockers prevent gonadal maturation and thus render children taking these drugs infertile. Introducing cross-sex hormones to children with immature gonads as a direct result of pubertal blockade is expected to cause irreversible sterility. Sterilization is also permanent for those who undergo surgery to remove reproductive organs[.] … For these reasons, the decision to pursue a course of hormonal and surgical interventions to address a discordance between an individual’s sex and sense of gender identity should not be presented to or determined for children who are incapable of comprehending the negative implications and life-course difficulties resulting from these interventions.
But in Michigan, if passed, Prop 3 guarantees children the right to “make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to … sterilization,” and without “discrimination,” giving boys and girls the right to obtain puberty blockers and surgical sterilization without parental notice or consent.
If passed, Section 4 of the proposed constitutional amendment will further guarantee that the Michigan Legislature cannot interfere in transgender minors’ decisions to obtain puberty blockers or surgical “gender reassignment” through castration, removal of ovaries, or a hysterectomy. That section, as excerpted above, provides that the state may only regulate such procedures for the limited purpose of “protecting the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of practice and evidence-based medicine,” and then, only so long as it “does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision-making.”
But the “accepted clinical standards of practice” by the supposed “mainstream” medical organizations is, at a minimum, to provide puberty blockers to children, with a steady movement toward the cash cow that is surgical interventions for minors.
Planned Parenthood Targets Kids One Way or Another
Again, these conclusions flow directly from the plain language of the proposed constitutional amendment. But here the public would be wise to note two significant facts: Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan helpedlead the ballot initiative to amend the Michigan constitution through the passage of Prop 3, deceptively described as the “Reproductive Freedom for All” amendment, and Planned Parenthood nowrepresents “the second largest provider of ‘gender-affirming hormone therapy.’” In fact, less than two weeks ago, Planned Parenthood launched an ad marketing puberty blockers to minors.
What Planned Parenthood and its extremist political partners don’t want publicized, however, is that a “Yes” vote for Prop 3 will not merely make abortion-on-demand, for any reason, at any time, and without informed or parental consent the law of Michigan: It will guarantee that children have an unfettered “right” to “transition” by obtaining puberty blockers and surgical sterilization, parents be damned.
With less than one month to go before Michiganders cast their final ballots, little time remains to give proof to the left’s lie that Prop 3 is about codifying Roe. It is not. It is about sacrificing the children of the state — both born and unborn.
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.
Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman’s health was the focus of a conversation he had with NBC News on Tuesday, during which he struggled to speak and understand the questions he was asked. With Election Day just over three weeks away, Fetterman insisted that a near-fatal stroke he suffered in May wouldn’t affect his ability to serve in the United States Senate should he defeat Republican Mehmet Oz.
“I don’t think it’s going to have an impact,” he told NBC News’ Dasha Burns in his first in-person sit-down interview since the stroke. The Fetterman campaign required NBC to provide closed-captioning technology so that the lieutenant governor could read the questions as they were asked in order to understand and respond.
“I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear. So I use captioning so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning,” Fetterman explained.
NBC News noted that he occasionally stuttered and had trouble finding words during the interview. At one point he couldn’t articulate the word “empathetic” and instead said something that sounded like “emphetic.” But he denied that this was a difficulty.
“It was just about having to be thinking more, uh, sl, uh — slower — to just understand and that sometimes that’s kind of the processing that happens,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman suffered a stroke in May caused by a blood clot from his heart formed by atrial fibrillation. Doctors surgically implanted a pace making device with a defibrillator to monitor and regulate his heartbeat. At the time, Fetterman said doctors insisted there was “no cognitive damage,” but in subsequent campaign appearances he’s made several verbal slips that Republicans have called attention to while raising questions about his ability to serve.
How can @JohnFetterman expect Pennsylvanians to send him to the Senate if he’s not being honest about his health?
Fetterman admitted to NBC News that his recovery “changes everything.”
“But it gets much, much better where I take in a lot. But to be precise, I use captioning, so that’s really the maijing — that’s the major challenge. And every now and then I’ll miss a word. Every now and then. Or sometimes I’ll maybe mush two words together. But as long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked,” he said.
Pennsylvania’s battleground Senate race could determine which party will control the Senate next year, with Democrats currently holding a 50-50 majority and Vice President Kamala Harris breaking tie votes. Both parties have poured millions of dollars into the contest
Republican candidate Dr. Oz has sought to make Fetterman’s health a major issue in the race. Oz has consistently trailed Fetterman in polls, but he has cut what was a double-digit lead for Fetterman in some surveys after the Senate primary in May to just a 3.7-point average differential by the end of September. He has attacked Fetterman for refusing to share his medical records with reporters and for only agreeing to one debate.
Burns pressed Fetterman on his refusal to disclose his medical records.
“If my doctor teams already said I’m fine, I’m not really sure that’s much more beyond transparent,” he replied, but Burns pointed out that the Fetterman campaign hasn’t provided any of his doctors for interviews with the press.
NBC: "Why not be transparent and [release medical records]?"
Fetterman: "If my doctor teams already said I'm fine, I'm not really sure that's much more beyond transparent."
NBC: "We're taking your word for what your doctors are telling you. We haven't heard from them in months" pic.twitter.com/pJlCTvmxC6
“Well, I mean, if they believed that I was ready to do that, and I’ve been able to successfully do that kind of campaigning, I think that demonstrates what they said and their opinions were pretty accurate,” Fetterman said. He insisted that he’s been transparent by presenting himself on the campaign trail, where voters can see him and decide for themselves whether he is fit to serve.
Watch:
John Fetterman Discusses Health, Campaign In First Sit-Down Interview Since Stroke youtu.be
The office of Colorado’s Democrat secretary of state admitted to “mistakenly” sending “get out the vote” postcards to roughly 30,000 noncitizens ahead of the state’s upcoming elections, according to a new report.
As reported by the Associated Press (AP), Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office blamed “the error on a database glitch related to the state’s list of residents with driver’s licenses” and claimed that “none of the noncitizens” would be permitted “to register to vote if they [tried].”
“The error happened after department employees compared a list of names of 102,000 people provided by the Electronic Registration Information Center [(ERIC)] … to a database of Colorado residents issued driver’s licenses,” the AP report reads. “That Department of Revenue driver’s license list includes residents issued special licenses to people who are not U.S. citizens. But it didn’t include formatting information that normally would have allowed the Department of State to eliminate those names before the mailers went out.”
Under state law, Colorado may issue driver’s licenses to non-U.S. citizens and is able to automatically register eligible citizens to vote when they acquire their license from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
As reported by Federalist Staff Writer Victoria Marshall, a group known as ERIC was kickstarted in 2012 “by far-left activist David Becker and the left-leaning Pew Charitable Trusts” and “shares voter roll data — including records of unregistered voters — it receives from the states with [the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR)].” CEIR was one of two leftist groups used to funnel Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million into U.S. states that resulted in the “private takeover of government election offices” during the 2020 election.
“CEIR then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach,” Marshall writes. “As part of their agreement with ERIC, states are not allowed to disclose any data they send to nor receive from ERIC, however, ERIC is not under the same constraints and is able to work with CEIR.”
In response to the proclaimed “error,” Griswold’s office told the AP that it is purportedly in the process of sending notices to the 30,000 noncitizens that received the postcards and that it’s developing practices “to prevent or reject anyone not eligible to vote from registering, including comparing Social Security Numbers required for each application, on a daily basis.”
In Colorado, all registered voters are automatically sent a ballot in the mail, regardless of whether they intend to vote in-person on Election Day. This election cycle, the state plans on sending out ballots to voters as early as Oct. 17.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for 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
My husband pastors a campus church at a Big Ten university, and we live amongst college students. It is a blessed life, one in which our evenings are longer and our mornings shorter, all because we have the privilege of fostering 50-plus Gen Z-ers in the faith.
What passion and curiosity reside in the hearts and heads of our young people! But do you know what else resides there? Fear and distrust of most everything coming out of the mouth of anyone older than them.
For so many of these students grew up reading, hearing, watching, and absorbing stories that assert that they are omniscient, that no outside source is as trustworthy as their own feelings. They are certain they know what is best for themselves, and anyone who asserts otherwise is an indoctrinated false prophet of the dead past who simply refuses to sing along with Elsa, “Let it go.”
How did these young people come to trust their own corrupted gut more than the wisdom of their parents? I suspect it has something to do with Cinderella, Ariel, Elsa, and Anna; as well as Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler; and “Modern Family,” “Sex and the City,” “Parks and Recreation,” Marvel movies, and even “Veggie Tales,” for many of our present college students were raised in homes dominated by screens.
Much of their free time was spent absorbing serial television, and while not every televised program, movie, and YouTube channel necessarily tells false stories, much of modern programming follows a storytelling formula that ensures the pet social agendas of screenwriters are always being covered in the plot and in ways that narrate lies surrounding sexual identity, the sanctity of life, the good order of creation and marriage, the strength of men, and the reality of absolutes.
Stories have always been a part of how we pass down what is good and beautiful and true to our children, but depending on the storyteller, this practice can corrupt as easily as benefit. As more and more families turn over the care of their children to institutions, programs, clubs, teams, and devices, parents are no longer controlling the narrative of the stories being passed down to their children.
The loudest, most powerful propagandist holds the bullhorn, and he makes sure the story’s plot fits his personal agenda, no matter if it is evil and ugly and false. This proves especially dangerous in the classroom, where most children spend the greater part of everyday away from their parents.
We now have generations of children raised by bullhorns, and it is commonplace for a child to be occupied by some sort of program every moment of every day, whether it is a daycare program, school program, televised program, sports program, or an arts program — you name it. Many of today’s college students have had few opportunities in life to grow bored, to daydream, and to experience what happens to their bodies and minds and emotions when not occupied. They seem to have missed out on what used to be standard human experiences such as unregulated play, relating to peers of all shapes, sizes, and maturity levels, and making messy, wonderful, formative relationships with imperfect people.
I have observed that when young people are denied the opportunity to share experiences with other real people, they bond with the fake experiences and fake people they see on a screen instead. It is not uncommon for conversations amongst college students to be centered around Disney or “Game of Thrones” or the show “Friends” or countless other streamed programs. Sadly, those Hollywood-scripted shows are the memories peers share, and those designed-to-disorder plots are the common experiences with which they relate to each other.
So, what do we do about it? How do we reclaim the hearts and minds — the attention — of our children? We have to turn off the television, certainly, and power down our devices and pick out the books to be read before bedtime as well as model chastity and charity and temperance and kindness and patience in our own lives.
As Rod Dreher suggests in “The Benedict Option,” “Christians are going to have to become better tellers of our own story,” for the screenwriters are already pitching a relentless campaign for that position, programming our children into an understanding of humanity and of God that is false, an understanding that fools’ men, born free, into living as slaves to bullhorns.
Bo Giertz, the most celebrated storyteller in my own tradition of Lutheranism, writes: “People often think they are free when they put themselves above God’s commands and don’t do what He wants. Actually, they only stop serving one power and begin serving another. Jesus tells us there is only one way to find true freedom: to remain in His Word, listening, receiving, and understanding. Then we perceive truth, and the truth sets us free, truly free.” (“Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent,” To Live with Christ, Bo Giertz, 224.)
We need more of this truth that “sets us free” in the stories our children are consuming. We need to read and discuss books with them that teach toward virtue and away from vice, so our youth can recognize tyranny and slavery to sin when they see it.
And they need to know they are not alone. When the time of persecution inevitably comes — when their character and endurance are put to the ultimate test — it is helpful for them to know that they are in good company. They stand with Jesus and the Apostle Paul and Samwise Gamgee and Josip Lasta and Charles Wallace and Katniss and the Rev. John Ames and Robbie Jones and saints and angels and hundreds of years of fictional heroes who have been tested and tried and even triumphed.
Think of it this way. A child is born having no formative memories of virtues and vices. At least, we hope he doesn’t, for firsthand knowledge of tyranny and sloth and intemperance would suggest that the child has been abandoned or deceived by a parent or abused by an adult or has endured some unthinkable suffering.
But a child can still know that patience is a virtue, that joy accompanies charity, that self-sacrifice has its rewards, and that chastity is a beautiful, worthy aspiration, because he has heard the story of Joseph in Egypt and Isaac on the altar and Stephen in Jerusalem and Frodo in Mordor and Bigwig in “Watership Down” and Anne in Avonlea. These characters and stories — fiction or nonfiction — give children memories of virtues before they experience them themselves. These stories teach children into a thought pattern and into a mindset and behavior that is virtuous, that is free.
As Wendell Berry writes in his essay “A Native Hill”: “It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” Our children need us to keep telling them good, true stories — especially the true story of their forefathers, both in the family and in the faith — so they can learn to be better than they are. For we have already seen that, if left to the world and its false stories, our children will learn to be worse than they are.
Katie Schuermann is a full-time homemaker, a part-time musician, and a seasonal writer. Find her books and more at katieschuermann.com.
Last night, Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake was brought up on stage with President Trump during his Save America rally in Mesa, Arizona, and she showed him how much she loves him with a big hug.
“I know for a fact President Trump loves Arizona, but President Trump, I think Arizona loves you even more. I really do,” said Kari Lake as the crowd erupted with cheers.
Lake called out the “know-nothing consultants” and the Fake News Media that says she needs to distance herself from President Trump, saying they need to “put down Hunter’s crack pipe.”
The Gateway Pundit previously reported on an epic interview where Kari told the crackheads at CNN, “You really need to put down the crack pipe, Hunter’s crack pipe. You really believe Joe Biden won by 81 million votes?”
She then promised to never back away from President Trump or the people of Arizona as she hugged President Trump.
Her opponent, racist Katie Hobbs, tweeted about Lake and President Trump Last night, attacking them and claiming “the 2020 election was the most secure in AZ history,” which is a complete lie.
No matter how many times Donald Trump and Kari Lake deny the truth (including at today’s rally), it won’t change the fact the 2020 election was the most secure in AZ history. Arizona will always be a model for free, fair elections — it will not be a breeding ground for more lies.
The Gateway Pundit reported extensively on the Maricopa County election audit, which found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent, illegal, or questionable ballots were counted. Katie Hobbs acted as the Arizona audit’s biggest opponent, fighting transparency and voter integrity every step of the process.
Hobbs is also a left-wing extremist who publicly referred to Republicans as “neo-Nazis” in the past. She now labels anybody who questions the 2020 election results a “conspiracy theorist.”
Hobbs must step down from her role as Secretary of State in her own election for governor, but she refuses. She will likely attempt to cheat again, just like in 2020, and Arizona needs to outnumber the massive voter fraud.
President Trump called Kari Lake up on stage with him last night, and the crowd went wild chanting her name. Here, she made a promise to stick with President Trump’s America First agenda and never step away from the people of Arizona.
Lake: Oh man, Arizona, you’re too good to me. Do you love this guy or what? I know for a fact President Trump loves Arizona, but President Trump, I think Arizona loves you even more. I really do. Is that right? Why wouldn’t we love him? Think about it, let’s go back in history here just a few years. record low inflation. Our 401K’s looks great. I just talked to a neighbor who’s lost a third of his retirement savings since Joe Biden took office. We were doing great. Our kids were safe because our streets were safe. He supported the police. We had great times under President Trump, and we miss you so much, President Trump. Now I gotta tell you, I have some of these know-nothing consultants who tell me, “You know, you really need to back away from President Trump right now.” And I say to them, “put down Hunter’s crack pipe right now.” Wouldn’t it be horrible? Wouldn’t it be horrible? What would it say about my character if I stepped away from my friends? If I step away from my friends, that means I would step away from you, and I will never step away from the people of Arizona. And so, for those know-nothing consultants and the media, I want to show you what it looks like when I step away from President Trump.
During the COVID-19 EU hearing, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, admitted that the vaccine had never been tested on its ability to prevent transmission, contrary to what was previously advertised.
Robert “Rob” Roos, a politician from the Netherlands who is also a member of the European Parliament, exposed the lie that people from all over the world had been led to believe.
“If you don’t get vaccinated, you’re antisocial. This is what the Dutch prime minister and health minister told us. You don’t get vaccinated just for yourself, but also for others. You do it for all of society, that’s what they said. Today, this turned out to be complete nonsense.” Roos said in his viral bombshell video posted on Twitter.
“In a COVID hearing in the European Parliament, one of the Pfizer directors just admitted to me at the time of introduction, the vaccine had never been tested on stopping the transmission of the virus,” Roos said.
In one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity, all the governments worked together with big pharma and big tech to deceive the general public into taking the COVID shot. They lied to us. They coerced millions of people into being vaccinated on the lie of preventing transmission.
“This removed the entire legal basis for the COVID passport. The COVID passport that led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society. I find this to be shocking, even criminal,” Roos added.
During the hearing, when asked by Ross if the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market, Janine Small responded while smiling:
“Regarding the question around did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market? No. We have to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market.”
Watch the video below:
🚨 BREAKING:
In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission.
“Get vaccinated for others” was always a lie.
The only purpose of the #COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated.
Dr. Ladapo recommended that young males from 18 to 39 refrain from taking the COVID Vaccine.
Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Parents in San Diego, California, are outraged over a flyer that was sent to public school children advertising the “queerest” Halloween party with a “family-friendly” drag show and sponsored by a gay bar and a gender reassignment surgery center. The flyer for the show was sent to parents of students in the Encinitas Union School District using its email platform. The event is being organized by Trans Family Support Services; a group based in San Diego that helps provide transgender support services for people across the country. The flyer advertised a “family-friendly drag show” as well as other Halloween events like a costume contest and trick-or-treating.
The school district explained that the email went out through PeachJar, a service that offers optional information about other events in the district. It added that the emails contained the notice, “Distribution of this flyer does not imply endorsement by the Encinitas union school district, its schools or staff and is distributed in compliance with federal and state law.”
Some parents are planning to attend the school district’s board meeting to protest the event and to denounce a comment made by a district employee calling them homophobes. Attorney Paul Jonna told KGTV-TV that a concerned parent called him and that he was requesting information from the school district.
“A lot of people are just generally not comfortable with the idea of pushing drag queen shows on little kids, but separate and apart from that, I think the biggest concern with this event are the sponsors,” Jonna said.
“We submitted a public records request to find out more about their involvement, their communication with these sponsors and sort of this event,” he added.
He added that the event was sponsored by Align Surgical Associates, which advertises as offering “gender confirmation surgery for transwomen, transmen, non-binary, and gender diverse individuals.” He said another sponsor, Rich’s San Diego, advertises itself as “San Diego’s largest and most popular gay nightclub.”
Kathie Moehlig, the founder and executive director of Trans Family Support Services, said they will not cancel the show.
“We’re not going to back down from doing what we know is right and appropriate to support these youth and their families, just because some people think they can use it as their mega piece to get talking points and get attention,” said Moehlig.
Here’s more about the planned drag show:
Parents to protest Encinitas Union School District for hosting ‘Queerfest’ drag show Halloween event www.youtube.com
Despite passing an executive order mandating that military members be treated according to their gender identity and not their biological sex, the Biden administration still requires biological men who identify as women to register for the military draft, while those who are “born female and have changed their gender to male” are off the hook.
The Selective Service tweeted a reminder recently telling parents that even “if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS.”
Parents, if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS. Learn more about who needs to register at https://t.co/GYbRK99c09. pic.twitter.com/tzW6uKkyl5
However, according to a chart provided by the Selective Service System, almost “all male U.S. citizens and male immigrants residing in the United States who are 18 through 25 years of age” are required to register, and individuals “who are born male and have changed their gender to female” are expressly included.
When they need you to go to war, the US government acknowledges that a person can NOT change sex. pic.twitter.com/rWzwT9SnWV
They actually say if you were born a male but identify as female, you still have to register. But if you were born a female and identify or transitioned into male, you don’t have to register.
Since the media likes to tout that illegal immigrants pay taxes and have drivers licenses, I'm assuming they also qualify for the draft also? Or are they exempt?
On “The News & Why It Matters,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Alex Stein and Chad Prather wondered when the Biden administration remembered that there’s actually a biological difference between men and women.
Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of “The News & Why It Matters” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday her departure from the Democratic Party. Gabbard said on a Twitter video that the Democratic Party is controlled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers” promoting division and “anti-white wokeism.”
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that’s under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly woke-ness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that enshrined in our Constitution, who are hostile towards people of faith and spirituality.”
I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf
“I believe in a government of the people, by the people and for the people,” she said. “Unfortunately, the Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government that is of, by and for the powerful elite. Now I’m calling on my fellow commonsense, independent minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party. If you can no longer stomach the direction of the so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, then I invite you to join me.”
Gabbard has been highly critical of the Democratic Party, accusing them of stoking racial divisions in America and supporting open borders. She also further criticized President Joe Biden’s administration’s response to the war in Ukraine, which has put the country on a collision course with nuclear-armed Russia.
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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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Nick Searcy and Joe Dan Gorman taking it up
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Tony, April, and Joe Dan Gorman… Joe Dan, April, and I want to thank you so much for the hospitality at your home. You made us feel so welcome. Check out his website – 
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