Republican lawmakers in Texas are pushing legislation that would make it a state felony to cross the border from Mexico illegally and establish a state unit of officers to assist with the arrests of migrants entering the state at places other than ports of entry.
Introduced by Texas GOP state Rep. Matt Schaefer, House Bill 20 would create a “Border Protection Unit” that allows its officers to “arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border illegally including with the use of non-deadly force.”
Schaefer’s bill, which will have to pass both of Texas’ Republican-controlled legislative chambers before the end of May, notes that officers serving in the unit must be U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents, and have law enforcement experience.
The state House proposal would also give officers serving in the unit immunity “from criminal and civil liability for any actions taken that are authorized” under the proposed law. In addition, civilians who have not been convicted of a felony could also be invited by the unit’s chief, which will be appointed by the governor, “to participate in unit operations and functions, but such persons may not have arresting authority unless trained and specifically authorized by the governor.”
National Guard agents place a barbed wire wall on the banks of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, on the border with Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, on March 8, 2023. (HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
People arrested for crossing into Texas illegally would face up to 10 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines for each violation.
Another bill introduced in the state Senate by GOP state Sen. Brian Birdwell, would make it a state crime for people who forgo legal immigration proceedings and cross into Texas illegally.
Birdwell’s legislation, which has received support from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, would “jail a person for a year or two years if the person tried to enter the country a second time” and “also punish the person to life in prison if they had been previously convicted of a felony,” according to the Texas Tribune.
The offices of Schaefer and Birdwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the proposed legislation, all of which is seen as a direct test to federal immigration law.
Under current federal law, individuals who are arrested for entering the country illegally could face a misdemeanor charge. Those arrested a second time under current law, could then be charged with a felony and banned from entering the country for a number of years.
Texas GOP House Speaker Dade Phelan said in a statement that “addressing our state’s border and humanitarian crisis” was a priority for lawmakers in the state and that the proposed border police — as well as a proposed Legislative Border Safety Oversight Committee, which would provide border safety policy recommendations and oversight to the new policing unit and work on issues in South Texas — was a “must-pass issue.”
The Republican proposals in the state legislature serve as an extended effort to advance Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to wrangle illegal border crossings known as Operation Lone Star.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference on Jan. 31, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
The $4 billion border initiative from the governor has included an increase in patrols near the border with Mexico, gridlocking traffic with increased commercial truck inspections, and building more barriers along the international boundary. The effort also included directing officers to detain migrants who trespass on private property and bused thousands of migrants to Democrat-led cities, including New York and Washington, D.C.
Civil rights organizations and Texas Democrats were quick to denounce the legislation in the state.
“It is designed to create racial profiling,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa told The Associated Press. “Something that is just horrendous.”
“I think the underlying fact that it is going to allow people to question our being American in our border communities and across Texas is unacceptable,” Texas state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, chairwoman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said, according to The Associated Press.
Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital when asked about the proposals in the state.
Since taking office in January 2021, President Biden has watched as illegal border crossings have surged. Many migrants who have turned themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents and were released into the U.S. interior as they await federal immigration court proceedings.
Migrants illegally cross into the United States via a hole in a fence in El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 22, 2022. (ALLISON DINNER/AFP via Getty Images)
There were over 1.7 million encounters of migrants at the border in FY 21 and more than 2.3 million in FY 22. So far in FY 2023, which began in October, there have been more than a million encounters.
The House Homeland Security Committee announced last month that it would hold its first field hearing on the crisis at the southern border on March 15, giving Republicans a chance to highlight what they say is the direct link between the chaos and disorder at the border and the Biden administration’s policies.
Democrats on the committee, however, are reportedly bailing from attending the hearing that would provide lawmakers with a first-hand look at the communities affected by the influx of migrants.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw, Greg Wehner, and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
President Biden is expected to announce an executive order on Tuesday that would expand background checks to more firearm sales by expanding the statutory definition of a firearms dealer, the White House said.
Biden is set to sign the order during a trip to Monterey Park, California, where he will meet with families and the community impacted by the mass shooting that killed 11 and injured nine others in January. The White House said the executive order will bring the U.S. “as close to universal background checks as possible” without additional legislation.
Under the executive order, Biden is also directing Attorney General Merrick Garland to develop and implement a plan to prevent former federally licensed firearms dealers, whose licenses have been revoked or surrendered, from continuing to engage in the business of dealing in firearms.
President Biden speaks during the annual House Democrats Issues Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel March 1, 2023, in Baltimore. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The order will also improve public awareness and increase the use of extreme protection, like “red flag” laws and safe storage of firearms.
Biden is directing his cabinet to encourage the “effective use” of those orders, by partnering with law enforcement, health care providers, educators and other community leaders. Biden is also directing members of his cabinet to expand existing federal campaigns and efforts to promote safe storage of firearms.
The order will also direct the secretary of transportation, in consultation with the Department of Justice, to work to “reduce the loss or theft of firearms during shipment,” and to improve the reporting of such losses or thefts by engaging with carriers and shippers.
The White House said the order will also hold the gun industry “accountable,” by providing the public and policymakers with “more information regarding federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a news conference to announce recent law enforcement action in transnational security threats case, at the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters on Jan. 27, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The order directs the attorney general to publicly release ATF records from the inspection of firearms dealers cited for violation of federal firearm laws.
The order also requires the Department of Defense to develop and implement principles to further firearm and public safety practices through DOD acquisition of firearms.
Biden’s order would also help “catch shooters by accelerating federal law enforcement’s reporting of ballistics data.”
The National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) currently allows federal, state and local law enforcement to match fired cartridge casings to the guns from which they were fired, making it easier for law enforcement to connect multiple crime scenes and catch shooters.
The executive order will direct all federal law enforcement agencies to issue “rigorous requirements regarding NIBIN data submission and use of this tool.”
President Biden, under the order, will also accelerate and intensify implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act; improve federal support for gun violence survivors, victims and survivors’ families, first responders to gun violence, and communities affected by gun violence; and advance congressional efforts to prevent the proliferation of firearms undetectable by metal detectors.
Guns are displayed in a store during the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival on Oct. 9, 2022, in Greeley, Pennsylvania. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The White House said the president will also encourage the Federal Trade Commission to issue a public report analyzing how gun manufacturers market firearms to minors.
A senior administration official touted Biden’s executive actions throughout his presidency related to reducing gun violence. That official said Biden will also continue to call on Congress to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
Biden, earlier this month, said he is going to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines “come hell or high water.”
Last June, after it was passed by both the Democrat-controlled House and Senate, Biden signed into law the most significant gun control bill in nearly 30 years.
Spearheaded by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, the measure came in the wake of recent mass shootings at the time and provides funding for states to create programs, often called red flag laws, that could keep weapons away from people who are a danger to themselves or others. The legislation also provides equal funding for states without red flag laws, like Texas, for crisis intervention programs like drug and veterans courts.
In addition, the measure enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, adds penalties for some gun criminals and provides funding for a variety of health and mental health-related programs. It also addresses closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which is a gap in federal law that means spousal domestic abusers can have gun rights taken away but not unmarried ones.
With regard to working with Congress on gun control legislation, a senior administration official said, “I think when you do gun violence policy, you always have to have hope. And I think there always is hope.”
“The president is going to continue to fight for common sense gun safety legislation, and there are all sorts of pieces of legislation we need,” the official said. “But in the meantime, [the president] wants the federal government to be doing all we can with existing authority to reduce gun violence. And that is what this executive order does.”
Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.
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Transgender activists and their supporters were triggered after Jordan Peterson launched an online invective against vaginoplasty surgery for children.
Peterson was responding to videos posted to social media showing a doctor from Boston Children’s Hospital explaining the “penile inversion vaginoplasty” procedure for biologically male people.
“In this procedure the surgical team is creating the outer and the inner vagina,”explained Dr. Oren Ganor. “The reason it’s called penile inversion vaginoplasty because we use the penile skin and the scrotal skin in order to reconstruct the vagina. But in doing so, we break it down to all of its components and we use some of the tissue to reconstruct things the way they were supposed to be for that patient.”
Peterson responded to the video with a one-word tweet, saying simply, “Prison.”
And it's not a vagina. It's a hole for another man to f**k. And that's that. https://t.co/E03wxm8fCF
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 12, 2023
“And it’s not a vagina. It’s a hole for another man to f**k. And that’s that,” he added in another tweet.
Supporters and allies of the transgender agenda were angered by Peterson’s description of the operation.
“At this point Jordan is pure hatred and bigotry walking around in a trench coat, pretending to be an intellectual,” read one response.
“Oh this sad little pathetic man who needs to denigrate women to boost his fragile ego,”responded a woman identifying as a professor and a feminist.
“He’s claiming to be talking about and in defense of the bodies of children. The post is not age restricted, and would be disgusting even if kids couldn’t see it. You won’t find a single anti-trans crusader who doesn’t sexually harass children like this,”said another person identifying as a transexual communist.
“I’m tired of transphobes seeing parts of trans people’s identity (in this case, a trans woman wanting a vagina) and sexualizing it,”read another response.
Others inexplicably accused him of being homosexual over the comment.
Here’s more from Jordan Peterson:
Jordan Peterson Knows Why We’re Obsessed with Aliens | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 107 www.youtube.com
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Rebecca F. Rothstein, a teacher at North Bethesda Middle School in the Montgomery County School District, posted multiple controversial videos to her TikTok account – which has since been deactivated.
Rothstein, who stated that she is “proud as f*** to be liberal,” insisted that educators should not prioritize teaching students math and science but instead provide lessons on anti-racism and “how to be kind.”
“As a teacher, I wish we could do more with our students, like teach anti-racism and how to be kind people. Does anyone else feel like … we can skip the math, skip the science, like we’ll do that next year. Maybe this year we focus on teaching our youth how to be anti-racist,” she said in one TikTok video.
In another social media post, Rothstein said, “F*** capitalism” and bragged about providing her students with “Marxist literature.”
“Tired after a long day of indoctrinating students,” she stated.
Rothstein told her more than 13,000 TikTok followers that she had to “un-brainwash” herself to “fall in love” with socialism and communism.
“If everyone had the same amount of money, then money wouldn’t be worth anything,” she said.
Rothstein insisted that “capitalism must go” and said that “revolutions involve violence.”
The teacher also defended the summer 2020 riots that destroyed cities and small businesses.
“There are so many a******* in my comments saying, ‘What about all the burning of the buildings, and the looting and the rioting?’ Why do you care more about buildings than human lives? It’s like you’re stomping around, being like, ‘All buildings matter.’ No, no, they don’t. And the fact that you don’t understand where the rage is coming from, why there is so much rage of burning buildings, that’s the exact problem,” Rothstein said.
She continued by stating that she is “f***ing angry” about “the patriarchy,” “racism,” and “police brutality.”
Rothstein shared that she believes “boys should get vasectomies at birth, or when it is safe to do so” and then asked, “Why is preventing pregnancy just on the woman?”
In another TikTok video, she claimed that “all white people experience white privilege” and noted that being “silent on Palestine” is “rooted in white supremacy.”
“I’m proud of my ability to recognize white privilege,” Rothstein said. “White privilege is not about work ethic. White privilege is about the color of your skin.”
Neither Rothstein nor Montgomery County School District replied to a request for comment, Fox News Digital reported.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
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We have no free market and never will have one so long as the Federal Reserve exists in its current form. It is the unelected judge, jury, and executioner of the economy that can pick winners and losers by manipulating credit and monetary policy to artificially inflate certain investments and investors at the expense of others. Years of unnaturally low interest rates have enriched well-connected woke elites at the expense of consumers and savers. Now that their Ponzi scheme is coming due, with the collapse of one of the wokest banks and the vicious cycle of stagflation and reliance on loose money, it’s time for conservatives and GOP presidential candidates to revisit the idea of either abolishing or severely limiting the role of the Fed.
For the past several generations, the Democrat Party thrived on class warfare. Democrats claimed that conservatives elevated the wealthy at the expense of the working class simply because they didn’t support free stuff and redistribution of wealth through an extremely progressive income tax on legitimately earned wealth. But it turns out that their policies have actually artificially enriched the wealthy and harmed middle-income consumers and savers, but unlike with our policies, the wealthy never earned these tendentious favors, nor are they constitutional.
In many respects, the Federal Reserve has more power than all three branches of government put together, yet the members never stand for reelection. For years, the Federal Reserve has created endless inflation and loose credit with near-zero interest rates and by buying up trillions of dollars of securities and treasuries. It distorted the market, allowed woke banks like Silicon Valley Bank to overextend themselves, and even become the primary lender for solar financing in America, based on Monopoly money.
Now that the Fed inevitably was forced to hike interest rates to curb some of the historic inflation it helped create, Silicon Valley Bank, along with Signature Bank in New York (the bank Barney Frank joined when he left Congress), collapsed and was taken over by the FDIC. But just like a frustrated teen losing a video game, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are pulling the plug on the game so that their buddies don’t lose. Remember, until Friday, SVB’s CEO, Gregory Becker, was on the board of directors at the San Francisco Fed. It’s one big game of, by, and for the politically connected venture socialists.
Less than 10 hours after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen promised there would be no new bank bailout, the Federal Reserve issued a statement Sunday evening announcing a spectacular bailout of every penny of deposits both at SVB and at Signature Bank. Except this one, unlike in 2008, won’t even require a vote in Congress, because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have the backhanded tools to print money, even though we have reached the statutory debt limit.
“The financing will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral,” wrote the Fed. “These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.
In other words, they are back to printing money. The Fed has already grown its balance sheet by $4.7 trillion during the frenetic COVID money-pumping scheme (in addition to Congress’ $5.5 trillion fiscal stimulus), and has only off-loaded roughly $600 billion over the past year.
This was after many preceding years of ultra-loose monetary policy. Finally, as inflation reached record highs last year, the Fed began to ease up on those policies. Not any more! The Fed is promising to buy the assets “at par,” not at market value, which will have the effect of loosening bank credit beyond belief.
Additionally, along with the Treasury Department, the Fed will make $25 billion available as a backstop to this quantitative easing scam. The debt limit is a complete mockery, because evidently the Treasury Department can come up with vast sums of money on the fly, and this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Once the initial shock of this policy sets in, the debate will merely be over how many hundreds of billions are offered to stem the panic from other banks.
The immediate effect of this bailout will be to halt all interest rate hikes. As of this morning, the yield on the two-year Treasury note was down more than 80 basis points since last week, in anticipation of the return to loose credit. So the government will crush consumers with record inflation to bail out the well-connected woke (ESG-supporting) elites who took advantage of the unnatural and manipulated easy credit. John Edwards was indeed correct that there are two Americas, except it’s not because of a lack of government involvement. It’s because of too much big government, and particularly an unelected fourth branch of government that should be abolished.
If it’s impractical to immediately abolish the Federal Reserve, we should at a minimum remove its power to serve as both the arsonist and the firefighter. Congress must repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins bill from 1978, which empowers the Fed with a “dual mandate” to achieve maximum sustainable employment and keep prices stable. The Fed should be forced to focus solely on price stability. This would take “the game” out of the Fed. If it has no ability to create stimulus and provide monetary morphine, Wall Street can’t anticipate it and build an artificial economy based on its nourishment.
Market-distorting monetary manipulations are no different from market-distorting fiscal policy from the government. This is how the statists have successfully dissuaded us from ever limiting government. “You really plan to pull the rug out from under such-and-such industry?” the forces of special interests groan, be it health care or the financial sector. The same applies to monetary policy. There is no reason why we should allow the Fed to use monetary stimulus in such an officious manner that the entire market would collapse without the monetary morphine, even during robust economic growth.
The Fed should also be banned from buying up other securities and bonds, such as mortgage-backed securities from Freddie and Fannie. We must stop distorting the markets by encouraging investments on the basis of how much capital is available instead of real growth in a specific industry. It’s time to go back to the days of real economic growth built on the fiscal equivalent of protein and healthy fats, not sugar and carbs for the well-connected elites involved in regulatory capture.
We have enough lawless, unelected branches of government. It’s time to stop creating asset bubbles and misallocation of resources and return to a true organic equities market that reflects the economic realities of America. That will not happen until the Fed is brought under the checks and balances of the republic. As Andrew Jackson warned of a central bank, “The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government … [is] but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R.) / Getty Images
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Less than one month into her first term as Arkansas governor, Sarah Sanders was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, a speaking slot typically granted to rising stars in the party with the intent to elevate them onto the national stage. But stepping onto the national stage doesn’t appear to be Sanders’s goal—at least for now.
In her address, she used Arkansas as the example of what Republicans are doing across the country. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” Sanders said. ”We will educate, not indoctrinate our kids, and put students on a path to success.”
In an hour-long interview, the former White House press secretary dodged questions about the 2024 election, diverting the conversation back to what she’s doing in Arkansas.
She already has substantive accomplishments to point to. This past Tuesday, exactly one month after her State of the Union response, the state legislature passed Sanders’s signature legislation, an ambitious overhaul of Arkansas schools, and she has already signed it into law. Corey DeAngelis, a leading advocate for school choice, said Arkansas is now the “gold standard for educational freedom.”
The bill is a kitchen-sink approach to education reform—in addition to establishing universal school choice, it yanks obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, sets stringent new learning standards, and raises the base teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.
“This is what bold conservative education legislation looks like,” Sanders said from the governor’s office, where she monitored the debate on the bill taking place on the other side of the Capitol.
And Sanders says Arkansas as a whole can be the “blueprint” for what conservative states could do.
Sanders joins a crowd of superstar Republican governors making headway by focusing on schools, and armed with a legislature of staunch conservatives, she’s charging ahead of other states. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is still fighting to get the sorts of reforms passed by Arkansas in Sanders’s first few weeks over hurdles in his legislature—his universal school choice bill, for example, faces even some Republican opposition. Sanders came out of her long campaign in Arkansas eager to establish herself as the “Education Governor” and thus far is doing just that.
Sanders’s growing profile has also made her a target of Democratic activists and politicians. Washington Post columnists are writing hit pieces questioning why anyone would move to Arkansas: “Good luck recruiting Californians for Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,” wrote Philip Bump. Shortly after Sanders’s national address, California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom took aim at Arkansas’s crime rate and last week was taking shots on Twitter about local Arkansas pieces of legislation.
Sanders acknowledges that she’s drawing more scrutiny to her state, but she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “We outkick our coverage, frankly, in a lot of places,” she said.
“When it comes to politicians on the national stage for a small state, we have some pretty big names out there,” the governor said. “I’m sure you’ll find people that will disagree, but my opinion is that it’s a good thing for our state, and I plan on using that platform to better us.”
Sanders says the critics are unavoidable. “I try to tune it out and stay focused on the objectives in front of us. There are people who wouldn’t care what’s in the bill, they’re gonna hate it simply because I’m associated with it. They don’t want to see me be successful. Certainly, that’s disappointing, but not surprising, and it’s not gonna slow us down from doing things that we feel like are the right thing to do.”
Sanders sharpened her ability to drown out the critics as White House press secretary. Not only was Sanders the longest-serving Trump administration press secretary—she was the only person to hold the job for more than a year—she was also the most successful, taking over as the daily briefing became a media feeding frenzy and adding a semblance of order to the chaos. She remains beloved by staff, some of whom followed her to Arkansas, and her former boss, to whom she still talks regularly.
Though Sanders is taking advantage of lessons learned at the White House, former colleagues say she’s also developed the ability to talk fluently about policy.
“We used to tell her, you need to get more detail,” said a former White House colleague. “Now the opposite is the case. She’s gone from somebody who was laser-focused on communications with a thin understanding of the policy to somebody who is a policy expert. It’s impressive to me.”
It’s not the first transformation of her career, Sanders says. When she first joined the Donald Trump campaign, she never foresaw that she’d become the lead spokeswoman for Trump’s administration.
“I was much more on the strategy and political operation side, and really didn’t see myself as a front person or the public-facing individual,” she explained.
Sanders joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to do coalition-building in the South, but after a few TV appearances, Trump called her to say he wanted to see her on television every day. And at the White House, after Sanders filled in for then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer while serving as his deputy, Trump tapped her to fill the job.
Her rise to the Arkansas governorship is a different story. Sanders announced her run in January 2021 and, as the prohibitive favorite from the outset, had two years to prepare for the job. It’s during that time that she decided she wanted to be the “Education Governor”—she not only became an expert on the issue but also gained confidence that she had to make it her trademark legislation.
“I went to all 75 counties,” Sanders said. “Everywhere I went as I traveled on the campaign for two years, every community wants their kids to do better. If we don’t have a good education system in place, then we are not setting our kids up for success.”
On the ground in Arkansas, Republicans say Sanders has brought a “new energy” to the legislature. “The whole atmosphere and mood of everything is different,” said Bart Hester, who leads the state’s upper chamber. “It’s such a fun energy, an exciting and new energy. It’s fun to come in everyday.”
Hester says the onslaught of opposition from teachers’ unions against the education bill was no match for Sanders.
“We have a governor now where members are more scared of her than they are their superintendents or the teacher union—we’ve never experienced that,” Hester said. “They don’t want to disappoint her—they know that she’s super popular, they don’t want to be the guy that was against their number-one priority.”
Sanders scoffs at suggestions that her education plan was a “copycat” of legislation championed by DeSantis, another high-profile Republican governor. “Hard to copy when ours is much bigger and goes much further,” Sanders said. But she has nothing negative to say about her Republican counterpart in Florida, and says there’s a “great sense of camaraderie and willingness to share best practices” between her and DeSantis, who has emerged as Trump’s chief competition in the Republican Party.
Sanders is yet to weigh in on who the Republican presidential nominee should be in 2024—her “focus is solely on Arkansas,” she says, in the same way every ambitious and upwardly mobile politician does. And Trump, her former boss, reportedly called Sanders in recent weeks to ask for her endorsement, which still hasn’t come.
But she also said she “maintains a great relationship” with Trump, and left the door open for an endorsement in the future.
“When the time comes, maybe, but right now, I don’t want to do anything that takes away from the huge agenda list that we have to get done here in Arkansas,” Sanders said. “I don’t intend on slowing down on that front at any point soon. And so I don’t want to do anything that takes away, not just my attention, but also the attention of what we’re accomplishing.”
A former White House colleague who remains close to Sanders doesn’t expect her 2024 neutrality to change any time soon. “Trump’s not her boss anymore,” the former colleague said. “Her boss is the people of Arkansas, and that’s where I assume her priorities will lie.”
Republicans in the state appreciate her focus on Arkansas and recognize she’s putting the work they’re doing in the Capitol first. “Everyone wants a minute with her—she can be Sarah the national celebrity, or Sarah the governor, and she only has so many minutes in a day,” Hester said. “She is spending those minutes as Sarah the governor.”
Republican state senator Matt McKee says Sanders has the whole legislature bullish on Arkansas.
“I know Florida’s been at the forefront, Texas has done things, but Arkansas can be the place,” McKee said.
Sanders says her appreciation for Arkansas has grown since moving her family back to her home state. After traveling to each county for her campaign, she has enhanced her ability to sell the state to visitors. The governor boasts that she can point to the best place to eat in any Arkansas town—this reporter was sent to CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Russellville.
When it comes to dining, things are going more smoothly for Sanders in Arkansas. Thus far, she says she hasn’t been denied service, as she was in 2019 at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia.
“You know, knock on wood, I have not been asked to leave any restaurant so far,” Sanders said. “It’s amazing to be home.”
Friday, in Sacramento, Calif., a group of detransitioners, parents, and allies gathered at the state capitol building in honor of Detrans Awareness Day. They came together to raise awareness about the growing group of individuals who say they’ve been irreparably harmed by the gender industry.
Among them is Prisha Mosley, a female detransitioner who was prescribed male hormones as a minor and underwent a double mastectomy shortly after turning 18. Today at 25, Mosley describes feeling like a “medical monster,” suffering from a long list of prolonged side effects, including such severe vaginal atrophy that she can no longer use tampons.
The effects of the “mutilation” that Mosley describes falling victim to as a child is not unlike the horrific procedure of female genital mutilation, which involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia.
As a result of her medical transition, Mosley is unable to have a normal sex life, says she feels as though she’s “robbing” her boyfriend of her breasts, and doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to bear her own children.
According to data from the World Health Organization, more than 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to FGM and, annually, more than 3 million girls are still at risk of being subjected to the procedure. FGM is nearly universally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women, and a violation of the rights of children. And yet, in the U.S., under the guise of “gender-affirming care,” a modern-day version of the practice is being widely accepted and promoted to young girls.
Join me for Detrans Awareness at the California Capitol on March 10th! Dress warm it might be raining! pic.twitter.com/XOE9YbRvkK
Instead of calling it FGM, activists have bubble wrapped their modern-day mutilation in pleasant-sounding terms such “top surgery,” “bottom surgery,” and “reversible” hormonal treatments for children and adults who identify as transgender.
Yet, like FGM, procedures offered to those who suffer from body image issues and/or gender confusion incorporate medical interventions that can mutilate their sex organs. These effects aren’t limited to vulvoplasties and hysterectomies, which are two of the more extreme surgical procedures offered under “gender-affirming care.”
As Jamie Reed, a whistleblower who oversaw the treatment of thousands of minors at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, recently described:
“[G]irls were disturbed by the effects of testosterone on their clitoris, which enlarges and grows into what looks like a microphallus, or a tiny penis. I counseled one patient whose enlarged clitoris now extended below her vulva, and it chafed and rubbed painfully in her jeans. I advised her to get the kind of compression undergarments worn by biological men who dress to pass as female. At the end of the call I thought to myself, ‘Wow, we hurt this kid.’
“There are rare conditions in which babies are born with atypical genitalia—cases that call for sophisticated care and compassion. But clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals—and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet. They had no idea who they were going to be as adults. Yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.”
This is an atrocity. And disproportionately, it’s an atrocity that’s affecting the bodies of women, as girls account for a significant majority of minors receiving “gender-affirming care.”
While critics are quick to dismiss evidence of “social contagion” among teenage girls, even the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and its activist president, Dr. Marci Bowers, have recognized that social influences may be driving some transgender identification in youth.
This perhaps explains why detransitioners are a rapidly-growing group gaining more visibility and attention, despite claims by some transgender activists that detransitioning is rare or not a “real thing.” Yet the harrowing stories of former trans-identified individuals serve as a cautionary tale against medical transitioning, as professionals appear either unable or unwilling to treat the often-severe medical complications caused by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
At its root, gender ideology teaches vulnerable and impressionable girls to medicalize the natural insecurities that they face. In pursuit of “acceptance,” professionals then send them down a devastating path that includes drugs used to castrate male sex offenders and, in some cases, irreversible surgeries.
European countries such as the U.K., Sweden, Finland, and most recently Norway have moved to sharply limit these practices for minors after a systematic review of evidence found that the risks to “gender-affirming care” outweigh any benefits.
Here in the U.S., aside from a few brave states such as Florida pushing back on “gender-affirming care,” we’re moving in the opposite direction. Activists, medical professionals, and politicians are doubling down on their support for the mutilation of healthy bodies by smearing attempts to ban these procedures as bigoted and dangerous—attacks not unlike those once used to legalize and normalize FGM.
For his part, President Joe Biden has made his position clear: “Affirming your child’s identity is one of the most powerful things you can do to keep them safe and healthy,” he said in a 2022 video message speaking directly to parents.
To transgender Americans of all ages, I want you to know that you are so brave. You belong. I have your back. pic.twitter.com/mD4F0m3rU1
But sadly for the Biden administration, it’s not enough to irreversibly destroy the future sex lives and reproductive abilities of youth by encouraging experimental drugs and treatments in the U.S. According to a leaked internal memo from Secretary Antony Blinken, the Biden administration may begin pressuring other countries to push vulnerable youth into hormones and surgeries.
As Manhattan Institute scholar Leor Sapir put it, “Under President Biden, it would appear that cultural arrogance and ‘colonialism’ (as defined in the contemporary academy) are once again staples of American foreign policy.”
With Detrans Awareness Day following on the heels of International Women’s Day this week, it’s time to stop mincing words. We must treat gender ideology as a human rights issue. And we must be clear, the Biden administration is on the wrong side.
The Biden administration announced Monday that it is moving forward with approving a massive 30-year oil drilling project in Alaska over objections from climate activists and Democratic lawmakers about its environmental impact.
The Department of Interior (DOI) approved three of the five drilling sites proposed by oil company ConocoPhillips as part of its Willow Project in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) located in North Slope Borough, Alaska. ConocoPhillips previously stated that, for the project to remain economically viable, the federal government would need to approve at least three of the sites.
According to the record of decision published by the Bureau of Land Management, the administration is also flatly rejecting the two other drilling sites and associated infrastructure proposed by ConocoPhillips. And the Houston-based company agreed to forfeit about 68,000 acres of drilling rights that it owns for a separate project.
The decision noted that the approved option would produce the fewest greenhouse gas emissions compared to all alternatives and the DOI said, by denying two of the drilling sites, it was “substantially reducing the size of the project.”
President Biden is pictured next to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland at the White House on Oct. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“The Record of Decision denies two of the five drill site pads proposed by ConocoPhillips, reducing the project’s drill pads by 40 percent,” the DOI said in a statement. “The concurrent relinquishment of 68,000 acres by the company of its existing northernmost and southernmost leases within the Bear Tooth Unit reduces the Bear Tooth Unit’s footprint in the NPR-A by one-third.”
“This reduces the project’s freshwater use and eliminates all infrastructure related to the two rejected drill sites, including approximately 11 miles of roads, 20 miles of pipelines, and 133 acres of gravel, all of which reduces potential impacts to caribou migration and subsistence users.”
While the DOI issued the final decision Monday morning, President Biden and senior White House officials have been actively involved in overseeing the approval process.
The final record of decision, meanwhile, comes years after ConocoPhillips first proposed the project. Willow was originally approved under the Trump administration before a federal judge ordered the government to conduct a more rigorous environmental analysis following a legal challenge from climate advocacy groups.
The company has forecasted the project will produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day, create more than 2,500 construction jobs and 300 long-term jobs, and deliver as much as $17 billion in revenue for the federal government, Alaska and local communities, many of which are Indigenous. The project will lead to the construction of up to 250 wells, multiple pipelines, a central processing plant, an airport and a gravel mine.
Over its three-decade lifespan, Willow is projected to produce up to 614 million barrels of oil. In 2022, producers in the U.S. drilled for 4.3 billion barrels of oil on federal lands and waters.
Oil pipelines stretch across the landscape outside Nuiqsut, Alaska, where ConocoPhillips operates the Alpine Field on May 28, 2019. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“The permitting and environmental review process encompassed a period of well over two years and included multiple rounds of public comment and public meetings with Alaska Native stakeholders,” Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) President Julie Kitka wrote in a letter to Haaland last year.
“AFN understands that the need for a proactive whole of government approach to deal with climate change; however fossil fuels will be with us for quite some time to come, and projects like Willow can help bridge the gap,” Kitka continued. “The Willow Project could jumpstart our economy with thousands of jobs and be a model in community and environmental stewardship for future opportunities.”
In addition to the AFN, the largest group representing Natives in Alaska, Willow also received strong support from the state’s entire legislature, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, labor unions, elected leaders of the North Slope Borough and Alaska’s entire congressional delegation — Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola — over the last year.
During an hour-long meeting between Biden and the Alaska congressional delegation at the White House earlier this month, Sullivan handed the president a unanimous bipartisan resolution passed by the state’s legislature in support of the project.
“I’m Yupik. We have Athabascans in this audience, we have Tlingits, we have Eyaks,” Peltola said during a March 1 event in support of Willow. “Across the board, Alaska Natives are standing in support with Inupiaqs … across America there is no issue that has 100% unanimous support but clearly there is the preponderance of Inupiaqs who are in support of this. The majority of Alaska Natives, and the majority of Alaskans are in support of this.”
Climate activists hold a demonstration to urge President Biden to reject the Willow Project at the Department of the Interior headquarters on Nov. 17 in Washington, D.C. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Sunrise AU)
However, environmentalists and climate-focused Democratic lawmakers have blasted the project and urged Biden to completely reject its permits. It is estimated to produce 278 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of the carbon footprint of two million cars. Groups like Earthjustice have labeled Willow as a “carbon bomb” and, following reports Friday evening that the DOI would sign off on it, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., characterized the decision as a “complete betrayal.”
THE WORDS OF CLIMATE TERRORISTS, AND THE CLIMATE RELIGIOUS CULT.
“If allowed to proceed, the Willow [Master Development Plan] would pose a significant threat to U.S. progress on climate issues,” several House and Senate Democrats wrote to Biden on March 3. “Climate damage is unlikely to stop with the first phase of the Willow project; your administration needs to draw the line now.“
“You can stop this ill-conceived and misguided project,” they continued. “We therefore ask your administration to reject the Willow [Master Development Plan], choose the no-action alternative, and fundamentally reconsider this unsustainable approach to managing the Western Arctic.“
Biden remarked in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7 that the U.S. would “need oil and gas for a while.” (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The letter — led by House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — added that the project alone would cause $19.8 billion worth of “climate-related damages.”
Progressive lawmakers Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also signed the letter.
Though, in an apparent attempt to soften the blow of its Willow approval, the Biden administration announced Sunday that it would indefinitely block 16 million acres of federal land and water in Alaska near the site of the Willow Project from future fossil fuel drilling.
A former senior Bureau of Land Management official told Fox News Digital on Sunday the action was a “totally political decision” and not based in science. But activists said the move was not enough to blunt the impacts of Willow.
“These conservation decisions by the Biden administration are positive steps, but not nearly sufficient to blunt the impact of any version of the Willow oil and gas project,” Karlin Itchoak, the Alaska senior regional director for The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.
“We cannot allow ConocoPhillips to accelerate the climate crisis.“
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The Federal Government was forced to pause the “Proud Boys’” trial regarding J6 insurrection and you will never guess why.
Special Agent Nicole Miller accidentally revealed that her boss ORDERED her to destroy 338 items of evidence via chat logs that were leaked. That’s bad news for the prosecution. And now it’s official. We are living under the very government our founding fathers warned us against.
Apparently, Miller not only lied to the defense, but also may have spied on attorney-client communications (last I checked, these fall under the ‘privileged’ category) after also being asked to “edit out that I was present” during a meeting with a confidential informant. I guess this is the kind of ‘higher loyalty’ James Comey wrote about.
As part of her testimony, prosecutors shared with defense lawyers a set of internal FBI messages that Miller had sent and received from colleagues related to the case — a standard production of evidence in criminal cases. To compile those exchanges, FBI headquarters sent Miller a spreadsheet of her messages — culled from a computer network classified at the “secret” level. Miller then reviewed the messages and filtered them to ensure only relevant, unclassified exchanges were included.
Miller sent her final list to prosecutors, who then packaged the messages into an Excel spreadsheet that they provided to defense lawyers. But unbeknownst to them, the messages Miller initially filtered out — including some that DOJ officials say are likely classified — were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet. Defense counsel stumbled upon them and began grilling Miller about them in front of jurors in the case.
Overnight, Justice Department attorneys told the defense team they were concerned there had been a “spill” of classified information in the hidden messages they accessed. And on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly paused the trial — already in its third month — to determine how to handle the error.
It’s the latest hiccup in a seditious conspiracy trial that has been marked by excruciating delays and extended legal disputes. Prosecutors say Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and four leaders of the group schemed to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The group, according to the Justice Department, split into teams that helped engineer the breach of police lines and, ultimately, the building itself, when one of the defendants, Dominic Pezzola, smashed a Senate-wing window with a stolen riot shield.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, who is supervising the case for the Justice Department, acknowledged the likely “spill” of classified information Thursday morning. She raised particular concerns about a message sent to Miller by another agent who works on covert activity — and who she said did not work on the Proud Boys case — describing a supervisor’s order to “destroy 338 items of evidence.”
“That could impact a classified equity,” Ballantine said.
‘describing a supervisor’s order to “destroy 338 items of evidence.”’
Likely Story
I find the timing of Ballantine’s “classified” claim to be pretty fishy. Just this week, Tucker Carlsen unleashed quite a bit of video from this so-called insurrection. However, there’s only one problem. The insurrection part is missing.
For example, we all know the story of the QAnon Shaman.
Jacob Chansley, the spear-carrying Jan. 6 rioter whose horned fur hat, bare chest and face paint made him one of the more recognizable figures in the assault on the Capitol, was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
However, Carlsen revealed that video captures Chansley’s movements in the capitol that day. He went from room to room, offering up prayers, thanking police for their hard work, while escorted at all times by capitol police. The idea that anyone else would face a prison sentence after Carlsen’s big reveal is preposterous.
No wonder the prosecutor had to employ a stall tactic. Their entire case is in shambles.
Politico continues:
Defense lawyers cried foul, though, noting that the government’s claims of “classified” material arrived just as the defense sounded the alarm about the content of some of the inadvertently disclosed messages. While Miller testified Wednesday she had produced about “25 rows” of messages, defense lawyers said there were thousands of rows of hidden messages that included contents they contended were directly relevant to their case.
Some of the messages appeared to reveal that FBI agents accessed contacts between defendant Zachary Rehl and his attorney, which led Miller to tell a colleague she thought Rehl would take his case to trial. In another message, an FBI agent tells Miller, “You need to go into that CHS report you just put and edit out that I was present.” After defense attorneys began to press Miller about the attorney-client messages on Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors objected, and Kelly halted the trial to permit the parties to debate the matter.
After hearing arguments Thursday, Kelly ordered defense attorneys to refrain from reviewing or disseminating the messages until the FBI was able to conduct a classification review, a process that Ballantine said could likely be completed by the end of the day Thursday.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
Telling a group of lawyers not to look at those messages is like telling people not to look at a car crash on the interstate. Worse, it’s like telling people not to look at the files on the Hunter Biden laptop. Any attorney worth their salt is definitely viewing those chats, before they mysteriously vanish faster than a Clinton-accuser.
The flare-up comes as prosecutors are nearing the end of their case against the Proud Boys. They’ve laid out evidence showing that Tarrio and his allies developed a sense of existential dread about a Biden presidency and quickly embraced Trump’s claims of fraud in the days and weeks after his defeat in the 2020 election. As Jan. 6 neared, the group’s leaders grew increasingly disillusioned with police — who they accused of insufficiently acting to investigate a man who stabbed several Proud Boys at a December 2020 rally in Washington. And they set up a new chapter, dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense,” that included men they believed would follow orders.
A week before Jan. 6, Tarrio received a document from a girlfriend titled “1776 Returns” that sketched out a plan to occupy federal buildings in order to derail and delay Congress’ proceedings to certify the 2020 election.
Defense attorneys have contended that the group is little more than a glorified drinking club that had no actual plan to either storm the Capitol or prevent Biden from taking office. Miller’s testimony portrayed the group’s march through Washington on Jan. 6 as an organized and concerted advance toward the Capitol that pinpointed weaknesses in Capitol Police defenses and exploited them to help facilitate the breach of the Capitol.
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Feminist author Naomi Wolf offered a formal apology to conservatives who “put America first” after reviewing newly-released footage of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
“Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day,” Wolf said in a lengthy post on Substack Thursday.
“Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry. I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC and the New York Times,” Wolf also said.
“Anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of the day so as to distort the complexity of its actual history — must also be held accountable,” she added.
Wolf compared the release of the new January 6 footage to Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, noting that Leftists lionized the latter while condemning the former.
Everyone in my former 'tribe' is upset that @TuckerCarlson aired government-held footage of events off public interest, and I keep thinking about how we (on the left) rightly lionized Daniel Ellsberg after he released the Pentagon Papers…
Wolf, a “lifelong liberal and civil libertarian” is a prominent feminist, author, commentator, and periodic guest on Fox News Channel shows. She was a figurehead of 1990s “third wave feminism” and was once a “Democratic Party insider,” according to Business Insider. Wolf’s “impeccable” Democratic Party bonafides came into question when “The Beauty Myth” author gave an interview to Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson in 2021 and later appeared on Steve Bannon’s “WarRoom” podcast, the outlet also said. Wolf was a vocal opponent of COVID lockdowns and related policies. The Yale alum lead a protest against her alma mater’s vaccine policy in December 2022.
Why is she apologizing now?
Wolf says her apology was spurred by the recent release of previously unseen footage of the January 6 Capitol riot. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, who aired portions of the footage on his nightly show earlier this week.
Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) denounced the decision to air the footage.
In her letter, Wolf specifically cites footage of “Q-Anon Shaman” Jacob Chansley and Officer Brian Sicknick which appear to contravene the narratives she previously espoused.
How has Wolf’s apology been received?
“This is pretty courageous,” Jason Whitlock tweeted Friday in response to Wolf’s apology.
“I am one of those people who was targeted and brutalized in all of this horrific dishonesty. I still am,” Walkaway campaign founder Brandon Straka tweeted.
“This helps.”
I am one of the people who was targeted and brutalized in all of this horrific dishonesty. I still am.
“Amazing letter from Naomi Wolf. Well done to her. I do not define myself politically but these lies affected us all & it’s been years of frustration (agony at times) watching them play out & seeing so many be deceived,” journalist Lara Logan tweeted Friday.
Amazing letter from Naomi Wolf. Well done to her. I do not define myself politically but these lies affected us all & it’s been years of frustration (agony at times) watching them play out & seeing so many be deceived.
“It may be possible — if we can take off the tinfoil hat — that there is not a vast conspiracy,” Democrat Colin Allred of Texas scoffed at independent journalist Matt Taibbi during Thursday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing. But while Allred was busy deriding Taibbi and fellow witness, journalist Michael Shellenberger, the public was digesting the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” — which contained yet further proof that the government funds and leads a sprawling Censorship Complex.
Taibbi dropped the Twitter thread about an hour before the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing began. And notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the players revealed in the 17-or-so earlier installments of the “Twitter Files,” Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.
But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans.
In his prepared testimony for the subcommittee, Shellenberger spoke of the censorship slide he saw in reviewing the internal Twitter communications. “The bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from ‘countering terrorism’ to ‘countering extremism’ to ‘countering simple misinformation.’ Otherwise known as being wrong on the internet,” Shellenberger testified.
“The government no longer needs the predicate of calling you a terrorist or an extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity,” Shellenberger continued. “The only predicate it needs is the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.”
Being “wrong” isn’t even a prerequisite for censorship requests, however, with the Virality Project headed out of the Stanford Internet Observatory reportedly pushing “multiple platforms” to censor “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.”
An excerpt showed this verboten category included “viral posts of individuals expressing vaccine hesitancy, or stories of true vaccine side effects,” which the so-called disinformation experts acknowledged might “not clearly” be “mis or disinformation, but it may be malinformation (exaggerated or misleading).”
Silencing such speech is bad enough, but the Virality Project “added to this bucket” of “true content” worthy of censorship: “true posts which could fuel hesitancy, such as individual countries banning certain vaccines.”
Let that sink in for a minute. The Virality Project — more on that shortly — pushed “multiple platforms” to take action against individuals posting true news reports of countries banning certain vaccines. And why? Because it might make individuals “hesitant” to receive a Covid shot.
So who is this overlord of information, the Virality Project?
The Stanford Internet Observatory reports that it launched the Virality Project in response to the coronavirus, to conduct “a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis.” Stanford expanded the project in January 2020, “with colleagues at New York University, the University of Washington, the National Council on Citizenship, and Graphika.”
Beyond collaboration with state-funded universities, the Virality Project, in its own words, “built strong ties with several federal government agencies, most notably the Office of the Surgeon General (OSG) and the CDC, to facilitate bidirectional situational awareness around emerging narratives.” According to the Virality Project’s 2022 report, “Memes, Magnets, and Microchips Narrative Dynamics Around COVID-19 Vaccines,” “the CDC’s biweekly ‘COVID-19 State of Vaccine Confidence Insights’ reports provided visibility into widespread anti-vaccine and vaccine hesitancy narratives observed by other research efforts.”
The Virality Project’s report also championed its success in engaging six Big Tech platforms — Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, Google (including YouTube), TikTok, Medium, and Pinterest — using a “ticket” system. The social media platforms would “review and act on” reports from the Virality Project, “in accordance with their policies.”
With the Virality Project working closely with the surgeon general and the CDC, which provided “vaccine hesitancy narratives” to the Stanford team, and the Stanford team then providing censorship requests to the tech giants, the government censorship loop was closed.
Censorship requests were not limited to Covid-19, however, with the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership playing a similar role in providing Twitter — and presumably other Big Tech companies — requests to remove supposed election disinformation.
Earlier “Twitter Files” established that the Election Integrity Partnership was a conduit for censorship requests to Twitter for other government-funded entities, such as the Center for Internet Security. And in addition to receiving millions in government grants, during the 2020 election, the Center for Internet Security partnered with the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security — again completing the circle of government censorship we saw at play during the 2020 election cycle.
The groups involved in both the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project are also connected by government funding. The Election Integrity Partnership boasted that it “brought together misinformation researchers” from across four organizations: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Both Graphika and the University of Washington also partnered with Stanford for the Virality Project, along with individuals from New York University and the National Council on Citizenship.
Beyond the taxpayer-funded state universities involved in the projects, Graphika received numerous Department of Defense contracts and a $3 million grant from the DOD for a 2021-2022 research project related to “Research on Cross-Platform Detection to Counter Malign Influence.” Graphika also received a nearly $2 million grant from the DOD for “research on Co-Citation Network Mapping and had previously researched “network mapping,” or the tracking of how Covid “disinformation” spreads through social media.
The Atlantic Council likewise receives federal funding, including a grant from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center awarded to its Digital Forensics Research Lab. And Stanford rakes in millions in federal grants as well.
The government funding of these censorship conduits is not the only scandal exposed by the “Twitter Files.” Rather, the internal communications of the social media giant also revealed that several censorship requests rested on bogus research.
But really, that is nothing compared to what Thursday’s “Twitter Files” revealed: a request for the censorship of truthful information, including news that certain Covid shots had been banned in some countries. And that censorship request came from a group of so-called disinformation experts closely coordinating with the government and with several partners funded with government grants — just as was the case during the 2020 election.
This all goes to show that sometimes there is a vast conspiracy at play and that the problem is not that someone is donning a tinfoil hat, but that he’s buried his head in the sand.
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.
President Biden finally released his budget on Thursday, more than a month after the Budget Act’s statutory deadline. The document should have come with a five-word warning attached: “Hold on to your wallet.”
The budget includes thousands of pages of arcana and technical details, all of which will come to light further in the coming days. But a preliminary review of the budget’s main summary tables illustrates a familiar pattern among Democrats — a tax, spend, and borrow vision designed to expand government further. Here are some of the “highlights” (more like lowlights) from the summary document.
Taxes Too Much
Overall, the administration says the budget proposes $4.7 trillion in tax increases — a staggering sum in any season, but particularly when the economy faces recession risks. Among the highest profile revenue hikes:
$437 billion from “a minimum income tax on the wealthiest taxpayers”
$493 billion from changes to the “global minimum tax regime”
$238 billion from increasing the tax on stock buybacks
$306 billion from applying Medicare taxes to pass-through income — a “loophole” that President Biden himself spent the past six years exploiting
$344 billion from increasing the rate of said Medicare tax from 3.8 percent to 5 percent for those earning over $400,000
$1.3 trillion from increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent
$200 billion from other “reforms” to business taxation
$549 billion from adopting the undertaxed profits rule regarding international taxes
$66 billion from “reform[ing] taxation of foreign fossil fuel income”
$37 billion from “modify[ing] energy taxes”
$235 billion from increasing the top marginal rate for high-income earners
$214 billion from higher taxes on capital gains
$23 billion from higher taxes on the retirement plans of “high-income taxpayers”
$77 billion from changes to estate and gift taxes
$50 billion from “clos[ing] loopholes”
$105 billion in revenue assumed by extending the IRS enforcement money included in last year’s Inflation (Reduction) Act. The proposal to extend and expand the IRS’ ability to audit and potentially harass taxpayers comes shortly after an analyst at the Tax Policy Center admitted that the Service let President Biden off the hook for failing to pay his own taxes.
Whatever anyone thinks about the merits of these individual proposals, they cumulatively would have a significant — and negative — impact on the economy. Taxing energy producers in particular would lead to less exploration and higher prices at the pump, at a time when American families are still suffering from high inflation.
These tax increases come with the added irony that Biden himself did not “pay his fair share” of Medicare taxes, according to numeroustax experts. On a budget preview call with reporters Thursday, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young refused to recognize Biden’s hypocrisy — but the American people will.
Spends Too Much
Where will all the budget’s new tax revenue go? In many cases, to more spending and an expansion of the welfare state. Among the proposals included are several from Biden’s failed Build Back Bankrupt agenda:
$200 billion for a government-run health program in the states that have not expanded Medicaid to the able-bodied under Obamacare
$96 billion to double the Pell Grant
$90 billion for “free community college”
$104 billion for housing subsidies
$150 billion for home and community-based services in Medicaid
$325 billion for “national, comprehensive paid family and medical leave”
$429 billion for an expanded child tax credit. However, according to Treasury’s revenue explanations, the higher credit would apply for 2024 and 2025 only. In December 2021, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the 10-year cost of a permanent extension of this policy at $1.6 trillion, or almost four times the amount included in the budget.
$156 billion for an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit
$76 billion for behavioral health care
$1 billion to “make permanent the income exclusion for forgiven student debt.” While this number seems like a comparatively small amount, in reality it would pave the way for a future administration to pass another massive giveaway in student “loan forgiveness,” without triggering federal income taxes on the amount of debt canceled.
Over and above the details of the specific proposals, the budget ignores the inescapable fact that subsidizing programs increases rather than decreases their costs. The proposals will encourage colleges, child care providers, insurance companies, and others to jack up their rates, knowing that the federal government will pay the difference. To put it another way, the budget’s spending will raise inflation, even as its tax increases will kill economic growth.
Borrows Too Much
Even with all the tax increases Biden has proposed, it still won’t begin to make up for the new spending he plans, and the cost of servicing the debt from Washington’s Covid spending binge the past several years. The budget also proves how the debt has worsened under this president:
Table S-2 of the budget states that, if enacted in full, the budget would reduce 10-year deficits by $2.857 trillion. But last month, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the 10-year budget, which showed that since last May, the projected 10-year deficit has increased by $3.082 trillion. In other words, even if all the Biden “deficit reduction” gets enacted, our nation will still be $200 billion worse off fiscally than it was just 10 short months ago.
The budget as proposed would lead to deficits of at least $1.5 trillion in every year of the 10-year budget window. By the last year of the budget window, they would total $2 trillion — and rising.
By the time President Biden intends to leave office in 2029 (assuming he gets reelected), interest on the debt will total over $1 trillion per year. By that point, we will be devoting more than 10 percent of the federal budget just to pay the interest on our debt.
Deficits will remain near or above 5 percent of GDP for the foreseeable future — much faster than our economy can grow, meaning that debt will continue to rise and rise as far as the eye can see.
To say this budget ignores reality is putting it mildly. Here’s hoping lawmakers can finally restore some sanity to a perpetual Washington spending spree that has grown completely out of control.
It’s hard to believe the Biden administration’s Department of Education would refuse to punish a university for a flagrant violation of Title IX simply because they were confident the victim would prevail in court if they sued. The same would go if a school violated the civil rights of a racial minority or LGBTQ+ student. Everyone would expect the administration to take quick and decisive administrative action without requiring the victim to hire a lawyer and pursue justice in the courts.
So, why should it be any different when an educational institution violates a student’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion? It shouldn’t be, but a recent notice of proposed rulemaking from the Department of Education shows that the Biden administration fails to take threats to religious liberty seriously.
In November 2020, a Department of Education rule went into effect stating that, as a condition of receiving federal funding, “a public institution shall not deny to any student organization whose stated mission is religious in nature and that is at the public institution any right, benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations at the public institution… because of the religious student organization’s beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards, or leadership standards, which are informed by sincerely held religious beliefs.”
That seems in line with the First Amendment, but Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Nassar Paydar says it has “caused confusion” and creates an “unduly burdensome role” for the Department because it must investigate complaints.
The proposed solution? The Department says your First Amendment rights are robust, so hire a lawyer and pursue a resolution through the courts. Don’t bother them; and maybe the issue will be resolved before you graduate.
Before the Trump administration rulemaking, religious student groups did not have any administrative options. The courts were their only avenue to combat discrimination based on their beliefs. The rule the Biden administration now wants to repeal changed that.
Today the Department of Education doesn’t have to use the rule for it to be effective. Its mere existence has forced schools to drop their hostility to religious groups on campus out of fear that it might be used.
There are countless examples of university administrators discriminating against religious student groups. No faith or belief system is exempt from hostility. Some of the worst examples are colleges trying to regulate what student groups can require their leaders to believe. It seems reasonable to most people that a religious group should be able to require that its leaders are adherents of that faith. Yet this is still a constant issue on college campuses.
One of the best-known — or perhaps we should say notorious — cases of this was at the University of Iowa. The school derecognized a religious student group, Business Leaders in Christ, after 25 years on campus in 2017 because it required its leaders to share its religious beliefs.
Without the regulation currently in place, the group was forced to file a federal lawsuit to regain its official recognition. They won in 2019 but the University, not wanting to lose control, appealed, and lost again at the appellate level in 2021.
Not wanting to stop at just one group, in July 2018, the University officially derecognized 38 other student groups for the same reason, including those for Muslim, Sikh, and Mormon students. This was after a preliminary injunction was issued against the school in the original court case. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals again ruled against the University of Iowa.
The appellate court said the University engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” by selectively enforcing its anti-discrimination rules against religious organizations but not other student groups with selective memberships. Between the two cases, the plaintiffs spent nearly $2 million over four years to defend their First Amendment rights, a sum the University of Iowa ultimately had to pay. It would have been easier, quicker, and cheaper for everyone if the Department of Education had had the ability to intervene at the university level.
The current public comment period for the proposed repeal of this regulation closes on March 24. I hope the Department of Education reconsiders its proposal, but I pray our colleges become more accommodating of diverse religious beliefs. The existing rule helps move us in that direction but repealing it empowers hostility towards religion on campus.
Sam Brownback is chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom. He previously served as United States ambassador at large for international religious freedom, as governor of Kansas and in the U.S. Senate.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin defended the state’s policies on school bathrooms and sports on Thursday following a question from a transgender student.
Youngkin’s administration rewrote the state’s policies on transgender youths at public schools in September, requiring students to use bathrooms, locker rooms and join sports teams based on their sex at birth, not their gender identity. The policy updates also include forbidding students from changing their names and preferred pronouns at public schools without the consent of their parents.
During the audience Q&A section of Thursday’s CNN town hall, a 17-year-old transgender student, who went only by the name “Nico,” asked Youngkin about these policies.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks prior to signing executive actions in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond on Jan. 15, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Look at me. I am a transgender man,” Nico said. “Do you really think the girls in my high school would feel comfortable sharing a restroom with me?”
Youngkin replied by first thanking the student for attending the event and engaging in the critical discussion.
“I believe first that when parents are engaged with their children, then you can make good decisions together, and I met your dad, and I’m glad that you’re both here together — it’s really, really important,” he said.
Youngkin then said that many students are involved in this decision and noted the importance of accommodating students, highlighting the need for more school bathrooms, including gender-neutral lavatories.
“People can use the bathroom that they in fact are comfortable with,” he added.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks after signing a House bill in the conference room at the Capitol in Richmond on March 2, 2022. ((AP Photo/Steve Helber))
Youngkin then gave a significantly more definitive answer to transgender men and women competing in sports.
“I think sports are very clear and I don’t think it’s controversial. I don’t think biological boys should be playing sports with biological girls,” he said. “There’s been decades of efforts in order to gain opportunities for women in sports. And it’s just not fair. And I think that’s non-controversial and something that is pretty well understood.”
“There’s been decades of efforts in order to gain opportunities for women in sports. And it’s just not fair. And I think that’s non-controversial and something that is pretty well understood.”
As Youngkin responded, Nico’s father could be seen in the audience shaking his head.
A picture of a gender-neutral bathroom in a public school. (Istock/ AndreyPopov)
Youngkin previously defended his state policies on CNN in October when he told Jake Tapper, “Let me begin with these basic principles, which is first, parents have a fundamental right to be engaged in their children’s lives. And oh, by the way, children have a right to have parents engaged in their lives. We needed to fix a wrong. The previous administration had had a policy that excluded parents and, in fact, particularly didn’t require the involvement of parents. And let’s be clear — parents have this right and children don’t belong to the state, they belong to families.”
Tapper pressed the Republican governor on whether the policies would actually exclude parents who are supportive of their child using facilities or joining sports teams based on gender identity and not biological sex.
“Certainly not. If parents actually want their child to be able to change a pronoun or their name or use a bathroom, if parents choose that, then legally that’s what the schools will do. With regards to sports teams, this is a different issue,” Youngkin responded.
Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Nikolas Lanum is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced Friday he will block a key Department of Interior (DOI) nominee from moving forward over her climate activism.
Manchin noted that his decision — which effectively kills President Biden’s nomination of Laura Daniel-Davis to serve as DOI’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management — came in response to an internal agency memo that was leaked last week. The memo showed that Daniel-Davis, who holds a lower position at DOI, signed off on an explicit decision to prioritize climate policies over energy security.
“Today, I have also decided, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that I will not be moving forward the nomination of Laura Daniel-Davis as assistant secretary of the Department of Interior,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed for The Houston Chronicle.
“Daniel-Davis approved higher royalty rates for the Alaskan Cook Inlet sale, which were explicitly designed to decrease fossil energy production at the expense of our energy security,” he continued. “Even though I supported her in the past, I cannot, in good conscience, support her or anyone else who will play partisan politics and agree with this misguided and dangerous manipulation of the law.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks during a news conference on Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
President Biden first nominated Daniel-Davis for the position in June 2021. Since then, she has appeared in two confirmation hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but has failed two votes for her nomination to be passed to a floor vote.
The White House announced on Jan. 23 that it would again send the nomination back to the Senate.
Daniel-Davis, who currently serves as principal deputy secretary for land and minerals management, previously served in a leadership position for the National Wildlife Federation, a group that has advocated for far-left climate policies. Senate Republicans have consistently opposed her nomination and expressed concern about her views on energy issues.
“Laura Daniel-Davis’ nomination should have been pulled over a year ago when she first failed to pass committee,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital earlier this week. “The latest attack on oil and gas is no surprise. The Biden administration, his out of touch nominees and Senate Democrats have long put the cult of climate change ahead of energy security and local communities.”
On March 3, a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management memo addressed to Daniel-Davis was leaked, showing that the agency projected energy security would be bolstered if the administration charged lower royalty rates for an offshore oil and gas lease in Alaska.
“While a 16 ⅔ percent royalty may be more likely to facilitate expeditious and orderly development of [offshore] resources and potentially offer greater energy security to residents of the State of Alaska, a reasonable balancing of the environmental and economic factors for the American public favors the maximum 18 ¾ percent royalty for Cook Inlet leases,” the memo stated.
Daniel-Davis ultimately signed off on the maximum royalty rate option without publicly acknowledging the energy security implications of that decision. The memo resulted in a rebuke from Manchin and additional calls from Republicans like Daines for her nomination to be withdrawn.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
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Dr. Robert Redfield testified before Congress Wednesday, noting three suspicious events at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that strengthened his long-held conviction that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab — a belief, he says, that got him boxed out of transformative conversations.
Whereas there is now growing recognition that COVID-19 “most likely” originated in the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous gain-of-function experiments were routinely performed on coronaviruses, saying so in recent years prompted derision and censorship.
Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reportedly received death threats from his fellow scientists for noting that human error and meddling may have resulted in the spread of a virus that claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide.
“I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” he told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”
When addressing the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on March 8, he did not hold back.
Redfield noted there were three things in particular that took place early in the pandemic that bolstered his suspicion that COVID-19 came from a lab.
First, “they deleted the sequences. Highly irregular. Researchers don’t like to do that.”
The New York Times reported that early in the pandemic, over 200 data entries from the genetic sequencing of early cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan were erased from an online scientific database. The early suspicion was that these sequences were deleted because they revealed that the virus that ravaged the world may have predated the alleged outbreak at the wet marked in December 2019.
Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, was able to track down 13 of the sequences online and determined that it “seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence.”
Chinese researchers had requested that the National Institutes of Health delete the sequences, and the NIH complied, reported the Washington Examiner.
Redfield appeared to suggest that the deletion of sequences took place as early as September 2019.
Second, Redfield said, “they changed the command and control at the lab from civilian control to military control. Highly unusual.”
In 2021, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) noted during a meeting of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, “New testimony now received by my committee reveals the Chinese military potentially took over this lab, not in January 2020 as was reported, but earlier in 2019. … The Chinese military were actually in the facility at the time of 2017. That signals the CCP was worried about something at the lab before the world even knew what COVID-19 was. Why else would they put the Chinese military in charge?”
The State Department noted in early 2021 that “the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”
Major General Chen Wei, China’s top biowarfare expert, formally took over the BSL-4 lab from a local communist party committee president on Jan. 31, 2020, sparking concerns that the virus not only originated in the lab but was linked to a biowarfare program.
Third, “which is very telling, they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory. So I think, clearly, there was strong evidence that a significant event that happened in that laboratory in September.”
Redfield ruffled feathers in March 2021 when he went on CNN and said, “I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory — escaped. … Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.”
Dr. Robert Redfield, the former CDC Director, talks about three suspicious events that took place at the Wuhan lab in September 2019:
"In Sept. 2019, three things happened in that lab. One is they deleted the sequences. Highly irregular, researchers don't like to do that. The… pic.twitter.com/nIT5b96AbE
Redfield told the subcommittee that retired National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins both sought to push a “single narrative” about the virus’ origins.
Redfield noted that he “made it very clear in January [2020] to all of them why we had to aggressively pursue this and I let them know, as a virologist, that I didn’t see that this was anything like SARS or MERS because they never learned how to transmit human to human.”
“I felt that this virus was too infectious for humans,” said Redfield. “There was a lot of evidence that lab actually published in 2014 that they put the ACE2 receptor into humanized mice so it could infect human tissue. I think, you know, we had to really seriously go after the fact it came from the lab and they knew that that was how I was thinking, although I thought we had to go after both hypotheses.”
Even though Redfield helmed the CDC at the time, Redfield intimated that Fauci elected not to involve him in the controversial Feb. 1, 2020, conference call with top virologists on account of his insistence on a possible lab origin.
TheBlaze previously reported that Fauci appeared keen to push the zoonotic origins theory, both on the conference call and in the correspondence that followed.
According to congressional investigators, just days after the call, Fauci commissioned an influential 2020 study suggesting COVID-19 was not the result of a Chinese lab leak. The former NIAID director also reportedly edited and provided final approval for the document, which he later cited on the national stage without noting his involvement.
Redfield revealed he was not made aware of his exclusion from the conference call or the call itself until the correspondences was released following a FOIA request.
When asked why Fauci and others excluded him, Redfield answered, “Because I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative, which I will argue is antithetical to science.”
“This was an a priori decision that there’s one point of view that we’re going to put out there, and anyone who doesn’t agree with it is going to be sidelined,” Redfield told Congress. “And as I say, I was only the CDC director, and I was sidelined.”
Former CDC Director: Coming Up With a Single Narrative Is Antithetical to Science
Dr. Redfield, who was the CDC director at the time, was excluded from a February 2020 call with doctors Fauci, Collins, and others discussing the origins of COVID.
After Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired Capitol surveillance footage this week exposing yet more falsehood from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 and leaving Democrats and their media allies irate, the committee chair on Wednesday said the panel never actually analyzed the crucial footage.
On Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News aired the footage of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, undermining the select committee’s narrative of a “deadly insurrection.” Given access to the video by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson’s team reviewed over 40,000 hours of footage, which offered proof the committee manipulated audio and video to dramatize the riot for its made-for-TV hearings in an election year.
But in a Wednesday night statement to CNN, select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., claimed the panel never analyzed the blockbuster footage Fox News aired this week.
“I’m not actually aware of any member of the committee who had access,” Thompson said. “We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.”
Hiring investigators who “kind of went through the video” doesn’t sound like a very thorough investigation.
However, Thompson’s admission that his committee lacked due diligence makes no sense. Since when do lawmakers have no access to the same material as their own staffers? Did none of the nine panel members view the footage that was played for the cameras? Does Thompson not know who had access to the tapes? Was it just the former television executives they hired to produce their show trials? Either Thompson is lying and knows exactly who had access, or he handed the key to Vice Chair Liz Cheney and had nothing to do with it while the committee leaked exclusives to CNN.
Thompson’s office did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s inquiries.
The committee clearly had access to the footage Carlson aired this week that contradicted the panel’s key narratives. After all, members of the committee endlessly bragged about how many documents, more than 35,000, investigators reviewed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who used the committee to dodge responsibility for her own failure to secure the Capitol, just refused to make the tapes public — and after Carlson’s revelations, it’s clear why.
Carlson’s program showed that the man who became the face of the “insurrection,” known as the “QAnon Shaman,” was given VIP treatment by police. The tapes showed since-deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick walking around “vigorously” after altercations with protesters who had allegedly murdered him. The footage also showed that mysterious rioter Ray Epps lied to congressional investigators about his whereabouts the day of the riot, yet the committee protected the “insurrectionist.”
On Monday, Carlson announced his team discovered proof that Democrats on Pelosi’s probe came across the same footage Fox made public.
“We can be sure because the footage contains an electronic bookmark that is still archived in the Capitol’s computer system,” said Carlson. “That means that investigators working for the Democratic Party saw this tape. They saw it, but they refused to release the tape to the public.”
Committee staffers even used some of the footage to show Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., allegedly fleeing the Capitol. All Carlson did was extend the footage a few seconds longer than what was televised in the committee’s show-trial hearings, and it became clear Hawley departed the Capitol along with other members of Congress. The clip published by the committee was always demonstrably dishonest.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Fox News host Tucker Carlson now has access to more than 40,000 hours of unreleased surveillance video from the Jan. 6 riot. It’s created quite a bit of consternation and anger in the media. Of course, if the Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack, handpicked by Nancy Pelosi, hadn’t withheld inconvenient evidence from the public in the first place, then McCarthy wouldn’t have had the chance to give the Fox News host anything. Republicans have Fox. The Jan. 6 committee has virtually every other outlet.
Mitch McConnell is also outraged by Carlson’s framing of the surveillance video. Perhaps if the Kentucky senator had voiced outrage when the committee handed unfettered access to a former producer of “Good Morning America” and “Nightline,” so he could create a slick, selectively edited program that made Jan. 6 look like the September Massacres of the French Revolution, we wouldn’t be here. It says a lot about McConnell that he’s more upset by a media personality sharing videos than he is about Chuck Schumer, a government official, demanding a private company censor journalism.
“I could take footage from World War II, find a little piece of it, and convince somebody it’s the moon landing,” former Jan. 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night. “There’s footage of soldiers [in Vietnam] at their bases hanging out in Saigon,” Cooper responded. “… You can take video of anybody in the course of a day.”
You can. And you can also take footage showing soldiers in Vietnam abusing civilians to create the perception that most servicemen abused civilians. The “mostly peaceful” formulation, typically used by liberals to whitewash leftist violence, is shameful. And so is the partisan fearmongering surrounding Jan. 6.
It’s difficult for me to muster any sympathy for the nutjobs who entered the Capitol building. It’s implausible that most of them didn’t understand what they were doing was wrong, dangerous, or illegal, whether they were just milling about or banging on doors or vandalizing offices. Many, of course, acted in threatening and violent ways. It was a national embarrassment.
None of that makes the dishonest political revisionism of the Jan. 6 committee any truer. It’s clear the QAnon Shaman wasn’t moments away from overthrowing the republic and declaring Donald Trump the king of America. It wasn’t anywhere close to “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” or the new Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Which is why Democrats conflate the actions of rioters with those of the thousands of people who protested the election results outside, the president who enflamed the crowd with conspiratorial rhetoric, and the politicians who were inside voting on certification. Wrong or right, conspiracists or not, the latter people did not do anything illegal.
Put it this way, the central difference between Jan 6, 2021, and the last day or two of May 2020, when Secret Service agents had to stick Donald Trump into a bunker for hours as a throng of “protesters” began overwhelming security at the White House, some throwing rocks and bottles and trying to break down barricades, was the effectiveness of the police.
Then again, QAnon Shaman, like anyone else accused of rioting, deserves a fair trial. If his lawyer is telling the truth, the defense had no access to video of cops peacefully escorting the man around the Capitol. We have no clue if that footage is exculpatory, but it is clearly relevant. QAnon Shaman was sentenced to over three years in prison, with another nearly three years of probation.
If Cooper were a member of a functioning press, he would have been grilling Kinzinger about his committee’s lack of transparency and denial of basic due process. Pelosi blocked members who could have asked for answers regarding security breakdowns or demanded the release of countervailing evidence or tempered the hyperbole and grandstanding that dominated the hearings.
Cooper knows that journalists “selectively” edit and cherry-pick video all the time. He knows that the Jan. 6 committee “selectively” edited and cherry-picked video, as well. Maybe seeing both narratives gives us a far better sense of what happened that day. There was a riot, not a coup d’etat. And the media should be elated that we have more footage for the historical record. Then again, that was never the point, was it?
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
On Sunday night, as I was doing laundry, I got a text message from a fellow Virginia mother with an interesting invitation: Ben Litchfield, a Democratic Party Virginia Senate candidate from Fredericksburg, was convening a statewide Zoom call of “parents, educations and pro-public school activists” to discuss education issues.
A “mama bear” activist from northern Virginia since June 2020, I thought it was a unique opportunity to brainstorm. A Democrat all my life, I moved to Virginia in December 2008 with my young son, then in kindergarten, only because the state elected Barack Obama to be U.S. president.
Born in India, I am an American Muslim immigrant and single mother, and I thought the state was finally progressive enough for me. With English as my second language when I arrived in the U.S. at the age of 4, I believe in the power of America’s public school system to empower a girl like me to become a reporter for the Wall Street Journal at the age of 23.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin gestures after signing a House bill at the Capitol, March 2, 2022, in Richmond, Virginia. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
That’s why I fight every day to support a public system where teachers are able to spend their time educating my younger self, not indoctrinating kids with divisive, distracting activist agendas.
This time, these activists were hosting a strategy session to develop “a coordinated opposition” to the Youngkin administration’s alleged “attack on public schools, educators, and students.”
The designated “Topic” for the call: “VA Dept of Education and Youngkin Town Hall.” Thursday night, CNN host Jake Tapper is hosting a town hall meeting with Gov. Glenn Youngkin. I know because I’ve encouraged many parents and students to join the town hall.
Suparna Dutta was smeared when nominated to the Virginia Board of Education in July 2022. (Fox News Digital)
When I joined the call, I recognized some names. Cheryl Binkley, a former northern Virginia teachers’ union leader, was guiding introductions. Mariane Burke, the local leader of the national activist group, Indivisible, was online.
I knew them well. They had led a successful hit, organized by the Virginia chapter of a national teachers’ union campaign – #RedForEd – to assassinate the character of a friend, Suparna Dutta, an American Hindu immigrant, with the “White supremacist” smear when Youngkin nominated her to be on the Virginia Board of Education. They won a 22-18 vote, with Democrats casting their ballots unanimously against Dutta.
On the call, another woman introduced herself, and then Binkley, a former Virginia Education Association union official, turned to me. I introduced myself fully: I’m Asra Nomani, and I’m a mother in northern Virginia, and I looked forward to learning from others.
While we may have a difference of opinion on a few – OK, many – issues, I thought we could benefit from a much-needed conversation, hearing each other out, at least virtually face-to-face. Binkley had another point of view.
She kicked me out of the meeting, and my only participation was left to my introduction and this note that popped up on my phone: “The host has removed you from this meeting.”
“…I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” declared Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat’s gubernatorial candidate in Virginia in 2021. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Virginia Democrats’ removal of me – a Muslim immigrant single mother from India and “woman of color,” as U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez once described Rep. Ilhan Omar – symbolizes much more than the ejection of one person. It captures the utter failure of the Democratic National Committee to actually be inclusive to the millions of parents – many of them immigrant minority parents – who refuse its lockstep agenda with the country’s two teachers’ unions – the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Even though President Joe Biden won the White House in 2020, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race in 2021, over Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, who famously sealed his loss with the assertion in a debate that “…I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
The arrogance, political corruption and myopia of Democratic Party officials to parents portends bad news for the Democratic Party in 2024 and good news for Republican candidates. On cue, every Republican presidential candidate, former Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former President Donald Trump – and those still unannounced, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Youngkin – have made education a key issue on their platform.
Take a bow. That’s the mama bear movement driving issues, not the other way around.
On Twitter the next day, the Democrat loyalists didn’t apologize and acknowledge the error of their ways. One user responded: “Good. You have no business in Virginia education.”
But I actually do have business in Virginia education. So does every parent.
Democrats will turn off more parents with their closed-door mentality, and that will drive a wedge issue between traditionally Democratic parents, like Black, Hispanic and Asian parents, and the Democratic Party.
Republicans have embraced a winning agenda item, and they will win the White House if they continue to translate their platforms with policy and legislative answers restoring parents’ rights in America.
A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Asra Q. Nomani is the author of a new book, Woke Army. She is a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Network. She is reachable on Twitter as @AsraNomani.
Texas rancher Debi Douglas spoke out Thursday about the escalating danger at the border after four Americans were kidnapped, and two killed, by a cartel in Mexico. Douglas’ ranch is located in Brownsville, a city that sits along the Mexico border adjacent to Matamoros, where the kidnapping took place. Douglas said on “Fox & Friends First” that living conditions in her area are only getting worse, and she doesn’t believe anything will improve even if the cartel members are arrested.
“The Mexican government is afraid of the cartel,” she reasoned. “If Biden does not do something, this is going to come more into our country.”
Douglas said the community is largely unaware of the severity of the danger, and she believes the two individuals killed in Mexico didn’t take the threat “to heart” when they traveled across the border. Douglas said she believes it’s only a “matter of time” before cartels attempt to take over border towns in her state.
Mexican National Guard prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen at Matamoros, Mexico, on Monday. (AP)
“And unless we do something, everybody had better get ready,” she told co-hosts Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier.
The Biden administration has called the death of Americans “unacceptable” and said U.S. officials will work with the Mexican government to pursue justice. Douglas, however, said the Democratic administration’s plan to address the problem is a “joke.”
“The Mexican government is either partially paid off by the cartels or they fear the cartels. So the fact that Biden is saying he’s going to work with them is absolutely a joke and an insult to the American people,” she said.
“Our administration is never going to wake up,” Douglas said, arguing that Biden does not care about the American people. “He’s a puppet, and he has been protected in this country. And with him not in turn protecting the people of this country, he basically is a traitor.”
She called Biden a “weak” individual and said she believes he wants “all these illegals” to enter the country. Douglas claimed Democrats want to allow illegal immigrants to vote to keep the party in power.
“If the border was even shut down today, we have an extreme problem with the illegals that are already in this country,” she said. “They are a lot of criminals, that’s been proven. There’s child molesters. There’s murderers.”
“It’s going to take the FBI, the CIA, ICE, everybody. Number one, shut the borders and then let’s get on this. Let’s deport them all,” Douglas said.
Douglas said she’s “more vigilant” now in protecting herself following the kidnapping of Americans.
“I’ve always been vigilant since the illegals have been pouring in,” she said.
With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis busy running the third-largest state, enacting a magnificently conservative agenda, promoting a new book, and having to respond to endless demands that he run for president (not to mention banning the words “gay” and “slavery” — the man’s a whirlwind of activity!), I thought I’d jot down a few ideas for his presidential announcement speech.
Here are some of the main points I think he should hit.
— “We are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan!” (Donald Trump, 2023 CPAC)
During his first two years in office, Trump had a Republican House and a Republican Senate. He’d just won a stunning upset victory that should have scared the bejesus out of every Republican in Washington. The people had spoken! They wanted a wall, not more tax cuts.
But Ryan wanted to cut taxes, so Trump forgot all about the wall and gave them tax cuts. (In fairness to Trump, challenging Ryan and pushing for wall funding would have required making a phone call.)
HEADLINE: “Ryan gets big — and much-needed — win on tax cuts” — Politico, Nov. 16, 2017
From the article:
“Loathed by the Breitbart wing of the Republican Party — which sees Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as Trump’s biggest obstacle to making America great again — the Wisconsin Republican scored a major victory in Thursday’s 227-205 vote to pass a massive tax-cut package that dramatically alters the U.S. tax code … [T]he biggest legislative win so far for Trump is an issue that Ryan has been working on for virtually his entire career.”
— “Now we have complete chaos [at the border], fentanyl is pouring in and families are being destroyed. There is death everywhere caused by incompetence.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
In fact, drug overdose deaths in America skyrocketed during the No-Wall/Open-Borders policy of the Trump administration, going from an average of about 50,000 a year in Obama’s second term to more than 90,000 in Trump’s last year in office.
Even in his CPAC speech, full of preposterous, fantastical claims about all the great things he did, Trump couldn’t stay focused on the (now) 100,000 Americans who die of drug overdoses every year — something that is 100% attributable to not having a border wall. After briefly mentioning fentanyl, he got right back to something much more important — Syria and Iraq!
Trump said — no ellipses, this is exactly what he said — “Fentanyl is a big problem. In fact with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said, it can only be done in three years, it probably cannot be done it all, sir. And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq. Met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You heard that story.”
What on Earth? The man makes Biden look razor sharp.
— “I stood firm against the forces of anarchy and decay. I arrested the Marxists who toppled statues of our great heroes in Washington, D.C. I arrested them. They were knocking down the most beautiful artwork, the most beautiful statues of great heroes. They didn’t even know who they were, they just wanted anarchy.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Under President Trump, hundreds of national treasures were destroyed, mangled, defaced, thrown into lakes, chopped up, melted down, hidden away or renamed. It was the greatest desecration of our country’s inheritance since the British set fire to the White House during the War of 1812.
Among the casualties were memorials not only to anyone who ever had anything to do with the Confederacy (on the plus side, black SAT scores immediately improved!), but also statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key and Christopher Columbus. Also, a statue of an elk in Portland, Oregon.
In DeSantis’ Florida, no monuments or statues were toppled or defaced — not even the Confederate ones. About a dozen park names were changed and statues moved to other locations, but 75 Confederate memorials still stand in the Sunshine State, including an obelisk at Florida’s state capitol.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who gave a damn about our country’s heritage and beautiful artwork?
— “Republicans must compete using every lawful means to win. That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes and Election Day votes.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Before the absolutely vital Senate runoff election in Georgia in January 2021, Trump did everything he could to discourage Republicans from voting.
The AJC reported: “Trump’s message that the election was stolen discouraged voters such as Craig Roland, a 61-year-old Rome resident. Roland said he didn’t believe his vote would count. ‘What good would it have done to vote? They have votes that got changed,’ Roland said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever vote again.’”
— “We will keep men out of women’s sports.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
It was during Trump’s first year in office that biological men competing in women’s events destroyed women’s soccer and track and field in Connecticut, an absurdity that quickly spread to the rest of the country. Trump did nothing about it, unless you count a strongly worded tweet. (Heard of Title IX?)
Gov. DeSantis signed a bill prohibiting biological males (according to their birth certificates) from competing in women’s sports in any interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by a public secondary school, high school, public college or university institution in the state of Florida.
— “I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
The entire transgender craze kicked off during the Trump administration, and it continued unabated throughout the Trump administration.
By contrast, acting at the behest of Gov. DeSantis, Florida medical boards have issued rules prohibiting the poisoning and mutilation of youth under 18 years old, one of the first such policies in the nation.
— “[Fox News host] Sean Hannity should get a [Pulitzer] prize … Tucker should get a prize.” (Trump, 2023 CPAC)
Hmmm. After the election, Hannity was “privately disgusted by Trump … but was scared to lose viewers,” according to Rupert Murdoch. In texts, Tucker Carlson called Trump “a demonic force” and “a destroyer.”
I don’t know if having a tenuous grasp of the obvious warrants a Pulitzer Prize, but if those are Trump’s biggest boosters, he may want to go back to Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer is calling on the owner of Fox News to prevent network host Tucker Carlson from releasing any more footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that House Democrats hid from the public for two years. Carlson’s team reviewed more than 40,000 hours of video from that day and on Monday aired previously unseen footage that contradicts numerous falsehoods peddled by Democrat politicos and corporate media.
On Tuesday, Schumer melodramatically told reporters that Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch “has a special obligation” to bar Carlson from airing more unedited footage from Jan. 6 “because our democracy depends on it.”
Schumer: "Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it." pic.twitter.com/uld6eaCl3C
The comments echo remarks Schumer gave during a temper tantrum on the Senate floor earlier in the day, in which he accused Carlson’s Monday night program of being “one of the most shameful hours … ever seen on cable television” and similarly called on Murdoch to prohibit the release of more Jan. 6 footage.
They're Freaking Out Big Time
Senator Schumer Went Down To The Senate Floor This Morning To
-Condemn Tucker Carlson's January 6th Tapes Segment Last Night -Call For Fox News And Rupert Murdoch To Stop Tucker Carlson From Releasing Another Report On The January 6th Tapes… pic.twitter.com/e3z3YBwTFR
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) March 7, 2023
Why the demand for censorship? According to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Jan. 6 was supposedly“the worst attack on [American] democracy since the Civil War.” If the country were as close to forfeiting democracy as Democrats often claim, don’t the American people deserve to see as much footage as possible from that day? Not according to Democrats. That’s because the footage Carlson released shows their J6 narrative was not only overblown but in some instances completely false.
Within the footage Carlson released on Monday night were clips showing Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of natural causes the day following the J6 riot, walking around the complex “after Democrats and the media claimed he was brutally murdered” by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. The New York Times, for example, claimed in its original report on Sicknick’s death that he died — right there, big and bold in its headline — “From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.”
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported, Democrats’ House select committee, which was used as a political show trial to their benefit, also helped fuel such conspiracies over Sicknick’s death.
In addition to surveillance footage of Sicknick, Carlson also released clips showing Capitol law enforcement giving VIP treatment to Jacob Chansley, known as the “Q-Anon Shaman.” As The Federalist separately reported, the footage shows Chansley being escorted by Capitol Police officers “to multiple entrances throughout the building,” with some clips appearing to show officers checking “for unlocked doors.”
“They helped him. They acted as his tour guides,” Carlson said. “We counted at least nine officers who were within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley. Not one of them tried to slow him down.”
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
What if I told you that Officer Brian Sicknick, the cop supposedly murdered during the J6 “insurrection” at the Capitol, actually died months later from completely different causes?
Prepare to have your mind blown, because according to Tucker Carlsen, that’s exactly what happened.
The autopsy found no evidence of external or internal injuries and Sicknick did not have an allergic reaction to any chemical irritants.
The mainstream media, with The New York Times leading the charge, lied about Sicknick’s death and falsely claimed he died from injuries suffered after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher during the Capitol riot on January 6.
I’m guessing this determination will make it pretty difficult to prosecute Julian Khater and George Tanios for homicide, although the two still face charges for assaulting Officer Sicknick.
GP adds:
The DC Chief Medical Examiner earlier this month announced the cause and manner of death of the four people who died during January 6 riot at US Capitol.
Two men died of natural causes and one woman’s death was ruled an accident.
Ashli Babbitt’s death was ruled a homicide.
Video Proves Sicknick was actually walking around AFTER the insurrection.
BREAKING: Tucker Carlson has obtained footage of Brian Sicknick walking around the Capitol healthy after the media claimed he had been killed by Trump supporters pic.twitter.com/Vd5sEu6oqS
However, Biden and his regime continue to hammer down the lies of Sicknick’s death. I can’t help but wonder why Sicknick’s family was part of this lie. I recall an article in which their refusal to shake hands with GOP leaders was the focus.
“We got together and said we’re not going to shake their hands,” Gladys Sicknick, mother of the late officer, told NBC News.
She called out congressional Republicans who continue to support former President Trump, “go down to Mar-a-Lago and you know, kiss his ring or whatever the hell they do down there, you know.” She met with Republican lawmakers last year asking for them to vote in support of creating a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack. McConnell and McCarthy were opposed to the commission. The legislation passed the House, but it was blocked in the Senate due to a Republican opposition led by McConnell.
Ken Sicknick, brother of the late officer, told NBC News that their refusal to shake GOP leaders’ hands at the ceremony is “kind of self-explanatory.”
“They continue to perpetrate the big lie, or at least not denounce it, which is basically the same thing, and they refuse to condemn Donald Trump,” he said, referring to the former president’s false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.
Craig Sicknick, another brother of the late officer, also called McCarthy out for his initial condemnation of Trump after the Capitol attack, but ultimately remained a staunch supporter of the former president.
“I mean, they’re speaking here today in honor of the officers and what happened but at the same token out of the other side of their mouth, … they’re doing a lot to support what caused the events of January 6, instead of denouncing them,” Craig Sicknick said.
It’s not really surprising to see the brothers divided. That’s what leftism continues to do to this country. It brings a whole new meaning to the old adage “divide and conquer”.
Why Lie?
That’s the question that pretty much sums up the last three years. What’s the point of all this dishonestly?
Tucker also reported that this bit of video had been bookmarked. So those who had access to all the video but denied access to others were aware that this evidence disproved their “Sicknick was murdered” narrative, but hid it to enable their propaganda and false charges.
Let’s get real. If the chemicals sprayed in Officer Sicknick’s face caused his stroke, why not say that from the very beginning? If there existed a mix of both peaceful and violent protesters, why hide it?
You conspiracy theorist, you never heard of someone dying and still walk around afterwards???
You can apply that question across the board. Why lie about covid’s origin? Or Biden’s many crimes against America? It seems as though the lying is part of the scam. While leftists distract us by constantly forcing us to “prove” the truth, what else are they trying to pull off?
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended on Tuesday his decision to give Tucker Carlson the Jan. 6 tapes, fiercely responding to a CNN reporter who questioned him. CNN reporter Manu Raju asked McCarthy whether he regrets giving Carlson the tapes, accusing the Fox News host of using the footage to “whitewash” what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. McCarthy was clear that he does not.
“No,” the California Republican responded.
“I said at the very beginning, ‘Transparency.’ And so what I wanted to produce for everybody is exactly what I said, people can actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day,” he explained.
When the reporter asked McCarthy if he agrees with Carlson’s reporting, McCarthy responded, “Each person can come up with their own conclusion.”
That’s when McCarthy zeroed in on CNN for allegedly exposing the secret location where congressional leadership fled on Jan. 6.
“I just wanted to make sure I had transparency, because I know on CNN, I mean, I had here where you guys actually wrote where we were,” McCarthy said. “This was a secret location: Fort McNair. I don’t know if you got concerned by that. I don’t even know from a point of view of security if we could ever be taken there again.
“But when you broke that at CNN, that was a real concern to a lot of people,” he added, referring to transparency in media.
Interestingly, McCarthy also revealed that he consulted the Capitol Police before releasing the tapes to ensure sensitive material was not released. He said the Capitol Police only raised concern about one piece of footage, which was protected before its release. On the other hand, the Capitol Police told McCarthy that the Jan. 6 committee did not consult with the agency before it released footage.
Last October, CNN exclusively reported that congressional leadership had established a command center at Fort McNair in Washington, publishing additional footage not shown by the Jan. 6 committee.
The committee had shown footage of lawmakers gathering there, but the committee did not disclose the exact location. Instead, it labeled the footage as having taken place at an “undisclosed location,” according to CNN.
Most committee hearings flounder because politicians waste time grandstanding, but lawmakers shouldn’t squander the chance to ask insightful questions of the ‘Twitter Files’ witnesses.
Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testify on Thursday before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Little they say will be new, yet because corporate media have refused to cover the story, many Americans remain ignorant about the massive scandals Taibbi, Shellenberger, and the other independent journalists have revealed over the last three months in the “Twitter Files.”
Here’s what the House committee must do to break the cone of silence.
Introduce Taibbi and Shellenberger to Americans
Most Americans know little about Taibbi and Shellenberger, allowing the left to execute its go-to play when faced with inconvenient facts: call the messengers members of a right-wing conspiracy. The House’s weaponization committee should thus ensure the public knows neither Taibbi nor Shellenberger can be written off as conservative conspirators, much less “ultra MAGA.”
Hopefully, the two witnesses for the majority party will ensure their opening statements detail their non-conservative “credentials” — something Taibbi has attempted to do on Twitter, writing: “I’m pro-choice and didn’t vote for Trump,” and noting he is an independent.
Taibbi’s work covering politics for Rolling Stone and his “incisive, bilious takedowns of Wall Street,” as well as past appearances on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, and his work with Keith Olbermann, are the non-conservative credentials Americans need to hear.
Shellenberger’s biography likewise confirms he is no right-winger or Trump surrogate. Time Magazine named him “Hero of the Environment.” “In the 1990s, Shellenberger helped save California’s last unprotected ancient redwood forest, inspire Nike to improve factory conditions, and advocate for decriminalization and harm reduction policies,” his webpage reads — details helpful to highlight for the listening public.
If Taibbi and Shellenberger’s prepared testimony omits these and other details, Chair Jim Jordan should open the hearing by asking the witnesses to share with the country their political and policy perspectives and then push them on why all Americans should care about the “Twitter Files.”
Here, the committee and its witnesses need to remind Americans of the importance of free speech and that the silencing of speech harms the country, even when it is not the government acting as the censor. (In fact, I would argue it is precisely because our country has lost a sense of the importance of free speech that the government successfully outsourced censorship to Twitter.)
Guide Them So They Tell a Coherent Story
Next, the questioning will begin. Unfortunately, here’s where most committee hearings flounder because politicians prefer to pontificate than pose insightful questions to their witnesses. But in the case of the “Twitter Files,” Republicans can do both because the witnesses have already provided detailed answers to much of what the country needs to know in the nearly 20 installments they published over the last several months.
Thus the goal of the committee should be to provide a platform that allows the witnesses to tell the story of the scandals uncovered. Ideally, then, committee members will lead the witnesses through their testimony as if each question represents the opening paragraph of a chapter, with Taibbi and Shellenberger given the floor to provide the details.
Start at the Beginning, the Best Place to Start
Committee members will all want to focus on the most shocking discoveries, such as the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the government’s demands to silence unapproved Covid messages. But those events merely represent symptoms of the diseased state of free speech Taibbi and Shellenberger uncovered, and the latter represents the real threat to our country.
Democrats, independents, and apolitical Americans will also be inclined to immediately write off the hearings as political theater if Republicans immediately flip to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and Covid messaging. Both are important parts of the story, but Americans first need to understand the context.
Begin there: After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he provided Taibbi, Shellenberger, and other independent journalists access to internal communications. What communications were accessible? What types of emails did the journalists review? How many? What else remains to explore?
Buckets of Scandals
The story will quickly progress from there, but how?
While the committee could walk Taibbi and Shellenberger through each of their individual “Twitter Files” reports, the better approach would be to bucket the scandals because each thread the journalists wrote included details that overlapped with earlier (and later) revelations.
Remember: The scandals are not merely the “events,” such as the blocking of the New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Rather, they go back to first principles — in this case, the value of free speech.
Twitter’s Huge Censorship Toolbox
Moving next to what Taibbi called Twitter’s “huge toolbox for controlling the visibility of any user,” the House committee should ask the witnesses to expand on those tools, which include “Search Blacklist,” “Trends Blacklist,” “Do Not Amplify” settings, limits on hashtag searches, and more.
What were those tools? How often were they used and why? Did complaints from the government or other organizations ever prompt Twitter to use those visibility filters? Were official government accounts ever subjected to the filters? If so, why?
Twitter-Government Coordination
The natural next chapter will focus on any coordination between Twitter and the government. Again, the “Twitter Files” exposed the breadth and depth of government interaction with the tech giant — from FBI offices all over the country contacting Twitter about problematic accounts to, as Taibbi wrote, Twitter “taking requests from every conceivable government agency, from state officials in Wyoming, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut, California, and others to the NSA, FBI, DHS, DOD, DOJ, and many others.”
Internal communications also showed the CIA — referred to under the euphemism “Other Government Agencies” in the emails — working closely with Twitter as well. Other emails showed Twitter allowed the Department of Defense to run covert propaganda operations, “whitelisting” Pentagon accounts to prevent the covert accounts from being banned. The multi-agency Global Engagement Center, housed in the Department of State, also played a large part in the government’s efforts to prompt the censorship of speech.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations reached out to Twitter as well, seeking the removal of various posts, as did other individual politicians, such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
To keep the conversation coherent, the committee should catalog the various government agencies, centers, and individuals revealed in the “Twitter Files” and ask the witnesses how these government-connected individuals or organizations communicated with Twitter, how they pressured Twitter, the types of requests they made, and their success.
The “Twitter Files” detailed censorship requests numbering in the tens of thousands from the government. Asking the witnesses to expand on those requests and how individual Americans responded when they learned they were supposedly Russian bots or Indian trolls will make the scandal more personal.
Non-Governmental Organizations
Questioning should then proceed to the non-governmental organizations connected to Twitter’s censorship efforts. Again, the committee should first provide a quick synopsis of the revelations from the “Twitter Files,” highlighting the involvement of various nonprofits and academic institutions in the “disinformation” project, including the Election Integrity Partnership, Alliance Securing Democracy (which hosted the Hamilton 68 platform), the Atlantic Council’s Center for Internet Security, and Clemson University.
What role did these organizations play? Have you reviewed all of the communications related to these groups? Were there other non-governmental organizations communicating with Twitter? How much influence did these groups have?
Disinformation About Disinformation
The story should continue next with testimony about the validity of the various disinformation claims peddled to Twitter. Internal communications showed Twitter insiders knew the Hamilton 68 dashboard’s methodology was flawed. Other emails indicated Twitter experts found the claims of Russian disinformation coming from Clemson, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, and the Global Engagement Center questionable.
Highlighting these facts and then asking the witnesses to elaborate on the revelations, organization by organization, will advance the story for the public.
Funding Sources
Next up should be the funding of those organizations, which came from government grants and often the same few private organizations. Here the Committee should ask Taibbi the status of his research on the financing of these organizations — something the journalist indicated last month he is delving into.
Taibbi also suggested the Global Engagement Center’s funding should be looked at in the next budget. Why? What should the House know before it makes future budget decisions?
Connecting the Censorship Complex Dots
After these details have been discussed, the committee should connect the dots as Taibbi did when he wrote: “What most people think of as the ‘deep state’ is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless.”
Read that quote — and other powerful ones from either the emails or the journalists covering the story — to the witnesses. Hopefully, staffers already have the best quotes blown up and ready for tomorrow.
Can you explain what you mean, here, Mr. Taibbi? What “state agencies”? What NGOs? Mr. Shellenberger, do you agree? What governmental or non-governmental players did you see involved?
What Was the Media’s Role?
Asking the witnesses about the media’s involvement will then close the circle on the big picture, which is ironic given the press’s role in circular reporting — something even Twitter recognized. Hamilton 68 or the Global Engagement Center would announce Russian disinformation and peddle it to the press, Twitter, and politicians. Then when Twitter’s review found the accounts not concerning, politicians would rely on the press’s coverage to bolster the claims of disinformation and pressure Twitter to respond. And even when Twitter told the reporters (and politicians) the disinformation methodologies were lacking, the media persisted in regurgitating claims of Russian disinformation.
Can you explain how the press responded when Twitter told reporters to be cautious of the Hamilton 68 database? What precisely did Twitter say? Did you find similar warnings to the media about the Global Engagement Center’s data?
Specific Instances of Censorship
Then the committee should focus on specific instances of censorship, with the Hunter Biden laptop story and Covid debates deserving top billing.
While Republicans care most about the censorship of the laptop story, this committee hearing is not the place to put the Biden family’s pay-to-play scandals on trial. Rather, Americans need to understand four key takeaways: The laptop was real, the FBI knew it was real, the FBI’s warnings to Twitter and other tech giants prompted censorship of the Post’s reporting, and the legacy media were complicit in silencing the story. Having the witnesses explain why Twitter censored the story with the goal of conveying those points will be key.
However, highlighting the censorship of Covid debates offers a better opportunity to cross the political divide of the country and to convince Americans that the hand-in-glove relationship between media and government threatens everyone’s speech. Stressing that both the Trump and Biden administrations pushed Twitter to censor Covid-related speech will also bolster that point.
The committee should start by summarizing the various Covid topics considered verboten — the virus’ origins, vaccines, natural immunity, masking, school closings — and then stress that the science now indicates the speech silenced was correct. Highlighting specific tweets that were blocked and medical professionals who were axed from the platform, while asking the witnesses to explain how this happened, will show the public the real-world implications of a Censorship Complex governing debate in America.
Where Do We Go from Here?
The committee should close by giving Taibbi and Shellenberger the floor, asking: “Where do we go from here?”
The “Twitter Files” revealed that the government and its allies did not limit their efforts to Twitter but pushed censorship at other platforms, and also that a new “cottage industry” in disinformation has already launched. How do Americans know they are hearing the truth? How do we know the government is not manipulating or censoring the truth?
Furthermore, if the same Censorship Complex that limits speech on social media succeeds in canceling alternative news outlets, and if the legacy media won’t provide a check on the government, how do we preserve our constitutional republic?
That last question is not for tomorrow’s witnesses, however. It is for every American.
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.
Can we trust Congress to set politics aside and do the right thing?
I get that question from a lot of veterans and military family members.
I will testify on Wednesday as one of the initial witnesses for the long-awaited House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that will re-visit the botched Afghan withdrawal by discussing the Afghanistan collapse and the impact it’s had on our nation, the Afghan people, and our veterans.
The U. S. government may not have had the backs of our Afghan Allies, but our veterans did.
For as long as we’ve been a nation, our veterans have been a moral compass for doing the right thing, especially in hard times. When Kabul collapsed on August 15, 2021, thousands of veterans across the country watched the Taliban take back Afghanistan. Most of these men and women veterans had paid their dues and moved on with their lives. Jumping back into the quagmire of Afghanistan was certainly not part of their military retirement plans. Yet they did just that, and in a big way. Because they weren’t willing to break a promise that every warrior lives by: “I have your back.”
This hearing on Wednesday will be the first time that the voices of these volunteer veterans will be heard in this kind of public forum. It’s possible that the whole thing might quickly spiral into the polarized political grandstanding most of us have come to expect.
Even so, a few of us are going to walk in there, take that oath, and speak our truth on the off chance that our political system still honors its social contract with its veterans. Veterans know something about the impact of the Afghan withdrawal that our country seems oblivious to: we might be done with Afghanistan, but it’s not done with us.
For my part, I intend to drive home the fact that right now, veterans are still holding the line for our Afghan Allies. We are banding together, pooling our resources, and sharing information about best practices on safe passage and resettlement issues. We’re advocating for our Afghan partners.
Why?
Because veterans know something about the impact of the Afghan withdrawal that our country seems oblivious to: we might be done with Afghanistan, but it’s not done with us.
As Afghanistan re-emerges as a terrorist safe haven, our national security risk is higher than even pre-911 levels. And no one is talking about it.
Formerly, one of the most-trusted institutions in our civil society, public trust in the military was crushed by the Afghanistan abandonment, dropping from the mid-70s to 56 percent.
Consequently, this has impacted military recruiting and retention. Many recruits come from military families and many veterans. I’ve spoken with dozens of iconic veterans across America, who are advising their loved ones to think twice about joining up.
Humanitarian atrocities that go against every American value of human decency are happening against Afghan women, children, ethnic minorities, and at-risk members of Afghan society in broad daylight, while our government claims to stand for women and other under-represented voices. Our government left our allies on the side of the road to be killed and then turned the page like it never happened. There have been no efforts to take responsibility for this abandonment or to evacuate the most at-risk Afghans, such as the commandos who fought side-by-side with American troops.
As a result of this moral injury, a violation of what one knows to be right, veteran mental health is plummeting, with an 81% spike in calls to the VA suicide line one year after the withdrawal.
This is not a Democrat issue. It’s not a Republican issue. It’s an American issue. There is deep responsibility on both sides of the Congressional aisle to set politics aside and act responsibly for accountability and change.
Testimony by a few veterans won’t be enough. If you care about this issue, please contact the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and demand action. If Congress doesn’t step up in this hearing, this war will follow us home and haunt our society for decades.
Congress, your veterans are watching. Do what’s right.
A U.S. Marine Corps sniper was moved to tears as he recounted how his warnings about a potential suicide bomber were ignored by leaders just minutes before the deadly blast at Kabul airport during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine sniper who served in Afghanistan during the American withdrawal, recounted the ordeal in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, telling members about the moment he and a friend were hit with a “flash and massive wave of pressure” after a suicide bomb detonated at Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021.
“I’m thrown 12 feet onto the ground but instantly knew what happened. I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious and lying around me. A crowd of hundreds immediately vanished in front of me and my body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings now in it,” Vargas-Andrews told the committee through tears.
Moments before the blast, he and his fellow Marines were providing security from a tower near the gate where the blast occurred. Armed with intelligence about a potential suicide bomber, Vargas-Andrews and those with him spotted an individual matching the suicide bomber’s description. The Marines observed as the man engaged in suspicious behavior and sent urgent warnings to leaders asking for permission to engage the suspected bomber.
Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews breaks down while testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (Fox News)
“Over the communication network we passed that there was a potential threat and that there an IED attack imminent, this was as serious as it could get. I request engagement authority while my team leader was ready on the M110 semi-automatic sniper system. The response, leadership did not have engagement authority for us, do not engage,” Vargas-Andrews recounted.
The Marines asked for their battalion commandeer to come to the tower as psychological operations confirmed the individual met the description of the suspected bomber. They presented the commander their evidence while assuring him of the “ease of fire” on the suspect and asked for authority to shoot, but were never given permission.
“Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded, no one was held accountable for our safety,” Vargas-Andrews said.
The team soon left their position on a mission to find allies on the ground among the crowd when they were hit with the suicide blast, which led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
A U.S. Air Force aircraft takes off from the airport in Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images)
Vargas-Andrews, who was appearing in front of the committee in a personal capacity and not as a representative of the U.S. Marine Corps or the Department of Defense, is one of several individuals testifying about the chaotic final days of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
“Nobody wanted my report post-blast. Even NCIS and the FBI failed to interview me.”
The hearings are the first on the subject since Republicans took control of Congress earlier this year, with Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., telling Fox News Digital Tuesday that the proceedings will be aimed at providing the “transparency and accountability the American people deserve.”
Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews recounted how his warnings about a potential suicide bomber were ignored by leaders just minutes before the deadly blast at Kabul airport. (Fox News)
“I think these 13 Gold Star families deserve to know who was responsible for the loss of life. I think that the Americans who are left behind to perish without our own U.S. government’s obligated duties to provide safety and security to them need to have transparency,” Mills said. “We need to know where the decisions were being made, whether it was ignoring military strategy by the president. Whether it was failed strategies by both the DOD and the Department of State, whether it was not being properly carried out by the ground commanders… we get the necessary information to be able to take further steps and lessons learned.”
Vargas-Andrews said he personally observed some of those failures, including slow processing speed by State Department personnel.
A U.S. Marine grabs an infant over a fence topped with concertina wire during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, 2021. (Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images)
“The troops on the ground had to tirelessly work to control the crowds, day and night. The Department of State staff at HKIA (Hamid Karzai International Airport) would completely shut down processing Afghans every evening and into the morning, leaving ground forces with a nightmare,” he said. “State was not prepared to be in HKIA.”
Despite the disastrous events, the Marine testified that he was not asked to provide his report after the blast and stressed the need for accountability in the aftermath.
“Nobody wanted my report post-blast. Even NCIS and the FBI failed to interview me,” Vargas-Andrews said.
“Our military members and our veterans deserve our best because that is what we give to America,” he continued. “The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence. The 11 Marines, one sailor, and one solider who were murdered that day have not been answered for.”
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee
Last night, we aired video from surveillance cameras on Capitol Hill. That video was recorded 26 months to the day before January 6, 2021, and for 26 months, that footage was held from the American public. The January 6 Committee made certain. Now, the Justice Department also kept a lid on that video footage and in fact, in some cases, DOJ did not share it with criminal defendants who had been charged on January 6 in violation of their constitutional rights.
We felt it was a public service to bring what we could to you. There was no justification for keeping the secret any longer and a powerful argument to be made that sunlight is always and everywhere the best disinfectant and in fact, because it was video evidence, it is to some extent self-explanatory.
Anyone could look at the tape and decide what he or she thinks of it. The tape we showed last night indicated very clearly that Capitol Hill police in some cases escorted protesters through the Capitol as if they were giving a tour. They did that with Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman. At one point, they even tried to open locked doors on Chansley’s behalf.
Chansley was sentenced to four years in prison for his crimes in the Capitol on January 6 and the video we showed you last night raises the obvious question: Why? On what grounds? The video we showed you last night also showed that Officer Brian Sicknick was not beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by protesters on January 6 as the media and Liz Cheney so often claimed. The video shows Sicknick walking around the building, apparently in good health, after he was supposedly killed. We showed you that video. You can make of it what you will. We also showed you video that proves Ray Epps, the mysterious protester who encouraged others to breach the Capitol, lied to the January 6 Committee about where he was on that day, but for some reason, the committee protected him anyway. He was not considered an insurrectionist. He was their ally.
Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, speaks during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
So, once again, you can draw whatever conclusions you like from that video. We have ours and we shared them with you, but it’s really beyond debate that it is good for this country for Americans to be able to see it. The media and politicians, the people in charge, have talked about January 6 every day since it happened for 26 months and so at some point, the evidence should be presented to the public. In free countries, governments do not lie about protests as a pretext to gain more power for themselves. They don’t selectively edit videos for propaganda services and then lie about them and fake hearings and show trials, but that’s exactly what happened and every member of Congress should ask why that happened, but Democrats in the Senate, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is not asking why. Instead, Chuck Schumer went on the Senate floor today to explode and to say that showing that video evidence of wrongdoing by the federal government, including the security forces, the police department, that Nancy Pelosi personally controlled, letting the public see any of that is a threat to democracy.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: Last night, millions of Americans tuned in to one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television. Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a primetime cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr. Carlson did last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain.
“There’s nothing that shameful that has ever appeared on American television in the history of the media,” and so on the basis of that, the self-evident outrage of showing the public video that it paid for and has a right to see, Chuck Schumer called for the censorship of that video — any information, and he did not dispute that it was accurate — the damage is a storyline his party constructed and used must be squelched. And Schumer’s explicit on that point. Because that video contradicted lies told by the Democratic Party — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Chuck Schumer demanded that our bosses pull this show off the air.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., walks on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, March 15, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
SCHUMER: He’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch — tell Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. I urge Fox News to order Carlson to cease propagating the big lie on his network and to level with their viewers about the truth — the truth behind the efforts to mislead the public. Conduct like theirs is just asking for another January 6 to happen.
“It’s a threat to democracy. Pull him off the air.” A couple of obvious observations: You don’t often see the Senate majority leader openly call for censorship on the floor of the Senate as if that was totally normal and didn’t contradict the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment, but of course it does, but what’s really happening here? What you’re seeing is hysteria, the overstatement, the crazed hyperbole, the red-in-the-face anger. What is that? Well, it’s not outrage, of course. It’s fear. It’s panic.
Those videos, which we did not retouch, which we brought to you after running everyone by the Capitol Police to make certain that we didn’t imperil anybody, and we told you that last night, those videos touch a nerve because they’re a threat to the lies that Chuck Schumer has been telling for the last 26 months, and not just Chuck Schumer. We should also tell you that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, was joined in this outrage by the Senate minority leader and that would be a Republican, Mitch McConnell, and they were joined by a cascade of other Republicans — Thom Tillis from North Carolina, Mitt Romney from Utah — all sharing the same outrage, and from this, we learn two things.
One: You’re getting close to what they really care about, and you have to ask yourself why? Why is it so important that they would degrade themselves by telling such obvious lies and calling for censorship? Why? What are they trying to protect? That might be worth exploring, and we plan to, and the second thing that we learn from this is that they’re on the same side. The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader — Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney. They’re all on the same side. So, it’s actually not about left and right. It’s not about Republican and Democrat. Here you have people with shared interests, the open borders people, the people like Mitch McConnell, who are living in splendor on Chinese money, the people who underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else, and that would include almost all news organizations in this country as well.
So, if you’re watching, this might be kind of interesting to keep a list, because one thing we learned today is that they’re all in agreement with each other. They kind of outed themselves. They sort of showed their membership cards and whatever club this is to the public, so keep a list. If you want to know who’s actually aligned, despite the illusion of partisanship, we found out today. We have a little more tape for you tonight. If you take three steps back, you may notice that the one person really who was never blamed for anything that happened on January 6 was the very same person who was in charge of the police force, the Capitol Hill police, that was charged with securing safety on January 6, and that person was Nancy Pelosi.
If there was a security failure on January 6, and demonstrably there was, it was probably Nancy Pelosi’s fault, and after looking at thousands of hours of footage, we came to the conclusion that many others have reached, which is the Capitol Police were not prepared for what happened, and that’s fascinating when you think about it, because there was ample warning. The federal intel and law enforcement agencies knew perfectly well there could be a massive disturbance at the Capitol, but the frontline officers on duty that day didn’t know and yet the people who kept that information from the frontline officers were overwhelmed by thousands of people milling around the Capitol building? The people who fell down on the job, who didn’t do their job, they were not punished. They were rewarded, and you have to ask yourself, why is that?
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied the number one tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, entry to America and his chance to compete in two renowned tournaments this month because he did not get the Covid-19 jab. Djokovic, who acquired natural immunity, something even the corporate media admits protects against virus severity and death, multiple times since lockdowns began in 2020, applied for a vaccine exemption through DHS with hopes of playing in the Miami Open and Indian Wells Masters in the U.S. this March and April. Even though he has natural immunity and the Biden administration plans to end its “emergency” pandemic requirements like covid shots for air travelers on May 11, the Serbian was barred by the U.S. government from pleading his case for exemption anyway.
THIS IS SOOOOO REDICULOUS. This is more proof of how stupid these Leftist “mental patients” think we are. They quibble over Djokovic, yet care nothing about the hordes coming over our Southern Border, bringing in diseases of how knows what.
This isn’t the first time Djokovic was forced to forfeit his chance to win elite competitions based on his Covid shot status.
Not only could he not participate in the 2022 U.S. Open, but Djokovic was also expelled from the 2022 Australian Open because the pro-jab Australian government canceled his visa and deported him. Djokovic didn’t regain his status as the world’s top tennis player until he was permitted into Australia under the country’s relaxed mandates, where he won the 2023 Australian Open.
Even though it’s abundantly clear that the jab does nothing to stop the spread of the virus, the U.S. is one of the only countries and is the only major Western nation still requiring foreign visitors to get the shot before entering. As Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio noted in a letter calling for the repeal of covid vaccine requirements for travelers, there’s no good reason for these senseless rules to live on.
Especially as other legislators have noted since even President Joe Biden admitted the pandemic is “over.”
The Biden administration tried to force the jab on illegal border crossers at the end of March last year. Of the 476,921 migrants that border agents took into custody in April and May of 2022, only 20,000 were given the shot. That means hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers who were caught and thousands more “gotaways,” migrants who evaded arrest from overwhelmed patrol units, entered the U.S. without the same stringent requirements DHS enforces for legal travelers.
In contrast, air travelers like Djokovic have to offer verified proof of vaccination upon their arrival to the U.S. or risk getting turned away.
Keeping an unvaxxed professional athlete and star out of the U.S. while border crossers of all kinds pour into the southern U.S. without the same scrutiny proves vaccine mandates were always a political pawn to strong-arm Americans, not a means to control a virus.
From very early on in the pandemic, it was clear that, contrary to leftwing SCOTUS justices and the president’s insistence, the jab doesn’t prevent the spread of the virus. Even if it did, most Americans haven’t cared about the pervasiveness of covid since 2021. Those who do care should understand that natural immunity is a better indicator of protection than shots like the ones DHS currently requires.
Barring legal travelers from entering the U.S. over their covid vaccination status has never been about reducing illness. Neither was forcing nurses, teachers, contractors, children, and many others to follow arbitrary pandemic protocols. Since the beginning of the bureaucracy’s pandemic panic, vaccine mandates have been about forcing conformity on people who felt like they had no other choice but to comply.
For three years now, Djokovic sacrificed his career so he wouldn’t have to bend a knee. Other countries like Australia have recognized their mistake in keeping him away, but the Biden administration, which knowingly lets millions of unvaccinated illegal border crossers into the country each year, wants to teach him a lesson by barring him from the country for just a couple months more. Until Djokovic’s entry is on their terms, when they say being unvaccinated is socially acceptable, the U.S. will sentence him to the sidelines.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
House Democrats lied when they said an investigation into an FBI whistleblower’s claim of retaliation had been dismissed, according to a letter obtained exclusively by The Federalist. On the contrary, an investigation into Special Agent Steve Friend’s claims is ongoing.
Last week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee leaked a “staff report” that contained numerous misrepresentations to The New York Times, Monday’s letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz said. The letter — signed by Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, the legal services firm representing Friend — began by condemning the “Forward” from committee ranking member Jerry Nadler and subcommittee ranking member Stacey Plaskett that declared by fiat and without evidence: “[T]he three individuals we have met [including Friend] are not, in fact, ‘whistleblowers.’”
Friend is indeed a whistleblower, the letter said. Not only that, but throughout the report that Democrats crafted and peddled to multiple media outlets, they falsely and repeatedly claimed the Office of Inspector General (OIG) had rejected Friend’s whistleblower retaliation claims, Leavitt stressed. “These mischaracterizations in the Democrat staff report were subsequently parroted by multiple media outlets,” including CNN and The Washington Post.
Contrary to the Democrats’ claims, echoed by friendly media outlets, Leavitt’s letter says that Friend’s whistleblower retaliation complaint, originally filed in September 2022, remains pending with the DOJ’s inspector general. While Friend had also alleged “systematic abuses of the Constitution, laws, and policy by the FBI,” in December of 2022, those allegations were referred to the FBI’s Inspection Division. But in follow-up inquiries, the OIG made clear, according to Empower Oversight, that the referral did not apply to Friend’s whistleblower retaliation claims.
In fact, since then, “Special Agent Friend and Empower Oversight continued to furnish additional information” to the OIG, and the inspector general continues to receive and evaluate information, the letter said, explaining the attorneys’ understanding of the investigation’s status. Friend’s attorneys said they understood the OIG intended “to interview Friend in order to obtain a more complete understanding of his allegations and fully assess both his underlying disclosures as well as his retaliation claims.”
Yet some media, without seeking comment from the OIG, “uncritically repeated” Democrats’ false narrative that the inspector general had rejected Friend’s claims. Conversely, when other outlets sought comment and clarification on the status of Friend’s case, Horowitz remained silent.
“This suggests a disturbing situation in which your office’s silence is allowing its reputation for neutrality and objectivity to be hijacked by partisans and their media allies to leave a false impression with the public — all in the service of undermining a whistleblower for political purposes,” Leavitt wrote.
Given the inspector general’s silence, Empower Oversight requested an update on the status of his office’s investigation into Friend’s whistleblower retaliation complaint — something his attorneys should not have to request. But given the Democrats’ lies, apparently it’s necessary to correct the record.
Monday’s letter also chastised House Democrats for leaking excerpts of Friend’s deposition transcripts, “without authorization of the Committee.” This was in violation of the committee’s representation to Friend that it would treat the transcripts “confidentially,” the letter added.
The leaks will likely continue, however; and sadly, so will the blatant lies.
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.
The FBI’s D.C. field office directed the Boston office to open investigations into more than 100 Americans who had attended the Jan. 6 rally despite having no evidence those individuals had committed any crime, according to whistleblower testimony reviewed by The Federalist. This represents the second attempt by the D.C. field office to sic the FBI on innocent Americans — in this case, people who were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.
The D.C. field office pressured Boston’s FBI office to open criminal investigations into some 140 people who took buses from Massachusetts to D.C. on Jan. 6, according to testimony from George Hill, a whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, reviewed by The Federalist. The D.C. field office applied this pressure, Hill said, even though it had no evidence that any of those travelers had entered restricted areas of the Capitol.
Hill, a military veteran and former longtime FBI and NSA analyst, had previously identified himself as one of several whistleblowers cooperating with House Judiciary Committee investigators when he spoke with Just the News’ John Solomon last month. The Federalist’s review of Hill’s testimony confirmed the details he told Solomon and exposed more troubling information.
According to Hill’s testimony, after rioters entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the D.C. field office, which was leading the investigation, presented the Boston office “definitive evidence” that two individuals within its jurisdiction had entered restricted areas of the Capitol. Boston opened investigations into those two individuals.
In his deposition testimony to congressional investigators, Hill explained that because those two people had arranged for buses to take rally-goers to Washington, the D.C. field office told the Boston office to open investigations into all 140 of the passengers.
According to the whistleblower, a Boston supervisory special agent, or SSA, told the D.C. field office, “Happy to do it. Show us where they were inside the Capitol, and we’ll look into it.”
But the D.C. field office said it couldn’t do that unless it knew the exact time and location in the Capitol where the individuals were located, according to Hill’s testimony. Then when Boston asked for access to the 11,000 hours of video to allow its own agents to review the footage themselves to assess whether to launch an investigation into any of the rally-goers, the D.C. field office refused to share the video, Hill’s testimony revealed. The bureau claimed the footage might reveal undercover agents or confidential human sources, according to the whistleblower.
Yet the D.C. field office persisted in its demand for Boston to open investigations into everyone on the bus, threatening to call the special agent in charge of the field office if the lower-level agent refused. The supervisory special agent remained firm, however. As Hill explained, the SSA told the D.C. field office that those 140 people “were going to a political rally, which is First Amendment protected activity.”
This move by the bureau represents its second such attempt — just from Hill’s testimony — to target innocent Americans. As The Federalist reported on Monday, Hill also told the House Judiciary Committee that the D.C. field office pressured local FBI field offices to open investigations on innocent, gun-owning Americans based on data mining that Bank of America voluntarily provided to the bureau.
According to The Federalist’s review of the testimony, Hill said the Bank of America list included people who used its credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Furthermore, people who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm were elevated to the top of the list.
In both instances, Boston’s special agent in charge, Joseph Bonavolonta, withstood the outside pressure — something Hill commended in his testimony.
While Bonavolonta and the Boston office refused to investigate Americans based solely on their First Amendment activities or credit card receipts placing them in the greater-D.C. area, it is unclear whether other field offices launched investigations based on the D.C. office’s pressure. A source familiar with Hill’s testimony confirmed that Hill did not know the answer to that question either.
Open-source reporting, however, reveals that in at least one instance, the FBI questioned an individual who organized buses for rally-goers — apparently without any evidence of potentially illegal conduct. In January of 2021, FBI agents appeared at Jim Worthington’s suburban Philadelphia home to quiz him about the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Worthington was not home at the time but later spoke with investigators over the course of two hours, confirming he had been in D.C. for the rally and had “helped bring busloads of people to the event,” but had “never went to the Capitol.”
Given that Worthington, who also led the People4Trump PAC, never entered the Capitol, one must wonder what legitimate basis the FBI claimed it had to target him.
Or had the D.C. field office pressured the Philadelphia field office to open an investigation into Worthington? And what about the some-200 people who traveled to D.C. on the buses Worthington arranged? Did the local field office open investigations into those people? And what about the other 50-plus field offices? Did they also target individuals based on their First Amendment-protected activities? With stories of buses from acrossAmericatraveling to D.C. for the Jan. 6 rally, it is a definite possibility.
While it’s long been known that the House’s Jan. 6 Committee and the legacy media pushed a narrative that conflated the rally-goers and the rioters, the whistleblower’s allegations now suggest the FBI’s D.C. field office also treated Americans exercising their right to free speech as suspected criminals, without any evidentiary basis to do so.
Mollie Hemingway contributed to this report.
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.
When Disney began lobbying against a parental-rights bill in Florida that would prohibit public school teachers from discussing sex, sexual orientation, or so-called gender identity with prepubescent kids in kindergarten through third grade, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a special session of the legislature to review Disney World’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status to see if it was “appropriately serving the public interest.”
The popular bill — which Democrats and the media dishonestly renamed “Don’t Say Gay” despite the bill never mentioning the word gay or stopping anyone from saying it — passed both houses and was signed by DeSantis. Disney was handily beaten. Nevertheless, DeSantis ended up signing legislation that effectively stripped Disney of control of over 25,000 acres surrounding its theme park and created a new tax district.
Democrats like Jonathan Chait claimed the threat alone was “What Post-Trump Authoritarianism Looks Like,” and MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones noted that the threats showed the GOP had gone “full authoritarian,” and so on. By full authoritarian, he meant that the Florida legislature passed the bill and then the governor signed the bill. Disney, of course, has no constitutional or divine right to be a special tax district. But the notion of “democracy” is highly malleable these days.
It is probably unpopular to say I believe it’s a terribly short-sighted idea to normalize state retribution against speech. Disney should be able to stake any political position it wants without worrying about repercussions from the government — in the same way that Jack Phillips or Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A shouldn’t have to worry about the government punishing them for their beliefs. If Disney’s position is that state-run schools should teach kindergarteners about oral sex and celebrate gender dysphoria despite the wishes of parents, it would almost surely pay a steep economic price.
It is also true, however, that one can understand why DeSantis’ move is popular with conservatives. The entire feigned anger over the incident from leftists is laughable and transparently insincere. Contemporary Democrats have never been reluctant to punish and single out corporations that do not share their political values. Virtually the entire technocratic economic agenda of the contemporary left exists to subsidize industries that produce things they like, mandate consumers buy those things, and punish those who do not. Democrats have never been reluctant to target disfavored companies over their profit margins, to use corporations to compel vaccinations and unions, or to threaten Big Tech companies into accepting government speech codes. The committee chair in the Senate is an open Marxist. Who are they kidding?
This week we learned that Walgreens wouldn’t sell the abortifacient mifepristone in 20 red states that have laws curbing unfettered abortion. Gavin Newsom, the man who presides over a state whose economic controls are beginning to resemble an Eastern European “republic” circa 1975, promised the pharmaceutical company would face consequences and that California would no longer do any business with the chain because it “cowers to the extremists” and “puts women’s lives at risk.”
Walgreens, of course, is not standing in opposition to any California law, much less putting any women’s lives in danger. It’s not lobbying the state to overturn laws that legalize abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy nor staking a position that is at odds with most of the state’s voters — though it has every right to do all those things if it desires. Walgreens has decided not to sell abortion drugs, ones it has never sold in the past, in other states. It is not doing so for any moral reasons. It is trying to avoid legal conflict.
Many Democrats celebrated Newsom’s threat, as they’ve celebrated threats before, because they have zero qualms about compelling or hurting companies. They don’t believe it’s authoritarian. They’re just angry they no longer have a monopoly on the practice.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
Four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros, Mexico having traveled to the country for medical treatment. Two of the four American citizens kidnapped in Mexico are dead while the other two remain alive, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing the governor of Tamaulipas.
Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Tuesday that one of the surviving Americans was wounded and the other was not, while two of the four U.S. citizens who traveled to Mexico were found dead.
The FBI is still working to return the missing Americans, who were abducted after being caught in the crossfire of rival cartels shortly after crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a Tuesday news conference that he has been briefed by the FBI on the situation unfolding in Mexico and said the State Department was working with Mexican authorities on the investigation.
Garland offered sympathies to the families of the victims of the attacks, but did not confirm the reports that two of the Americans died in the attack.
The attorney general added that the Justice Department would be working to prosecute the cartel members behind the incident.
Dramatic video shows the moment four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing into Mexico, in what authorities have called a case of mistaken identity.
The video of the violent incident shows armed men in body armor dragging one person across the pavement and pushing a woman into the bed of a white truck, then dragging two more men who appear to be wounded across the pavement and loading them into the bed of the same truck.
Photos from the scene show a white minivan with North Carolina plates riddled with bullet holes shortly after the kidnappings, with a woman who reportedly witnessed the attack telling the Associated Press she saw the minivan collide with another vehicle before hearing gunfire and seeing armed men approach the van.
“All of a sudden they (the gunmen) were in front of us,” said the woman, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. “I entered a state of shock, nobody honked their horn, nobody moved. Everybody must have been thinking the same thing, ‘If we move they will see us, or they might shoot us.’”
A member of the Mexican security forces stands next to a white minivan with North Carolina plates and several bullet holes, at the crime scene where gunmen kidnapped four U.S. citizens who crossed into Mexico from Texas, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo)
She added that she saw the men force one woman who was able to walk into the bed of their truck, while another victim who she said could move his head was loaded into the truck.
“The other two they dragged across the pavement, we don’t know if they were alive or dead,” she said.
According to law enforcement, the group of Americans were traveling to Mexico for health services last week when the minivan they were driving was attacked by a group of armed men, who shot at the vehicle before dragging the Americans out and loading them into a truck. The four Americans were not thought to be the intended target of the attack.
The group crossed from Brownsville, Texas, into the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an area that has been plagued by cartel violence and carries a travel advisory from the State Department warning Americans to avoid visiting.
Mexican Natioanla Guard prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen at Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
One of the four Americans in the group, Zindell Brown, was identified by his sister, Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, on Tuesday, saying she has been in contact with the FBI and Mexican authorities since the incident.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” Brown told the Associated Press. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
Brown said her younger brother is from Myrtle Beach and was visiting Mexico with three friends, one of whom was there to get a tummy tuck surgery.
She added that her brother was hesitant to make the trip, warning his friends about the dangers before they departed.
Mexican army soldiers prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
“Zindell kept saying, ‘We shouldn’t go down,’” Brown said.
The victim’s father, O’dell William Brown, said the family is reeling from the news.
“I don’t know which way to go right now,” he said. “We don’t know what’s what.”
It is unclear if Brown is one of those who died in the incident.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the return of the victims and arrests of those responsible.
THE Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee
Fox News host Tucker Carlson says Democrats used Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick’s death for their political agenda on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’
Tucker Carlson released never-before-seen footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at Capitol Hill that appear to dispel several narratives pushed by the Democrat-controlled House Select Committee and the legacy media. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” an exclusive first look to over 40,000 hours of security camera footage from the Capitol Building that were hidden from the public for over two years. On Monday, Carlson offered the first glimpses of footage involving key figures from that day.
Carlson concluded the footage proves that lawmakers and the media were “lying” about the events that took place on Jan. 6.
Footage from Jan. 6 released exclusively by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” dispel multiple narratives pushed by politicians and the media about the events that occurred that day. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
The first batch of footage showed Trump supporters peacefully touring the building, “sightseers” as Carlson put it, but the footage of the rioters overwhelmingly consumed the news coverage of Jan. 6, which many in D.C. have compared to 9/11 and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Capitol police officers were seen escorting Jacob Chansley, a Navy veteran widely referred to in the liberal media as the “QAnon Shaman,” around the building without incident. Carlson reported that officers were seen showing Chansley around, even trying to open locked doors for him. At one point, at least nine police officers were seen in close proximity to Chansley, and none of them slowed him down, as Carlson noted.
Chansley was later arrested and federally charged for “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.” He was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.
“If he was in fact committing such a grave crime, why didn’t the officers who were standing right next to him place him under arrest?” Carlson asked.
Jacob Chansley, who became the face of the Jan. 6 riot in the media, was seen in Capitol footage being guided around by police officers without incident. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine called the charges against Chansley “very sad,” saying that the footage proves that he was “harmless.”
“You can see the way those people were walking through the Capitol… they are walking meekly, politely queuing, very peaceable. They don’t mean any harm. They are treating the Capitol with reverence,” Devine told Carlson. “That doesn’t excuse the others, the minority of the protesters who did break windows and fight police and injure police and cause mayhem. But the people who are now being picked up and some of them have been jailed without trial for months, even years on end, did not commit violence. They walked through open doors, they were escorted by police, they felt that this was okay. And I think Jacob Chansley is a classic example of that.”
The second batch of footage addressed the widely promoted narrative by Democrats and the media that the events of Jan. 6 was a “deadly insurrection,” often citing the death of police officers, most of whom who died by suicide after the riot, while others died of natural causes. Only one person, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer.
However, the one person who became a household name was Officer Brian Sicknick, whom the media alleged was “attacked” by the mob and once falsely claimed was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. Sicknick was seen walking normally while guiding Trump supporters out of the building as he wore a helmet, which appears to contradict the media narrative that he died of a head injury.
“This tape overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie that Democrats told us about January 6th,” Carlson told viewers.
As Carlson noted, the footage of Sicknick had an electronic bookmark in the Capitol archives, alleging the Jan. 6 House Select Committee had reviewed it and chose not to include it in its widely publicized hearings and the final report.
“They lied about the police officer they claimed to revere,” Carlson said. “If they were willing to do that, then their dishonesty knew no limits.”
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was widely portrayed by the media as being the victim of an assault on Jan. 6. (US Capitol Police)
Washington Times opinion editor Charlie Hurt called the politicians and the press who peddled the Sicknick narrative “very sick.”
The third batch of footage showed Ray Epps, the man caught urging Trump supporters to go into the Capitol the night before the Jan. 6 riot, seen on the grounds at least 30 minutes after the time he told House Select Committee regarding a text he sent to his nephew, claiming he was already heading back in his hotel. As Carlson noted, that false claim to congressional investigators is itself a crime.
The lack of any criminal charges against Epps has fueled suspicion from critics that he had coordinated with the FBI leading up to the riot.
Democratic lawmakers pushed the narrative that some of their GOP colleagues aided rioters ahead of Jan. 6, singling out Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., of leading a “reconnaissance mission” through the Capitol building the day before. In reality, Loudermilk was seen in footage giving a tour in a congressional building down the street to constituents, none of whom were linked to the so-called “insurrection.”
Carlson also refuted the viral footage singling out Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who the House Select Committee claimed “fled” from the mob in a cowardly manner when in reality the full footage shows he was among several lawmakers who were rushed away from the Capitol by police with him on the tail end of the group.
“The clip was propaganda, not evidence,” Carlson said.
The Jan. 6 House Select Committee targeted Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who it accused of cowardly fleeing the mob based on a short clip Tucker Carlson concluded was “propaganda.” (January 6 Committee/Youtube)
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said the footage shown by Carlson has changed his perception of Jan. 6, noting that he was at the Capitol that day.
Massie cited a poll showing an overwhelming majority of Americans, including most Democrats, want all the Jan. 6 footage released. He also called for a “complete catalog of all the feds who were there” in order to get to the bottom of their involvement in the riot.
Carlson teased that more footage from Jan. 6 will be shared Tuesday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
‘Off the Press’ senior editor Rob Smith argues ‘leftist sympathizers’ have infiltrated mainstream media after some outlets referred to Atlanta rioters as ‘environmentalists.’ He also discusses the Army’s latest ad campaign to boost recruitment.
Several individuals who were arrested Sunday on domestic terrorism charges in connection with the “Cop City” attack in Georgia have ties to high-profile far-left movements and organizations.
On Monday, the Atlanta Police Department named the 23 activists it arrested for domestic terrorism after a protest of a proposed 85-acre police training center, labeled by opponents as “Cop City,” turned into a violent assault on law enforcement. Those arrested conducted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers at the construction site east of Atlanta, using large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails and fireworks.
“Actions such as this will not be tolerated,” Atlanta Police Department Chief Darin Schierbaum told reporters during a press briefing Sunday evening. “You attack law enforcement officers, you damage equipment, you are breaking the law. This was a very violent attack. This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy and this was about an attempt to destabilize.”
Among those arrested, Fox News Digital identified several individuals connected to environmental and left-wing groups or broader activist movements.
Protesters set construction equipment on fire at the site of a proposed police training facility in Atlanta. (Sean Keenan/Twitter/Screenshot)
For example, Tom Jurgens, a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), was among those arrested during the attack.
The SPLC identifies itself as a watchdog of extremist groups, and its research has been cited by Democratic lawmakers. The NLG is a radical group that provides legal support and training to activists involved in and arrested for protest actions.
“This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility,” the SPLC said in a statement. “The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities — working in partnership with these communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.”
The group added that Jurgens’ arrest was not evidence that a crime had been committed, but of “heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.”
The NLG said the arrest was “part of ongoing state repression and violence against racial and environmental justice protesters, who are fighting to defend their communities from the harms of militarized policing and environmental degradation.” The group also stated its legal observers, including Jurgens, serve important roles supporting protesters.
Booking photos for those arrested by police in connection with the “Cop City” attack on Sunday. (DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office)
“Many of these activists and the groups they belong to, like the National Lawyers Guild, claim to defend democracy, yet they love thuggish violence, the opposite of the democratic rule of law,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, told Fox News Digital.
“They feel they have a right to parachute into a city from out of town and rule by force, outside any law. Their arrogance only makes the rule of law more appealing—and necessary.”
Of the 23 individuals arrested in the attack, only two are from Georgia and some traveled from other countries, according to police.
Alex Papali — a former green justice organizer at the group Clean Water Action, according to liberal nonprofit Barr Foundation — was also among those arrested for domestic terrorism. Clean Water Action declined to comment, noting that Papali has not been employed by the group since July 2020.
In a 2019 blog post, Papali argued everyone has “a role to play in putting equity at the center of climate action.”
Another activist arrested was Bo Bogush, a former environmental educator at Common Ground, an eco-focused progressive school in Connecticut. Common Ground Executive Director Monica Maccera-Filppu told Fox News Digital that Bogush has not been employed at the school since August and declined to comment.
A sign is pictured near the construction site of a police training facility that activists have nicknamed “Cop City” near Atlanta Feb. 6. (CHENEY ORR/AFP via Getty Images)
Two other individuals arrested, Maggie June Gates of Indiana and Ehret Nottingham of Colorado, were also active in the environmental movement. Family and friends interviewed by Indiana local outlet WTHR-TV said Gates was “dedicated to preserving the environment,” and Nottingham made headlines in 2019 for leading a youth climate protest in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“My favorite critique we got was ‘stay in school,’” Nottingham said at the time, according to Communication Ministries. “If we wait until we’re more educated and have credentials, then it will be too late to make the changes our climate needs.”
Additionally, North Carolina resident James Marsicano, an outspoken advocate of defunding the police, was also arrested in the attack on Sunday. According to The Funambulist, a platform for activists, Marsicano goes by “Jamie” and is a “White trans femme organizer in Charlotte who is fiercely committed to supporting Black trans femmes, prison abolition, and destabilizing all forms of oppression.”
“She/they was a core organizer during the Charlotte Uprising where she led direct action trainings, established a legal infrastructure so freedom fighters could get out of jail and obtain legal aid, and worked with communities in charlotte to build strong, lasting relationships,” the description continues. “Her interested include prison abolition, gender justice, and uplifting POC trans/non-binary femme leadership.”
Marsicano was arrested for assaulting a police officer in June 2020 during a violent protest in Charlotte, North Carolina, in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time. Marsicano’s father was the president and CEO of the left-wing Foundation for the Carolinas, one of the nation’s largest foundations, from 1999 until this year.
In this aerial view, law enforcement vehicles block the entrance to the planned site of a police training facility near Atlanta. (CHENEY ORR/AFP via Getty Images)
Finally, Priscilla Grim, another activist arrested, was a lead organizer of Occupy Wall Street, a two-month protest movement against inequality that took place in New York City in 2011. A blog site that appears to belong to Grim shows support for Black Lives Matter, an Indigenous collective and a group that backs undocumented people and states “no borders on stolen land.”
“I am choosing hope and solidarity. Tonight, as the United States remains mired in sexism, climate change, a pandemic, and the greed of the 1%, I choose hope and solidarity,” Grim wrote in a 2021 blog post commemorating the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. “Together we are strong, and together we can win a new future for each other. I have to believe that we can win. It is our duty to win.”
“The experiment of what could happen in a society created by settler colonialism is over. The land is destroyed. Humanity is pushed forward with the threat of a cage at the tip of a gun,” she continued. “These fools in elected office don’t represent us. Power is conceding nothing in the face of a global pandemic and the fires and floods of climate disasters. The time is now to shut down everything until we can see a path forward.”
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Less than one month after Texas Tech University was busted for using race-based ideology as a litmus test for hiring candidates in the school’s biology department, the four-year university suspended head men’s basketball coach Mark Adams for quoting the Bible to a student-athlete.
TTU Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt suspended Adams on Sunday after learning that the coach encouraged one of his basketball players “to be more receptive to coaching and referenced Bible verses about workers, teachers, parents, and slaves serving their masters.”
The comment, according to the university, was “inappropriate, unacceptable, and racially insensitive” and deserved a formal written reprimand from Hocutt, suspension, and an investigation into Adams’ previous “interactions with his players and staff.”
TTU claimed that when confronted with offense over the comments, Adams “immediately addressed this with the team and apologized.” Adams, however, said that was not the case.
“One of my coaches said it bothered the player,” Adams told Stadium. “I explained to them. I didn’t apologize.”
The controversial exchange, Adams said, was supposed to be “a private conversation about coaching and when you have a job, and being coachable.”
“I said that in the Bible that Jesus talks about how we all have bosses, and we all are servants,” Adams added. “I was quoting the Bible about that.”
TTU first hired Adams as head coach in April of 2021 to replace Chris Beard. In Adams’ first year leading the team, he secured the most wins, 27, of any first-year head coach in TTU basketball history. He also led the Red Raiders to the Big 12 finals and the Sweet 16.
Adams’ impressive debut record, however, quickly dwindled earlier this year. One week before the 2023 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, TTU’s men’s team is only 5-13 in the Big 12 and 16-15 overall.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Four Americans who went missing in Mexico last week were taken in a possible kidnapping, according to the FBI. The agency is seeking public help in locating the four Americans who disappeared on March 3 after they crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas.
“Four Americans crossed into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico driving a white minivan with North Carolina license plates,” read a statement from the FBI published by Fox News. “Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle. All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men.” The FBI did not name the four missing individuals.
The Americans “had traveled to the border city of Matamoros for medical procedures,” a U.S. official “citing receipts found in the vehicle” told CNN. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “offered a similar explanation.”
“The information we have is that they crossed the border to buy medicines in Mexico, there was a confrontation between groups and they were detained,” Obrador said, according to CNN. “The whole government is working on it.”
The region across the border from Brownsville is predominantly run by the Gulf drug cartel, a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in constant conflict with warring factions.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said Monday American officials are working with Mexican law enforcement to bring the four missing citizens home. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the safe return of the missing Americans and the arrest of the captors. Tips can be submitted to https://tips.fbi.gov.
Kidnapping of Americans in Mexico is far from unprecedented. The State Department has warned Americans against trips to the Tamaulipas state since at least Oct. 22 with a level 4 travel advisory “due to crime and kidnapping.”
Last year, an American tourist had his foot hacked by a machete after being kidnapped by his taxi driver. In December 2021, six Mexican nationals from a trafficking group in Tijuana were indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for kidnapping nine victims and murdering six. Three of those reportedly executed were American citizens. In 2013, an American named Shane Andersen was held for $20,000 ransom in Monterrey, Mexico.
Most kidnappings don’t pick up major press coverage. This week’s hostage situation, however, has already driven headlines across the major networks as the U.S. southern border with Mexico continues to spiral out of control.
CBS aired apparent footage of the kidnapping Monday morning.
Escalating violence across the international boundary has amplified pressure on Washington lawmakers to address the crisis.
In February, newly-elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his first visit to the border as the leading figure in the lower chamber. McCarthy blasted the Biden administration’s lethargic response to the crisis at the border where a lack of law enforcement has opened the door to unchecked migration and a flood of narcotics pouring into American communities.
“We don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said at a section of the border wall in southeast Arizona.
The Republican House speaker threatened to launch an impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the agency’s failure to secure the nation’s boundaries.
“You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over,” McCarthy said.
In January, cartel violence reached the doorstep of McCarthy’s own California House district where six, including a baby, were murdered in a “cartel-style execution.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The call for reparations attracts more supporters every day. Even Disney has joined the cause, weaving the issue of monetary payments to the descendants of slaves into a storyline on the “The Proud Family” series on the company’s streaming service. But what generated the most controversy was one episode in which the show’s protagonists perform a song entitled “Slaves Built This Country” after they discover the founder of their town was a slaveholder.
Setting their frustrations over racial injustice and hardship to music, the cartoon children sing that slaves “made your families rich from the southern plantation, to the northern bankers, to the New England ship owners, the Founding Fathers, former presidents, current senators.” Catchy though the song may be, the children leave out one prominent beneficiary of slavery, one in the best position to provide the reparations called for: the Democratic Party.
One may argue for or against reparations on many different grounds. At its heart, supporters for reparations say that freed slaves never received any kind of compensation for their hardship from their owners. Thus, the descendants of slaveowners owe financial restitution to the descendants of their slaves, which would alleviate income inequality and atone for slavery, America’s “original sin.” Opponents of reparations argue one group of people, who did not commit the original wrong, should not be forced to make restitution to a group who indirectly received the wrong. From this angle, reparations seem more like “legal plunder,” a term coined by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat. Such an act “takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.”
But if the supporters of reparations are right and that some restitution must be made, it becomes obvious who should do it: the Democratic Party. Indeed, it is an objective fact that the Democratic Party is intimately tied to slavery and segregation. The Democratic Party was founded by Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, himself a slaveowner, and Martin Van Buren, a New Yorker who owned at least one slave and exploited enslaved labor. More importantly, Van Buren’s plan gained the support of southern politicians for his policies in exchange for his support of the “peculiar institution” of plantation slavery. Such politicians became so numerous they had a name: doughfaces, since their characters lacked all substance.
This pattern continued through the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century. After the Civil War, Democratic politicians in the southern U.S. supported segregationist policies that brutally infringed upon the rights and dignity of African-Americans.
As a result of this history, the Democratic Party should provide reparations, not the descendants of one class deemed politically expendable. Still, you may say, “that was the Democratic Party of the mid-19th century. So much has changed since then that the current officeholders and politicians could not possibly bear any blame for what their forebears did.” This is true, but it is also true of the American people.
Today, the American people are not directly responsible for slavery, segregation, Indian removal (also Van Buren), and a host of other injustices for which prominent Democrats ask for reparations. Moreover, the American people are being forced to pay for more spending programs, up to and including reparations. How is it any fairer to ask the American people to accept another raise in their taxes to fix a problem the progenitors of the Democratic Party started? Shouldn’t that be at least acknowledged?
They acknowledge institutionalized racism, but they entirely ignore the fact that they were the ones who institutionalized it. The Democratic Party, as a private institution, is in the best position to provide reparations for the evils of slavery and segregation they did so much to perpetuate. If the Democratic Party admitted its wrongdoing and offered financial compensation to the descendants of slaves, it would immediately remove reparations as a possible unwise and unreasonable expansion of government. Moreover, the Democratic Party, with its expansive network of donors and connections that includes local community and civic leaders, could far more effectively handle the distribution of reparations itself.
If the Democratic Party really wants to move the country past the legacies of slavery and segregation, it should acknowledge its role in promoting them. If there are any groups in the U.S. that should provide material assistance to black Americans to make amends for the injustices committed against them, it should be the institutions that committed those injustices. The Democrats, the self-proclaimed “party of the people,” and not the people of the United States themselves, should bear that cultural and financial responsibility.
Winston Brady is the Director of Curriculum and Thales Press at Thales Academy, a network of classical schools with campuses in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina. A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Winston writes on the intersection of history, politics, and culture, as seen through the lens of classical wisdom and virtue. He lives in Wake Forest with his wife Rachel of ten years and his three boys, Hunter, Jack, and Samuel, all of whom will one day learn Latin.
Should American employees be forced to choose between making a living and freely exercising their religious beliefs? That is the question the Supreme Court is considering in Groff v. DeJoy.
On Tuesday, a diverse group submitted amicus briefs urging the court to answer that question with a resounding “no.” More than 30 briefs were filed on behalf of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, Sikhs, Zionists, religious liberty and employment law scholars, medical professionals, nonprofit organizations, states, and members of Congress, among others.
Groff involves United States Postal Service (USPS) mail carrier Gerald Groff, a Christian, who holds uncontested sincere religious beliefs about resting, worshiping, and not working on his Sunday Sabbath. After he joined USPS in 2012, USPS contracted with Amazon in 2013 to provide mail deliveries on Sundays. Initially, USPS accommodated Groff’s Sunday Sabbath observance but later required him to work Sundays.
In accordance with his religious beliefs, Groff refused to work when he was scheduled on his Sunday Sabbath, resulting in progressive disciplinary actions by USPS. Realizing his termination was imminent, Groff resigned in 2019, leading to this religious discrimination lawsuit.
This case places the future of workplace religious accommodation rights in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Religious Accommodations in the Workplace
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Recognizing that we live in a pluralistic and religiously diverse society and that it is important for employees not to have to hide or give up their religious identities in the workplace, Congress amended Title VII in 1972 to affirmatively require employers to “reasonably accommodate” an employee’s religious observances and practices unless doing so would pose an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”
The necessity for a religious accommodation in the workplace arises when a job duty, rule, or policy violates an employee’s sincerely held religious belief — such as working on one’s Sabbath. In practice, Title VII’s religious accommodation right has the biggest benefit for employees of minority religions and those who have less common religious practices — from a Muslim’s hijab and daily prayers, to a Jew’s yarmulke or Friday Sabbath observance, to a Seventh-day Adventist’s Saturday Sabbath observance, and a Sikh’s kirpan (small sword), metal bracelet, unshorn hair, and beard.
In 2015, the Supreme Court held that under Title VII the clothing store Abercrombie & Fitch could not refuse to hire a female Muslim applicant because she wore a hijab in violation of the store’s “no cap” policy. As the Supreme Court explained: “Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices — that they be treated no worse than other practices. Rather, it gives them favored treatment,” creating an affirmative obligation on employers.
What Does ‘Undue Hardship’ Mean?
The central issue in Groff is what the phrase “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business” entails. In a 1977 case called Trans World Airlines, Inc.v. Hardison, the Supreme Court, interpreting similar language from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guideline in effect during the events at issue, summarily stated that “undue hardship” meant merely “more than a de minimis cost.” This formulation has been adopted as the standard for Title VII by lower court judges across the country, effectively gutting the workplace religious accommodation right Congress provided employees.
Justices, judges, legal scholars, and religious leaders, among others, have criticized the Hardison court’s undue hardship formulation. As Justice Thurgood Marshall explained in his dissent in Hardison, the decision “effectively nullifie[s]” employees’ religious accommodation rights and “makes a mockery” of Title VII.
To put it simply: Hardison’s more than de minimis standard is absurd. De minimis means “very small or trifling,” and more than de minimis means merely a smidge more than “very small or trifling.” “Undue,” in contrast, means “exceeding what is appropriate or normal” or “excessive,” which is significantly more than “very small or trifling.”
Since Hardison, and to avoid application of Hardison’s non-textual standard, Congress has explicitly defined “undue hardship” in multiple statutes as “an action requiring significant difficulty or expense.” This is true for laws requiring other types of workplace accommodations, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), which provides employees accommodations for disability, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (2022), which provides employees accommodations for the known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
A secondary issue in Hardison is whether undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business can be met by merely showing a burden on the employee’s coworkers rather than on the business itself. In Groff, the court of appeals held that USPS satisfied its burden to demonstrate undue hardship because accommodating Groff would burden the employee’s coworkers. This standard would minimize Title VII’s religious accommodation protections, subjecting them to a “heckler’s veto by disgruntled employees,” as Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote in his dissent.
Poised to Protect Religious Accommodations
The Supreme Court has had several chances in recent years to revisit Hardison, but the court finally decided it should do so in Groff. This has led many to speculate that the court will reject Hardison’s more than de minimis formulation and clarify that undue means, well, just that — undue.
Indeed, this case should be a no-brainer. It is a simple exercise in statutory interpretation and textual definitions.
An interesting wrinkle in this case, however, is that since the USPS is an arm of the federal government, it is represented in court by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In December 2019, the DOJ, joined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the federal agency tasked with enforcing Title VII), told the court that Hardison’s formulation is “incorrect.” Indeed, in USPS’s brief urging the court not to hear Groff, DOJ merely argued the case was a “poor vehicle” to revisit Hardison and that the issue of a religious accommodation’s burden on coworkers “does not merit review.” The court clearly disagreed.
It would go against DOJ custom for the United States to change its position on Hardison. But it is unclear if the Biden administration will willingly support religious liberty, especially when it involves a Christian employee. We’ll find out when USPS files its response brief.
As evidenced by the number of amicus briefs filed by different faith traditions in support of Groff, religious accommodation rights in the workplace is an issue that all Americans, regardless of religion, can and should support. No one should be forced to choose between his religion and earning a paycheck.
Without action by the Supreme Court, employers will continue to feel safe denying religious accommodation requests because they can easily demonstrate a cost that is slightly more than de minimis. It is high time the Supreme Court remedies Hardison’s error.
Oral argument in Groff is scheduled for April 18, and a decision is expected by the end of June.
Rachel N. Morrison is an attorney and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she works on EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project.
An FBI whistleblower told congressional investigators that the D.C. field office pushed local offices to open criminal investigations into Americans based solely on financial transactions Bank of America tracked and voluntarily provided to the bureau, according to testimony reviewed by The Federalist.
“Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,” whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill told investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hill’s testimony.
Hill had identified himself last month as one of the whistleblowers cooperating with congressional investigators when speaking with Just the News’ John Solomon about the disclosures he made to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition. A review of Hill’s testimony confirms the details the military veteran and former longtime FBI and NSA analyst told Solomon. It also reveals more troubling details.
According to the material reviewed, Hill testified that on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI’s D.C. field office a “huge list” of individuals who used Bank of America credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Bank of America then elevated to the top of the list anyone who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm.
There was no geographic or date-range limit to the search for firearm purchases, Hill stressed, meaning the individual would be flagged at the top of the list had he “purchased a shotgun in 1999” in Iowa, and used a Bank of America credit card to check out of a hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, in the Northern Virginia area, following a trip that could be completely unrelated to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
The D.C. field office, which oversaw the Jan. 6 investigation, distributed the Bank of America list internally to field offices throughout the country, Hill testified in his deposition. Hill further explained that his supervisor at the Boston field office refused to open an investigation on the individuals flagged on the list because there was “no predication.” “There’s no crime that was committed by using a [Bank of America] product in the District or around the District,” Hill testified, explaining his supervisor’s reasoning for why no “further action” was required.
But the D.C. field office pushed back, according to Hill. The D.C. field office told Boston’s supervisory special agent, or SSA, he needed to open up the cases. When the local office’s SSA refused, the D.C. field office threatened to call the assistant special agent in charge, or ASAC, of the local office, Hill told the congressional committee. The SSA stood firm in his refusal, as did the local ASAC, Hill said, even though the D.C. field office then threatened the ASAC that it would escalate the matter to the office’s special agent in charge, or SAC.
The D.C. field office then pushed the office’s SAC to open investigations into the targeted Americans. But to the SAC’s credit, he refused, Hill noted, saying the Boston SAC countered, “No, we’re not going to open up cases based on credit card or debit card activity that took place.”
While Boston’s FBI office refused to open the requested cases, Hill stressed that “what I don’t know and could not give accurate testimony to,” was whether the D.C. field office “took it upon themselves to open cases.”
Hill’s deposition testimony raises another troubling possibility: that one or more of the other 54 local FBI field offices either complied with the D.C. field office’s initial request to open investigations into innocent Americans, or later capitulated when the D.C. office escalated the request up the chain of command to the ASAC and then the SAC.
The only reason the Boston FBI office did not launch investigations into the Bank of America customers flagged by the D.C. field office is that the Boston office’s leadership stood firm against the pressure. And the only reason we know about the D.C. field office’s attempt to target innocent Americans based on Bank of America’s data mining gun owners who happened to be in the greater D.C. area on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021, is that a whistleblower came forward.
What the FBI’s other 54 field offices did in response to the D.C. field office’s pressure is unknown. According to a person familiar with Hill’s testimony, Hill had no information on that question either. Also unknown is whether any other private businesses mined the financial information of their customers, as Bank of America had, and then handed that private information over to the feds.
Congressional investigations and more whistleblowers will be needed to uncover the extent of the FBI’s political targeting of innocent Americans.
Bank of America did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Mollie Hemingway contributed to this report.
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.
“Outnumbered” panelists sound off after rioters launched an all-out assault against the Atlanta police training facility dubbed “Cop City”
Atlanta police identified 23 suspects charged with domestic terrorism after allegedly launching an attack against the construction site for a police and fire training facility dubbed “Cop City.”
The Atlanta Police Department revealed that all but two of the arrestees are from out of state. Another two are from out of the country. Dimitri LeNy is from France and Fredrique Robert-Paul is from Canada. Three suspects – Ayla King, Alexis Paplai and Timothy Bilodeau – are from Massachusetts.
There are two from Arizona: Samuel Ward and Max Biederman. From New York, there are Mattia Luini and Priscilla Grim.
Atlanta police released video of fires set to equipment at the construction site of a police and fire training facility dubbed “Cop City.” (Atlanta Police Department)
Another pair – Kayley Meissner and Grace Martin – are from Wisconsin.
Kamryn Pipes is from Louisiana. Maggie Gates is from Indiana. Ehret Nottingham is from Colorado. Victor Puertas is from Utah. Amin Chaoui is from Virginia. James Marsicano is from North Carolina. Emma Bogush is from Connecticut. Luke Harper is from Florida. Colin Dorsey is from Maine. And Zoe Larmey is from Tennessee.
The only suspects with Georgia addresses are Thomas Jurgens and Jack Beaman.
The group is accused of leaving a nearby music festival Sunday evening and heading to the construction site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center “to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.”
Authorities noted how the group changed into black clothing and allegedly threw commercial-grade fireworks, Molotov cocktails, large rocks and bricks at police officers.
“What happened last night was not peaceful protest – it was violence. Plain and simple,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement Monday. “We will not tolerate this destruction of property, and we will seek to ensure that those who have engaged in this criminal behavior are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Police say at least 35 “agitators” were arrested in attack on “Cop City” in Atlanta. (Atlanta Police Department)
“This state-of-the-art Public Training Safety Center will benefit not only police officers, firefighters and EMTs, but the entire community,” Carr said. “We strongly support its construction and operation, and we will not back down from violent extremists from Georgia, Maine, Oregon or elsewhere who seek to stop us.”
Though Carr cited Oregon, it does not appear any of the 23 charged in Sunday’s incident are from that state. Police did initially say 35 “agitators” had been detained.
On an appearance on Fox News earlier Monday, Carr described those arrested as part of a “national network, an international group of people that are organized to come to our state to undermine a public safety training center.”
Atlanta police say demonstrators set fire to equipment and threw explosives at officers. (Atlanta Police Department)
“This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy, and this was about an attempt to destabilize,” Atlanta Chief of Police Darin Schierbaumsaid Sunday night, telling reporters at the scene that both the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation have joined the probe into the incident.
Though demonstrations at the 85-acre property in DeKalb County, which was secured for a $90 million police and fire training facility, have been ongoing, Schierbaum said Sunday’s incident marked a “significant escalation” both in the level of violence and the number of individuals involved in the attack.
Before Sunday, at least 19 people had been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism since December in connection to demonstrations at the “Cop City” site. Six of the 19 arrests came out of a violent riot in downtown Atlanta on Jan. 21 that was sparked by the deadly shooting of 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran by Georgia State Patrol.
State patrol had responded to the construction site to clear out demonstrators. Authorities said Teran, who reportedly went by the name Tortuguita and identified as non-binary, shot a trooper in the abdomen before law enforcement officials returned fire and killed Teran.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
Image courtesy Ad Inception / YouTube (screenshot)
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A recent commercial for the Always brand of women’s pads features someone who appears to be a man, leaving viewers confused about the advertisement for the menstruation product. A 15-second promotion for Always Infinity Pads with Flexfoam features either a man or a transgender man in its commercial in support of “all bodies.”
“No two bodies are the same. Some pads never got that message,” the commercial begins, before promoting that the product “fits all bodies.”
But audiences are unable to pinpoint whether the actor in question is indeed a man or a biological woman posing as a man.
A Reddit thread titled “Always FlexFoam – do men use these?” asks, “[W]hy would a man ever be part of this demographic?
“This isn’t an inclusivity thing, this is a ‘you’re a biological man and have no need for this product’ thing,” the caption adds.
“Are you referring to the person in the purple shirt? Is that just a tall, gangly female?” the top comment asks.
“It’s pretty clear that a biological woman who identifies as a man was cast in this commercial for the sake of inclusion,” says Natasha Biase, a reporter and writer on women’s issues.
“Interestingly, this casting choice admits that only women can get their period,” she adds.
A Twitter user took a different perspective, however, criticizing the ad because the company hasn’t “gotten the f***ing message that not everyone who menstruates is a woman.”
“Maybe take the ‘you go girl!’ s**t off your pads & then get back to me,” it continues.
The next day, a different viewer claimed that the actor was indeed a man, saying, “OMG, I just saw a tv ad for Always Flexfoam pads that had a man in it! Well let’s say a male cuz I wouldn’t call him a man!”
A different company called L, which specializes in organic tampons, is currently running an ad campaign featuring a male content creator named Jeffrey Marsh.
You gotta wonder if brands run campaigns like this knowing how stupid they are in an effort to go viral.
Because literally no woman is going to buy tampons that are being promoted by a man. https://t.co/102tkAqFtr
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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
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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American Family Association
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American Family Association
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