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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Child Sacrifice

A.F. BRANCO | on April 12, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-child-sacrifice/

If Democrats really wanted to save kids they would secure the schools but dead kids are how they sell gun control.

Ban Guns For the Children — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into 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 Presiden

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Transgender movement is nothing more than ‘ideology masquerading as science,’ Christian physician says

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter | TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2023

When it comes to transgender ideology, Dr. André Van Mol says simply being a board-certified family physician in today’s political climate could be considered controversial.

Speaking at The Christian Post’s Generation Indoctrination conference last month, Van Mol, who is also the co-chair of the American College of Pediatrician’s Committee on Adolescent Sexuality, said if he was to give testimony in a court of law, attorneys for the other side would work to get his testimony thrown out, claiming he is not an expert. But if he worked for a gender clinic, he would be considered an “expert.”

“If I were a family physician working for the gender clinic, now I’m an expert,” he noted, pointing to what he described as the “ideological capture of medical organizations, legislators, media as a whole, [and] the academic world” by gender politics.

Van Mol called the trans movement “ideology masquerading as science, reinforced with emotional blackmail — ‘You have to support them or they’re going to kill themselves’ — which is also not true.”

That dynamic, he added, is perhaps best encapsulated by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which Van Mol calls an advocacy group.

“All roads lead back to WPATH,” he explained, using the acronym for the organization formerly known as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.

Under WPATH Standards of Care (SOC) for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People, said Van Mol, all age restrictions for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery have been removed. The latest version of WPATH’s SOC now includes “eunuch” as a gender identity, which it describes as “individuals [who are] assigned male at birth and wish to eliminate masculine physical features, masculine genitals or genital functioning.”

Van Mol’s response to the change was brief but to the point.

“This cannot be science,” he said.

“There’s always a more honest answer to gender dysphoria or confusion in a minor than chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation in what is otherwise a very healthy young body,” he said. “What they need is to address those underlying issues.”

Oftentimes, said Van Mol, much of the controversy stems from a toxic mix of mainstream media headlines and low-quality scientific research. He pointed to the familiar trend of media outlets chasing headlines rather than following the science.

“You’ll notice that whenever there’s a new study singing the praises of transition, magically, immediately, it’s covered in the media from coast to coast, with pretty much the same talking points, and that can’t be coincidental,” he said.

Van Mol also said studies that support sex-change procedures “uniformly show that those studies are of low to very low quality.”

“By definition that means they fail to show what they claim they are showing,” he added.

He also pointed to the closure of the Tavistock Clinic, Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic, set for later this year following six comprehensive literature reviews out of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Florida.

“What we see now is … four nations that were leading the world in ‘gender-affirming transition medical interventions’ have done a complete turnaround, a complete 180, again, they were leading in it, and now they’re like, ‘No, this is not supported by good data,’” he said.

According to recent data, the number of minors in America receiving a diagnosis of gender dysphoria tripled from 2017 to 2021, with more than 42,000 receiving the diagnosis in 2021. On the social media platform TikTok, which is especially popular among younger people, the hashtag “trans” has logged 50.2 billion views, nearly doubling within the space of a year.

More European nations, he added, are turning away from this “junk science” and instead telling minors who are experiencing gender dysphoria to undergo comprehensive psychological evaluation and therapy — both for the patient and the family.

“There’s decades of literature showing overwhelming probability in a gender dysphoric minor of underlying health problems of adverse childhood experiences, bad family dynamics and a way over-representation of autism spectrum dysphoria, and that these all predate the gender dysphoria,” Van Mol explained.

This approach, said Van Mol, is a more holistic method of addressing what tends to be a deeply complex condition.

“And there’s absolutely no way that happens in a 40-minute visit to Planned Parenthood that gives you hormones,” he added.

Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ian.giatti@christianpost.com.

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Culture, Political, Spiritual

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10 Things the U.S. Can Start Doing Right Now to Counter China’s Dominance

BY: MIKE COTÉ | APRIL 11, 2023

Chinese Military Parade — One of the biggest challenges presented by China as compared to the USSR is the depth of the Chinese penetration of America’s economy, politics, culture, and society.

MIKE COTÉ

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The Heritage Foundation released a thorough report titled “Winning the New Cold War: A Plan for Countering China” on March 28. In an address to introduce the plan, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., declared that the report will “help us to wake up and to realize that we are not just in a competition; we’re in a conflict.”

“It is time to acknowledge reality: The United States is in a New Cold War with the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” Heritage President Kevin Roberts wrote, expressing a sentiment espoused throughout the report.

This foregrounding of the stark reality of the geopolitical competition with China characterizes Heritage’s expert analysis, cutting through the typical attitude of the corporate media and President Joe Biden.

For decades, America has followed a bipartisan and naïve policy of unfettered engagement with China, which has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to entrench and enrich itself within the international system while facing no consequences for its aggression abroad or totalitarianism at home. China now uses its wealth and technology to supercharge a policy of civil-military fusion, linking economics and military strategy.

One of the biggest challenges presented by China as compared to the USSR is the depth of the Chinese penetration of America’s economy, politics, culture, and society. The Heritage plan leaves no stone unturned when discussing these malign activities, advocating a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society effort” to counter them.

1. Ban Dangerous Chinese Apps

TikTok and other CCP-linked apps are incredibly popular, especially among American youth. These apps threaten personal privacy and national security. Heritage recommends an outright ban of TikTok and a more aggressive, risk-oriented approach to assessing foreign-owned information technologies in the U.S.

This would take very little in terms of new law, and the federal government has processes in place to monitor or ban these apps. Congress is already debating this issue, so the prognosis looks good.

2. Ban the Import and Sale of Chinese Drones

Although a lesser-known issue, CCP-linked drone manufacturers, specifically Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), dominate the commercial and recreational markets. As with TikTok, all information collected by those drones is stored on CCP-accessible servers.

Local, state, and federal agencies have used DJI drones — some given as free “gifts” during the pandemic — to “monitor every aspect of life in these cities,” including “the precise location of critical infrastructure and other sensitive information.”

Bans on these drones can be included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) or implemented via executive order. Educating non-federal officials about the drones could reduce the threat at the state and local levels.

3. Risk-Manage Inbound Investment

China’s direct investment in American firms peaked in 2015, but its national security implications remain. Often funneled through middlemen who camouflage Chinese involvement, CCP-linked investment still reaches into the billions annually.

The federal government has the tools to properly manage and review this. The 2018 Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) enabled the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to scrutinize these investments more.

Expanding definitions in FIRRMA can empower CFIUS to address all forms of Chinese investment, even through intermediaries, while direct legislative language can force reviews when agencies decline to use the power granted by law.

4. Reject Damaging ESG Policies

So-called environmental, social, and governance policies have been a debacle for investors and a sop to Chinese-linked firms, which control the supply chains for ESG-mandated renewable energy. ESG weakens the U.S. while strengthening its greatest foe.

Congress can end this damaging strategy through legislation, which it indeed did before President Biden vetoed it. Congress should continue pushing to end ESG through law and work to advance the understanding of ESG’s danger in the corporate sector.

5. Increase Munition Production and Arm Taiwan

This issue is paramount to countering China, particularly as the CCP has advanced its aggression toward Taiwan. The Heritage report acknowledges the trade-offs inherent in the decisions about arms sales and transfers and proposes an augmentation of our defense-industrial base to overcome these scarcity issues going forward.

Today, we can prioritize Taiwan by sending critical munitions, ensuring that capabilities sent elsewhere do not overly affect the defense of Taiwan, drawing down our own stocks in accordance with the law, and facilitating arms purchases from other nations.

6. Foster Innovation in the U.S. Maritime and Shipping Sectors

America’s “uncompetitive and outdated shipbuilding and shipping sector diminishes U.S. competitiveness, undermines the resilience of the economy, constrains the nation’s ability to mobilize and sustain a wartime economy, and meet the U.S. Navy’s global responsibilities,” according to the report.

The major stumbling block to reform is the restrictive Jones Act, which should be repealed and replaced with a law focused on promoting innovation in the maritime sector. The Jones Act, or the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, mandates that U.S.-made and U.S.-owned vessels transport goods between American ports, and that U.S. citizens operate the vessels.

Free-market solutions will allow the creativity of American industry to excel, developing novel methods of transportation, growing our shipbuilding and shipping capacities, and backstopping American naval power.

7. Expand Export Controls

The U.S. policy of engagement with China had allowed the chronic export of technologies used to advance China’s military aims. Legislation has since limited certain “foundational technology” exports, but the federal bureaucracy has failed to implement controls by refusing to label these technologies.

Congress must exercise its oversight power and force executive branch agencies to make these determinations in line with the law, so as to cease the transfer of critical security technology to the CCP.

8. Hold China Accountable for Covid-19

Regardless of the pandemic’s specific origin, a great deal of evidence has shown the CCP deliberately covered up the virus, allowing it to spread unchecked. Since then, the CCP has stonewalled investigations into its behavior, using its leverage at the World Health Organization to avoid accountability.

The U.S. government should cease funding the WHO until it conducts a thorough investigation of China’s involvement in the pandemic, end all financing of Chinese biomedical research, and propose unbiased international standards by which pandemics can be detected and limited without interfering with national sovereignty.

9. Prioritize the Pacific Islands

The Pacific Islands are often overlooked in the geopolitical competition with China. Many small island nations comprise the region, but it is strategically important to maintain a U.S. presence in the Pacific, especially through its links to Asia and Australia.

China has focused on this region, seeking to cut off the U.S. from its Indo-Pacific allies.

“Winning the New Cold War” suggests the U.S. compete on the same turf by renewing existing diplomatic and security agreements, exploring the expansion of those accords to other nations, and engaging diplomatically through high-level visits and summits.

10. Establish a Quad Select Initiative

The Quad — the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan — is one of America’s most important initiatives to counter China. It links the key players in the Indo-Pacific and builds bridges for future cooperation.

Expanding this multilateral format by selectively inviting other nations to join for military, economic, or planning purposes would allow the U.S. to enhance regional alliances and foster broader anti-CCP cooperation.

This would not require any legislation but merely a change in the executive posture. Creating a more open architecture for the Quad would serve as a significant counter to Chinese regional aggression.

These 10 points are the plan’s low-hanging fruit, and the federal government could adopt these policies tomorrow if it had the will. Heritage’s “Winning the New Cold War” aims to bolster that resolve. Time will tell if it succeeds, but the plan is an excellent start.

Mike Coté is a writer and podcaster focusing on history, Great Power rivalry, and geopolitics. He has also written for National Review and The National Interest, blogs at rationalpolicy.com, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

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Government Is Marketing Censorship Tools to Big Tech to Gag Conservatives

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 11, 2023

censorship of Hunter Biden laptop story by the State Department — The State Department isn’t skirting the First Amendment. It is driving a stake through its heart.

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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The federal government peddled technology to Big Tech companies to assist them in censoring Americans’ speech on social media in the run-up to the 2020 election, according to emails Missouri and Louisiana uncovered in their First Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration. Specifically, the State Department marketed this censorship technology through its Global Engagement Center. In other words, our tax dollars not only funded the development of tools to silence speech that dissented from the regime’s narrative. They also paid for government employees to act as sales reps pitching the censorship products to Big Tech.

I’ve been “tasked with building relationships with technology companies,” Samaruddin Stewart, then a senior adviser for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center or “GEC,” wrote in an early-February 2020 introductory email to LinkedIn, allegedly requesting a meeting. According to the lawsuit, his email also suggested he would be reaching out to other social media companies interested in “countering disinformation.”

On March 9, 2020, Stewart again contacted LinkedIn, referencing an earlier verbal discussion and writing:

I’ll send information [to LinkedIn representatives] about gaining access to Disinfo Cloud — which is a GEC funded platform that offers stakeholders an opportunity to discover companies, technology, and tools that can assist with identifying, understanding, and addressing disinformation.

These two emails are explosive. Yet because they were revealed in two passing paragraphs of the 164-page complaint filed by Missouri, Louisiana, and a handful of other plaintiffs against the Biden administration, they — and their enormous significance — have been overlooked.

‘Cold-Calling’ Big Tech

The Stewart emails establish that in 2020, federal government actors contacted social media giants to promote GEC’s Disinfo Cloud. GEC represented that this government platform provided “companies, technology, and tools” to “assist with identifying, understanding, and addressing disinformation.” Then it gave private tech companies access to Disinfo Cloud.

Almost identical to how GEC described Disinfo Cloud in congressional testimony, the State Department’s webpage marketed it as a “one-stop shop” to “identify and then test tools that counter propaganda and disinformation.” “Fact checking” and “media authentication” are just a couple of the types of technologies available through the dashboard.

GEC didn’t just promote Disinfo Cloud or give Big Tech access to what GEC called “the U.S. government’s online repository.” Government employees at GEC also offered to help private companies identify tools to suit their specific needs. Just “write” to the GEC’s Technology Engagement Division about “what your office needs to counter propaganda and disinformation,” the State Department instructed on its webpage, and the government will “assist” in finding “a technological solution.”

‘Testbed’

Access to Disinfo Cloud, according to the State Department’s webpage, also provides “a gateway” to the GEC’s Technology Engagement Division’s “Testbed,” allowing users to review and test the technology against their unique needs.

While Stewart’s emails don’t expressly mention the “Testbed” feature, the State Department boasts that the “private sector” uses both Disinfo Cloud and Testbed. The GEC’s webpage also invites Disinfo Cloud users to ask “for assistance in identifying a technological solution or draft a test proposal for a tool.” If Disinfo Cloud users can’t find a tool that works for them, the GEC Technology Engagement team stresses it “is open to insights and is here to help implement ideas to move the counter propaganda and disinformation mission forward.”

Infomercials

Deposition testimony by FBI Agent Elvis Chan suggests GEC’s marketing of the censorship tools went beyond making cold calls (or emails) to LinkedIn and other Big Tech companies. It also seemingly went further than providing product advice and samples on Disinfo Cloud: The GEC’s Technology Engagement Division apparently hosted infomercials to help the private vendors market their censorship software.

Chan, the assistant special agent in charge of the cyber branch at the FBI’s San Francisco field office, was “one of the primary people” communicating with social media companies about supposed “disinformation,” and thus is one of the named defendants in Missouri v. Biden. As part of that litigation, the plaintiffs deposed Chan. During questioning, Chan testified that ahead of the 2020 election, he periodically spoke with Stewart, who would meet with the social media companies separately from Chan.

According to Chan, Stewart met with policy individuals with the various social media companies about “different initiatives.” Those initiatives included various kinds of vendor-made software “that they would pilot to see if they could detect malign foreign influence on social media platforms.”

Chan further testified that Stewart and GEC “would provide webinars” from these vendors. As Chan explained, “[T]he State Department was just providing a venue where different vendors could show off their products.” The presentations were open to the general public, said Chan, but the GEC “would invite all sorts of audiences, to include researchers, employees from State Department counterparts, so typically Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The intended audience, according to Chan, was “State Department-equivalent personnel, social media companies, and researchers.”

Chan said he attended only a couple of the webinars because the companies took only a “surface-level” look at the content, and thus he didn’t consider the technology useful to the FBI. But apparently, it was fine for the State Department to market the same tools to social media companies.

From Chan’s deposition testimony, it appears Stewart, the GEC’s then-senior adviser, made the equivalent of sales calls and hosted infomercials, all for the purpose of pushing various censorship services to social media companies.

It is unclear whether these webinars were in addition to the GEC’s “Tech Demo Series” — at which private vendors showcased their knack for fighting so-called disinformation for “U.S. government counterparts and foreign partners” — or whether, after the GEC sent a full-time representative to Silicon Valley in December of 2019 (presumably Stewart), the Tech Demo Series was opened to the public. However, given that the official Disinfo Cloud Twitter account promoted the Tech Demo Series, it seems likely that GEC expanded its target audience for the series to include the private sector and other Disinfo Cloud users.

Either way, Chan’s deposition testimony reveals our government marketed censorship technology to social media companies through “webinars.” And while Chan claimed he didn’t think GEC endorsed the products, the government expressly represented the Disinfo Cloud technology as tools to “assist” with attacking so-called disinformation.

The Tools

So what exactly were those tools?

From open-source material, it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify the entire dataset of tech companies featured on Disinfo Cloud or participating in the Tech Demo Series. That’s because Disinfo Cloud has “been retired as [a] GEC-sponsored effort,” according to the State Department. The DisinfoCloud.com webpage has also been shuttered.

But because GEC ran various “tech challenges,” giving winners State Department “sponsorship” on the government’s Disinfo Cloud Testbed — advertised as worth $25,000 — among other things, several censorship companies involved can be identified, including NewsGuard, PeakMetrics, and Omelas.

NewsGuard’s censorship technology includes “its unreliable reliability ratings database of thousands of news and information websites and a second database of purported hoaxes,” as I detailed in March. NewsGuard’s winning tech-challenge entry built upon those databases and used “AI and social listening tools to identify the initial source of the hoax,” and to find instances of the hoax being “repeated or amplified” online.

The second winner, PeakMetrics, offered a dashboard for tracking mentions of a topic across multiple media channels with social listening technology. The third winner, Omelas, developed tools to visually map online information.

The government gave these winners the ability to pilot their technology on Disinfo Cloud’s Testbed. Then it promoted Disinfo Cloud to social media giants as offering “access to companies, technology, and tools that can assist with identifying, understanding, and addressing disinformation.”

So were NewsGuard, PeakMetrics, and Omelas among the companies GEC marketed to Big Tech? Did they participate in the government-run Tech Demos and present infomercials to the private sector? Did GEC help these vendors test their products for private companies on the Testbed?

In Practice

Consider the implications, using NewsGuard to illustrate.

NewsGuard rates various media outlets on a 100-point scale and provides a red “unreliable” rating if its “experts” score the news source below 60. The company rates The Federalist “red” and claims it is one of the top-10 “most influential misinformers.” Conversely, some of the outlets that botched the biggest political stories of the century maintain a 100 percent reliability score.

The government awarded NewsGuard a $25,000 prize to develop new technology on Disinfo Cloud, using, in part, that ratings system as a backbone. NewsGuard would later receive an additional $750,000 from the government to advance the development of its censorship technology. PeakMetrics and Omelas also both scored additional government funding of $1.5 and $1 million respectively.

But think about the government’s other behind-the-scenes censorship entanglements. The government, via your tax dollars, funded both Disinfo Cloud, which provided the technology necessary to pilot the program, and the outside contractor, Park Advisors, that managed it.

The State Department’s GEC promoted the companies and technology featured on Disinfo Cloud, and a government liaison working for GEC personally contacted social media companies to encourage them to use the platform. The government also hosted Tech Demo Series for the vendors to market their products to the private sector.

Disinfo Cloud regularly promoted private censorship technology on its official Twitter account and retweeted NewsGuard’s announcement of its partnership with Mediabrands to “bring NewsGaurd’s rating work to TV news programming.

Then beyond promoting the censorship tools, government employees working with GEC helped social media and private-sector businesses identify, test, and tweak the most “appropriate” technology for their “needs.”

And what are those “needs?” Censoring the speech of you and your fellow Americans.

A Scandal Like No Other

This scandal far surpasses the one that formerly ensnared GEC, when it was revealed the State Department awarded the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) — another “ratings” company that blacklists conservative outlets — $100,000 as part of the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge. GDI also reportedly received money from other government-funded organizations. Those taxpayer funds helped finance GDI’s blacklist of conservative media outlets, which advertisers relied upon to defund dissenters.

But what Stewart’s emails now reveal is that the government is not merely funding censorship research. It is acting as a sales rep to market censorship technology to private companies.

The State Department isn’t skirting the First Amendment. It is driving a stake through its heart.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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WALMART PULLS PRO-ENVIRONMENT T-SHIRT AFTER CUSTOMERS FIND HIDDEN SWEAR WORD: REPORT

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Walmart closing 4 Chicago stores, blaming millions in annual losses

By Greg Norman FOXBusiness | Updated on April 11, 2023 2:18pm EDT

Walmart has announced Tuesday that it is closing four of its Chicago stores because they are part of a group of locations that “lose tens of millions of dollars a year.” The retail giant says the Chatham Supercenter, the Walmart Health center, and the Walmart Academy at 8431 S. Stewart Ave., the Kenwood Neighborhood Market at 4720 S. Cottage Grove Ave., the Lakeview Neighborhood Market at 2844 N. Broadway St. and the Little Village Neighborhood Market at 2551 W. Cermak Road will shutter this upcoming Sunday.

“The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago — these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years,” Walmart said in a statement.

“The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community,” it added.

Walmart store in Chicago — The Walmart Supercenter in Chicago that will close on Sunday, April 16, the company says. (Google Maps)

Walmart said that “over the years, we have tried many different strategies to improve the business performance of these locations, including building smaller stores, localizing product assortment and offering services beyond traditional retail.

“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the city, including $70 million in the last couple years to upgrade our stores and build two new Walmart Health facilities and a Walmart Academy training center,” the company also said.

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“It was hoped that these investments would help improve our stores’ performance,” Walmart said in press release, but “Unfortunately, these efforts have not materially improved the fundamental business challenges our stores are facing.”

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Map shows locations of 4 Walmart stores that are closing in Chicago — Walmart announced Tuesday, April 11, 2023, it is closing four Chicago stores that lose millions each year. (Fox News / Fox News)

Those employed by the stores that are soon set to close are now eligible to transfer to work at other Walmart locations.

“Hiring managers from surrounding facilities will be in each of these stores this week to help associates begin finding their next opportunity,” according to Walmart.

The company said it hopes to repurpose the buildings it’s leaving behind so they remain “important parts of their communities.”

Affected staff will be paid until Aug. 11, 2023, unless they transfer out to another store. After that date, Walmart said those eligible will receive severance benefits.

Walmart said it has tried different strategies to improve the business performance of its Chicago stores, but “these efforts have not materially improved the fundamental business challenges our stores are facing.” (Robyn Beck/AFP / Getty Images)

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The number of positions being impacted was not immediately clear.

FOX Business has reached out to Walmart and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce for further comment.

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Business

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The one pivot Republicans could make to start winning again

By Liz Peek | Fox News | Published April 11, 2023 4:00am EDT

Republicans have an abortion problem, and there is only one Party leader who can fix it: Donald Trump.

Let me explain. Like the proverbial dog chasing the bus, the GOP spent years campaigning on the promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would repeal Roe v. Wade but when finally successful, had no idea how to navigate the resulting political landscape. Democrats have used the reversal of Roe and Republicans’ subsequent anti-abortion initiatives to paint the party as extreme, thereby winning over women and younger voters.

The overturning of Roe handed abortion policy back to the states, where it will stay for the foreseeable future. Our country is so divided on the issue that Congress is unlikely to pass a nationwide law any time soon.

MACE CALLS TEXAS MIFEPRISTONE RULING ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL,’ SAYS GOP ON ‘WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY’ ON ABORTION

Given that power, some red states like Texas have enacted draconian laws banning all or nearly all abortions, a position that is unpopular with the majority of Americans. Other states have had long-standing restrictions on the books that were not enforceable because of Roe; now, some of those are in play.

WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT ELECTION TURNOUT BREAKS RECORD AS DEM-BACKED CANDIDATE WINS

Wisconsin, for instance, has a statute from 1849 that banned most abortions. That law is under review by the state’s Supreme Court. Just recently, Badger State residents voted to fill a seat on that court; a Democrat who favors abortion rights won that race by a shockingly wide margin after the contest became the most expensive such match-up in Wisconsin’s history. Because of that win, liberals now hold a majority on the state court, for the first time in decades.

Remember that Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and then lost it in 2020 to Joe Biden, both by narrow margins; it is truly a “swing state”. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans actually gained seats in Wisconsin’s state legislature. So, the recent loss of the court seat, driven by the dispute over abortion, should be a wake-up call to Republicans.

Red states, too, have delivered warning shots to Republicans. Last year in Kansas, voters soundly defeated a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have banned abortions. Even in conservative Kansas, about 60% of voters shot down the measure. As in the Wisconsin senate race, turnout was extremely high.

Polling shows very clearly that Americans want abortion to be safe, legal and also to be restricted to the early months of pregnancy. Some 61% of Americans in a Pew survey last year said abortion should be legal in all or most cases – about the same number that defeated the Kansas resolution.

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Polling also shows strong support (70%) for the kind of referendum offered voters in Kansas. There are 14 states currently that have a total or near-ban on abortions, including some swing states like Wisconsin and Georgia – states which could determine the outcome of future presidential elections. Other swing states, like Ohio and Arizona, have bans that are on hold pending court rulings.

How can Republicans be faithful to voters who firmly oppose abortion but also appeal to the majority, and win elections? By demanding that every state put abortion laws before voters, instead of allowing governors and state legislatures to dictate policy. In some states, that would likely result in a continuation of broad restrictions; in others, it would not. That’s called democracy, with all voters having their say. The GOP needs a leader to declare this the Party’s policy. The only person able and perhaps willing to do so is Donald Trump.

First, remember that abortion was not an issue central to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Indeed, he was barely familiar with party orthodoxy when he claimed early on that women who had abortions should be “punished,” a position he quickly reversed when admonished from the right and the left. Banning abortion ranks below China’s threat, a strong military and solid economic growth for the former president, and a lot of Republicans would agree with him.

Second, Donald Trump has been blamed for post-Roe election losses in the midterms and in special elections. He would relish, instead, pinning those losses on the GOP’s abortion policies.

Third, Trump can remind voters that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and liberty. How can the GOP claim that mantle while denying half the country one of the most personal freedoms that exists – how to manage their own bodies and their families?

Fourth, Democrats have taken an extreme position on abortion by passing offensive laws in states they dominate. In New York, abortion is allowed up to and including at nine months, if “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” The law does not specify what the health threat might be; depression might satisfy the “health care provider” who does not even have to be a doctor. It is time the GOP turned the “extremist” weapon on Democrats.

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Fifth, Republicans need to broaden their appeal if they want to win elections. In the recent Chicago mayor’s run-off race, Paul Vallas, easily the more accomplished of the two competing Democrats, was defeated partly because his opponent ran ads featuring a 2009 clip in which Vallas describes himself as “more of a Republican than a Democrat.” Imagine: the Republican brand is so tarnished that in a troubled city bleeding residents, the “R” word elects a man with virtually zero credentials.

Any Republican candidate who comes out with a balanced abortion policy, even one that channels the majority of voters, will lose support among Evangelicals and the powerful pro-life movement. On the other hand, Trump is in an extremely strong position currently, notwithstanding his many legal issues, has been a champion of religious freedom and should be uniquely able to withstand the tempest. He can remind pro-lifers that he delivered a conservative Supreme Court, without which voters would not be able to choose. And, it is worth noting that not that long ago, the GOP, including then-Governor Ronald Reagan, were leaders in liberalizing abortion policy.

By siding with the American majority, Trump could do something powerful for the GOP: make it great again.

Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.

Category:

CALIFORNIA SCHOOL BOARD VOTES TO UPHOLD SO-CALLED ‘PARENTAL SECRECY POLICY’ FOR TRANSGENDER STUDENTS

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California mom confronts school district after 11-year-old changed genders without her knowledge

By Taylor Penley | Fox News | Published April 11, 2023 10:00am EDT

A California mom is outraged after her daughter’s school district upheld a “parental secrecy policy” allowing school officials to offer gender counseling without informing parents.

Aurora Regino said her 11-year-old daughter’s elementary school in the Chico Unified School District helped her transition from female to male during the last school year, but a guidance counselor kept her in the dark during the entire process.

“During one of the meetings, my daughter told the counselor she wanted to tell me about her new identity. They ignored her request and did nothing to support her in letting me know what was going on at school,” she told board members at a meeting last Wednesday.

The board weighed a measure that would allow for “more parental inclusion” but ultimately voted to keep the existing so-called “parental secrecy policy” in place with a 3-2 vote.

“It was a really sad decision that they made, but unfortunately I wasn’t extremely surprised,” Regino told “Fox & Friends First” host Todd Piro on Tuesday.

“This policy that they have in place, to keep these situations a secret from the family, is incredibly damaging. It was extremely damaging in my case with my daughter. She was bullied and she didn’t have the support that she needed from her family and, also, she was outed within the school with other people within the office knowing her new gender and pronouns that she didn’t even tell them, and she had to go through those feelings of wondering how they even knew all on her own.”

BIDEN ADMIN RELEASES NEW TITLE IX REGULATIONS ON TRANSGENDER ISSUES IN SCHOOLS

California mom Aurora Regino speaks to her daughter's school board ahead of a vote offering more transparency for parents. — California mom Aurora Regino speaks to her daughter’s school board ahead of a vote offering more transparency for parents. (Chico Unified School Board of Education)

Regino, who is suing the district for keeping her in the dark about her daughter’s identity and transition, lambasted the policy as “incredibly dangerous” and said the struggle to advance parental rights in the area had been hard-fought.

She told Piro her daughter is doing well, but she is determined to speak out on behalf of her family and others with similar experiences, so everyone knows what is taking place in public schools.

“When this originally happened to our family, nobody could’ve ever told me that this was going on, especially at the young age of elementary school,” she said.

BIDEN SAYS TRANSGENDER PEOPLE ‘SHAPE OUR NATION’S SOUL’ IN OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION

The policy that board members voted to uphold, according to Regino, extends to children as young as pre-kindergarten who are approximately five years old and reaches through the 12th grade.

“It’s incredibly damaging that they’re upholding such a crazy policy for such young children,” she continued after a moment, arguing that such a tumultuous time in children and adolescents’ lives is when they need parental guidance the most.

SEE UGENIC ROOTS SECTION https://wordpress.com/post/whatdidyousay.org/76034

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Education

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Washington, DC, funeral home shooting leaves 1 dead, 3 wounded; gunman at large

By Danielle Wallace | Fox News | Published April 11, 2023 1:46pm EDT

Four people were shot, including one fatally, outside a Washington, D.C., funeral home Tuesday, police said, as the unidentified gunman remains at large. Officers responded to the scene where multiple people were shot outside Stewart Funeral Home in the 4000 block of Benning Road NE, a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) spokesperson initially confirmed.

Greeting reporters at the scene, MPD Police Chief Robert Contee said investigators believe the people were targeted but don’t yet know why. The shooting unfolded while a funeral for a homicide victim killed at the end of March was letting out. Around 12:17 p.m., an officer already in the area in his car by a bus stop called out for the sounds of gunshots.

“Our member went to the aid of several people,” Contee said. Of the four victims struck by gunfire, all were adults. One of them, a man, was deceased, while the other three were taken to area hospitals with serious but not life-threatening injuries, the chief added.

“At this point, the Metropolitan Police Department is asking for the community’s help. We’re asking for anyone who has information to please call us anonymously at 202-727-9099, or you may text us anonymously at 50411,” Contee said. “At this point, it appears that several people who were in the block were specifically targeted. We’re unsure why that is. We’re unsure why these people were targeted, more or less why they were targeted at a funeral. We don’t understand that. We’re looking for the community’s help.”

MINNESOTA POLICE OFFICER SHOT IN GRANITE FALLS WHILE EXECUTING WARRANTS ON SUSPECT FOR WEAPONS, DRUG CHARGES

A shooting unfolded outside Stewart Funeral Home in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Googe Maps)

“We have not identified a gunman. But it appears that the individuals who were standing in the block were targeted for some reason. And that reason we’re not sure,” the chief said.

LOUISVILLE MAYOR CITES OWN TARGETING BY BLM ACTIVIST AFTER BANK SHOOTING, DEMANDS ‘END GUN VIOLENCE’

Contee said it is not clear at this time whether the incident was a drive-by shooting.

MPD Chief Robert Contee delivers an update on the shooting near a funeral home. (Fox News)

“It does not appear that it was an exchange of gunfire. It appears that these four people were near the sidewalk here [and] were struck by gunfire coming from a suspect or suspects,” he said.

“Again, the funeral ended. People were milling about when this shooting happened. And we’re trying to find out who fired the shots at the end of the funeral.”

Police units block the street near Stewart Funeral Home after a mass shooting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Fox News)

Contee did not name the March homicide victim remembered at the funeral.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

Category:

BIDEN SIGNED OFF ON FBI REVIEW OF TRUMP RECORDS, NATIONAL ARCHIVES LETTER REVEALS

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Biden administration officials were involved in Mar-a-Lago raid despite claiming otherwise: Report

By Michael Lee | Fox News | Published April 11, 2023 12:21pm EDT

The Biden administration involved itself in the raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home despite reports that its officials were “stunned” to find out about the news on social media, according to the group America First Legal, which obtained internal government documents related to the raid through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The evidence further suggests that Biden officials in the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice unlawfully abused their power and then lied about it to the American people,” said Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations, in a post on social media Tuesday. “This government, it seems, acknowledges no limits on its power to harass, intimidate, and silence its political opponents.”

Rubinstein’s comments come after a Freedom of Information Act request by America First Legal found the FBI initially obtained access to Trump records through a “special access request” from the Biden White House.

The new information confirms Fox News reporting from August, when NARA acting head Debra Wall wrote a letter to Trump’s attorney alluding to the administration’s involvement.

Records show that John Laster, “the Archives’ official responsible for administering all access requests for Presidential records,” was involved in the request despite the Archives’ previously claiming it had “not been involved in the DOJ investigation.”

“On October 25, 2022, Acting Archivist Wall wrote to then-Ranking Members James Comer and Jim Jordan, claiming ‘NARA received the 15 boxes from President Trump on January 18, 2022, and then discovered that they contained classified national security information. Shortly after the discovery, NARA consulted with its Office of Inspector General (OIG), which operates independently of NARA. As DOJ has disclosed publicly in court filings, NARA’s OIG subsequently referred the matter to DOJ on February 9, 2022,’” America First Legal wrote.

“If the OIG acted independently in making a referral to the FBI, then Mr. Laster would not have involved himself in the FBI’s review of the 15 boxes in his capacity as the Director of the White House Liaison Division ‘responsible for all access requests for Presidential records.’”

Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. — Former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

JUDGE REINHART FORMALLY REJECTS DOJ ARGUMENT TO KEEP TRUMP AFFIDAVIT SEALED, CALLS RAID ‘UNPRECEDENTED’

According to America First Legal, the special access statute “authorizes special access requests to an incumbent president only when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House.”

“Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House,” the organization said.

The August letter from Wall to Trump attorney Evan Corcoran also seemingly hinted at President Biden’s involvement.

Local law enforcement officers are seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)

“NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote. “The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege.”

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Leading US Behind

A.F. BRANCO | on April 11, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-leading-us-behind/

Biden leading America from behind while China eats our lunch will have disastrous implications.

China Eating Our Lunch — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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LIBERALS MELT DOWN AFTER FAR-LEFT JOURNALIST BLASTS ‘BIRTHING PERSON’ LANGUAGE: ‘OH F— OFF’

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San Francisco State Sides With Men Who Assaulted Women’s Rights Speaker Riley Gaines

BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 10, 2023

Riley Gaines on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ — Footage of the attack shows a crowd yelling ‘trans rights are human rights’ at Gaines and calling the swimmer a ‘transphobic b-itch.’

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

San Francisco State University endorsed the erasure of women this week when its top student affairs administrator released a statement reaffirming the transgender activists who attacked women’s rights speaker Riley Gaines.

Gaines, who rose to fame after speaking up about the unfairness of men masquerading as women to gain an advantage in women’s sports, was assaulted last week after she attempted to address a crowd at a Turning Point USA event about the necessity of female spaces, especially in athletic settings. The chaos ensued mere hours after White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre encouraged radical gender ideologues to “fight back” against people who called for sex-specific spaces.

Footage of the attack on SFSU’s campus shows the former NCAA swimmer being chased by a crowd yelling “trans rights are human rights” and calling the swimmer a “transphobic b-itch.”

Gaines reported that, during the chaos, she was assaulted by at least one man and trapped in a room for three hours. The mob also attempted to extort money from her in exchange for her freedom before she was finally able to escape. Gaines said neither campus police nor attending school administrators took steps to stop the violence.

“This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces,” Gaines tweeted.

Instead of punishing the hysterical students who “ambushed” Gaines, the school and alumni cheered on the angry mob.

Shortly after Gaines was attacked, SFSU’s Vice President for Student Affairs & Enrollment Management Jamillah Moore released an official statement encouraging the students who harassed the speaker.

“Today, San Francisco State finds itself again at the center of a national discussion regarding freedom of speech and expression. Let me begin by saying clearly: the trans community is welcome and belongs at San Francisco State University,” she wrote.

Moore also claimed that the students that are seen on footage roughhousing Gaines chose to “protest peacefully.”

“Thank you to our students who participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event. It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space. I am proud of the moments when we listened and asked insightful questions. I am also proud of the moments when our students demonstrated the value of free speech and the right to protest peacefully,” Moore said.

Gaines quickly condemned Moore’s statement and confirmed that she plans to sue the school for failing to protect her from violence.

“I’m sorry did this just say PEACEFUL….,” Gaines replied. “I was assaulted. I was extorted and held for ran[s]om. The protestors demanded I pay them if I wanted to make it home safely. I missed my flight home because I was barricaded in a classroom… We must have different definitions of peaceful.”

Just last month, an angry mob of Stanford law students shut down a talk led by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan with profane insults and threats of violence and death. Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez eventually apologized but the students and administrators who participated in the chaos were left largely unpunished.

Stanford Law School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach, who confronted Duncan about the “harm” she claimed he caused to students, doubled down on their defiant challenge and refused to apologize even after she was put on administrative leave.

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.

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Crime, Political

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Study Says All Hormonal Birth Control Raises Breast Cancer Risk — But Don’t Expect The FDA To Tell You

BY: GRACE EMILY STARK | APRIL 10, 2023

birth control pill pack — Elevating a woman’s risk of breast cancer even a little bit should be a serious consideration for doctors and health-care institutions.

GRACE EMILY STARK

The facade of “safety” around hormonal birth control continues to crumble: Researchers at Oxford Population Health’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit have recently shown that progestin-only hormonal contraceptives, long billed as the “safest” birth control option because of their lack of estrogen, definitively raises one’s risk of breast cancer, similarly to combined hormonal contraceptives (which contain both synthetic estrogen and progestin).

Furthermore, the Oxford researchers found that breast cancer risk, while it declines after discontinuation of hormonal birth control, still remains elevated for ever-users of hormonal birth control (when compared to never-users). Of course, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still won’t cop to increased risks for breast cancer for ever-users of birth control — just for current users — and they are also currently evaluating whether to make a progestin-only pill the first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States.

Unsurprisingly, in another instance of “nothing to see here, folks,” headlines abounded with the results of the Oxford study for a few weeks, carefully emphasizing the “slight” or “small” increase in breast cancer risk. And the experts, of course, were quick to chime in with all the benefits of hormonal contraception, insisting women shouldn’t see this as a reason to go flushing their pills.

ABC’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton had this to say, for example:

So listen, I talk to women about this every single day. You have to talk about risk vs benefit. It is clear that hormonal contraception lowers the risk of ovarian and uterine cancer, but it increases the risk of clotting. When you put that head to head, it’s about individualizing that risk-benefit and option-risk for the woman. If you talk to any OB/GYN, they will say, we have a line, ‘pregnancy is much higher risk than any associated risk with birth control pills or hormonal contraception.’ So you have to have that conversation based on you and your health-care provider.

While I agree that health-care decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor, is it really true, with everything we know about the risks and side effects of birth control (and we know an awful lot), that it’s really that much “safer” than a nine-month pregnancy? Women, after all, tend to be on birth control for years — perhaps even decades — at a time. And the oft-touted benefits of hormonal birth control reducing ovarian and uterine cancers? Well, Dr. Ashton might be surprised to learn that pregnancy has those, too.

It’s also worth mentioning that while ovarian and uterine cancers can undoubtedly be devastating diseases, the average woman’s baseline risk for breast cancer is far greater than her risk for ovarian or uterine cancer; in fact, breast cancer is now the world’s most commonly diagnosed cancer. In other words, elevating the average woman’s risk of breast cancer even a little bit should be a serious consideration for doctors and health-care institutions indeed. In fact, one might argue they have a moral imperative to help women lower their risks for breast cancer.

Unfortunately, despite increasing, high-quality evidence of the harms of birth control (of which breast cancer is only one among a lengthy list of risks), health-care organizations such as the FDA are loath to give women true informed consent about these drugs. In 2019, the Contraceptive Study Group (CSG) submitted a Citizen Petition to the FDA requesting they add a black box warning to hormonal contraceptives given the mounting evidence for breast cancer risks for ever-users of these drugs (evidence the Oxford study has yet again corroborated).

Yet in a partial response to the CSG’s petition, published a full three years later in 2022, the FDA refused to supply women with this warning. One wonders what leg they have to stand upon now, and if they’ll continue to ignore these significant risks to women — which can be entirely avoided through the use of highly effective, drug- and side-effect-free measures for family planning known as fertility awareness-based methods.

With the publication of the Oxford study, the FDA has once again proven itself at odds with the best scientific evidence on this matter, which even the National Cancer Institute acknowledges. Again, this is largely because of the “benefit” of preventing pregnancy, which evidently trumps all other considerations — even ones that could take the lives of women.

Grace Emily Stark is a freelance writer with published work in multiple outlets, and she is the Editor of Natural Womanhood. Grace is also a current Ramsey Institute Fellow at the Center for Bioethics & Culture, and a former Novak Alumni Fund Journalism fellowship recipient. Follow her writing at GraceEmilyStark.com.

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Health, Political

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Judge’s Abortion Pill Opinion Tells The Truth About ‘Unborn Humans,’ And The Left Can’t Stand It

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 10, 2023

abortion pill protest after Roe v. Wade was reversed — In his 67-page straight-talking opinion, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk stuck to the facts — something Americans desperately need to hear after decades of euphemistic discussions about abortion.

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

“Unborn humans.” “Eugenics.” “Head, hands, and legs, with defined fingers and toes.” “Shame, regret, anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts.”

Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s Friday decision freezing the FDA’s approval of the abortion-pill combination, mifepristone and misoprostol, included these phrases and more. And while the left is already attacking Kacsmaryk’s 67-page straight-talking opinion in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA by framing it as filled with anti-abortion rhetoric, the Trump appointee stuck to the facts — something Americans desperately need to hear after decades of euphemistic discussions about abortion.

After a brief introduction in which Kacsmaryk highlighted the FDA’s two decades of stonewalling that delayed a legal challenge to the 2000 approval of the abortion drugs, the court opened with the basic facts. The plaintiffs — doctors and medical associations that provide health care to pregnant and post-abortive women and girls — sued the FDA, challenging several administrative actions related to the approval of the chemical abortion drugs.

‘Unborn Humans’

The court then explained the drugs and their functioning: “Mifepristone — also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex — is a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death.” But “because mifepristone alone will not always complete the abortion,” the court continued, “the FDA mandates a two-step drug regimen: mifepristone to kill the unborn human, followed by misoprostol to induce cramping and contractions to expel the unborn human from the mother’s womb.”

Calling an unborn human an “unborn human” immediately triggered abortion activists, but as Kacsmaryk explained in a footnote, such terminology is scientifically correct, whereas the lawyers and courts “often use the word ‘fetus’ to inaccurately identify unborn humans in unscientific ways.”

“The word ‘fetus,’” Kacsmaryk explained, “refers to a specific gestational stage of development, as opposed to the zygote, blastocyst, or embryo stages.” And because the FDA’s approval of the abortion drugs applies at multiple “gestational stages,” the word “fetus” would be inaccurate.

It is understandable that abortion activists want to hide the humanity of unborn humans, but that doesn’t make the science less real: It just means girls and women who have bought the “clump of cells” narrative will suffer when faced with the truth, which chemical “at home abortions” force.

“The mother seeing the aborted human ‘appears to be a difficult aspect of the medical termination process which can be distressing, bring home the reality of the event and may influence later emotional adaptation,’” the court wrote, based on the record evidence. “For example, one woman was surprised and saddened to see that her aborted baby ‘had a head, hands, and legs’ with ‘[d]efined fingers and toes.’”

Another woman alleged that “she did not receive an ultrasound or any other physical examination before receiving chemical abortion drugs from Planned Parenthood.” According to the record, “The abortionist misdated the baby’s gestational age as six weeks, resulting in the at-home delivery of a ‘lifeless, fully formed baby in the toilet,’ later determined to be around 30-36 weeks old.”

Harm to Women

Beyond exposing the reality that abortion kills an unborn human, Kacsmaryk’s opinion also refuted the “popular belief and talking points” that using the abortion pill is “as easy as taking Advil.” Here, the federal judge detailed the factual evidence. Among other things, “bleeding from a chemical abortion, unlike surgical abortion, can last up to several weeks,” and by being done at home, “without physician oversight,” it can lead “to undetected ectopic pregnancies, failure of rH factor incompatibility detection, and misdiagnosis of gestational age — all leading to severe or even fatal consequences.”

The opinion also countered the claim that side effects are rare by highlighting evidence that “over sixty percent of women and girls’ emergency room visits after chemical abortions are miscoded as ‘miscarriages’ rather than adverse effects to mifepristone.”

The evidence also shows emotional and psychological injury, Kacsmaryk stressed, with 77 percent of women who underwent a chemical abortion reporting “a negative change” after the at-home abortion, and 38 percent of women reporting issues “with anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts because of the chemical abortion.”

While the abortion industry prefers to cite its own evidence, as Kacsmaryk noted, those studies are flawed both because of the miscoding of chemical abortions as miscarriages and because the FDA stopped requiring the reporting of non-fatal adverse reactions.

Eugenic Roots

The left also didn’t like Kacsmaryk exposing the eugenic beliefs of the Population Council, which had sought FDA approval for the abortion drugs. John D. Rockefeller founded the Population Council in 1952, “after he convened a conference with ‘population activists’ such as Planned Parenthood’s director and several well-known eugenicists,” the court wrote. Attendees of that conference discussed “the problem of ‘quality,’” and concluded that “[m]odern civilization had reduced the operation of natural selection by saving more ‘weak’ lives and enabling them to reproduce,” thereby resulting in “a downward trend in … genetic quality.”

“[m]odern civilization had reduced the operation of natural selection by saving more ‘weak’ lives and enabling them to reproduce,” thereby resulting in “a downward trend in … genetic quality.” …….. “Natural Selection”????? Can you say, “disciples of Margarete Sanger”?

Many Americans remain oblivious to the historical backdrop eugenics played to the abortion movement, and activist groups prefer they remain in the dark. The sunlight Kacsmaryk shined upon that truth infuriates them.

Political Pressure

Judge Kacsmaryk also exposed the political pressure placed on the FDA to approve the abortion drug — something Americans are likely to appreciate more today in the aftermath of the FDA’s hasty approval of the Covid mRNA shots.

In the case of the abortion pill, the FDA took the unprecedented step of arranging a meeting between the French pharmaceutical company that owned the patent rights and the eventual drug sponsor, the Population Council. “The purpose of the FDA-organized meeting was ‘to facilitate an agreement between those parties to work together to test [mifepristone] and file a new drug application.’”

Evidence further shows the Department of Health and Human Services “initiated” another meeting to determine how the Clinton administration “might facilitate successful completion of the negotiations” between the French firm and the Population Council to ensure the group secure patent rights and eventual FDA approval.” In fact, Clinton’s HHS secretary “believed American pressure on the French firm was necessary.”

Then after the Population Council submitted a new drug application, the FDA proposed detailed restrictions to address safety concerns, including that the drug be administered by doctors “trained and authorized by law” to perform surgical abortions; trained in administering mifepristone and treating adverse events; and able to provide treatment at a medical facility that had the equipment necessary to perform surgical abortions, resuscitation procedures, and blood transfusion, within one hour’s drive. The FDA’s restrictions were leaked to the press, prompting a political firestorm.

So Much for Safety

The FDA later abandoned the above safety mandates and approved the drug for use to kill unborn humans aged seven-weeks gestation or younger. The FDA further required three “in-person office visits: the first to administer mifepristone, the second to administer misoprostol, and the third to assess any complications and ensure there were no fetal remains in the womb.” All adverse events were also required to be reported.

In 2002, the FDA removed even more of the safety restrictions, increasing the maximum gestational age from seven-weeks gestation to 10-weeks gestation, reducing the number of office visits from three to one, increasing the drug dosage, allowing non-doctors to prescribe and administer chemical abortions, and eliminating the requirement for non-fatal adverse reactions to be reported. Then in 2019, the FDA approved a generic version of the abortion pills, and on April 12, 2021, the FDA announced it would allow abortion pills to be dispensed through the mail.

“Whether FDA abandoned its proposed restrictions because of political pressure or not,” the court wrote, “one thing is clear: the lack of restrictions resulted in many deaths and many more severe or threatening adverse reactions.” But “due to FDA’s lax reporting requirements, the exact number is not ascertainable,” Kacsmaryk stressed.

Straight Facts

But it was not on politics that Kacsmaryk based his decision to freeze the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill. Rather, in his methodical opinion, the federal judge explained that the FDA lacked the authority to accelerate approval of the drug under what is called “Subpart H” of the FDA. That subpart only allows for accelerated approval of drugs that treat “serious or life-threatening illnesses” — something pregnancy is not.

Kacsmaryk also concluded the evidence the FDA supposedly relied upon to approve the abortion drugs failed to support the conclusion that they were “safe and effective under particular conditions of use.” And finally, Kacsmaryk held the FDA’s approval of mail distribution violated the 1873 Comstock Act, which makes it illegal to use the mail to deliver any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”

The Biden administration has already filed a notice of appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in issuing his opinion in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, Kacsmaryk entered a temporary stay, which he or the court of appeals will likely make permanent pending resolution of the case. Thus, abortion pills will remain available for now.

How the Fifth Circuit and eventually the Supreme Court will rule remains to be seen, but what is clear now is the abortion-loving left is desperate to keep the truth about abortion from the public and is furious that Kacsmaryk dared to expose the reality: Abortion kills unborn humans.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Health, Law, Political

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Progressive journalist doubles down bashing ‘birthing person’ language after backlash: ‘I’ll never apologize’

By Kristine Parks | Fox News | Published April 10, 2023 2:00pm EDT

A progressive media host is doubling down after she enraged liberals by insisting women should not be referred to as “birthing persons” or “persons with uteruses.” “The Young Turks” co-host Ana Kasparian laughed at the backlash she received after calling transgender “inclusive” language “degrading” to women last month. Progressive journalists and transgender activists accused her of being “right-wing.”

“[Laughing out loud]! The meltdowns over wanting be referred to as a woman rather than a ‘birthing person’ is pretty wild,” she responded on Twitter on Monday.

The far-left host insisted she’d never apologize for taking this stance.

“I’ll never apologize for that, especially as biological woman who has had a f—ing lifetime of being told I’m less than,” she added.

"The Young Turks" co-host Ana Kasparian — “The Young Turks” co-host Ana Kasparian (The Young Turks)

“I’m a woman. No apologies,” Kasparian fired back.

Many of the same progressives who criticized her original tweet also took offense at this unapologetic statement. Several on the left pleaded for Kasparian to stop tweeting about the issue or accused her of bigotry.

“You’ll be on J.K. Rowling’s level of TERFyness within 2 years at this rate,” Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman tweeted.

You'll be on J.K. Rowling's level of TERFyness within 2 years at this rate.
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) April 10, 2023

Author J.K. Rowling commented on images of Members of Parliament standing front of a sign reading "Decapitate TERFs." — Author J.K. Rowling commented on images of Members of Parliament standing front of a sign reading “Decapitate TERFs.” (Twitter/Getty Images)

NYC TOP HEALTH OFFICIAL REFERS TO WHITE WOMEN AS ‘BIRTHING PEOPLE,’ CALLS BLACK AND HISPANIC WOMEN ‘MOTHERS’

The founder of “Race 2 Dinner,” an organization that invites White women to be lectured about their privilege and racism, mocked Kasparian. “You win the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy for Most Toxic White of the Weekend. Bravo for you,” Saira Rao said.

You win the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy for Most Toxic White of the Weekend.

Bravo for you.
— saira rao 🍉 (@sairasameerarao) April 10, 2023

Transgender activists insisted no one was referring to a woman as a “birthing person.”

“That’s not what’s happening,” Charlotte Clymer, an activist formerly with the Human Rights Campaign, retorted. “When referring to the whole community of people who are capable of pregnancy in the context of pregnancy, repro advocates use ‘birthing person’ to include trans men + nonbinary people. No one is arbitrarily calling individual women ‘birthing person,'” Clymer tweeted.

A transgender drag queen running for Congress in 2024 told Kasparian she was wrong and warned transgenders were under attack.

“I really don’t understand why you’re still tweeting about this. How many times a day are you being referred to as “birthing person” in real life? Knowing the intense scrutiny & hate trans people are facing rn, along w/the hundreds of anti-trans bills, couldn’t you just not?” the candidate tweeted.

I really don’t understand why you’re still tweeting about this. How many times a day are you being referred to as “birthing person” in real life?

Knowing the intense scrutiny & hate trans people are facing rn, along w/the hundreds of anti-trans bills, couldn’t you just not?
— Maebe for Congress (she/they) 🏳️‍⚧️ (@Maebe_A_Girl) April 10, 2023

Transgender attorney and activist Alejandro Carabello warned Kasparian that not using inclusive language could lead to “dire” results, linking to a 2019 report where a transgender man, a biological woman, was not given proper medical care and delivered a stillborn baby.

“No one is using that term to describe you personally, it’s in reference to the population. When language isn’t inclusive in medicine, the consequences can be dire. These are the real issues instead of making yourself the victim,” Carabello wrote.

Fox News reported last year how the Biden administration, congressional Democrats and liberal groups across the country had repeatedly dropped words like “mother” and “woman” from their language in order to appease the transgender community.

More recently, major companies like Nike have turned off customers by paying transgender activists like Dylan Mulvaney to model women’s clothing.

Fox News’ Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.

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WORKER CALLED FOR HELP FROM INSIDE VAULT AS GUNMAN STORMED BANK AND OPENED FIRE, TIMELINE REVEALS

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Virginia mom of 6-year-old who shot teacher charged in connection with the shooting

By Bradford Betz | Fox News | Published April 10, 2023 3:04pm EDT

The Virginia mom of a 6-year-old charged with shooting his first-grade teacher earlier this year has been indicted by a grand jury in connection with the shooting, the Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office announced Monday. Deja Nicole Taylor, 25, is charged with felony child neglect, and a misdemeanor count of recklessly leaving a firearm so as to endanger a child.

FILE: Students return to Richneck Elementary in Newport News, Va., Jan. 30, 2023. (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

The charges were brought about after an investigation by the Newport News Police Department and the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.

“Every criminal case is unique in its facts, and these facts support these charges, but our investigation into the shooting continues,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn said in a statement.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney has also asked a Circuit Court judge to impanel a “Special Grand Jury” to continue investigating security issues that may have enabled the January shooting. The probe could potentially lead to more people being criminally charged in connection with the shooting.

Abby Zwerner, a 25-year-old first-grade teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, was shot in the hand and chest Jan. 6, as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and required four surgeries.

Richneck Elementary School teacher Abigail Zwerner sat down with NBC for an interview a couple months after being shot by her 6-year-old student in the classroom. (Screenshot/NBC)

Monday’s indictment announcement comes a week after Zwerner filed a lawsuit seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing them of gross negligence and ignoring multiple warnings the day of the shooting the boy was armed and in a “violent mood.”

BIDEN IMMEDIATELY CALLS FOR CONGRESS TO ACT AFTER DEADLY LOUISVILLE SHOOTING

The lawsuit names as defendants the Newport News School Board, former Superintendent George Parker III, former Richneck Principal Briana Foster-Newton and former Richneck Assistant Principal Ebony Parker.

In the lawsuit, Zwerner’s attorneys say all the defendants knew the boy “had a history of random violence” at school and at home, including an episode the year before when he “strangled and choked” his kindergarten teacher.

Messages of support for teacher Abby Zwerner, who was shot by a 6-year-old student, grace the front door of Richneck Elementary School Newport News, Va., Jan. 6, 2023. (Family of Abigail Zwerner via AP, File/ AP Photo/John C. Clark, File)

Last month, Newport News prosecutor Howard Gwynn said his office would not criminally charge the boy because he is too young to understand the legal system. Gwynn has yet to decide if any other adults will be charged.

The boy used his mother’s gun, which police said was purchased legally. James Ellenson, the attorney for the boy’s family, has said previously that the firearm was secured on a high closet shelf with a lock.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Ellenson for further comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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PURPORTED FBI DOCUMENT SUGGESTS AGENCY MAY BE TARGETING CATHOLICS WHO ATTEND LATIN MASS

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FBI sought to develop sources in Catholic churches to combat domestic terrorism, docs show

By Thomas Catenacci | Fox News | Published April 10, 2023 2:02pm EDT

The FBI recently sought to develop sources inside Christian churches and Catholic dioceses as part of an effort to combat domestic terrorism, according to internal documents released by House Judiciary Committee on Monday. The internal documents — obtained last month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., who are also members of the so-called Weaponization Subcommittee — showed the FBI planned to use churches as “new avenues for tripwire and source development.” The federal law enforcement agency also aimed to specifically target “mainline Catholic parishes” as part of its efforts.

In addition, according to Jordan, the FBI expressed interest in “leverag[ing] existing sources and/or initiat[ing] Type 5 Assessments to develop new sources with the placement and access.” And, in another example, the agency cited a desire to to sensitize religious congregations “to the warning signs of radicalization and enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, conducts a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on March 9. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith,” Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday.

Jordan also issued a subpoena for a series of related documents the committee previously requested from the FBI, but which the FBI has failed to provide.

FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT NICOLE PARKER SAYS BUREAU BECAME ‘POLITICALLY WEAPONIZED,’ TRICKLED DOWN FROM HQ

“This information is outrageous and only reinforces the Committee’s need for all FBI material responsive to our request,” Jordan wrote to Wray. “The documents produced to date show how the FBI sought to enlist Catholic houses of worship as potential sources to monitor and report on their parishioners.”

“Americans attend church to worship and congregate for their spiritual and personal betterment,” the letter continued. “They must be free to exercise their fundamental First Amendment rights without worrying that the FBI may have planted so-called “tripwire” sources or other informants in their houses of worship.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray listens during a news conference at the Department of Justice on Jan. 27. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Jordan and Johnson first requested related documents from the FBI on Feb. 16, days after former FBI agent and whistleblower Kyle Seraphin published an internal document originating from the FBI’s Richmond Field Office that appeared to outline a plan to “mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics.”

The leaked document generated widespread condemnation from Republican lawmakers who said the FBI’s efforts may violate the Constitution. However, the original letter from Jordan and Johnson went unanswered prompting a follow-up request on March 20. Three days later, the FBI produced the 18-page document Jordan announced on Monday.

“The FBI received the subpoena,” the FBI told Fox News Digital in a statement. “The FBI recognizes the importance of congressional oversight and remains fully committed to cooperating with Congress’s oversight requests consistent with its constitutional and statutory responsibilities. The FBI is actively working to respond to congressional requests for information –including voluntary production of documents.”

The agency also referred Fox News Digital to recent comments Wray made during congressional testimony in which he said he was “aghast” when he saw reports about the FBI targeting Catholics.

“We took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems. It does not reflect FBI standards,” Wray added. “We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliation or practices, full stop. We have also now ordered our inspection division to take a look at how this happened and try to figure out how we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

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KENTUCKY POLICE END BANK SHOOTING WITHIN MINUTES, ‘ABOSLUTELY’ SAVED LIVES: TIMELINE

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Louisville bank shooting suspect: Who is Connor Sturgeon?

By Michael Ruiz | Fox News | Published April 10, 2023 3:26pm EDT

Louisville police have identified Connor Sturgeon as the man who opened fire at the Old National Bank on East Main Street Monday morning. The 23-year-old worked at the bank, Louisville Interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a 3 p.m. news briefing. He was livestreaming during the attack, she added.

The first reports of shots fired came in at 8:38 a.m., she said. Sturgeon shot at responding officers.

“We then returned fire and stopped that threat,” she said. “The suspect is deceased. This is the only time that I will mention the suspect name in this case: Connor Sturgeon, white male, 23 years of age, who was employed at Old National Bank.”

Connor Sturgeon was killed by responding officers after he opened fire on a bank in Louisville Monday. (Connor Sturgeon/LinkedIn)

Sturgeon used a rifle during the attack, she said. It was not immediately clear whether he purchased it himself, she said.

Gwinn-Villaroel said she was unaware of any prior contacts between police and the gunman.

EMOTIONAL KENTUCKY GOV. BESHEAR SAYS HE KNOWS LOUISVILLE BANK SHOOTING VICTIMS PERSONALLY, PLEADS FOR PRAYERS

“It is clear from the officers’ response that they absolutely saved people’s lives,” Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said at an earlier press conference.

Louisville police have identified 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon as the gunman in Monday morning's attack on an Old National Bank in the city's downtown neighborhood. — Louisville police have identified 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon as the gunman in Monday morning’s attack on an Old National Bank in the city’s downtown neighborhood. (Connor Sturgeon/LinkedIn)

According to his LinkedIn profile, Sturgeon worked at the bank for about two years as a “syndications associate and portfolio banker” and had three prior summer internships there.

He wrote that he had a master’s degree from the University of Alabama.

Police deploy at the scene of a mass shooting near Slugger Field baseball stadium in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. April, 10, 2023. ( Michael Clevenger/USA Today Network via REUTERS)

Sturgeon’s dad was a college and high school basketball coach in Indiana who led his most recent team to two sectional titles with a record of 142-45 before retiring last year, the Louisville-based WLKY-TV reported in April 2022. The school in Floyd Knobs, Indiana, is just 10 miles away from downtown Louisville.

Before coaching there, he had left his job as the successful head coach at the University of Indianapolis in 2007 to spend more time with his family, according to a report on the website of his alma mater, DePauw University. His two sons were 9 and 6 at the time.

LOUISVILLE POLICE RESPOND TO ACTIVE AGGRESSOR AT DOWNTOWN BANK

LMPD officers search for evidence after five people were killed and six injured, including a LMPD officer, in a deadly Monday morning shooting at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville. April 9, 2023 (Matt Stone/Louisville Courier Journal – USA Today Network)

At least one officer was critically injured in the attack Monday, police said, Nickolas Wilt, who was recently sworn in. A second responding officer suffered minor injuries. In all, four people were killed, not including the gunman, and nine injured, authorities said.

Gov. Andy Beshear, speaking at a news briefing alongside city leaders, said Monday that he had a personal connection to the attack.

Andy Beshear, Governor of Kentucky, speaks during a news conference after a gunman opened fire at the Old National Bank building on April 10, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. According to reports, there are multiple fatalities and injuries but the shooter died at the scene. (Luke Sharrett/Getty Images)

“This is awful,” he said. “I have a very close friend that didn’t make it today. And I have another close friend who didn’t either. And one who’s at the hospital that I hope is going to make it through.”

Law enforcement officers respond to an active shooter at the Old National Bank building on April 10, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. According to reports, there are multiple fatalities and casualties. The shooter died at the scene. ( Luke Sharrett/Getty Images)

Police are asking anyone with information on the attack to call their tip line at 502-574-LMPD.

Fox News’ Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – No Parents Allowed

A.F. BRANCO | on April 8, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-no-parents-allowed/

Minnesota children, not parents, are the ‘only authority on gender identity, DFL rep’s book says.

Transgender Surgery and Parental Rights — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Lawlessness Unplugged

A.F. BRANCO | on April 10, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-lawlessness-unplugged/

Democrats hate Trump so much they’re willing to flush the entire justice system down the toilet.

Democrat Lawlessness — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF APRIL 7, 2023

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BIDEN ADMIN ROASTED OVER NEW TRANSGENDER TITLE IX REGULATIONS: ‘INSANE INJUSTICE’

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Leftists Violate Separation Of Church And State With ‘Spiritual’ SEL In Public Schools

BY: LISA LOGAN | APRIL 07, 2023

Children playing with toys on the floor — It is clear that state-sponsored SEL violates the U.S. Constitution in its attempt to infuse the religious science of ‘right human relations’ into education while cloaking it in secular language.

LISA LOGAN

VISIT ON TWITTER@IAMLISALOGAN

Social-emotional learning will soon become spiritual-ethical learning, and the public school systems will decide whose spiritual and ethical beliefs to teach.

For families that care about raising their children with the moral and religious values of their own faith tradition, questions about which spiritual and ethical teachings should be taught prompt even more speculation about whether so-called social-emotional learning (SEL) should be taught in public education at all.

As the theory adopts spiritual and ethical dimensions, it will amount to state-sanctioned religion.

What Is SEL, and How Has It Changed?

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is a mental-health framework that has woven itself into the very fabric of our education system. Standards, assessments, curricula, and even college and career readiness standards have been altered to teach, measure, and track students’ adoption of SEL’s five core competencies — put forth by its standard-bearer, the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL).

Since its birth in 1994 at the Fetzer Institute and up until 2020, CASEL’s definition of social-emotional learning and its competencies have relatively stayed the same. It described SEL as “the process through which children acquire the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively.”

In 2020, amid the chaos of the global pandemic and racial riots, CASEL quietly updated that definition and its five core competencies. Its new definition of Transformative SEL and adjusted competencies reflect the view that so-called social and emotional learning needs to be taught through a racial and “equity” lens.

SEL lessons and the subjects addressed through them act as both a springboard and smokescreen for activist teachers to have discussions about race, sex, and class that aim to create a critical consciousness in children. Once they are led to believe the systems of society have been set up to oppress specific groups of people, students can be coached to become social-justice activists who show their empathy and compassion by tearing down the systems of society in order to build ones that are more “equitable.”

In this vision, “equitable” means equal outcomes through the redistribution of resources, not equal opportunity under the law. The whole purpose of social-emotional learning has therefore been changed to explicitly “address issues such as power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, social justice, empowerment, and self-determination” with the goal of developing “justice-oriented, global citizens.”

Spirituality Through SEL

As if this departure from its original purpose were not destructive enough, social-emotional learning is undergoing another revision — one that will seek to address the spiritual needs of students as a part of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. Created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), WSCC claims to create a comprehensive school health approach by fostering collaboration among the public health and education sectors through the integration and alignment of their services, far beyond hearing and vision screenings.

These public-private partnerships will take other medical and mental health services that are generally rendered out of school and facilitated by parents and caregivers and instead allow them to be offered as aid provided by the school so the needs of the “whole child” can be met. Spirituality will soon be seen as one of those needs.

🧵The CDC expands into education via the WSCC model of Community/Healthy Schools. They want children accessing psycho-social-emotional, medical, sexual, reproductive, dental, and eye services at school. They are collecting data, expanding Medicaid, and removing parental consent. pic.twitter.com/mDaXv5Nd4U
— Kelly S. (@kellyske) March 3, 2023

Recently, there has been an influx of SEL programs in the market that incorporate spirituality into their lessons. The Fetzer Institute, along with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Dr. Lisa Miller from Columbia’s Teachers College, launched the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education. Fetzer’s support of research on the spiritual aspects of childhood development led to the social-emotional learning program, “What Makes Me: Core Capacities for Living and Learning.”

Released in collaboration with UNICEF and the Learning for Well-being Foundation — a “Whole Child Partner” committed to advancing the WSCC model worldwide — it addresses nine core capacities that are believed to protect and improve the lives of children based on the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

There is just one teeny little problem. The UNCRC believes children’s rights usurp parental ones. The report released with “What Makes Me” states:

Both children’s ‘evolving capacities’ and ‘children’s spiritual well-being’ are key parts of achieving multiple children’s rights, as outlined in the UNCRC. The evolving capacities of the child are mentioned in both Article 5 and Article 14.1 in regard to children being able to exercise their own rights (Article 5), and their freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 14.1). Moreover, Articles 17, 23.3, 27 and 32 … recognize spiritual well-being as a goal of these rights alongside physical, mental and moral well-being, among others.

“What Makes Me” seeks to teach spirituality through SEL as “a more active and engaged process in which some persons choose to shape and create a way of knowing and living that may or may not draw on religion” and as something that involves the conscious choice to explore life’s “big questions.”

The UNCRC also states that children have sexual rights from birth and should be able to learn about sexual behaviors as young as age 5 through Comprehensive Sexuality Education, including the idea that sex is not binary or immutable. One must wonder if the “spirituality” they intend to impart to children as a fundamental “right” is a wide acceptance of sexual variance and the offering of an alternative belief system that differs from their familial, cultural, and religious beliefs.

“What Makes Me” is not the only SEL program incorporating spirituality that Fetzer invests in. It recently pledged $1 million to the QUESTion Project, started by mentalist and owner of The Open Future Institute, Gerard Senehi. It asks students questions such as: “Who am I?” “What is my purpose?” “What does a good life look like?” If administered in a public school using taxpayer money, these questions violate the separation of church and state and cross the line into the government using education to institute an unconstitutional state-sanctioned religion. SEL programs such as these meet the federal government’s definition of a religion, which is a “comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life and death, man’s role in the universe, and the nature of good and evil, and that gives rise to duties of conscience.”

The First Amendment commands that the government can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Considering the esoteric and mystical religious roots of social-emotional learning and CASEL through the Fetzer Institute, and its broadening into explicitly teaching “spirituality,” it is clear that state-sponsored SEL violates the U.S. Constitution in its attempt to infuse the religious science of “right human relations” into education while cloaking it in secular language.

The role and responsibility of molding and shaping a child’s moral character does not belong in public classrooms backed by organizations with political or societal agendas.

It should remain in the loving arms of the family, where it has been since the dawn of time.

Lisa Logan is the host of the YouTube Channel Parents of Patriots and author of the Substack Education Manifesto. As a wife, mother and patriot, she has made it her mission to expose the sinister agenda behind social-emotional learning programs to save our children and the future of our country.

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Education, Political

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White House blasted over ‘Easter news dump’ after Afghanistan, transgender sports, IRS actions

By Thomas Catenacci | Fox News | Published April 7, 2023 1:02pm EDT

The Biden administration was heavily criticized Thursday after it made a series of announcements on various hot-button topics ahead of the holiday weekend.

On Thursday afternoon, the White House released a long-awaited after-action report on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal overseen by President Biden in August 2021. Then, hours later, the Department of Education rolled out new Title IX rules expanding the definition of sexual discrimination in an effort to prevent schools from banning transgender athletes.

Also on Thursday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published a 150-page plan on how it would deploy new resources from the Inflation Reduction Act. Buried in the document, which the Treasury Department originally said would come no later than Feb. 17, the IRS acknowledged that it would spend a staggering $45.6 billion on increased enforcement and tax audits.

“I think I speak on behalf of my colleagues in this room when we want the record to reflect that this was sent to us about 10 minutes before the briefing began with little notice, and it’s the very definition of a modern major holiday news dump,” CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe said to White House spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday in a question about the Afghanistan report.

White House spokesperson John Kirby defended the timing of the Biden administration's Afghanistan report on Thursday. — White House spokesperson John Kirby defended the timing of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan report on Thursday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

“You’re releasing this at the beginning of the High Holidays [sic] and after months of requests from Republicans and the broader public,” O’Keefe continued.

Kirby responded that the White House believed the report, which is a summary of classified reports assembled by individual defense agencies, was timed in a “responsible” fashion, adding that it was the “culmination of an awful lot of work.”

WHITE HOUSE INSISTS AFGHANISTAN REPORT NOT ABOUT ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’; DIDN’T SEE ‘CHAOS’ IN DEADLY WITHDRAWAL

The White House was later criticized for the contents of the report, which largely cast the blame of the 2021 withdrawal on the Trump administration. During the operation, 13 American service members were killed in a suicide bombing while manning the perimeter of the airport where evacuations were taking place.

“John Kirby’s comments during today’s White House press briefing were disgraceful and insulting. President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement.

The Department of Education moved to review federal funding for schools that implement "sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity." — The Department of Education moved to review federal funding for schools that implement “sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity.” (Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The administration was also blasted for its subsequent Title IX revisions opening the door to force schools and colleges that receive federal funds to allow transgender students to play on sports teams.

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem threatened to sue the administration over the rule, saying “only girls will play girls’ sports.”

“What an Easter weekend news dump by the Biden Administration,” Noem’s spokesperson Ian Fury tweeted. “One wonders why they wanted to hide this? Probably because they know that public sentiment is not on their side.”

And the IRS was similarly criticized for announcing its massive $45.6 billion tax and audit enforcement funding. The Inflation Reduction Act bolstered the IRS’ budget by $80 billion, allowing the agency to hire tens of thousands of new agents. The House passed legislation in early January to rescind $70 billion of that funding.

“New IRS spending plan allocates $45.6 billion on ramping up audits, more than 14x the spending for improving taxpayer services,” tweeted Mike Palicz, the federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform. “Nice Easter news dump.”

A White House official noted that the White House took more than 90 minutes of questions, including some about the Afghanistan report, from reporters Thursday. The press briefing also occurred after the IRS announcement.

Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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FLORIDA POLICE ARREST 2 JUVENILE SUSPECTS IN MURDERS OF 3 TEENS, HUNT FOR THIRD SUSPECT

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Florida Sheriff Billy Woods goes off after reporter asks about gun control following teen murders

By Audrey Conklin | Fox News | Published April 7, 2023 12:54pm EDT

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods on Friday slammed “society,” “school districts” and gun law rhetoric after announcing the arrests of two juveniles — one of which is just 12 years old — in connection with the recent killings of three teenagers in Florida.

A third juvenile suspect remains at large, and the attorney general’s office is weighing whether to charge all three suspects as adults, Woods said during a press conference.

“The fact is: society fails them. We do not hold our juveniles accountable. We minimize their actions,” Woods said Friday.

The suspects are accused of fatally shooting 16-year-old Layla Silvernail, 16-year-old Camille Quarles, and an unnamed 17-year-old male on or around March 30 in rural Marion County.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods blames society and school district failures for three juvenile suspects accused of killing three teenagers around March 30. (Fox News)

Woods told reporters he had to “look into the eyes” of the suspects’ mothers and inform them of their son’s crimes.

“Really, [the suspects’ parents] don’t have a whole lot to say. If you’re a parent, put yourself in their shoes. Holy hell. Panic. I’m scared to death as a parent. Embarrassed. Ashamed. What do you think they’re gonna say?” the sheriff said.

FLORIDA TRIPLE HOMICIDE VICTIMS LIKELY KNEW GANG-LINKED SUSPECTS, SHERIFF SAYS

“I am a father, and I cannot fathom what they were going through. These mothers and the mothers across this nation need all of your help because here’s what infuriates me,” he added.

"I am a father, and I cannot fathom what they were going through. These mothers and the mothers across this nation need all of your help because here's what infuriates me," Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said. — “I am a father, and I cannot fathom what they were going through. These mothers and the mothers across this nation need all of your help because here’s what infuriates me,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said. (Marion County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook)

The sheriff also criticized media and others who put the blame on guns after a shooting.

“There are individuals out there viewing … who want to blame the one thing that has no ability or the capacity to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun,” Woods said. “These individuals committed the crime.”

THIRD FLORIDA TEEN DIES IN SUSPECTED GANG-LINKED TRIPLE HOMICIDE

He added that he does not know what the solution is, but “[t]he bad guy’s going to get a gun no matter what laws you put in place.” Woods went on to blame society and schools for not holding juveniles accountable for their crimes.

Layla Silvernail, left, and Camille Quarles, along with an unidentified 17-year-old male, were shot and left for dead in Marion County, Florida, between March 30 and April 1. (Facebook/Layla Silvernail/Camille Quarles)

“I am a father,” he said. “But here’s the one thing my boys know: growing up, the freaking barber had my permission to whip their a–es.”

The suspects in the triple homicide were involved in a burglary and robbery ring and stole their firearms from cars, Woods said.

“A simple burglary, as some people would say — but I don’t consider anything ‘simple’ when it comes to a burglary — if the law allows me, I’ll plaster their face up … on my page, on media, I will hand it out if the law allows me because parents have the right to know who their kids are hanging out with and preventing this,” Woods said.

He continued, “Our school districts, not just here, across this state and across this nation need to stop minimizing the actions of their students. Hold them accountable. That’s where the failure is.”

Police first found Silvernail with a gunshot wound, lying on the side of the road in the area of Forest Lakes Park on SE 183rd Avenue Road. Authorities transported the teenager to a hospital in critical condition, and she lost brain function until she was pronounced dead.

Three teenage shooting victims were found left for dead miles apart in Marion County, Florida, between March 30 and April 1. (America’s Newsroom)

A day after finding Silvernail, Marion County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) deputies responded to SE 94th Street and SE 188th Court and located a deceased 17-year-old male with a gunshot wound.

The next morning, on April 1, the MCSO Major Crimes Unit, Forensic Unit and Underwater Recovery Team responded to a tip and searched the area of Malauka Loop and Malauka Loop Trace and found Silvernail’s vehicle partially submerged in a body of water. The car was about 9 miles from where Silvernail was found.

GABBY PETITO’S PARENTS ASK BRIAN LAUNDRIE’S PARENTS ABOUT MAJOR WITHDRAWALS IN NEW COURT FILINGS

The suspects were in Silvernail’s vehicle with the victims prior to their deaths, according to the sheriff. Authorities believe all three victims were shot at the same time.

“She was there of her own free will,” Woods said of Silvernail.

Layla Silvernail's family is planning to donate the 16-year-old's organs, according to a GoFundMe. — Layla Silvernail’s family is planning to donate the 16-year-old’s organs, according to a GoFundMe. (Facebook/Layla Silvernail)

After obtaining a search warrant and searching her vehicle, authorities found 16-year-old Quarles dead from a gunshot wound in Silvernail’s car. The arrested suspects confessed to shooting Quarles in the vehicle, Woods said.

Woods previously told Fox News Digital that he believed the suspects were part of a “wannabe” or “neighborhood” gang, and the victims likely knew them for a short time.

Police have not released the name of the male victim who was killed.

Audrey Conklin is a digital reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business. Email tips to audrey.conklin@fox.com or on Twitter at @audpants.

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Crime, Law

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House Oversight Committee subpoenas banks for Biden family financial records

By Chad Pergram , Adam Sabes | Fox News | Published April 7, 2023 3:21pm EDT

The House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to banks asking for the Biden family’s financial records.

Fox News has confirmed that the Oversight Committee subpoenaed Bank of America, Cathay Bank, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC USA N.A., as well as former Hunter Biden business associate Mervyn Yan asking for financial records.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, complained that Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., was trying to hide information regarding the investigation from Democrats on the committee.

COMER DEMANDS BIDEN CORRECT HIS ‘DISHONEST’ DENIAL THAT FAMILY GOT $1M FROM HUNTER’S CHINA DEAL

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., leads an organizational meeting for the 118th Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In a statement to Fox News, Comer said “Ranking Member Raskin has again disclosed Committee’s subpoenas in a cheap attempt to thwart cooperation from other witnesses. Given his antics with the first bank subpoena, the American people and media should be asking what information Ranking Member Raskin is trying to hide this time. No one should be fooled by Ranking Member Raskin’s games. We have the bank records, and the facts are not good for the Biden family.“

President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, step off Air Force One, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The Oversight Committee Democratic staff sent a memo to members on Thursday which accuses Republicans of conducting their investigation behind a “veil of secrecy.”

COMER DEFENDS DECISION TO SHIELD WITNESSES FROM DEMS IN HUNTER BIDEN PROBE, SAYS SOME ‘DO NOT TRUST’ RASKIN

“Despite this massive investment of time and resources, Republican efforts on this and other congressional committees have failed to yield any evidence of misconduct by President Biden. Nevertheless, Chairman Comer has issued six document subpoenas for financial records as part of this renewed investigation, several of which have been based on information Committee Republicans know to be false,” the memo states.

The Democratic memo alleges that Republicans haven’t been publicizing their subpoenas or notifying Democrats, which has purportedly resulted in some targets of subpoenas being unaware that the committee is seeking their records.

President Biden speaks during the annual House Democrats Issues Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Baltimore on March 1, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“On February 27, 2023, Chairman Comer secretly issued the Committee’s first document subpoena as part of Committee Republicans’ ongoing investigation into the Biden family to Bank of America. This subpoena sought, among other information, “all financial records” from January 20, 2009, to the present — a staggering 14-year period — for John R. Walker, a private U.S. citizen… Yet, because of Chairman Comer’s use of a secret subpoena, Mr. Walker was never notified that the Committee had subpoenaed his financial records from Bank of America, he was never notified that Bank of America turned over his records to the Committee, and he was never notified that the Committee was publicly releasing information from these records,” the memo states.

Chad Pergram currently serves as a senior congressional correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in September 2007 and is based out of Washington, D.C.

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Transgender teenager arrested for allegedly plotting mass murder attack on schools and churches, had written manifesto

By: CARLOS GARCIA | April 06, 2023

Law enforcement officials arrested a transgender person they believed was plotting a mass murder attack on schools and churches in Colorado Springs.

The 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said on Thursday that a family member of a teenager named William Whitworth, who identified as “Lily,” contacted law enforcement because of a threat Whitworth made “to shoot up a school.”

Police went to Whitworth’s address and found the suspect sleeping in a bedroom.

Investigators described what they saw in the charging documents.

“Once entering the home there was trash piled up all around the house to where it made it hard to walk inside,” they wrote. “There were numerous containers filled with half eaten food with mold growing inside and numerous alcoholic beverage containers laying around the house.”

Police spoke to Whitworth, who reportedly said, “I’m a little drunk by the way,” during the questioning.

“While waiting for the fire department to show up, Lily was asked how long she had been planning the school shooting and Lily stated she’s about a third of the way from doing it,” police said.

Whitworth allegedly told police that Timberview Middle School was a target, as well as some churches.

The charging document also says that Whitworth allegedly admitted to writing a manifesto and going through “active firearm planning” in addition to mapping out the school.

Whitworth was charged with two counts of criminal attempt to commit murder in the first degree, criminal mischief, menacing and interference with staff, faculty, or students of educational institutions.

The teenager had a bond set at $75,000 and is scheduled for a court hearing on May 5.

The arrest was compared by many to the horrific mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, during which a transgender person mercilessly slaughtered three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members. The murderer in that incident also prepared a manifesto, but police have not released details from it to date.

Here’s more about the Nashville mass shooting:

Glenn’s POWERFUL Nashville Tragedy Message: THIS Is the Way Out www.youtube.com

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Riley Gaines ‘ambushed and physically hit’ by male trans activist, swarmed by violent mob: ‘The prisoners are running the asylum’

By: JOSEPH MACKINNON | April 07, 2023

Image source: Twitter video, @GGXNews – Screenshot

Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines has been subject to verbal and written abuse in recent weeks after she took a stand against the inclusion of men in women’s sports. On Thursday night, however, her attackers turned to physical violence.

A man in a dress reportedly struck Gaines at least twice Thursday night after the 23-year-old swim star gave a speech about keeping women’s spaces female-only. Her attacker was part of a hysterical mob of transsexual extremists and LGBT activists that descended on the Turning Point USA and Leadership Institute event at San Francisco State University.

Gaines posted a video to Twitter documenting some of the chaos that reached a fever pitch as audience members were being let out of the classroom, noting, “The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU…I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces.”

The 12-time All-American swimmer underscored that the vicious attack “only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder.”

The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU…I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces.

Still only further assures me I'm doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/uJW3x9RERf
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 7, 2023

Kim Shasby Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, tweeted, “These people are UNHINGED and dangerous. It is 2023 and a young women is physically assaulted simply for speaking up for her rights!”

The Independent Women’s Forum, for which Gaines is a spokeswoman, issued a statement strongly condemning the violence, adding, “Riley was violently accosted, ambushed, and physically assaulted during a speech on sex discrimination women face in their own single-sex sports category.”

The IWF noted that “Riley is courageous in speaking up for truth, science and common sense. She has experienced firsthand the injustice female athletes face across America in their own sport.”

“The effort to silence, threaten & harm women for standing up for #WomensRights is absolutely ludicrous. The Biden administration @POTUS & governing bodies of sport @ncaa @iocmedia pushing for biological males in women’s sport for the sake of inclusion are responsible for this,” continued the statement.

Gaines had dared to tell her story to SFSU students about competing in the women’s NCAA swimming championships against male athlete Lia Thomas, whom she claimed in a February interview had exposed his male genitalia in a women’s locker room after a meet.

Her agent, Eli Bremer, told Fox News Digital, “Her goal in speaking at universities has been to educate her peers about her experience and what the impact of the growing number of biological males in women’s sports will do to the integrity of Title IX. She has been questioned in civil and somewhat uncivil manners about her views many times, and she thoroughly encourages diverse viewpoints and debate on this issue.”

Concerning Gaines’ attack by a transsexual extremist, Bremer said, “This will not stop Riley from boldly educating people of the dangers of biological males in women’s sports. She will continue to speak the truth against the radical left that no longer understands the difference between men and women.”

Footage taken by the student-run news outfit Golden Gate Xpress shows police escorting Gaines down a hallway and away from the angry mob. When the officers reach the end of one corridor, they appear to find the door to a safe room locked, at which point Gaines turns to calmly face the extremists, who held signs that read, “Go the f*** home,” “trans lives matter,” and “trans women are women.”

One LGBT activist can be heard screaming, “transphobic b****.”

Riley Gaines has been escorted out of the event into a side hallway in the HSS Building. Students were following through “trans women are women” 8:31 p.m pic.twitter.com/rGaTvrje17
— Golden Gate Xpress (@GGXnews) April 7, 2023

Gaines was ultimately barricaded in a room with police protection for roughly three hours, during which time some transsexual activists attempted to extort her, saying they would disperse if paid off.

The All-American athlete did not leave campus until 11:38 p.m., 20 minutes after police announced that those who stuck around to protest would be arrested.

Upon learning that Gaines had been attacked, her husband, Louis Barker, said, “I was shaking. It made me that mad. It makes me sick to feel so helpless about it. … She was under police protection and was still hit by a man wearing a dress.”

A TPUSA spokesman told Fox News Digital that the mob had been “organized by SFSU’s Queer and Trans Resource Center.”

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Big Shoes to Fill

A.F. BRANCO | on April 7, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-big-shoes-to-fill/

Biden can’t even fill President Carter’s shoes but President Reagan’s are a good fit for President Trump.

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The Rapidly Expanding Transgender Cult is the Product of Cultural Marxism

BY: JEFF GOLDSTEIN | APRIL 06, 2023

country music star singing on stage with drag queens and confetti falling — Cultural Marxism is dystopia peddling utopia through grievance narratives and rank emotionalism, the hallmarks of transgenderism.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN

In a surreal moment at the Country Music Awards last week, co-host Kelsea Ballerini joined with several drag performers to belt out a campy version of her single, “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too),” an anthem taking aim at Tennessee laws denying wrongly named “gender-affirming care” for children.

The performance was steeped in queerness, both in the pretend “oppression” of performers literally center stage at a nationally-broadcast awards show and in the academic sense, where drag serves as a kind of postmodern harlequin dance. Choreographed to confront its audience, the unspoken subtext of the number was that it’s time for you to pick a side, and you had better be careful which side you pick.

This was a brazen show of strength. Think “shock and awe,” only with lots of bedazzling.

A Vicious Activist Cult

The left picked their side. And the side they picked was the side of a school shooter who became for them an emblem of their cultural movement: Cast as a victim of “hateful” traditional religious values, a tragic figure broken by her desire to “be seen,” the shooter was sainted, her death a kind of religious redemption play. The narrative coalesced around her supposed suffering because the left was never going to surrender its stranglehold on politicized victimhood. That’s where all the power is.

At the tip of the cultural Marxist spear today is the trans cult. Just a year ago, it was the racialist cult of Black Lives Matter. Their presence is smothering in cultural spaces by design. In fact, their defiance of norms is predictable. After all, over the last seven years or so we’ve seen veneers of civil comradery peeled back, or else worn so thin as to become transparent.

A public pause to mouth the platitudes of togetherness is no longer required in a society so clearly divided along ideological lines. Indeed, such niceties are ridiculed as a sign of weakness or inauthenticity. “Where was your Christian god that day?” the left sneered. “Guess your church can’t protect you, after all.”

In glib taunts that displayed their misunderstanding of God’s earthly role in traditional religions, they laid their ideology raw before the bodies of three 9-year-olds were even cold. And that ideology, like the martyr it created when it embraced the killing of Christians as a blasé bump on the road to their utopia, now wants to be seen. The devil wants his due. There can be no other explanation for the leftist urge to celebrate the “visibility” of a vicious activist cult, or to claim “transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul,” especially in the immediate wake of the slaughter of Christians by a trans person. Their ostentatious obeisance to these damaged people was a liturgy performed with rapturous audacity on the American stage. It, too, was meant to “be seen.”

Whether it’s a country music drag act, a trans-identified light beer, a trans-allied wizard, or a march by college students demanding the surrender of natural rights to the state, the memetics of cultural Marxism is performative, phony Maoist struggle sessions delivered in swarms to project strength and to dispirit opponents by displaying the inevitability of the mob and its power. It’s a cultural troll. It’s their way of telling you that they are in charge and that you are helpless. You will conform. You must. What else is there?

It was in response to this attempted coup against Western liberal culture and the Enlightenment itself that I’ve written what I believe to be a clarion call for the individualist; but it, too, was something of a performance: It proclaimed, but it didn’t explain.

Cultural Marxism Demands Cultural Hegemony

Briefly, we must reject the premises of the cultural Marxist because cultural Marxism itself cannot live peaceably with federal republicanism or individual autonomy. In fact, it demands the opposite: All things are constrained by the state and its desires. Rule must be universal. Governing individuals is like herding cats, whereas ruling over a collective molded by both state pressures (law, force) and social forces (shame, shunning) is a more gratifying task, especially because the molding, if done well, creates a populace that reflects back the will of the state to itself. The state is now God, and its citizens, made in the state’s image, are its supplicants.

The whole of the cultural Marxist project is to create and maintain cultural hegemony. It’s that sameness we saw in the uniformed Maoists with identical haircuts, and the sameness we see in our own social justice Red Guard with their ubiquitous cotton-candy hair and tribal piercings. There can be no deviation from the new standards, built atop the rubble of old traditions the Marxists seek to destroy. To create the New Man, you must kill off the Olds. To arrive at Year Zero, you must erase all those years that came before it. To save the culture, you must first destroy it completely.

Cultural Marxism is dystopia peddling utopia through grievance narratives and rank emotionalism. It grants the self-styled dispossessed enormous power over those it casts as oppressors, which is itself determined by an intersectional calculus among victim groups.

Yet this power is temporary. Because what its authors seek, ultimately, is authoritarian. The useful idiots will soon be replaced by a ministerial elite, who will guide the filthies during The Great Reset. With policed conformity. Asceticism. Sameness. Every thought you think, every word you utter, and every move you make, must be approved by the state. And you’ll beg them for that privilege.

Blinded By ‘Being Seen’

The useful idiots enjoy wielding power, but they never seem to recognize that once they’ve ground down all opposition and extirpated all difference, once they’ve rooted out every intolerance they can conjure, there are no more battles to fight, no more ideas to be born, no more purpose left to live. To speak in a language they understand, their project reduces us to the means of production, slaves to the most successful oligarchs, earthly deities who delight in our serfdom, providing us safety and sustenance in exchange for conformity, and a surrender of self to a greater good they determine. Enlightened feudalism, in short. And we’re tilling their fields.

But that’s the endgame, and those who’ve embraced the cultural Marxist paradigm can’t see it coming. Their identity politics and the power their “oppression” yields appeal to their egos. They are blinded by the narcissism of “being seen,” and by the thrill of cultural control, however temporary. They revel in bullying.

All of our major institutions have taken up the trans cause for the same reasons they took up the cause of BLM: to gather power, destroy norms, attack traditions, and create the conditions of tribalism that must exist before the collective comes together out of the ruins of universal cancellation. The last man standing is the New Man, the perfect servant to a benevolent master.

Where we once were conceived of statist authoritarianism as an iron boot forever pressing on our necks, today it’s a Christian Louboutin red-bottomed pump, worn by a dude in a lace dress and zebra thong, stomping on our faces forever. Only we’re compelled to dig the kink.

The revolution will be accessorized, and you’ll learn to like it, or else.

Jeff Goldstein is a lapsed academic and writer living in Colorado. He likes tacos, ’79 Cabernets, and his favorite color is magenta.

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McCarthy Strengthens U.S.-Taiwan Relations While Biden Allows Red China to Rise

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | APRIL 06, 2023

Kevin McCarthy meets Taiwan President Tsai at the Reagan Library — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen on Wednesday in an aim to strengthen U.S.-Taiwan relations.

Author Shawn Fleetwood profile

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD

On Wednesday, Speaker McCarthy and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. The meeting made McCarthy the most senior U.S. official to meet with the leader of Taiwan on U.S. soil in decades, according to Newsweek.

During the historic summit, McCarthy reaffirmed Congress’s commitment to strengthening relations with the island nation and support for Taiwan’s aim to remain democratic in the wake of increasing Chinese aggression.

“I felt our meeting today provided a greater peace and stability for the world. America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan,” McCarthy said. Tsai echoed similar sentiments, saying, “To preserve peace, we must be strong” and “we are stronger when we are together.”

“I am the Speaker of the House. There is no place that China’s going to tell me where to go and who I can speak to — I’m not the general manager of @HoustonRockets.”

“We’re united in this same approach… on both sides [of the aisle].” – @SpeakerMcCarthy’s message to the CCP. pic.twitter.com/VR5tIHw6WN
— Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (@committeeonccp) April 6, 2023

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — which claims Taiwan is Chinese territory — issued remarks on Thursday threatening to “take resolute measures” in response to Tsai and McCarthy’s alleged promotion of Taiwanese independence. Taiwan News reported the island’s national defense ministry tracked a People’s Liberation Army helicopter and two naval vessels in the waters surrounding Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday.

Most egregiously, however, is the CCP’s attempt to “inspect” ships traveling through the Taiwan Strait. According to Reuters, “China’s Fujian maritime safety administration launched a three-day special joint patrol and inspection operation in the central and northern parts of the Taiwan Strait” on Wednesday that includes “moves to board ships.” Fujian is a southeastern Chinese province bordering the Taiwan Strait.

“The maritime safety authority in the southeastern Chinese province said … the operation included ‘on-site inspections’ on direct cargo ships and construction vessels on both sides of the Taiwan Strait ‘to ensure the safety of vessel navigation and ensure the safe and orderly operation of key projects on water,’” the report reads. Taiwan indicated it would not cooperate with the inspections.

Biden Helps China by Undercutting America

In the background of McCarthy’s bid to reaffirm U.S. support for Taiwanese sovereignty is the flailing presidency of Joe Biden, whose administration’s seemingly intentional bid to cripple America’s national security and economic stability is giving China leeway to expand its influence across the globe.

On Monday, NBC News reported the infamous Chinese spy balloon the Biden administration let drift across the continental United States earlier this year “was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites.” Among the intelligence transmitted back to the CCP was “mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel.”

On the economic front, Biden’s monetary policy — which includes spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on useless Democrat pet projects — has resulted in decades-high inflation, causing everyday Americans to struggle to afford basic necessities such as gas and groceries. The administration’s ongoing war against the U.S. fossil fuel industry has only exacerbated the country’s economic pains.

Under Biden, the hegemony of the U.S. dollar is also in jeopardy. Countries such as Brazil and Malaysia have announced within the past week plans to work with China to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar when conducting trade with Beijing. Most recently, the Chinese yuan surpassed the U.S. dollar as the most traded currency in Russia, signifying growing ties between Beijing and Moscow.

As noted by The Daily Caller, “[i]f foreigners no longer want [U.S. dollars] for trade, central bank reserves, private wealth funds, and the official currency of about a dozen countries, all those dollars have nowhere to go but back to us in a flood like our country has never seen.” Such a scenario would likely lead to hyperinflation and further suffering among the American people.

The U.S. is haunted by self-inflicted domestic problems, so the CCP likely sees an opportunity not just to take control of Taiwan but to recalibrate the politics of the Indo-Pacific in its favor. The longer Biden cripples the U.S., the closer China gets to creating a new world order devoid of U.S. influence.

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

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SUNY Albany protesters destroy Bible at free speech event: ‘The tolerant left, ladies and gentlemen’

By Taylor Penley | Fox News | Published April 6, 2023 2:00pm EDT

Protesters at The State University of New York at Albany (SUNY Albany) worked to shut down conservative pundit Ian Haworth at an event Tuesday in defiance of the Turning Point USA speaker’s discussion on free speech on college campuses.

The conservative pundit labeled a snippet of the campus catastrophe “the most socialist thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Trans rights are human rights!” the group shouted at one point.

“F— you, TPUSA,” they separately exclaimed.

COLUMBIA LAW STUDENTS FLIP OUT OVER KAVANAUGH EVENT, CALL FOR PROTESTS: ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST’

Protesters at SUNY at Albany voiced their dissent against TPUSA guest speaker Ian Haworth on April 4, 2023. (Twitter @ighaworth/TPUSA Upstate)

The Turning Point USA-sponsored talk titled “Free Speech on Campus” was sent into a tailspin as students hit Haworth with insults and expressions of “queer rage” filled the room.

“F— Ian!” protesters shouted in one video he posted to Twitter. “F— you, fascists!” rang out in another. Haworth laughed it off as “irony.”

“Last night, I was at the University of Albany to speak with @TPUSA. My argument: free speech is being destroyed on college campuses. And like clockwork, some deranged protesters showed up and used the heckler’s veto to try and shut down the even,” he tweeted Wednesday.

“When the chapter tried to settle the protesters down so we could start the event, they responded with ‘f— you @TPUSA’ The tolerant left, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued in the thread.

Haworth made several posts in the thread, pointing out the protesters who stormed the room who were eating the free pizza provided by the organization they were protesting.

PRO-LIFE LEADER FUMES AT VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY AFTER VIOLENT LEFT-WING PROTEST: ‘KNEW THEY COULD CREATE CHAOS’

A view of the Delaware & Hudson Building and administrative center of the State University of New York (SUNY) on April 22, 2020, in Albany, New York. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

“The most socialist thing I’ve ever seen is a bunch of deranged students screaming ‘no cops, no KKK, no @TPUSA’ at a Jewish immigrant while also happily shoveling free pizza down their throats paid for by…@TPUSA!,” he wrote.

Jokingly, he added, “Sure, they’re Nazis, but who doesn’t love a free slice?”

STANFORD LAW PROTESTERS DEMAND TO HAVE NAMES REDACTED FROM NEWS REPORTS: ‘NOT HOW THE FIRST AMENDMENT WORKS’

One demonstrator, according to another tweet in the thread, even went as far as destroying an event attendee’s Bible for “no reason whatsoever.”

And, as Haworth noted, things got even weirder when protesters decided to form a conga line in the room, flipping off the camera as they passed by.

“Not one person seemed concerned that this is a traditional Cuban carnival dance, and is therefore an act of cultural appropriation,” Haworth wrote on a video tweet.

Other students kicked off their Crocs and danced and screamed, before eventually taking over the room.

Someone also destroyed a Bible for no reason whatsoever.@TPUSA pic.twitter.com/fcoKhAWUxm
— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) April 5, 2023

Haworth’s event was eventually moved to another location, complete with a police escort and police presence surrounding the new venue.

“College is now where free speech goes to die, and we need to push back against this bulls— with everything we have. Don’t let the angry minority bully people into silence,” Haworth said.

Fox News Digital reached out to both Haworth and SUNY at Albany for comment, with SUNY at Albany providing the following statement:

“Consistent with the mission of an institution of higher learning, we expect members of our community to be able to voice their views in a manner that promotes constructive dialogue and honors UAlbany’s commitment to freedom of expression,” the school said. “This is especially important when it involves speech that members of our community find offensive or objectionable.”

“Our constitutional obligation to protect speech, even when that speech fundamentally conflicts with our core values, is a pillar of our democratic system. We are equally committed to fostering an environment in which all students feel safe and included – and that the right to protest is also protected,” it added.

SUNY at Albany pledged to help its community members understand their “rights and responsibilities under the First Amendment” and said all student organizations are entitled to reserve space and invite guest speakers “without interference.”

TRUMP FACES MAXIMUM SENTENCE OF 136 YEARS IN PRISON FOR 34-COUNT INDICTMENT

The institution further detailed that university staff and the university police department worked with the hosting organization to relocate the event to ensure it could continue but to also provide protesters a space to voice their concerns, adding that two students were ticketed for trying to gain access to a restricted area reserved for the event.

Haworth responded with the following statement:

“The protesters who stormed the Turning Point USA event on free speech at University at Albany proved my point: college campuses are where free speech goes to die. The protesters disrupted the event, abusing and insulting the TPUSA chapter, college staff, law enforcement and their fellow students, with one goal: to shut down speech. While I fully support their right to protest (even if their accusations of me being an infamous Jewish immigrant transphobic misogynistic KKK member are laughably inaccurate), the heckler’s veto is not free speech…and neither is destroying the property of TPUSA members!…

“Ultimately, this isn’t about me. I doubt these protesters even knew who I was prior to this event. In reality, it’s about any ideas that threaten the fascist ideology of leftism on campus. This unfortunate event proves the threat conservatives face every day on campus, and reinforces the truth that colleges have a duty to allow free speech and debate to flourish on campus,” he concluded.

Haworth also thanked TPUSA, university faculty and law enforcement for making sure the event could proceed at the new venue.

Taylor Penley is a production assistant with Fox News.

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Maoist survivor issues chilling warning to those celebrating Trump arrest: ‘Cheering for your own demise’

By Bailee Hill | Fox News | Published April 6, 2023 2:00pm EDT

A survivor of the Chinese Cultural Revolution issued a chilling warning on the heels of the Trump indictment, arguing the tumultuous past of communist China is “repeating itself” in the U.S.

Xi Van Fleet, a Maoist survivor, joined “Fox & Friends First” to discuss why Tuesday, the day former President Donald Trump was arraigned in Manhattan, will be remembered as one of the “darkest” days in history.

“You are cheering for your own demise, because… April 4th, 2023, would be remembered as one of the darkest day[s] in America when the Democrats made our country… a banana republic of communism,” Fleet told Todd Piro on Thursday.

The former president was formally charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. The indictment was predicated on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s years-long investigation into alleged hush money payments prior to the 2016 election.

He has faced rampant bipartisan criticism surrounding the strength of the charges, and some have even tabled the move as “political persecution.”

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in New York on Monday for his expected booking and arraignment the following day on charges arising from hush money payments during his 2016 campaign. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Fleet noted that when she was growing up in China, Mao weaponized the law to target his political enemies, and that is now happening in the U.S., she warned.

TRUMP SLAMS BRAGG AFTER PLEADING NOT GUILTY: ‘I NEVER THOUGHT ANYTHING LIKE THIS COULD HAPPEN IN AMERICA’

“When the totalitarian wins, no one is safe, we will all become victim[s],” Fleet said. “After the cultural revolution, what happened is China was brought to ruins and 20 some million lives lost. American people need to learn the history of the communism and to see that it is repeating right here in America.”

Hung Cao, who is a retired Navy captain, fled Vietnam decades ago, just before the fall of Saigon. He echoed Fleet’s sentiment on Thursday, saying Americans are falling “prey” to totalitarian leadership in wake of the indictment.

“My grandfather was hauled away in the middle night. He was a magistrate and murdered in front of my mom, and so it’s just one of those things where if this can happen in the United States, that it can happen anywhere,” Cao said.

“This is why I fought for this country for so many years. I wore uniform for 30 years and fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, for things like this, and here we are,” he continued. “We’ve fallen prey to all of this.”

CHINESE EMBASSY SENDS THREATENING LETTER TO CONGRESS OVER TAIWAN MEETING, WARNS IT ‘WILL NOT SIT IDLY BY’

Meanwhile, some critics worry China is celebrating the unprecedented indictment, in an effort to derail the significance of American democracy on the world stage. This could, in turn, have an impact on heightening bilateral tensions over Taiwan as relations between Washington and Beijing remain icy at best.

The South China Morning Post, a media organization funded by the pro-China e-commerce firm Alibaba, published an op-ed saying China is “chuckling at the irony” of Trump’s arrest.

“Chinese didn’t always feel the need, nor have the ammunition, to lampoon the U.S. political system,” the article says. “However, the generation of young people who shouted ‘Long live President Wilson’ at the end of World War I, and the idealistic generation who endorsed a ‘fight for freedom and democracy’ in Tiananmen Square in 1989, have little in common with young Chinese people today who see no upside to emulating American democracy.”

A delegation of U.S. lawmakers traveled to Taiwan to meet with the island’s leaders, despite clear warnings from Chinese officials that came on the heels of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s historic meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Simi Valley, California, on Wednesday.

“We have to show them that we’re going to stand with them and have the Seventh Fleet standing by to support them in case something happens,” Cao said.

The Chinese military had a fleet surrounding the island during the lawmakers’ visit, according to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. Despite the “intimidation” tactics, he insisted the delegation would not succumb to the threats.

Bailee Hill is an associate editor with Fox News Digital. Story ideas can be sent to bailee.hill@fox.com

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: You’re Being Played, Republicans!

April 5, 2023 by Ann Coulter

A few years ago, I posted this riddle on Twitter:

What’s easier to roll than an Easter egg?

Answer: Donald Trump.

Now, I can add:

What’s easier to roll than Donald Trump?

Answer: Republican voters.

Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle. The left’s sole objective is to make Trump the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee. He’s already lost three election cycles for the GOP — why not make it four?

A month ago, things were looking bad for the Democrats.

Immediately after Trump announced for president last November, he may as well have gone into the witness protection program. Even Fox News cut away from his announcement speech. He had to have dinner with a noted Hitler enthusiast to get any attention, and, when he spoke at CPAC in February, the room was half-empty.

Looming before them was the threat from Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis. He was beating Trump in the presidential polls without even announcing. He’d scored victory after victory against Democrats and won his reelection bid — in a purple state! — by 20 points, despite attacks from Trump.

Against DeSantis’ smarts and energy, the Democrats would be running President Senile Dementia and a vice president whose sole credentials are that she is black and a woman.

They had only one hope: Get Trump the nomination. Liberals: HE’S A DANGER TO THE NATION! NEVER HAVE WE FACED SUCH PERIL! Now let’s do everything we can to make sure he gets the nomination.

And that’s why Democrats indicted Trump on absurd charges this week, with the media covering the event like it was the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Today, the party mandarins are sitting around laughing as Republicans trip over themselves to defend Trump.

This was the whole point of my book, “Resistance Is Futile: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.” Instead of attacking Trump for the things he’d actually done, liberals would run off and make wild charges, forcing normal people to say, I don’t like the guy, but he’s not a Russian agent.

The endless stream of preposterous charges against Trump only helped him.

So why not launch another ridiculous accusation to help him get the nomination? That’s exactly what they did in last year’s GOP primaries, supporting Trump’s nut-bar candidates, knowing they would go on to lose the general election. By boosting Trump’s candidates, Democrats managed to pull out a historic midterm victory for Biden.

And now, they’re doing it again, trying to trick Republicans into choosing the worst possible presidential nominee. Guess what? It’s working! New GOP motto: Unable to learn from the third kick of a mule.

In response to Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, all conservative media swept aside news of out-of-control crime, chaos at the border, fentanyl overdoses and the looming recession. Their No. 1 job became: SAVE TRUMP! A major conservative talk radio host even suggested DeSantis stand down and endorse Trump.

True, everyone at MSNBC is a Trump-hating zealot. But this helps obscure the real objective. Half the Democrats genuinely hate Trump, and the other half are saying, This is fantastic. We’re going to win him the nomination.

Politico reports that Biden’s senior advisers reacted to Trump’s recent surge in the polls with unmitigated joy. “We beat Trump once, they say, and will again.”

They’re absolutely right. After voters reject you once, they almost never change their minds. In all of U.S. history, losing presidential candidates have run again about a dozen times. Only three of those renominations were successful — and only one since 1892. (Nixon was the only one to do it in the past 131 years. Of course, that first election probably was stolen from him, but Nixon graciously conceded, instead of running around making a complete ass of himself.)

Everyone acts as if Trump’s 2016 win was a gigantic, stupendous victory, when in reality he barely squeaked by. Don’t confuse “startling” with “big.”

He was running against the most hated woman in politics.

Moreover, the country had been incessantly told that Hillary had it in the bag. On Election Day, The New York Times put her chances of winning at 85%. Princeton professor Sam Wang — who’d correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in 2012! — said Clinton was more than 99% likely to be the next president. How many Clinton voters saw those polls and thought, I’ll just say I voted for her and go get my nails done.

Yet and still, out of 139 million votes cast in 2016, Trump won with a mere 80,000 votes across three states. Flip those votes, and Hillary wins.

Trump’s winning was a shock, but it wasn’t an amazing, spectacular victory, indicative of some sort of electoral magic.

And then, of course, Trump went on turn his presidency over to Jared and Ivanka, betray his voters (But he moved the embassy!) and lose the next three election cycles.

Republicans: No matter how angry you are at Democrats for politicizing the law, please remember: Trump. Will. Lose. To. Biden. There is absolutely no scenario in which he wins. The good news is there’s virtually no scenario where Biden wins — unless Trump is his opponent.

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Highway from Hell

A.F. BRANCO | on April 6, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-highway-from-hell/

In spite of destroying California, Gavin Newsome has eyes on the white house.

Newsom Eyes the White House — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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A Word From Franklin Graham

April 5, 2023

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12 Anti-Trump Pundits and Lawmakers Who Think Bragg’s Case is Terrible

BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 05, 2023

Donald Trump arrives for arraignment in New York — Some of Trump’s most outspoken political enemies are casting doubt on Bragg’s attempts to send the former president to jail.

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

For weeks now, former President Donald Trump and legal experts on the right predicted that the prosecution Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump was pathetic and partisan. Not long after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his arraignment on Tuesday, some of his most outspoken political enemies also began casting doubt on Bragg’s attempts to send the former president to jail.

Here are the notorious anti-Trumpers who willingly admitted that Bragg’s case against the leader of the Republican Party is a weak attempt to keep him from winning the White House in 2024.

Andrew McCabe

Former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe expressed disappointment on CNN on Tuesday after he realized that Bragg’s justification for elevating Trump’s charges to felonies “simply isn’t there.”

“I think everyone was hoping we would see more,” McCabe said.

He later added that “It’s hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get there.”

"Disappointment," says Andrew McCabe on CNN regarding the indictment. "Everyone was hoping we would see more."

McCabe says the justification to try these misdemeanors as felonies "simply isn't there": "It's hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get there." pic.twitter.com/PafSwiY2nZ
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) April 5, 2023

Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait, a political columnist at New York Magazine, wrote in the Intelligencer that Bragg’s case against Trump is littered with “legal deficiencies” and kicks off “the criminalization of politics.”

“Trump is being prosecuted charged because he paid hush money to a mistress, something it’s inconcievable he would have been charged over if he were never a candidate for office,” Chait tweeted.

Alan Dershowitz

Attorney Alan Dershowitz called Bragg’s case against Trump a “politicization of the criminal justice system” and “very, very dangerous for America.”

“This is a scandalous misuse of the criminal justice system,” Dershowitz told Sky News Australia. “It will create a terrible precedent in which other prosecutors will go after people of the opposing party.”

Carrie Cordero

CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero said she expected Bragg’s charges against Trump to be connected to the payments Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels but said the case itself is “a little underwhelming.”

“There’s not more to it. There are not more violations, tax violations. There’s not an incredible new set of facts that we didn’t know about publicly. It’s really the facts of this case, as they have existed for basically almost seven years,” Cordero said.

It’s a little underwhelming – – my reaction w/ @jaketapper & team @CNN in the moment the first ever indictment against a former president was unsealed. pic.twitter.com/USCc2LFCbM
— Carrie Cordero (@carriecordero) April 5, 2023

Sen. Mitt Romney

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s distaste for the former president is no secret but even his strong anti-Trump bias didn’t stop him from calling out the Manhattan D.A. for having “stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.”

John Bolton

Trump-era National Security Adviser John Bolton says Bragg is “wrong on the applicability of the New York statute” that he charged Trump under.

“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document. I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be and I think it’s easily subject to being dismissed or a quick acquittal for Trump,” Bolton explained on a CNN panel on Tuesday.

Even John Bolton thinks the indictment is a joke.
"I'm extraordinarily distressed by this document … This is even weaker than I feared it would be."
He predicts a "quick acquittal" because the case suggests everything a candidate pays for can be construed as campaign-related. pic.twitter.com/KTyBa72gLo
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 4, 2023

Bolton warned that “there is no basis in the statutory language to say that Trump’s behavior forms either a [campaign] contribution or an expenditure under federal law” which effectively renders Bragg’s case vulnerable to challenge.

“If you can construe the statute to cover this behavior then I think it violates the First Amendment,” Bolton said.

Ian Millhiser

Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, called Bragg’s case against Trump “painfully anticlimactic” and said it was built on an “uncertain legal theory.”

In the second paragraph of the Vox analysis he penned on Tuesday, Millhiser acknowledges that “there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax” because “it is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”

“Bragg, in other words, has built one of the most controversial and high-profile criminal cases in American history upon the most uncertain of foundations. And that foundation could crumble into dust if the courts reject his legal arguments on a genuinely ambiguous question of law,” Millhiser reaffirms later in the article.

Noah Feldman

Bloomberg opinion columnist and Harvard law professor Noah Feldman wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday that indicting Trump is a “Risky Bet for New York and the Nation.”

Feldman opens by invoking Democrats’ favorite Trump talking point — “no one is above the law”– but quickly criticized Bragg’s case against the former president as “poorly timed,” “legally weak,” and one that could easily result in a mistrial or acquittal.

“And not only may Trump potentially beat the charges, at trial or on appeal,” Feldman wrote. “He may be able to use those charges to create the impression among his supporters that he is a victim of politically motivated vendetta. In turn, that may make it harder for Georgia or federal prosecutors to bring and sustain much more serious charges against him.”

Mark Joseph Stern

“The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted,” Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern’s latest headline blared.

According to Stern, Bragg fails to disclose the specific election law that he believes Trump violated even though the “entire prosecution hinges on that question.”

“These charges will be difficult to prove,” Stern warned. “There can be no doubt that the district attorney faces an uphill climb.”

“They tell the story of a complex conspiracy to illicitly alter the course of the 2016 election—potentially, a powerful tale of corruption that persuades both the jury and the public of this prosecution’s necessity,” he continued. “But Bragg’s legal theory is, if not convoluted, a fairly confusing effort to patch together disparate offenses into one alleged crime, carried out over 34 illegal payments. This is not at all the slam-dunk case that so many Democrats wanted.”

Michael Avenatti

Even the lawyer who previously represented on-screen prostitute Stormy Daniels apparently cast doubt on Bragg’s ability to bring a successful case against Trump based on testimony from his former client.

“You can’t build a case on the testimony of Cohen and Daniels,” Michael Avenatti reportedly said.

Jonathan Lemire’s Democrat Sources

MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire told his fellow “Morning Joe” panelists last week that he and other Democrats are concerned Bragg’s case isn’t strong.

“Democrats I’ve spoken to, including some senior members of the White House, who do fear that because this case is weakest, that if it is brought first, that it will be potential — allow Trump to then paint this one as illegitimate, that it’s weak, and suggest that all of the other cases against him are as well. And that is something they’re worried about,” he warned.

Sarah Isgur

Harvard law grad and senior editor of the anti-Trump publication The Dispatch Sarah Isgur admitted on Twitter shortly after Trump’s arraignment that Bragg’s charges don’t make sense.

“He’s tying felony falsification of business records to another state crime that requires unlawful means…so now we need a third crime in order for this ‘felony turtles all the way down’ charge to work. The two state crimes can’t point back to each other!” she wrote.

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.

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ARKANSAS SUES SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS FOR ‘ADDICTIVE’ EFFECT ON KIDS: ‘REWIRING HOW OUR CHILDREN THINK’

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders opens tenure with this major win

By William J. Bennett | Fox News | Published April 5, 2023 10:00am EDT

The increasing prominence and leadership of Republicans on education has been a great development for American students and parents. This trend has really picked up speed. Take for example, Glenn Youngkin – running for governor at the time in previously blue Virginia – who recognized this unrest. He was elected in November 2021 when he earned the support of frustrated suburban parents whose children had floundered in prolonged COVID classroom lockouts.

Now comes Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former governor’s daughter and a president’s spokesperson. Elected as Arkansas’ first female governor and with her own young children at home, it was natural for Gov. Sanders to run on an education platform. She fulfilled that promise within her first months after taking office, describing her new education reform law as “the largest overhaul of the state’s education system in Arkansas history.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders attends an America First Policy Institute event in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Her new law has four major components.

First, the bill is a huge win for teachers. Yes, you read that right. This new Republican governor scored a major win for teachers.

Arkansas teachers presently have a $36,000 minimum salary with the national average a bit less than $42,000. Gov. Sanders destroyed that low bar; raising the minimum nearly 40% to $50,000. That is huge. As a late night TV advertisement might say, “But there’s more.” It’s not only new teachers or those under $50,000 who will see an increase; any teacher above that amount will see a $2,000 raise and could earn a $10,000 bonus. Ask any teacher and they will tell you: This is real money.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Still more benefits include 12 weeks of paid maternity leave and a scholarship for prospective teachers valued at up to $6,000. At the same time, the new law also empowers local school districts by ending an antiquated rule that made it harder to fire bad teachers and base pay on experience alone. I expect broad swaths of new applicants will be attracted to scholarship funds, a significant raise, time off for maternity, and eliminating the union rules that protected bad teachers.

Second, the law codifies Gov. Sanders’ earlier executive order banning classroom indoctrination. Progressive critics are forever up in arms about protecting rights, but this new governor’s law ensures that all educators “are in compliance with Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

If you refuse to believe a Republican governor affirms the 1964 Civil Rights Act, then Section 16(c) removes all doubt, noting the law “does not prohibit the discussion of: (1) Ideas and the history of the concepts described in subsection (b) of this section; or (2) Public policy issues of the day and related ideas that individuals may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.” Put more simply, go ahead educators and teach REAL history.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders unveils her education bill at the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock on Feb. 8, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Third, the law provides funding for parents to send their children to private schools under a tiered system that begins with students enrolled in an F- or D-rated public schools. Who wants to argue that kids forced to attend terrible schools have a fair chance? Or that parents who want to see their children thrive shouldn’t have an opportunity to send them elsewhere? Eventually, the law allows for all kids to have the same opportunity.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM WILLIAM BENNETT

Fourth and finally, the new law doubles down on literacy and the proven science of reading approach, with funding for more reading coaches and grants for parents to hire tutors. It also ensures that kids don’t move through the system unprepared for their future. Now children unable to demonstrate second-grade reading skills will be retained so they get the foundation they desperately need.

Arkansas is one of the smallest states in the country, but with Gov. Huckabee Sanders upending the status quo, it’s about to become a national model. Politicians and education policy wonks, take note.

William J. Bennett is the former secretary of education and director of the National Office of Drug Control Policy.

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McCarthy, Taiwanese president meet, declare strong ‘bond’ between the two nations

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published April 5, 2023 5:06pm EDT

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen declared the relationship between the United States and Taiwan is strong amid “unprecedented” challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. McCarthy, R-Calif., and Tsai met at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California on Wednesday, along with a group of bipartisan lawmakers.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., second from right, welcomes Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen as she arrives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

“Today, I’m honored to meet with Taiwan’s President Tsai as she transits the United States,” McCarthy said, adding that their discussion took place “fittingly” at the library, which highlights Reagan’s belief in “democracy and commitment to the ideals of peace and freedom.”

CHINESE EMBASSY SENDS THREATENING LETTER TO CONGRESS OVER TAIWAN MEETING, WARNS IT ‘WILL NOT SIT IDLY BY’

“Those values have always served as the bedrock of our friendship with the people of Taiwan and they are more important now than ever before,” McCarthy said.

“I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime,” he added, noting that Tsai is a “great champion of that bond.”

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitols Statuary Hall on Thursday, January 12, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The speaker of the House said the United States “will honor our obligations and reiterate our commitment to our shared values behind which all Americans are united.”

McCarthy met with Tsai and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Tsai thanked McCarthy and the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who attended the meeting.

“Their presence and unwavering support reassure the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone,” Tsai said.

US SAYS CHINA HAS NO REASON TO STEP UP AGGRESSIVE ACTIVITY DUE TO TAIWAN’S STOPOVERS IN THE US

Pointing to the regional challenges, Tsai said “it is no secret” that the “peace that we have maintained and the democracy which we have worked hard to build are facing unprecedented challenges.”

Tsai, in the meeting, reiterated Taiwan’s commitment to “defending the peaceful status quo, where the people of Taiwan may continue to thrive in a free and open society.”

“I also highlighted a belief which President Reagan championed, that to preserve peace, we must be strong,” Tsai said. “I would like to add that we are stronger when we are together.”

In this image made from video, Taiwan's Presidential office secretary general Lin Chia-lung, left, President Tsai Ing-wen, center, and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu wave before Tsai's departure on an overseas trip at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. — In this image made from video, Taiwan’s Presidential office secretary general Lin Chia-lung, left, President Tsai Ing-wen, center, and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu wave before Tsai’s departure on an overseas trip at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. ((AP Photo/Johnson Lai))

Tsai also thanked members of Congress for their proposed initiatives that have “helped to make Taiwan and our partnership stronger.”

“Specifically, initiatives in the realm of enhancing Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, fostering robust trade and economic ties between us, and supporting Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community, and also to seek out our shared interests in peace and prosperity across the Indo-Pacific,” Tsai said.

US DEFENDS SENDING AIRCRAFT THROUGH TAIWAN STRAIT AS CHINA GROWS INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE

The meeting Wednesday came after The Chinese Embassy wrote a threatening email to McCarthy and other members of Congress who planned to meet with Tsai Wednesday.

Li Xiang, the embassy’s liaison to Congress, wrote a nearly four-page email warning U.S. lawmakers that China views the meeting as a “blatant provocation.”

“I have to point out that China will not sit idly by in the face of a blatant provocation and will most likely take necessary and resolute actions in response to the unwanted situation. Let’s work together to prevent such a thing from happening,” Li wrote, according to a copy of the email obtained by PunchBowl News.

McCarthy’s meeting with Tsai came months after former House Speaker Pelosi visited Taiwan, which, according to the Chinese Embassy, “triggered a serious crisis in the China-U.S. relationship.”

“Lessons should be learned,” the letter read.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), center left, poses for photographs after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honor, from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, center right, at the president's office. — Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), center left, poses for photographs after receiving the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honor, from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, center right, at the president’s office. (Chien Chih-Hung/Office of The President via Getty Images)

China shut down communications with the United States military after Pelosi visited Taiwan last year. That visit prompted increased aggression by China in the South China Sea and led experts to predict a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by 2024.

China sent a specific warning to McCarthy on Tuesday regarding the meeting, alleging it would break the “One China” policy.

MCCARTHY’S CHINA MISSION: GIVE BIDEN A ‘BACKBONE,’ ‘EMPOWER’ HIM TO TACKLE THE CCP THREAT

“If Speaker McCarthy ignores the international community’s broad support for the one-China principle, refuses to draw lessons from others’ mistakes, and insists on playing the ’Taiwan card,’ it will undoubtedly further damage China-US relations, and even strengthen the strong determination of the Chinese people to unite and fight for national reunification,” a spokesperson for China’s consulate in Los Angeles wrote.

The “One China” policy, adopted by the U.S. and other countries, stipulates that the government of Beijing is the sole legitimate government of China.

Foreign Policy, International Politics

Officials and lawmakers have warned that it’s only a matter of time before China tries to invade Taiwan, with some arguing that the 2024 U.S. presidential election and the Taiwanese election might have influence on the timing of China’s aggression toward Taiwan.

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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Trump campaign rakes in over $10 million since indictment announcement, sells photoshopped ‘mugshot’ T-shirt

By Paul Steinhauser , Adam Sabes | Fox News | Published April 5, 2023 5:04pm EDT

The presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 bid says it has brought in over $10 million in donations since an indictment against him was announced a week ago. Trump was indicted March 30 as part of a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for hush money payments.

A source within the Trump campaign told Fox News Digital that the campaign raised $4 million in the first 24 hours following the indictment news, and an additional $6 million in the ensuing days.

In the days after the indictment, the Trump campaign sent out an abundance of fundraising emails.

DEMOCRAT VOTERS TORCH BRAGG FOR ‘TRAGIC’ TRUMP INDICTMENT AS CRIME SOARS: ‘WORST PROSECUTOR IN AMERICA’

Former President Donald Trump sits with his defense team in a Manhattan court on April 4, 2023, in New York City. (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

“The American people know that whenever I’m viciously and unfairly attacked, it’s really an attack on YOU,” a fundraising email from the Trump campaign on Wednesday afternoon reads.

His campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump.

“Not guilty,” the text below the photoshopped mugshot states.

The former president's campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump. — The former president’s campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump. (Trump Campaign)

On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree on Tuesday. Falsifying records is typically considered a misdemeanor charge, but rises to a felony when a defendant’s “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was asked why the second alleged concealed crime wasn’t specified in the indictment.

TRUMP FACES MAXIMUM SENTENCE OF 136 YEARS IN PRISON FOR 34-COUNT INDICTMENT

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks on Donald Trump arraignment April 4, 2023. (Fox News)

“Let me say as an initial matter that the indictment doesn’t specify it because the law does not so require. In my remarks, I mentioned a couple of laws which I will highlight again now,” Bragg said. “The first is New York state election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means. I further indicated a number of unlawful means, including additional false statements, including statements that were planned to be made to tax authorities. I also noted the federal election law cap on contribution limits.”

Bragg is also accusing Trump and his associates of using a “catch and kill” scheme to possibly bury potentially damaging information that came ahead of the election in 2016.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York, the day before his arraignment. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

“Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws,” Bragg alleged. “In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment.”

Fox News’ Paul Best, Danielle Wallace and Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.

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NY Times reporter exposes double standard in White House treatment of January 6

By: CHRIS ENLOE | April 05, 2023

New York Times reporter Michael Shear confronted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday over the Biden administration’s unwillingness to comment on the Donald Trump indictment. At the beginning of the briefing, Jean-Pierre said the White House is not commenting on Trump’s case because “it’s an ongoing case.”

When it was Shear’s turn to question Jean-Pierre, he noted that Biden “has spoken repeatedly” about January 6. Referring to two speeches he delivered involving Jan. 6, Shear pointed out that “there were more than 500 active legal cases going on during the time that he made those speeches” and that Biden’s comments could have impacted the cases.

“What is the White House’s reticence?” Shear asked, referring to the refusal to address Trump’s case. “And what’s the difference between [Jan. 6] and [Trump’s case]?”

The press secretary responded with her usual talking points, claiming Jan. 6 “was an attack on our democracy” and that Biden “will never shy away when it comes to our democracy.” But Shear had no patience for Jean-Pierre’s spin and question-dodging.

“There were 500 cases involving Americans whose freedom was at risk!” he told Jean-Pierre.

04/04/23: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre www.youtube.com

Jean-Pierre responded by noting that “people died” on Jan. 6, to which Shear fired back, “I don’t need a lecture on the fact that people died!”

After Jean-Pierre then accused Shear of lecturing her, he exposed yet another double standard in the White House’s position. Officials were willing to comment on Jan. 6 despite the ongoing criminal cases because of its historic nature, but Trump’s indictment is also historic, so why are they unwilling to talk about it?

“Why isn’t that, why isn’t there a similar kind of assessment about how the world is watching us now?” he asked.

The press secretary said Jan. 6 was “a different moment” and vowed the White House would be “consistent on not commenting on any criminal ongoing investigation.”

She never, however, addressed the core of Shear’s question, which highlighted the double standard about which historic criminal incidents the Biden administration publicly discusses.

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Media, Political

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – A Gift for Budweiser

A.F. BRANCO | on April 4, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-a-gift-for-budweiser/

A Gift to Budweiser for endorsing a mental health condition called gender dysphoria over real heroes like out military veterans.

Budweiser Transgenter — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Election Interference

A.F. BRANCO | on April 5, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-election-interference-2/

DA Bragg and the Democrats have weaponized the legal system against Trump to interfere with the 2024 election.

Democrat Election Interference — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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Gender dysphoria most common among teenage girls with ‘exceptionally high intelligence’: report

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | TUESDAY, APRIL 04, 2023

A new report reveals that gender dysphoria has the highest prevalence among youth of European descent, with discomfort with one’s gender most common among children, especially girls with “exceptionally high intelligence” and a history of mental health issues.

A website called Parents of ROGD kids.com, which has formed a support group for families with gender dysphoric children, surveyed parents who believed they had children experiencing rapid onset gender dysphoria. The survey results, which collected responses over nearly four years, were compiled into a report by website creator Suzanna Diaz and J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University’s Department of Psychology on Wednesday. The 1,774 responses to the survey were collected from Dec. 1, 2017, through Oct. 22, 2021.

Examining the demographics of youth who developed rapid onset gender dysphoria reveals that three-quarters of the children (75%) were female, while just 25% were male. Additionally, the overwhelming majority (78.9%) were of European descent, while much smaller shares were ethnically mixed (16.2%), Asian (2.8%), Indigenous (0.8%), African American (0.6%), Middle Eastern and East Indian (0.4%).

The results of the survey measured the average age when children first experience gender dysphoria as 14.8 years old. The report details how, on average, girls began to develop gender dysphoria at 14.1 years, while boys were an average of 16 years old when they first began to experience discomfort with their sex.

The survey asked parents to evaluate their child’s “social adjustment” before they began to experience gender dysphoria. A majority of both males (57.6%) and females (56.7%) had “a few good friends” before they developed gender dysphoria. Responses from parents showed that similar percentages of boys (33.7%) and girls (33.9%) “got along with other kids” before they began to question their sex.

While one-third of parents (33.3%) of sons experiencing gender dysphoria indicated their child was bullied before becoming gender dysphoric, just 26.3% of parents with daughters experiencing gender dysphoria said the same. According to parents of girls with gender dysphoria, 27.3% said their child was “well-liked,” in contrast to 22.7% of parents of boys.

As nearly 10% of parents who believe their daughters have gender dysphoria reported that their child had “many good friends,” just 3.9% of parents whose sons have gender dysphoria said the same. Parents of boys (16.8%) were slightly more likely than their female counterparts (14.3%) to report that their child was “not well liked by peers,” as similar percentages of parents with daughters (17.4%) and sons (15.8%) recalled that their child had “one good friend.”

Extremely small shares of parents with girls answered in the affirmative when asked if their daughters had others fight or instigate arguments with them (4.7%), instigated fights with others (2.3%) or bullied others (2.2%), while 5.4% of parents with boys reported that their son found themselves in fights or arguments instigated by others. Less than 1% of parents with sons maintained that their child “bullied others.”

When asked to evaluate their child’s level of intelligence, 35.6% of parents reported their child had “exceptionally high intelligence,” while just 15.5% characterized their child’s level of intelligence as “average or below average.”

A majority of parents (57%) said their gender dysphoric children had a history of “mental health issues,” while 42.5% insisted otherwise. Parents of girls (59.4%) were slightly more likely to report a mental health history in their children than parents of boys (51%). On average, mental health issues first began to arise 3.8 years before gender dysphoria.

The most common mental health issues experienced by females with gender dysphoria were anxiety (47.3%), depression (33.2%), difficulty socializing with peers (26.5%) and difficulty coping with stressful situations in general (23.2%). Among males, the most frequently reported mental health issues included anxiety (35.2%), difficulty socializing with peers (28.1%), depression (25.1%) and difficulty coping with stressful situations in general (19.2%).

A majority of the 390 parents (51.8%) who answered a question asking whether they felt pressure from a “gender clinic or specialist” to transition their child socially or medically reported experiencing pressure. By contrast, just 24.6% said that they did not feel any pressure to “transition” their child and an additional 23.6% responded that they were “unsure” if they felt pressured to transition their child.

When asked if their children were friends with others who “came out as transgender around the same time,” 55.4% of the 917 respondents who answered the question responded in the affirmative. Among parents of girls, that figure increased to 60.9%.

Respondents reported that their children spent an average of 4 ½ hours a day “on the Internet and social media.” However, it was determined that the number of hours per day on the internet and social media “was not significantly related to the likelihood of social transition.”

The report’s publication takes place as the medical establishment and popular culture continue to embrace the “Affirmative Approach,” which touts puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating sex-change surgeries as solutions for gender dysphoria. Parents of ROGD Kids condemn the Affirmative Approach as a “lie.”

The release of the survey comes as states across the U.S. are working to sex-change procedures from being performed on minors. Currently, 12 states have implemented prohibitions on some or all forms of sex-change procedures in light of concerns about their long-term impacts: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

The American College of Pediatricians has identified some of the potential side effects of puberty blockers as “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.” Potential longterm impacts of cross-sex hormones include “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.”

Sex-change surgeries include chemical and surgical castration, double mastectomies on girls, orchiectomy (removing testicles) for boys, the construction of a fake vagina (vaginoplasty) for boys, and removal of skin and tissue from girls’ forearms or thighs to create a fake, flaccid penis that doesn’t function.

Several detransitioners have come forward to discuss their trauma and regret from having these life-altering medical procedures, with 18-year-old Chloe Cole among the most prominent.

Cole, whose gender dysphoria has since subsided, has announced her intention to sue the medical professionals who treated her for gender dysphoria. As a letter announcing her intent to sue explains, although doctors advised Cole that “the distress she experienced because of her gender dysphoria would resolve as she transitioned,” she discovered that her “distress always came back worse” after a burst of “initial relief” following “each phase of transition.”

She has also maintained that the double mastectomy she underwent at the age of 15 caused her mental health to deteriorate and led to suicidal thoughts.

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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Rep. James Comer: Investigation into Biden Corruption ‘Doesn’t Look Good for POTUS’

BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 04, 2023

James Comer on Biden family corruption — ‘This investigation is moving along at a lot faster pace, I think, than most people would have predicted,’ Comer said.

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

In the House Oversight Committee’s (HOC) latest update on its investigation into the corruption of President Joe Biden, Chairman James Comer announced several former Biden family associates have eagerly agreed to speak with Republicans about how they were “left out to dry” by the Bidens.

“It doesn’t look good for @POTUS,” Comer warned during a Fox News segment on Monday.

I now have access to the Biden family's suspicious activity reports from @USTreasury.

I have also subpoenaed Biden family band records.

And Biden family associates connected to the schemes are talking to @GOPoversight.

It doesn't look good for @POTUS. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/YzcnP64AUd
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) April 4, 2023

Comer said that the HOC is in discussions with four associates who have inside knowledge about the foreign dealings the Bidens made with several of America’s political enemies. This, combined with potential testimony from two other associates who are currently tied up in litigation concerning their roles in Biden family businesses, could give the committee proof that the White House is compromised.

“If you look at everyone who’s ever been in business with Biden, whether it be Hunter Biden or Joe Biden, none of them ended well, none of the businesses ended well. Most of the businesses never got started off the ground,” Comer said. “Any money that was transferred in from China or adversaries around the world ended up in the Bidens’ back pockets.”

Now, Comer said, the HOC also has possession of the Biden family’s “suspicious activity” reports from the Treasury Department and subpoenaed the family’s bank records which will expedite Republicans’ investigation significantly.

The HOC confirmed in March that several Biden family members, including Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, an unknown “Biden,” and companies linked to the family “collectively received $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Rob Walker, a Biden family associate.” Within six months of Vice President Joe Biden leaving the White House and after several bank transfers, the Bidens received the money.

Comer said the HOC still did not know who the unnamed Biden was in the China transaction because the Biden family holds so many bank accounts and LLCs.

“That right there is a red flag,” Comer said. “That’s one reason they got so many bank violations. If they’re in a legitimate business, why do you have to have so many different LLCs, and why, when China sends you a wire, do you have to send it through one, two, or even three LLCs to launder it before then hits a Biden bank account? This whole thing stinks to high heaven.”

Despite this, Comer said that once the HOC gains access to the LLCs, it can assess the Biden family’s bookkeeping habits.

“It’ll be interesting to see how and if they paid any taxes on this revenue that was coming in from our adversaries around the world,” Comer said. “What all did they write off?”

He also expressed optimism about the speed of the HOC’s investigation thus far.

“This investigation is moving along at a lot faster pace, I think, than most people would have predicted,” Comer said.

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.

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No One Is Above the Law? Give Me A Break

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 04, 2023

The Clintons at Donald Trump's inauguration — On exacting poetic political justice.

Author David Harsanyi profile

DAVID HARSANYI

VISIT ON TWITTER@DAVIDHARSANYI

Lock Donald Trump up, or don’t lock him up, but don’t tell me that “no one is above the law.” It’s one of the most ludicrous fantasies peddled by the left.

Plenty of people are “above the law.” James Clapper, who lied under oath to Congress about spying on the American people, is above the law. John Brennan, who lied about a domestic spying operation on Senate staffers, is above the law. Unlike Trump advisor Peter Navarro, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder was never going to be handcuffed and thrown in prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena. He is above the law.

Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also above the law. The then-Secretary of State set up a private server in her home to circumvent transparency surrounding her slush-fund foundation. She sent 110 emails containing marked classified information, and 36 of those emails contained secret information. Eight of the email chains contained “top secret” information. Every one of those instances was a potential felony punishable with up to ten years in prison.

We learned all of this from James Comey, then FBI director, who noted that Hillary had been “extremely careless” in conducting her business. Comey didn’t recommend charges because, he claimed, the state couldn’t prove Clinton’s intent — even though “gross negligence,” not intent, was the only standard he needed. Gross negligence and extreme carelessness are synonyms. Comey concocted a new standard to protect Clinton because she is above the law.

When Hillary’s husband, also above the law, perjured himself under oath, Democrats argued that puritanical conservatives were only pursuing Bill because of some trumped-up charge over “sex.” Using that logic, Trump’s campaign finance charges related to Stormy Daniels’ “hush money” are also about sex. This is different because Trump is the boogeyman, and everyone knows he’s guilty of something. The important thing is getting that mug shot.

Don’t worry, though; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “Everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” By “everyone,” she means Republicans. And if you think this authoritarian formulation is an accident, you haven’t been paying attention. When Democrats were smearing Brett Kavanaugh as a (gang) rapist a few years back, Mazie Hirono was asked whether the then-nominee deserved the “same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?” After all, this wasn’t about any judicial disagreement but about alleged criminal behavior. The Hawaii senator responded, “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”

In other words, if you’re a conservative, your politics are evil; and if your politics are evil, you’re probably evil. I imagine that was the rationalization used by Kamala Harris when reading obvious fabrications about Kavanaugh into the Congressional Record. It is likely the rationalization of Lois Lerner or Merrick Garland — both above the law — when they weaponized government agencies against political opponents. It is almost surely the rationalization of Alvin Bragg. This is what justifies the contemporary left’s increasing comfort with deploying the state to punish and destroy political enemies. For many progressives, the legal system isn’t merely a tool for criminal justice (if that) but a way to exact poetic political justice.

(Though it should probably be mentioned that Alvin Bragg promised to use the DA’s office to enact social justice, not any kind of impartial or neutral justice. People who don’t pay for public transportation, those who trespass, those who resist arrest, those who obstruct governmental administration, or those involved in prostitution, are all above the law in New York City.)

Despite there being perfectly sound political arguments against Trump, we have been on a hysterical journey that has taken us from accusing Trump of being a seditious actor working on the orders of an antagonistic foreign government — the most successful conspiracy theory ever spun in American politics — to indicting him on some rickety seven-year-old campaign finance violation charge. Giving a porn star “hush money” is an immorality, not an illegality. Are DAs now going to be in the business of indicting political opponents who put $130,000 on the wrong side of the ledger during a race that cost hundreds of millions of dollars? I look forward to this kind of justice being meted out equally.

Everyone knows, of course, what’s going to happen when (or if) Republicans return the favor. Cries of fascism, that’s what. When Harry Reid blew up the judicial filibuster, it was to preserve the republic. When Republicans use that very precedent for themselves, they are power-hungry partisans. When Democrats throw congressmen off subcommittees, they do it for democracy. When Republicans follow suit, they are bigots. When a Republican governor retaliates against Disney for involving itself in educational issues, it’s 1933 all over again. But when a Democrat governor punishes companies like Walgreens for their stand on abortion drugs, it is a blow against injustice. This goes on and on and on.

Not that anyone cares about double standards anymore. I’m not naïve. And no one is innocent in politics. But the contemporary left’s utter and growing disdain for any semblance of limiting principles — the kind of abuse that helped Trump win the presidency in the first place — continues to do profound damage to the system. Trump is an easy target. The next target, I assure you, will be a Republican who is even “worse than Trump.” And the justifications for throwing out norms to stop them will be exactly the same.

Conservatives who contend that Democrats won’t like where the Trump arraignment leads are probably engaged in some wish-casting. Those who hold the upper hand in our major institutions aren’t too worried about short-term threats of retribution. And, anyway, progressives love Calvinball, a “system” of constantly shifting norms that rewards those most willing to use power. That’s the point.

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.

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Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records linked to 2016 hush money payments

By Brooke Singman , Jake Gibson | Fox News | Published April 4, 2023 3:52pm EDT

Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in New York City court Tuesday after being charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The charges, which are related to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign, came out of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s years-long investigation.

Bragg alleged that Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”

In 2019, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump sits at the defense table with his defense team in a Manhattan court during his arraignment on April 4, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

Trump surrendered to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and was arraigned in court Tuesday afternoon after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last week.

The indictment was unsealed in court during Trump’s arraignment Tuesday before Judge Juan Merchan, the trial judge presiding over the case. Trump was charged in a New York Supreme Court indictment with 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.

Bragg is alleging that Trump falsified New York business records in order to “conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

“During the election, TRUMP and others employed a ‘catch and kill’ scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects,” Bragg alleged. “TRUMP then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”

Former US President Donald Trump makes his way inside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York on April 4, 2023. (Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

According to New York state law, a charge of falsifying business records in the first degree alleges that the defendant committed a crime of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud. The intent to defraud would be an intent to commit another crime.

Trump pleaded not guilty. The judge did not impose a gag order. The judge said he would like to move ahead as expeditiously as possible with the case. The next hearing in the case is Dec. 4, 2023 in the same Lower Manhattan court.

The prosecution wants a trial in January 2024—the height of the GOP presidential primary season. Trump’s defense wants to delay that as long as possible.

Bragg alleged former Trump attorney Michael Cohen orchestrated the hush money payments on behalf of Trump. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

According to the indictment, Bragg alleged that Trump, from August 2015 to December 2017, “orchestrated a ‘catch and kill’ scheme through a series of payments that he then concealed through months of false business entries.”

Bragg alleges that American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman, who claimed to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock.

Stormy Daniels reacted to former President Donald Trump's arraignment with an X-rated tweet. — Stormy Daniels reacted to former President Donald Trump’s arraignment with an X-rated tweet. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images/Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

Bragg also alleges American Media Inc. paid $150,000 to a woman who alleged a sexual relationship with Trump. It appears Bragg is referring to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

DONALD TRUMP AND STORMY DANIELS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Trump “explicitly directed a lawyer,” an apparent reference to Michael Cohen, to “reimburse” American Media Inc. in cash, Bragg charges. He alleged that Cohen, “12 days before the presidential general election,” wired $130,000 to an attorney for an adult film actress—an apparent reference to Stormy Daniels.

Cohen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison for violating campaign finance laws related to the payments, among other federal charges. Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging the payments but maintains that Trump directed them.

Former US President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City Tuesday, April 4, 2023. Mandatory Credit: (Thomas P. Costello – USA Today Network)

Bragg alleged that after the election, Trump reimbursed Cohen through a series of monthly checks— “first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust – created in New York to hold the Trump Organization’s assets during TRUMP’s presidency – and later from TRUMP’s bank account. In total, 11 checks were issued for a phony purpose.”

“Nine of those checks were signed by TRUMP,” Bragg charges. “Each check was processed by the Trump Organization and illegally disguised as a payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement.

“In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment . . . Further, participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements.”

Opponents of former US president Donald Trump protest outside the Manhattan District Attorney's office in New York on April 4, 2023. — Opponents of former US president Donald Trump protest outside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in New York on April 4, 2023. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP/ Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

The former President of the United States, and the leading Republican presidential candidate for 2024, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury Thursday after a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which began in 2019.

Trump was not handcuffed, as some are during an arraignment, after making arrangements with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Detectives within the office handled the arrest of the former president.

The payments to Daniels and McDougal had been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and by the Federal Election Commission.

TRUMP SAYS DA BRAGG’S ‘OBSESSION’ WITH TRYING TO ‘GET TRUMP’ WILL ‘BACKFIRE’ AFTER GRAND JURY INDICTMENT

The charges against the former president come after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Daniels payment in 2019.

Also, the Federal Election Commission, in 2021, dropped its case on the same issue— examining whether Trump violated election law with the $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, after it “failed by a vote of 2-2 to…find reason to believe that Donald J. Trump knowingly and willfully violated” federal election law.”

TRUMP TARGETED: A LOOK AT THE INVESTIGATIONS INVOLVING THE FORMER PRESIDENT; FROM RUSSIA TO MAR-A-LAGO

“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” Bragg said in a statement after the arraignment.

“As the Statement of Facts describes, the trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic and fundamental business laws,” Bragg said. “As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.”

Trump has slammed the DA’s investigation and the indictment as “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

Fox News’ Bill Mears contributed to this report.

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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CNN boasts poll showing majority of Americans ‘approve’ of Trump indictment — but there is a major problem

By: CHRIS ENLOE | April 04, 2023

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CNN boasted on Monday about its poll showing that a majority of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump. The day after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed that a grand jury indicted Trump, CNN conducted a poll and found that 60% of Americans purportedly “approve” of the indictment while 40% do not.

But there is a significant problem with the poll and its result indicating widespread support for the indictment: It was conducted before the indictment was unsealed. How, then, can anyone form a reasonable opinion about the indictment and whether or not they support it? The charges against Trump — reportedly 34 counts of a Class E felony for allegedly falsifying business records — will not be made public until the former president is arraigned, which is expected to take place on Tuesday.

Even more bewildering, only 51% of respondents said they’ve heard “a lot” about the case. Setting aside the fact that no one yet even knows the exact charges against Trump, the figure raises another question: How can you “support” something you’re only vaguely aware of?

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Media, Political

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Buzz Kill

A.F. BRANCO | on April 4, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-buzz-kill/

The Media and Democrats keep poking at Trump supporters in hopes they can catch them in violent acts.

Democrat try to incite MAGA — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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As Moral Relativism Replaces Christian Values, Americans Will Suffer More Mass Shootings

BY: KATHLEEN BUSTAMANTE | APRIL 03, 2023

angry protesters march with signs — The devolution of American society began when moral relativism supplanted biblical truth in education, government, and eventually the family.

Author Kathleen Bustamante profile

KATHLEEN BUSTAMANTE

The devolution of American society began when moral relativism supplanted biblical truth in education, government, and the family. Beginning in the late 1940s with the Supreme Court’s Everson v. Board of Education ruling and onward, our government and educational system have turned their backs on absolute truth to embrace Marxism, which aims to remove Christianity from all spheres of society.

The moral erosion proves obvious in a recent Barna poll that found, “Millennials are significantly less likely to believe in the existence of absolute moral truth or that God is the basis of all truth.”

The study also noted that “Millennials have less respect for life, in general,” and that “they are less than half as likely as other adults to say that life is sacred. They are twice as likely to diminish the value of human life by describing human beings as either ‘material substance only’ or their very existence as ‘an illusion.’”

Millennials’ disregard for life or morality should not come as a surprise. The decreasing number of young Americans who attend church regularly hear from pastors who may not preach biblical truth. A study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that only 51 percent of America’s evangelical church pastors hold a biblical worldview.

Armed with this data, I am thankful that recent shootings like those at The Covenant School in Nashville and the school shooting in Uvalde do not occur more frequently.

Gun-control advocates, the media, politicians, and my friends on social media urge increased gun restrictions as the solution to the problem, pointing to Europe and Australia as the golden standard for gun control. Yet, a 2018 New Zealand Herald article showed that despite tighter gun restrictions in these countries, shootings have occurred more frequently than Americans realize.

In 2022, for example, a gunman killed two and wounded seven people in Denmark, a country with some of the strictest gun laws in Europe, before authorities apprehended him and held him for psychological testing. The article, along with anti-firearm advocates, suggests increased psychological testing as the next solution now that radical gun-control policies have failed.

Not many in Western society honestly address the origin behind increased psychological problems. Western countries increasingly lean on modern mental health mantras rather than dealing with the heart of the matter.

For centuries, firearms have been a standard tool for hunting and home defense in America and Europe. So why the escalation of gun-related massacres throughout the United States and the West over recent decades? Again, I pose the heart of the issue: Moral relativism has replaced the truth of God’s Word.

As a college writing professor, I read and hear the anti-American and anti-Christian propaganda to which my students have been exposed their entire lives. Basic biblical truths such as “treat others how you wish to be treated” and “love your neighbor” have been replaced with mantras like “treat others with kindness unless they offend you” and “love yourself.”

How can a society that raises children devoid of the Christ-centered teachings of Christianity expect anything besides massacres at the hands of miserable, self-centered, and horribly confused individuals like the Uvalde and Highland Park shooters?

Gun Control to Mask Moral Decline

Seven years ago, I attended an active-shooter training hosted by the campus safety department at the community college where I taught in Portland, Oregon. I will never forget the cautionary advice shared by one of the presenters.

“In the event of an active shooter situation, don’t bother calling campus police. Instead, call 911,” he advised. “Campus police at this college are unarmed, so we won’t be able to ensure your safety. Although it will take the local police department much longer to respond to a campus shooting, they will eventually be able to take down a shooter if the need arises.”

Baffled, I asked why campus police are expected to perform their duties unarmed. He explained that several years prior, a college board member felt distressed about campus police carrying firearms. After a swift vote by the board, my safety as well as the safety of my students and colleagues would be jeopardized henceforth.

After the training, I stayed behind to ask the officer his opinion regarding faculty arming themselves on campus. He encouraged me — off the record, of course — to carry concealed for my own safety and for the safety of my students. That college, like most academic institutions across the country, proclaims itself to be a gun-free zone.

A 2019 CNN article documented 10 years of school shootings, and the majority occurred in gun-free zones. A 2019 study conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that in schools across the U.S. that reportedly allow teachers to carry guns on campus, no deaths occurred as a result of shootings between 2000 and 2018.

Neither the problem nor the solution to school shootings has any correlation with guns or mental health problems that can be treated with medication and therapy, as many scholars and pundits contend. Rather, the problem stems from our nation’s replacement of biblical truth with moral relativism.

A Symptom, Not the Cause

As a writing instructor for 16 years, I examined thousands of essays, gaining an unusual window into the lives and experiences of my Millennial and Gen Z students. Like an airline passenger who shares intimate details with a stranger, knowing he will never see that passenger again, many of my students confide personal musings and revelations in their writing.

A surprising number of essays I read unwrap students’ deep suffering related to childhood sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. Some of my students suffer the scars of drug- or alcohol-addicted, neglectful parents. Some students are only a few months clean and sober themselves. Several are homeless. And over the past decade, they write increasingly about gender confusion.

I have detected a common theme throughout their stories. Each of these unique souls is in search of something specific, a need inherent in every human. The agonizing part is that an ancient moral and religious tradition understands their needs, but they do not.

Instead of the moral relativism they have been fed from kindergarten through college, they need to hear truth. Not the “find your own truth” nonsense propagated by educators, Hollywood, and hosts on “The View,” but rather the age-old truth found solely in the Word of God.

The solution is clear: Churches must put away social justice-centered and seeker-friendly sermons and return to expository teaching. Parents must roll up their sleeves and remove the responsibility of parenting from educators and the media by doing the hard work themselves. And voters must stop expecting the government to fix a problem created by sinful humanity.

Instead, we must repent and ask God to point our nation to truth.

Kathleen Bustamante is a freelance writer and former college writing instructor. Her writing has appeared in the American Spectator, the American Conservative, the American Thinker, Real Clear Religion, and James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

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Idaho Takes An Axe To Ranked-Choice Voting In Elections, And North Dakota And Arizona Could Follow Suit

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | APRIL 03, 2023

Maryland residents voting in an election

Idaho scored a major win for election integrity last month by banning the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in elections, with North Dakota and Arizona potentially following suit. On March 24, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed HB 179, which prohibits county election offices from using “ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting to conduct an election or nomination of any candidate in this state for any local government, statewide, or federal elective office.” The bill passed the Idaho House of Representatives (56-12) and Senate (28-7) earlier last month.

Under RCV, which critics often refer to as “rigged-choice voting,” voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. Such a process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

In addition to Idaho, South Dakota banned the use of ranked-choice voting last month. Florida and Tennessee also passed similar bans last year.

Meanwhile, North Dakota Republicans put their state one step closer to banning the confusing system following the state Senate’s passage (33-13) of HB 1273 on Friday. The measure had previously cleared the House of Representatives (74-19) earlier this month and will soon head to Republican Gov. Doug Burgum’s desk for approval. When pressed on whether Burgum intends to sign the bill, Burgum spokesman Mike Nowatzki declined to answer, saying “We have not received HB 1273 from the Legislature yet, and the governor generally does not comment on legislation before it reaches his desk.”

In addition to Idaho and North Dakota, Arizona Republicans are also working to outlaw the use of ranked-choice voting in their state’s elections. The legislature is attempting to pass a ban on ranked-choice voting in the form of HB 2552, which passed the House last month and is now being considered by the Senate.

While Maine and Alaska are the only two states to employ RCV so far, their respective elections since implementing the system have produced outcomes that clearly contradict the desires of voters. In Maine, then-incumbent GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost to Democrat Jared Golden during the 2018 midterms, despite Poliquin winning the most votes in the first round of voting. That outcome was due to the state’s ranked-choice voting system.

Similarly, in Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola won the state’s at-large congressional seat last year even though “nearly 60 percent of voters [cast] their ballots for a Republican.” RCV also played a major role in helping Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski fend off a challenge from Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka during the 2022 midterms. The system allowed her to win due to being listed second on Alaska Democrats’ ranked-choice ballots.

Other states considering bans on ranked-choice voting include Alaska, Texas, and Montana.

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

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Trump Refused To Prosecute Hillary Clinton. Democrats Have No Such Restraint

BY: JOY PULLMANN | APRIL 03, 2023

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — If it is indeed ending democracy to jail political opponents, let’s be clear about which party is dragging the nation down that route.

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Bill and Hillary Clinton’s long, crooked political careers have been marked by multiple well-established high crimes and misdemeanors. Not the least of these was Hillary’s decision to commit what amounts to multiple felonies by using an insecure private email system to conduct top-secret public business while U.S. secretary of state under Barack Obama.

This criminal behavior that so-called U.S. justice systems openly and repeatedly refused to punish was undertaken to hide treasonous actions. Those include selling political access and favors to foreign adversaries, as journalist Peter Schweizer and others, including The Federalist and members of Congress, have repeatedly and thoroughly documented.

Selling political favors to foreign opponents, including communist China and authoritarian Russia, is clearly treason. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “treason” as: “The betrayal of allegiance toward one’s own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.” The Clintons got filthy rich from it.

Clinton then compounded that with more treasonous conduct when she lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

It is by now well-established that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid various actors to lie to U.S. intelligence agencies about Trump in an operation that eventually essentially negated the 2016 election — including encouraging federal employees’ treasonous behavior and two falsely predicated impeachments — and helped lose Republicans the 2020 election. Her campaign even tacitly confirmed this by paying a slap-on-the-wrist Federal Election Commission fine while still refusing to admit guilt for it a few weeks ago, seven years after the fact.

BREAKING: Last year Hillary Clinton quietly settled a campaign finance violation over reporting the *Steele Dossier* funding as legal services

She paid a fine and was never arrested pic.twitter.com/MoIoClVaQ8
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 30, 2023

Did FBI agents ever show up at Hillary Clinton’s house over her clearly criminal and treasonous “documents dispute”? Nope. The FBI’s director instead essentially confirmed she had committed multiple felonies but decided not to investigate or prosecute her for it because she was a presidential candidate for a major political party.

Hillary paid to have Trump falsely smeared as a traitor, laundering the slander through U.S. agencies that are supposed to provide equal justice under the law but now function as weapons to damage Democrats’ political opposition. In conjunction with others in the Obama administration that likely include Obama himself, she colluded with multiple security-state agencies to slander, undermine, hamper, and now threaten with jail time Democrats’ top political opponent.

That’s treason. It’s election erasure. It’s ongoing. And these traitors are all running about totally scot-free, while they jail their political opponents for what at best are misdemeanors, and for which they refuse to prosecute anyone on the left who perpetrates them — from street rioters all the way up to their presidential candidates.

My colleague Elle Purnell pointed out that when Trump countenanced chants of “lock her up” at his rallies over Clinton’s never-penalized repeat criminal behavior, Democrats lost their minds, and insisted this was the stuff of dictatorships, tyranny, and political repression.

“Dictatorships lock up the opposition, not democracies,” said Spygate intelligence official Michael McFaul. “Since when do Americans advocate jailing political opponents?” said top Spygate propagandist Julia Ioffe, then at Politico.

“In a democracy, you can’t threaten to jail your opponents,” Obama said in 2016. “We have fought against those kinds of things.” “In America, we don’t send our political opponents to jail,” tweeted an official Democratic National Committee Twitter account.

REMINDER In 2016 Trump got huge laughs for telling Hillary Clinton she'd be in jail if he was in charge of the law Then there was four years of agitprop about how this proved that Trump was "a dictator who wanted to imprison his political opponents."https://t.co/jJADWmsMSj pic.twitter.com/hNgTVnmI5W
— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) October 21, 2022

The Clintons are clearly traitors willing to endanger their nation for profit, and it would be fully just to prosecute them as such. Yet as president when he had the chance, Trump decided not to pursue it. According to Trump Attorney General Bill Barr’s recently published memoir, “Trump brought up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and surprised Barr by saying that he had wanted the matter to be dropped after the 2016 election,” according to a review of Barr’s memoir in the fall 2022 Claremont Review of Books.

“‘Even if she were guilty,’ he told Barr, “for the election winner to seek prosecution of the loser would make the country look like a ‘banana republic.’”

Ever since riding down his golden escalator, Trump has been ceaselessly vilified as a tinpot dictator, an evil supervillain, an authoritarian, the second coming of Adolf Hitler. But Democrats cannot change the facts, which include that Trump had fully legitimate justification to prosecute his horribly corrupt political opponent and refused to do so. They can make no such argument for themselves.

So, if it is indeed the stuff of banana republics and ending democracies to jail one’s political opponents, let’s all be clear about which political party is dragging the nation down that route. And let all in authority who care about equal justice under the law begin fiercely applying Democrats’ standards to them until they stop perverting justice to destroy our country.

The no-holds-barred legal shutdown and prosecution of leftist insurrectionists filling state capitols in support of a transgender child murderer would be one such proportionate response.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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